Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing

Author:Kojo Laing [Laing, Kojo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241370100
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The tail of the church rat bisecting the middle of the pews made the biggest cross; the same tail gathered shadows, sudden shafts of light, and all other linear things, and dragged them in rodent holiness towards the circular altar. God’s Word crawled. The rat was now at the centre of the empty SS church, and was shifting this centre as if the church were moveable, as if other walls, other beams, other windows could instantly appear and retain the rat at the centre wherever it went. Silence bred a new architecture. The church was dizzy with this movement. When Osofo rose early that cool January morning, God rose with him and put some fire in his hands. As he prayed by the outside walls his words scattered into the church, moving the rat out with their force. Words prowled around the running rat. Osofo took the worries and troubles of the absent flock and pressed them against the morning walls; and the walls touched them as they raced towards the ear of the sky, towards the ear of God. Last night’s drum, dance and song still lay inside the church, calm, as Osofo entered it with broom and reverence. Then as the morning wore on, the sufferers came; suffering broken marriages, poverty, disease, witchery, shame and hopelessness. He laid his hands on them with such zeal, such intensity that some of them were frightened by him. Different shrubs took in and gave out different prayers to Osofo as he sometimes pulled at their leaves in semi-trance. While Bishop Budu calmed and cajoled the sick, Osofo overwhelmed them. The bishop’s clothes, his lavender, and his utter satisfaction with his relationship with his flock drew out a different world of healing. But the flock would wonder: how many times had Osofo burned his own head? With his changing moods, his unpredictable preaching, his trances, and his passion for selling Bibles? He roamed over airports, markets and football parks with God by his cassock, and he was filled with a burning desire to keep the faithful uncomfortable, to make the comfortable faith shiver for a new beginning. Somebody thought: Osofo’s passion was just like roast plantain kept on the ashes too long.

Osofo ended his healing with the announcement that the extension to the church should move more quickly than it was moving. It was now time for the Weekly Exchanges between priest and congregation, which formed part of the church’s ritual. ‘The building should not move too quickly at all,’ someone shouted with annoyance. Osofo retorted, grimacing with impatience, ‘If God is saving you, would you say he should not save you too quickly?’ A member replied, his high voice moving fast: ‘But before we give ourselves totally to the water in God’s moving hands, we ourselves must have some surviving to do, even before God’s hands move again; besides the water we choose may be too deep to begin with. After all we’ve got to make things a little easier for God.

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