oh la la, mon dieu

last night, rachel and i thought we were headed to a quiet dinner at the réfectoire (on-campus dining). a few minutes before leaving the house, one of the hospital administrators invited us to dinner at blague à port, cuisine from côte d’ivoire. so we all piled into the hospital truck and headed across the river to the same tiny island with the market. we had enough animated conversation to endure the two-hour wait for ultimately quite tasty “fish-kebobs,” fries, plantains, and cold slaw.
then, everyone was headed over to after-dinner drinks at cécado. i don’t drink, so it was another d’jino (grapefruit fizzy drink) for me. i relaxed the no carbonation rule, so there would be something i could drink. french and english floated around the table as did the marlboro haze. eventually we ended up at padouk, a nearby dance club, with an age range of clientele from practically prepubescent to somebody’s grandpa. there was a mix of traditional and latin music that was enjoyable until some guy gave me the evil eye and said something i didn’t really understand. i think he didn’t like where i was sitting. whatever, angry drunk man is always a good reason to be out. so i started scouting out the dance floor to round up the rest of the troops, but everyone was gone! before i got dizzy from circling the floor, i ran into rachel. folks had moved outside. we ended up heading back home alone because the rest of the group wanted to stick around.
so, if this story hadn’t taken enough unexpected turns yet, this is where it really got crazy. we get into a taxi (usually only marked with blue and white paint) with these two random guys headed somewhere else (it’s common to lump random people together). tworandomguys need to go to some dark shady looking neighborhood where taxi driver hits a dog and stops to pee on the side of the road since random guy #1 had to “go get something.” we’re waiting for what seems like forever. let’s just say i wasn’t sure if we were gonna get home okay. everybody gets back in the car and the next stop is the now-deserted market which is full of night roamers. we wait again while exchanging tworandomguys for anotherstrayguy. finally, we drive over “the second bridge” (that’s the real name), through the island where dinner happened, and over “the first bridge.” i was never so happy to see the hospital! whew...happy ending:)
after my night of serial our fathers and attempted hail marys, i hauled myself up a few hours later to go to church. it may sound cliché to churchgoers, but it is always good to be in the house of the lord. doesn’t matter what continent. this was a catholic church where one of the schweitzer doctors spoke and played music. there was an awesome vibraphone? (wooden xylophone) with two players, some drummers, and an occasional flute-like woodwind. you can tell i liked the music. there were these older ladies who reminded me of the steward board in traditional black baptist churches. most wore white and covered their hair. the difference is that they have moves! at an agreed upon time, each little old lady pulled out her pair of pom poms and, together, they did a praise routine. most of the rest was regular catholic church until the priest decided to make a public inquisition of my friend. he walked down the aisle to our pew to ask her something none of us really understood until later. turns out, he thought she was going to steal the communion because she didn’t stand in front of them and swallow it. she had taken it to her seat because that’s the way they take communion at her church back in the states, kneeling at your own pew. well, the priest goes back up to the altar and proceeds to lecture the entire congregation on the sanctity of communion. what a way to start the day. by the way, thanks to the peeps who pray for me every day. you guys are awesome!