I must admit that the "restaurant" upstairs gives me an opportunity to comfortably try some African dishes I haven't yet tasted. Below are rice with beef in peanut sauce, and boiled igname with chicken and [slightly spicey] attiéké.
rice with beef in peanut sauce
I mentioned my back problems to one of the cleaning women, who promptly decided I needed to try a chocolatey drink originally from the Philippines, but now apparently globally marketed--MyChoco, which she swears by. I'll try it for breakfast tomorrow. According to the box, it makes all kinds of outrageous promises, so we'll see. It's supposed to be a mix of cocoa, milk, sugar [of course], DHA powder [an omega-3 fatty acid], and fruit flavoring.
And, speaking of Easter Week, for Maundy Thursday, I attended a "Christian" Seder at the Campbell's place along with their children, the Goodlins and their children, and a few others. As the Passover Seder is a ritual feast at the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover, and Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples according to three of the Gospels, Jesus being referred to at the paschal lamb--the sacrificed lamb of God, this isn't as strange as is sounds. If you are unfamiliar with the Passover Seder, after the meal, the half-matzah which had been “hidden” during the meal and set aside, the afikoman [dessert], is taken out and eaten. It symbolizes the Paschal lamb. At any rate, it was an interesting experience and a sort of object lesson for the children and participants.
On Good Friday, as I was heading for the grocery store for a couple of needed items in the late afternoon, I heard much singing and saw an immense crowd of people heading down the road towards the highway. There was a semi-covered truck holding a red-robed choir, followed by a huge wooden cross being transported by a another vehicle following the choir, with masses of singing worshipers, following in its train. It was possibly a large Catholic church staging the event, even the Notre Dame de La Tendresse, across the highway, the Boulevard de France. If so, in addition to crossing the highway, they would have needed to pass by the large Riviera Golf Mosque, but I have no idea where they started, and even if the crowd was even from N-D de La Tendresse as there as I see nothing posted on the church website. I wanted to check the Cathedral's website as well, in case it was part of a city-wide event of the Archdiocese for Holy Friday, but the site was down. Someone I talked to said it could also be the United Methodist Church, as they are also known to have done something similar in the past, but I'm not aware of one close by. By the time I had returned from my errand, all was as if nothing had happened...
For Easter itself, there were heavy thunderstorms in the wee hours of the morning. It sounded like buckets of water were being poured out from the sky. Fortunately all was cleared up by the time I was ready to leave! For church, I had considered two [easy] options, attending the English language African church that meets regularly on the upper level of the SIL Center, or attending the French language one that Christina has been attending. Since Emily and Kathryn had decided to try this church out for themselves, I joined them, and we shared a taxi together.
It was a smallish church set up for about 50 worshipers or so. With a couple of exceptions, including the pastor, most of the congregants were quite young in age, and the music reflected this. There was an hour and a half of lively contemporary gospel-style music, and prayer before the sermon, which lasted 40 minutes, then another 1/2 hour or so of singing the same fare. No familiar hymns, all modern music that to my ears was exceedingly loud [the singers' microphones worked very well], with soloists and a musical ensemble. There was no choir. All in all, the music was fine in small doses, although I found it both overly repetitive, and inordinately long, as it went on FOREVER... We stood up to sing, sat down to listen to the special music, sometimes joining in with the vocalist; and many parishioners enthusiastically danced in place, swaying and clapping to the beat.
the entrance to the church compound
[click on the image above for the video]
I was elated that the pastor didn't yell at us--so many African preachers have a shrill, angry, strident tone [recall Jonathan Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God]--but was soft-spoken and, consequently, difficult to hear. He did not use a microphone and really should have done so. Although it lasted 40 minutes, about 20 minutes too long in my book, many African preachers exceed this...
After the service, we were invited to a special Easter luncheon at the church, which we gladly accepted. It would be quite a wait while they prepared the food, but it was Easter, and none of us were doing anything special that afternoon. The pastor came and sat down where the four of us were sitting, along with an African student studying civil law, Sarah Yeboua, who had introduced herself to us. The pastor, probably in his 60s, was originally from a Muslim background, so we asked him questions about himself and his church. Apparently the church has been around since 2004, if I understand correctly, but the building itself was newer, dating from 2017, and was still under construction. I believe the church to be originally a church plant of Presbyterian missionaries, one of three sister churches in Abidjan.
Lunch was a casual dinner of lamb and vegetables roasted on a makeshift grill, served over a type of semolina, the meat chopped and grilled by two of the men. As most of us waited around talking, one of the African women kept a large number of children occupied with songs and hand motions. She may have been a Sunday School teacher, and they were very well-behaved.
Here are the veggies, with the spices [piment] in the background
And since the main cook of the SIL restaurant was away today, I had to look for lunch elsewhere. I returned to a place I had visited last year, Roots, basically an ice cream parlor with burgers and light fare on the side. I had a ham, chicken, mushroom, and onion crêpe, a ginger drink, and salted caramel ice cream for dessert. Quite a switch from my African fare, but a welcome change of pace.
Clément only works in the library Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so I didn't see him today. He will probably freak out when he returns and finds I've switched the AZERTY keyboard to a QWERTY one, but if I'm going to do any serious typing at all I'm going to need it. I've also momentarily switched the library software from French to English as it's so much more efficient working in English. [I'm creating some lists of useful open-source and other free resources for Clément to use when he attempts to help library users, particularly students writing papers]. And I will switch the keyboard back to the AZERTY one when I'm done...
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