In Upende

Well, as I promised, I will now divulge the story of my first romantic encounter here in Nigeria. I was in the care center at Gyero, which is a little village about 40 minutes outside of Jos, spending time with the boys and learning how to play the drum when a couple 15 passenger vans pull up and out pour a stream of folks, and they get the boys to start unloading sacks of food. As it turned out, the army was making a large donation of food to Gyero, and they had sent their army chaplains as emissaries with the gift. So while these good folks were being addressed by one of the uncles of the center, one of their number wandered away to where I was merrily booming away on my little drum and engaged me in conversation. He introduced himself as the pastor of a village church not too far away and complimented me on my musical ability and asked me where I was from and what I was doing in Nigeria and how long I was going to be staying here and how often did I come to this orphans’ home? He then politely enquired if my husband was also working in Nigeria, to which I told him I was not married. This was not really the first time that Nigerians assumed that I must already be married or even have children stashed away somewhere, so I was hardly surprised by this. Then he asked me why I was not married, if it was because I felt called not to be, and I told him (fool that I am) that I didn’t feel especially called to singleness, but that I would wait for God’s timing to bring circumstances together. He assured me that this was a wonderfully wise course of action and asked me what kind of person I was going to marry, like perhaps, I don’t know, a pastor? To which I had to shrug and say that I didn’t have anyone particular in mind. “Oh yes, you are staying open to the will of God, that is good, God bless you, hallelujah. Do you have a phone number here in Nigeria?” To which I replied, scrambling for plausibility in the face of my shock, that I didn’t have a phone number I could give out, and that the only way people from home could contact me was through the SIM office line. “That is very good, I should very much like to have that number.” To which I think I nodded and smiled and looked distracted, because he then went on to ask me how long I had been a Christian and when I told him since I was ten years old, he (with many praise God’s and hallelujah’s) gave me quite a sermonette about how we had to press on in our faith and keep maturing and the importance of prayer (praise the Lord!) and the importance of spiritual warfare and are you filled with the Holy Spirit? then you must speak and pray in tongues because the Spirit will intercede for us with groans the words cannot express, hallelujah! And he quoted a great deal of Scripture to me and concluded by asking me how old was I? (Praise the Lord) and he hoped that we would meet again. And then someone came to tell him that Reverend wanted everyone to come together and so he excused himself and that was that.

I have to say that I found the whole experience rather amusing. Apparently many of the young Nigerian gentlemen are very interested in romantic relationships with Western expats solely for the reason of getting out of Nigeria, so this experience is hardly uncommon, but when you’ve been warned and counseled about it so much it’s kind of like going to a gypsy fortune teller and having your fortune told and then actually seeing it come to fruition. At such times, one can hardly respond with anything besides the chortling disbelief of “Oh my gosh, it’s really happening.” So there you go, it really happened.