A visit to Serowe

Mid-morning on Saturday Banks Lesetedi, one of our students, and I head out for Serowe, some 180 miles north of Gaborone. It is another clear, sunny day, bound to be hot. I really need to get the air conditioner fixed.

As we load up Banks suggests that he drive. ‘I am younger,’ he says; ‘my elder should not be driving me around.’ I decline, saying simply that I like to drive. Maybe, I say to myself, if I get tired he can drive later.

After Phakalane the speed limit goes up to 120 km/h, a bit over seventy. The conversation has lagged when he says, ‘You certainly are a law-abiding citizen.’ Normally that would seem to me to be a compliment, but it quickly becomes clear that it is a criticism: I am driving too slow. I now picture him driving along at 80 mph or more, and I am determined to drive all the way at a modest 65-70.

Serowe is an historic town, and a sprawling one. Several of Botswana’s presidents have come from here, including the first, Sir Seretse Khama.

We drive to Banks’ sister’s home, where we will be staying, and drop off our luggage. Then we are off to Ford Gagoane’s home; he’s the second of our Serowe students. His home is up a rutted dirt track, and I drive carefully, not sure how much clearance I have.

We are taken into the living room to await Ford’s return. It is a large room, with a variety of things – photos, certificates and so on – hanging on the wall. I notice a calendar theme. There is a bamboo calendar from 1993, advertising a Chinese restaurant in Hamburg. There’s a large one providing the veterinary inoculation schedule for 2011. The year is cut out of another, but it has a large number of wild animals on it, promoting tourism in Botswana.

Banks and I have eaten at Nandos, a periperi chicken place in Palapye, on the way up, but soon the family brings out more chicken and mealie meal for us to eat. Ford digs in. Banks and I pick at ours, finally explaining we have just had a meal. It’s three in the afternoon.

            When I awake on Sunday morning, I find Banks’ brother-in-law washing my car. ‘We cannot have a priest going to church in a dirty car,’ he explains, as he finishes up the exterior and heads inside. No wonder my ministry as a parish priest never really took off. It’s the car’s fault. Then he looks at my shoes and says much the same thing, spraying them with something and beginning to polish them. I watch the shine appear. ‘My,’ I say, ‘this really works. What is it?’ He shows me the can. It’s tire blackener.

            We arrive at St. Augustine’s Church in clean car and shined shoes. It is a pretty old church, off the beaten road a bit; no one drives by and says, ‘Oh, I think I would like to visit there.’ Reminds me a bit of St. Paul’s in Cary. You have to intend to be going there.

            I walk through the service with Ford and Banks. This is to be my first time as celebrant, saying the Eucharist in both Setswana and English, and I am a bit nervous. Complicating the picture is the use of incense. I have never been good at managing the thurible, with its hot coals and smells that make me cough. But the young man who serves as thurifer is good, and patient, and he hands me the chain back and forth several times for me to get the feel of it.  And ultimately I manage fairly well.

            It’s a good congregation. I reach that conclusion because I don’t see any smirks when I say the liturgy in Setswana, and they seem tolerant of a sermon that – I realize as I am going along – has too many different ideas in it. Just last week I was saying to our students how important it is in preaching to focus and simplify, and here I am….

Oh well. I’ll do better at the cathedral next week.

Setswana lessons

            Peter Moshapa is giving me lessons in Setswana. He is one of my students, but today we reverse roles.

            I have identified portions of the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist that I want to be able to say in Setswana. Well, actually, I want to be able to say all of it in Setswana, but that’s exceedingly unlikely. What I’ve done is identify sections that I have some reasonable hope of managing.

            Morena a nne le lona, I begin. ‘The Lord be with you.’ Bakang Morena. ‘Praise the Lord.’ Go sego Modimo, Rara, Morwa le Mowa o o Boitshepo. ‘Blessed by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ A re rapeleng. ‘Let us pray.’

            I write them out in my own weird version of phonetics. As I do so, I wonder why a ‘g’ in Setswana sometimes sounds like an ‘h’. And why, in Boitshepo, is there an ‘h’ at all, since it is pronounced ‘say,’ not ‘shay’? But Peter does not give me time to speculate. He has me repeat a sentence, then I listen to him say it, then I repeat it again. And again. When it comes to the Peace, he even has me stand up, raise my hands, and say in a loud voice, A kagiso ya Morena e nne le lona ka metlha. I lose my place.

            He is an excellent, patient teacher. Annoying, but excellent. He’s annoying in that I have gotten into this enthusiastically, and I am ready to move to the next sentence, and the next. But, no. After five or six sentences, Peter says, ‘let’s go back to the beginning and go through this again.’ After ten or twelve sentences, he says again, ‘let’s go back to the beginning.’ I have sixteen sections on my list, and I wonder if we’ll get to the last.

            I also realize that what he is doing is what good teachers do.

            And we do make it through, and Peter is very encouraging, even when I continue to flounder with the most difficult word I come across. I’m trying to say the Sursum corda, ‘Lift up your hearts.’ In Setswana it begins with Tlhatlosang. The ‘tlh’ mysteriously becomes a guttural ‘klah’, and the next ‘tl’ sounds like a guttural ‘clue.’ If I can make it that far I’m home free: the sang sounds pretty much like our English word. But I find it hard to make it that far.

            At home I take out my bilingual prayer book and write my phonetic spelling over the Setswana sentences, and I sit on my balcony in late afternoon, reading them aloud over and over again.

            I’ve already told Peter Moshapa that I hope he will work with me again next week.

A Central African oath of obedience

We are standing in the Bishop’s office, me and Bishop Trevor, with Susan Mogwera as witness. He has handed me a document on heavy card stock, with the seal of the Diocese of Botswana at the top. He asks me to read it aloud.

‘I, Leon Spencer,’ I begin, ‘do swear that I will pay due and Canonical Obedience to the Bishop of Botswana and his successors, so help me God.’  

I’m making my Oath.

‘I assent to the Book of Common Prayer,’ and ‘I believe the doctrine as therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God.’  I go so far as to ‘consent to be bound by all the Canons of the Province of Central Africa.’ Not that I’ve ever seen them, but then, I doubt if at our Episcopal Church ordinations we can claim to know all that is in our canons either.

The three of us sign my Oath.

Then it’s the Bishop’s turn. He takes out a second document, which has a fancy red seal on it. He begins to read. ‘We, Musonda Trevor Selwyn Mwamba, by Divine Permission, Bishop of Botswana to our beloved in Christ, Leon Spencer, a Priest in the Church of God: We greet you in the name of the Lord.’

He goes on to read that he has granted me ‘our license and authority to officiate as a Priest within our Diocese.’ He signs it +Musonda Botswana.

No doubt this is one of the last official acts he performs. His resignation as Bishop of Botswana takes effect in just a few hours.

The Diocese of Botswana turns forty

            It is quite a procession at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross here in Gaborone: first, the lay ministers, then we clergy, who peel off past the President of Botswana in the first pew to go to our seats, then come a herd of bishops. (Do bishops come in herds? Maybe it is a clutch of bishops. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a coven.)

Anyway, there are the bishops of West Missouri and of Newcastle, in the UK, two of Botswana’s companion links. There are bishops from throughout the Province of Central Africa, from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia.  There is the first bishop of Botswana, and the third. There’s the Archbishop of West Africa, followed by the Archbishop of York, the Ugandan John Tucker Sentamu, who is to preach. Finally appears the celebrant, Botswana’s fourth bishop, Trevor Musonda Mwamba.

         

The Archbishop of York

We settle in for the long haul, but surprisingly, the service lasts only a bit longer than three hours. Not bad when you consider the place is packed, a superb youth choir has come over from Pretoria to join our fine choir, and sandwiched into it all is the dedication of stained glass windows, which include one with the seal of the Diocese of North Carolina.

Everyone knows that these are the final days of Bishop Trevor’s episcopacy, but I find it gratifying that the focus is not upon a farewell service for him. Instead it is upon the 40^th anniversary of the diocese, which before 1973 had been linked to the Diocese of Matabeleland in Zimbabwe, with ties also to Kuruman in South Africa. Its creation was a critical step toward the Church in Botswana securing its own identity.

Afterwards the two choirs do an impromptu concert, a kind of call-and-response, which is lively and, well, remarkable. I make a point to go over to our South African visitors and thank them for joining us for the celebration. Soon they are on their way again, across the border.

An excellent booklet on the history of the Diocese of Botswana is distributed to the congregation. Fr. James Amanze, my Principal and Canon Theologian to the Diocese, has written it. It is ‘published by the St. Augustine Theological School.’ We are shameless these days in self-promotion.

Mother Jamie L’Enfant and Dr. Sharita Womack, the new chairs of the North Carolina-Botswana companion link committee, and Fr. Murdock Smith, the former chair, represent Bishop Michael Curry, who could not attend. I take them around for the next few days. We visit the hospice, and St. Peter’s Day Care Centre for ‘orphans and vulnerable children,’ and our St. Augustine students, and even a few zebra at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve.

Bishop Trevor calls us in as we head to the airport, and we have tea with him in his office. Slowly but surely it is being emptied of all of his things. I then drive them to the airport, where there are many others to see them off.