Music Like No Other

Sunday morning I went to a Catholic Mass with my sister and her friend.  We walked through a simple village of dirt streets, broken wooden fences, piles of garbage littering the street, and homes built from concrete and tin to reach the church sitting in what may have been the center of the town. Distinguished from the other buildings, the church gate opened to a courtyard of small pebbles and ornamental plants.  People were picking up rows of white lawn chairs, set up as an addition to the many pews already within to accommodate a larger crowd from the early Mass.  Clean concrete steps lead the way to four sets of grand wooden doors, opening to a voluminous interior with vaulted ceilings, crisp white walls accented with wooden trim and red, yellow, and white banners, wooden pews adorned with flowers and bows, and a magnificent crucifix of wood and metal hanging beneath a large symbol of the Holy Trinity: a triangle and circle simply painted and alone in its grandeur.  I sat in wonder of this wondrous building surrounded by simple homes: evidence of the importance placed on religion, and the influence of those who have more and investment of their resources into this building. Later I learned that this was one of just four Catholic churches in the Arusha area.

After an hour the church was filled with children, women and a few men, all sitting shoulder to shoulder and chatting in low voices until the procession began.  A church bell deeply rang its steady beat, followed with hand bells that joined in with high-pitched chimes. A keyboard crescendo-ed in with a quick, alto beat, signaling the voices to enter in harmony.  Children chanted a light, airy tune, swaying and clapping in beat as they entered the church and the choir joined with mature soprano and base with women adding to the sound with soprano voices calling in unison.  The music filled the church and the congregation swayed and clapped in rhythm. All of Mass was said in Swahili so I was not moved so much by the words as I was by the music that filled my soul with joy.