St. Anthony of Padua

Just got back from the church bazaar at St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Conakry’s only English Catholic parish. On occasional Sunday mornings, Madeleine attends mass at this small, quaint, dilapidated church in the middle of downtown Conakry. She always comes back with the same report: it was hot, the service was long, but the music was good... and the church has this huge crocodile in a cage just outside the front entrance of the church. Anyways, St. Anthony’s was holding its annual fund raising bazaar this afternoon and Madeleine and her friend Lisa convinced Lisa’s husband Dave and I to accompany them as they ‘made an appearance’...just for an hour.

I am usually not a church bazaar fan. As a matter of fact, I avoid them like the plaque. I am just not a crocheted-fridge-magnet-and-rice-krispies-squares kind of guy. However, having just finished reading the last book at the bottom of my autumn reading stash, and having forgotten to pay our DSTV cable subscription last week and subsequently learning how to make corndogs on the food channel not being an option open to me this Sunday afternoon, Dave and I decided to accept our spouses’ invitation to join them. Besides, there was a rumor that they’d be selling Heineken Beer. What better way of spending our Sunday afternoon than sitting around in a church yard, drinking beer and looking at a crocodile looking at us drinking beer.

As soon as we got there, Dave and I made a bee line for the crocodile. Big ugly mother, but then all crocodiles are big and ugly, aren’t they? Once 'looking at the ugly reptile' was off our checklist, Madeleine and Lisa parked us at the Heineken table while they went about doing ‘church bazaar’ stuff that ladies do at church bazaars (I think this is where the fridge magnets and rice krispie squares come into play) while the men sit around debating things that guys debate when they have beers together. We had a lot of things to debate, like when is a crocodile an alligator, and when is an alligator a crocodile? After a while and a few beers, we kind of forgot what the question was, so we never did find the answer to whatever question we started our conversation with, which again is pretty well what usually happens when guys have beers in a churchyard.

It turned out to be a very pleasant afternoon. Madeleine and Lisa never did find fridge magnets nor rice krispie squares, and decided to just sit around like Dave and I, the ladies discussing the health care crisis issue in Africa, while us men discussing other quasi existential issues like why was there a crocodile at the door of the church.

But alas, sometimes, one needs to just accept the fact that there are no easy answers to the intricate questions that life occasionally throws at you. It was surely not meant to be that Madeleine and Lisa solve the health care crisis in Africa that afternoon. Nor was it meant to be that Dave and I would ever come up with a plausible answer to the question about Pete the crocodile guarding the gates to the church. In any case, we were both very content to accept the fact that we were merely two slightly inebriated and perhaps ignorant specks in this vast universe of ours, sitting in a church yard somewhere in Africa, drinking warm German beer, attending a church bazaar void of any fridge magnets or baked goods. Sounded good at the time.

The afternoon ended with two guys auctioning off cases of beer, coca cola, and a goat. They auctioned off the goat at the very end. It sold for 5 million francs ($750). That’s an expensive goat. The guy who bought the goat had drunk a lot of the beer that he had bought at the start of the auction. Dave and I wondered what his wife would say when he got home with a goat. But then, this is Africa. Maybe its normal here to come home from a church bazaar with a case of beer and a goat as opposed to a fridge magnets and rice krispie squares....