For all of you religious sceptics out there i can assure you with 100% certainty that Jesus is coming again this Christmas…

So where do i begin on my messianic tale of virgin birth….

I will start from the beginning…the Alpha if you will

Amongst other things I am in charge of a small tent hospital in the wilds of Congo that is next to an existing health centre that is run (nominally) by the ministry of health. Part of this health centre is a little straw roofed building that is the maternity, that up until recently had not been given much attention. However about a month ago we received a mid-wife in our team who now spends her days in this little building training the local matron and helping with deliveries…

Last week a lady, let’s call her Mary, came to the health centre complaining of abdominal pains…she was poked, prodded and tested and eventually told “congratulations madam, you are pregnant”
but this cant be she retorted, absolutely impossible, so they re-did the test, which again read positive.

With this Mary began to become a little agitated…..she swore blind that she has not been with a man since her husband had left nearly a year ago. In the villages of Katanga where our little story takes place it is commonplace for men (and women) to have second and third families. They are called the “deuxième bureau”…so there is no shame in having a fella on the side and no reason whatsoever for Mary to lie about her sexual liaisons, or lack thereof.
The matron and the midwife demanded again and again that the woman think back and try to remember who the father might be but she was adamant….there had been no man. She insisted that she would say if she had been with someone but it simply hadn’t been the case.

This puzzled the midwife, who not being religious or believing in miracles thought that despite Mary’s insistence, she must be mistaken or hiding something. She went to go and ask another Congolese colleague for some advice to see if he could perhaps shine some (non divine) light on the matter.

The colleague was not as one might expect completely taken aback by this conundrum. He simply asked Mary where she came from and where she bathed and then with a smile on his face he explained all.

Believers look away now … spoiler alert!

Who’s your daddy?

The village that she came from sits alongside a small river that is known for its tall grasses and reeds. It is also a well known fact that the boys of the village like to hide in the reeds upstream from where the women go to bathe where they pleasure themselves…

so somewhere in between the tall grasses and the bathing women a child was conceived.

At first this explanation seemed a little far fetched, until we were informed that Mary was not the first “Mary” to have been visited by an angel whilst bathing in the river and turn up with an unexplained pregnancy. This of course sparked a big debate over the possibility of this seemingly impossible scenario…As it turns out, according to my more medically inclined colleagues, sperm are resilient little bastards, we are all testament to that, and will stop at almost nothing in their quest to find an egg.
Having argued about the temperature of the water, the distance traveled, the life expectancy, and the likelihood of it even being possible, the overall conclusion was that Mary was telling the truth.

So sat before us, plain as day was a real life example of “divine” conception…..I would love to tell you that Mary was a virgin and had met a handsome gentleman named Gabriel only the night before, but alas Mary already had a son who was a few years old (father still unaccounted for but investigations are underway, initial inquiries lead us to believe he was an omnipotent looking man with a white beard)

So the midwife no longer believes Mary to be a lunatic and has given her a due date…..I kid you not…..the end of December!!!!!!

Welcome to the Congo

Give me money, give me biscuit……

Sunset on the lake Tanganika, Kalemie

River demarcating the border between Katanga and Sud-Kivu, Bendera

Displaced person cooking in a camp in Musa Kaite, northern Katanga

Sunset over the lake in Lubumbashi, Katanga

]]> http://www.chrisafir.com/blog/katanga-cong/feed/ 0 http://www.chrisafir.com/blog/london/ http://www.chrisafir.com/blog/london/#comments Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:06:30 +0000 chrisafir http://www.chrisafir.com/?p=527
Playing around with my new camera on London….clearly i have a lot to learn

It is still October, summer was just a few short weeks ago. Fall has been cancelled this year as we have moved directly into winter after yesterday’s blanket of snow. It is bizarre to see the ground all white and green leaves still on the trees.

What better way to celebrate the coming of a new season than sledging on the roof…

Atlanta seen from the top of the Western Hotel

Atlanta seen from the top of the Western Hotel

Atlanta, the home of Coca Cola

The Atlanta Metro. photo by Abram Kanzer

The view from my tent at Skydive The Farm in Rockmart, Georgia

A skydiver swoops the pond at sunset at Skydive The Farm

Marjorie working the late shift at Waffle House in northern Georgia

The Lorraine Hotel in Memphis Tennessee, site of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968

The Lorraine Hotel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum

Elvis Lives in Memphis

Live music on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee

Local Memphian runs for the trolley

Bella Flek and his wife play a free concert in Memphis

The old and the new, Nashville, Tennessee

A cowboy hangs out outside a live music venue in Nashville, Tennessee

Pulled pork and beans from Jacks BBQ photo by Abram Kanzer

Nashville Tennessee, Country music capital of the world. photo by Abram Kanzer

Lady tourist on the shores of a South Carolina Lake

The Bridge to Charleston, South Carolina

The Daughters of the Confederation, Charleston South Carolina

Cobbled Street in Charleston, South Carolina

The State Bank in Charleston, South Carolina

Street lamps still running off gas, Charleston

Historic buildings in Savannah, Georgia

The Waterfront, Savannah, Georgia

High Falls, Near Atlanta, Georgia

High Falls, Near Atlanta, Georgia

High Falls, Near Atlanta, Georgia