new heartfelt stuff

Monday, August 11, 2008

Joshua Nkomo

I would not like pokey rooms either. There’s a whole suburb in Perth — Como — that’s like that.

On the point of Como — after arriving in Australia, and taking to Christianity like ducks to water (at least this was the recipe for redemption for the lowly aggregate of X-African migrant society that wanted only to be accepted in the mainstream by the lowliest of the redemptive society) — we were exposed to a long priestly lecture at Como Baptist Church.

It was suffocatingly nullifying. Like a sermon out of wuthering heights, it seemed to go on for days and days. The church was evidently so crowded by migrants looking for cultural salvation, that at the back there was standing room only. So we stood on wooden boards, as the patriarch proceeded to induct us into a new mode of being.

And, at one point, my parents tell me, they suddenly woke up when the goodly pastor uttered the magical phrase: “What is it was Joshua in Como…”

They had throught they’d heard: “What if it was Joshua Nkomo?”

A message from the past.