Memories of an African Childhood: a Typical Sunday in the Village

After a quick cup of tea and left-over maize meal cake, when it was not too cold, we would wash our face, hands and legs in readiness for Sunday School. Applying locally made oil to our bodies (made using cow-milk cream that was heated, decanted and kept in a bottle. It was added onions to smell nice) we would then dress ourselves for church. Putting my short trousers on was such a feat. Getting my legs inside the trouser presented such a challenge I could fall down several times trying it.

If there was maize in the store, we would each take two cobs to serve as church offerings.  At times, our mom would give us some coins to serve the same.

Dressed and oiled (too oily if you ask me), I would pick and roll my wheel (an old tractor wheel) across the road and up the hill to our Sunday School.  That church was nothing more than a big rock atop the hill. Struggling with the steel wheel up the hill was such a task but it was worth. It served as a bell to summon other village kids to the church and a favorite toy of mine too.

Me and my young brother Leonard was always the first to get to church. With a stone, I beat the wheel and before long a dozen or so kids will be seen running towards ‘the church’ from all directions. After that I would raise our church’s flag. The flag was just but my mom’s head-kerchief that I borrowed every Sunday for the purpose.  It had a drawing of a peacock.

When our Sunday School teacher Tina arrived and a motley quorum of badly dressed snot-nosed village kids was achieved, it was time to go ahead with the business of the day. I was not a keen student; I don’t actually remember much of what was taught. Even with a gift of small biscuits that Tina would reward anyone who could recall the previous week’s verses, I could not bring myself to remembering anything. My interests lied elsewhere.

My role in that church was to beat the wheel to gather kids, raise ‘the flag’ and nothing more than pinch other kids and make faces at the teacher as she led us in prayer.  What I could not forget though was to join in saying ‘AMEN’ at the top of my voice.

There was a particular song I loved to join in too. It was about trampling the devil. The soloist would sing and we would stamp on the devil all over with all the might we could surmount in our tiny feet. The soloist will call on us to step on his feet, nose, mouth, ears, eyes, intestines… and we would stamp our feet vowing to trample him to dust. The dust we raised in that hill! (My mom had a rough time washing the red dust off her head-kerchief afterwards). That was not all to that song. After ‘trampling’ the devil, the soloist would pronounce triumph over the devil and we would clap, ululate and jump in praise of God. That song was my favorite.

The other bit I could contribute in that church was acting. On Christmas mornings, (our parents would join us then), we staged the Birth of Jesus, and I played Joseph, the father of Jesus. I did it so well because I mistakenly believed I was Jesus’ father for real. This belief was born out of the fact that the gal I admired the most played Mary, the mother of Jesus. After the play we all headed to Tina’s home for a feast of tea and buns. Tina did not miss to remind us to always take offerings to church lest Jesus refuse to be born on Christmas and hence there won’t be any bash. And we believed it!

After every Sunday School session, I lowered my flag, lift my wheel and threw it on the direction of home. That wheel would roll and jump towards home very fast and other kids cheered. It always hit a tree and stopped to be collected by me later. No kid will dare touch it because our menacing dog John Boss was presumed to be always on patrol.

Depending on the season, we would then go looking for wild fruits in the hill or we went to the shopping centre to scavenge in a certain trash pit that I kept it a secret between me and my little brother.

There was a senior education officer (Mr. Sambai, he died a few years ago in a fatal road accident) who lived in a magnificent house near our shopping centre, a kilometer or so from home. He was not home most Sundays. So we would go foraging for edibles in his trash pit. Sometimes we will get a spent tin of jam, chocolate, toothpaste or even stale bread. We would collect and eat it later (even toothpaste) as we sang lewd songs atop a certain tree overlooking our home on the side of the road. (When other kids were returning from a different church, we would bully them and rob them their sweets.)

In his compound again, there was an old dysfunctional trailer that was raised on stones such that its wheels could move. We would insert a stick to one of its wheels and rotate the wheels with speed as we mimicked the sound of a moving truck. It fascinated us immensely.

That done, we would pass by the shopping centre and buy sweets (I never gave out my coins in the church whenever my mom gave me and we would give out my young brother’s coins).

There was a diesel-powered maize mill in that shopping centre that belched out black thick smoke whenever it was ignited. (When I became literate in later years, I could read it was called Lister Diesel.) On Sundays, it was opened exactly at 2 pm. Not that we had any maize to grind but at the first sound of its engine, we would ran into the thick smoke it emitted and stand breathless engulfed by it. We would come out teary and coughing only to repeat it again the following Sunday. I can’t figure out now what the fun was in that.

Hungry but happy we will run home for lunch.

 In the evenings we would go out swimming in the dam and catch mudfish ( let this be a story for another day)