we met Jesus today

I just had the most bizarre afternoon of my life. First of all, you have to forgive me because I don’t have enough writing talent adequately describe the following events.

I woke up this morning with a phone call from my father. The main topic of conversation was that South Africa is dangerous and I am not to go into any of the townships (this is where blacks were confined during apartheid). I agreed, fully knowing that I would be attending church services at the township this afternoon.
My roommates (a Russian and German) invited me with them to a Zionist Church. The lady that cleans their office belongs to the church. You can google this if you’re more interested in the history. But pretty much it’s pretty huge all over Africa. We have to wear long skirts and have our heads covered. I thought I was appropriately dressed until I am told that I need something that buttons in the front and that I should go back into the car because the men shouldn’t see me. I eventually get a sweater and then head into the church with my roommates and the lady they know.

The hierarchal nature of this church is painfully obvious the minute you get there. There are hundreds of people sitting outside the church (men and women separate) and they are not allowed inside. You walk a bit further and then there are more important people. These people are also on the floor but get some shade. The most important people get to be indoors and they have specially uniforms. The men have green wannabe army outfits with police caps and the women have on highlighter yellow balloon arm shirts with green skirts. Overall there are about 1000 people on the premises. So we have about 2000 eyes on us. Being foreigners we are paraded around the church, our names announced, and we’re given first row seats INDOORS!!!! As they were leading us in I saw a white women sitting amongst all the black faces and thought she must also think this is strange.

The prophets:
The crowd is full of these prophets. Some are in the special uniform and some are in street clothes. At any given moment one of them will scream or cry or fall down. They come to whoever the hell they want to and clap in your face and then point at you. If they point at you, you have to follow them outside (men and women through separate exits). The first time we were called out we refused to go because we didn’t want to hear our fortunes. We were physically forced to go and out there we heard our fortunes in some native language. Once we were allowed back to our seats we decided that we would not let another prophet force us out. We were determined to stand our ground. Then another prophet comes and calls my roommates. They choose to stay seated. We then see the angry prophet barge into the church screaming “this is my church. You come out when I tell you!” My roomies get up and go out scared. About 20 minutes pass and I’m getting nervous because that’s about 15 minutes longer than the last time. The white lady is called up and the priest has her sit next to me. I find comfort in having her next to me. Then low and behold this woman is also a prophet! She starts making a noise with her throat, jumps up, claps, points at some other people, and then they follow her out. Right about now, I have lost my faith in everyone there and my roommates have been gone for too long. When they get back they said it was even freekier. Apparently this prophet was now Jesus and they had to go back to Germany and Russia and tell everyone that they saw they light there. We decide to leave immediately. The three of us get up and start down the long aisle, heading for the door with everyone watching us. At the door we are stopped and taken back to our seats. It was all really embarrassing. My new plan is not to make any eye contact because who knows who is a prophet. In the next two minutes a prophet comes to get me. This time the prophet leads us to another prophet: a man in his 50s, crying, screaming, and spitting. After kneeling down in front of his aggressive man for 10 mins, someone finally tells me what he’s saying. I am going to be receiving some stolen goods really soon. I should not take the goods because they will lead to trouble. There was also some special tea I’m supposed to drink.

After all this, we’ve had enough and decide that we’re going to leave and no one will stop us. We get to the parking lot (it’s not a lot, just red sand) and see that we can’t go anywhere. Our car is completely blocked in. There is not structure in the parking, people just parked everywhere. We chose to sit and wait in the car rather than go back inside.