Free One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina Page A

off hot fingers and generally squirm and bliss around. Eldoret has a great golf club. Uplands pork sausages.
    Mum has been going to church more. Sometimes Mum sleeps the whole afternoon. She is diabetic. All our uncles and aunts on Mum’s side are now diabetics. Today, she insists we find a church service. We drive around for a while and end up in some corrugated iron church, with no windows. We don’t want to go in, but Mum’s face is set, so we don’t argue. The heat and light are blinding, and people are jumping up and down and singing what sounds to me like voices from an accordion. It smells of sweat and goats.
    We sit. All hot and in Sunday sweaters and collars and Vaseline under the hot iron roof, and people spit and start and this is because we are frying, not because God is here. In the front, there is a line of young women dressed in long gowns: bright red and green, with a stiff cone rising outward up their chins. They are jumping up and down. Up and down. And some of them have rattles, and some have tambourines and they are singing loud and sweating in that gritty dusty Kenyan way—­not smooth and happy like American gospel on television.
    And the man in the front stands on the pulpit, sweating and shouting. The Catholic Church I know is all about having to kneel and stand when everybody else kneels and stands, and crossing and singing with eyebrows up to show earnestness before God, and open-mouth dignity to receive the bread. Some women will not open their tongues for the priest—­this is too suggestive. They will cup their hands and receive bread, and put the bread demurely into their hands and move back and bend one knee briefly before fading back to their seats and adjusting headscarves before sitting, kneeling, standing. Kneel. Stand. Massage rosary. Service ends in fifty-­seven minutes. Then announcements, when the priest says whoever wants to donate money for the parish fund should do so, and nobody ever does.
    This service goes on and on. Mum is shushing us a lot. Why does she come here? What is she looking for? Jimmy is quiet and looks pained. Mum, dressed in a simple, elegant dress, her hair professionally done, with her angular Kinyarwanda face looks out of place here. She does not seem involved; her face is set.
    People are dressed in wild robes: orange Peter Pan collars, neon blues and golds and yellows. People reach into bras and pockets and purses and take out notes and envelopes and throw them in the moving dancing collection baskets. A crescendo is reached, after we have given money, and people are writhing and shouting in the heat. Words are flowing from their lips, like porridge, in no language I know, but in a clear coherent pitch. Each person has her or his own tongue.
    In the Catholic Church, we all recite the same prayer and make a chorus out of it. Here, a chorus is made out of each person’s received tongue. The drums in the front set the tempo, and the pastor leads with his own language­less tongues, on a microphone.
    The church I am used to uses stories, parables, little priestly essays, and short written lyrical prayers. Some people just hiccup for twenty minutes. The pastor is saying, “RECEIVE, RECEIVE your own TONGUE.” And eyes are closed, and each person lets go of something, like me pissing in the sofa. The whole crowd has a group sound, and the instruments make this all one sound, and this sound carries us all, but each individual lives inside his or her own sound. One woman, all sharp angles and awkward shapes, is just hiccupping, as if her secret language is all starts and stops, and her elbows keep hitting the man next to her, who doesn’t even notice. In the front, eyes are closed, tears are flowing, and hand­made bottle-­top tambourines rattle at full slapslapslap, the tin roof church is so hot. Our hot wet breath is now dripping back down on us from the roof. Some faint. I want to drink.
    Why is Mum here?
    Ciru and I are both certain we will get into the