Wherein I witness equality

What a charged week this has been; full of events and people, for Sunday was the ordination of the first women pastors in the Lutheran church in Cameroon. Visitors came from South Dakota, Minnesota, Chicago, Canada, Tanzania, Germany, Ethiopia, and CAR. And who came from SD? My mother. I failed to meet her in the airport since I was supervising the Mock Exam (basically a practice SAT for the students in testing grades), and then she went straight to the meetings at happened all week. But I whipped up into the meeting hall during their break and, wouldn't you know, the she was. And after all that travel and all that waiting all she said was "your really sweaty." and since her arrival I have had to endure two things: 1) everyone saying how much alike we look and, 2) having people tell me that "you must profit from the chaleur (heat) of your mother." It has been really fun, though, to take her around to meet everyone. When we met Alfred and his family, she sang for hours with Alfred and Mado. The next day, after supervising the exams again, we went to visit with Oliver and his wife Alice and ended up talking a lot about culture in Cameroon. The best visit, though, was to Mommy Shah. We walked through Norwegian and I was greeted throughout the district. And then we came to the buvett, but she was not there. Her husband was and he brought us up to the house where, when I appeared in the doorway, her three daughters all charged the portal shouting "Unnnncle" and I swept them all up in my arms and deposited them in the couch. Then I introduced mom to everyone and we had a fabulous conversation for an hour during which I drank a liter and a half of shah and mom had the tiniest of sips. Then we walked down the street to the market and one of my waitresses came running out of her bar to meet my mother. At the bar we walked about and I showed off my quarter and introduced her to some students that were working there. And on Sunday was church. Church for six hours. Six hours. Six hours. Part of it was interminable, but there was a very exciting moment. It lasted forty five minutes but whipped by. When the ordinands were given their robes, women pastors and sponsors circled them to the whooping and hollering of the audience and the electric guitar and drums of the band. And from these cyclones of alb-bestowing emerged the first three women pastors of the Lutheran church in Cameroon. So, why was this so exciting? For me not so much because new pastors were raised, but because I was in the presence of equality in action. Men had been forced to step back and accept their equality with women, to realize that misogynism cannot be a valid structure for any successful institution. One of the very fun things this week is the fact that with so many people here having stressful meetings all day, we have been having excellent wine parties every night, wherein great quantities are drunk, much breeze is shot, and questions posed are questions answered, and the raconteurs stand in the spotlight. It is about as much fun as the parties every night during Dickens Camp.