We spent Friday the 17th on a 5-hour car ride from Moshi to a small, rural village called Kitete. The village is so remote that most people in the city of Moshi have never heard of it. If you try googling it, it doesn’t exist. The car ride (the parts that we were awake for) was beautiful; we drove past Masai villages, monkeys, camels, the Great Rift Valley, and Lake Manyara.
St. Brendan’s parish, where we stayed in Kitete, is on top of a hill (almost like the bluff) with an amazing view of the lake and surrounding hills. When we arrived, we were greeted by Brother Morris (also known as BroMo, pictured on the right in his swaggy Tire Rack sweatshirt and bucket hat) and a massive lunch. After stuffing our faces, we showed up to mass two hours late. But don’t worry, we got there in time for communion and the last two hours of mass (in Swahili). After mass, we were invited to share a meal with the community. We were still full from lunch #1 (and breakfast and snacks in the car) but we ate anyway. As our host mom lovingly said, “You’re in Africa, you’re allowed to be fat.”
After church, we had a bumpy ride back to St. Brendan’s to tour the vocational secondary school behind the parish. In the evening, we had soup and bread while we waited for the bishop to arrive. Thinking this was our dinner, we filled up. Two hours later, the archbishop showed up and we had dinner #2, this time, it was a full spread (yes, we counted: 6 meals, 1 day). This 
weekend was special in Kitete because the archbishop was making his yearly visit. Over the weekend, 124 couples were married and 344 people were confirmed. We were there for all of it. Additionally, it had been four years since the newly built church was consecrated and we were a group of 14 visitors–Fr. Sebastian was excited to point out the theme of 4’s. On Saturday, we attended the weddings. 5 hours later, 124 couples were married in the Catholic Church and our group became a choir. Mama Mo composed her first song in Swahili, Asante, and we performed the song during mass and introduced ourselves (this was the only part in English). The entire mass and celebrations were televised on national TV. Afterwards, we watched the newly weds feed each other cake and had the opportunity to feed each other wedding cake, too. All the sitting in church left us pretty restless and looking for movement. When there was no dancing after the weddings, we took it upon ourselves to start a dance party outside the pastoral residence. It began with Yeudith’s tiny speaker, but 20 minutes in, Fr. Sebastian ridiculed our quiet music and brought out a 3-foot tall speaker. We danced for three hours, rain and all. The music brought out priests, brothers, seminarians, the women who cooked our delicious food, and even a bride. It was a great bonding experience, and a highlight of the weekend. We also have a great Swahili playlist now.
The next day, we attended 344 confirmations. This time, we came prepared. We brought water, snacks, journals, and books to help us through the 6 hour ceremony. Some of the younger confirmandi performed a song and dance. We again performed a song for the congregation; we sang Sia Hamba, a South African folk song about marching with God. We had lunch after mass with the priests and bishop, and then laid low until dinner. This time, the party was inside. We danced and played musical chairs all night (we heard that some priests even stayed up until 4am). As Fr. Sebastian said, “In the Western world, you think therefore you are. In Africa, we dance, therefore we are.”
Monday morning, we had breakfast and toured the vocational school more in-depth with BroMo. Students study the trades of knitting, carpentry, welding, brickery and masonry, hairdressing, electrical work, or tailoring. It was amazing to see so many young people with so many talents. Many of us ordered custom-made skirts and shirts from the students in the tailoring department. They were beautiful! After lunch, we watched the student women’s netball and men’s soccer games. In the evening, we introduced the priests to Uno cards and played rambunctious card games for the rest of the night.
Tuesday morning, we woke up at 7am to attend–you guessed it–another mass. This time, it lasted 30 minutes (as promised by Fr. Sebastian) and the homily was given in both Swahili and English. After mass, we packed up our things and said our goodbyes. This was the hardest goodbye of the trip. We bonded with the community at St. Brendan’s and truly felt the spirit of the nation.
On the way to our next destination, we had an exciting drive. The roads were especially muddy and hard to cross due to recent rain, and not even our trusty Land Cruisers were equipped to handle them. We skidded and lost traction driving up and down steep, rocky mud roads. Inevitably, the cars got stuck. Before we could get too nervous, about twenty people came to our rescue from their nearby homes. After lots of trials and errors and muddy shoes, the locals were able to push us out of a ditch and safely back on our way. It was a 10-minute ordeal.
Without them, we’d probably still be there. To us, this was a crazy car ride; for the locals, it was another Tuesday. This is one of many acts of unconditional kindness that we’ve experienced in Tanzania. We have been blown away by the hospitality and love given so freely by the people we have encountered. We are looking forward to the experiences we’ll have and people we’ll meet in our last week!
Cat & Ariana