The West African Orthodox Catholic Church (+ Intimate Fridge Relationships)

Today was a very good day. Today was perhaps the best day that I’ve had in Morocco, and it all started with the West African Orthodox Catholic Church.

A little backstory: I went to Ghana in August of 2017 with a group from my church and spent a lot of time with our sister church in Ho-Bankoe. This included youth ministry activities, 5.5hr Sunday sermons, cultural exchanges (aka their beautiful dances and music, and our dumbass Cotton Eyed Joe routine), and many groundbreaking ceremonies. With the same church group, I was also fortunate enough to attend a Ghanaian church in the Bronx last year, which also included a lot of dancing, beautiful music, BEAUTIFUL clothing, and the best food I’ve ever had. That said, all of my West African church experiences were Presbyterian, and I have actually never been to a Catholic church at all until today.

I went to the church because my friend Mira wanted to join a choir here in Rabat. Leah and I tagged along and sat amongst the (obviously) majority Sub-Saharan crowd, and the scattering of French people, plus two Filipino women and 2 east Asians. This was the most racial diversity I’ve seen in a month, mind you. The priest was caucasian and French, which was bizarre to me.

The church is called Cathedral Pierre and is very extravagant with stained glass, perfectly clean walls, simple but pleasing architecture, etc. It was built by French colonists, but completely reclaimed by West Africans here in Rabat, and because the country is 98.5% Muslim, it’s the only church for miles and miles. Casablanca and Tangier are known for having a couple Jews and about a dozen Christians, too, but other than that, no religious diversity en Maroc. Or should I say, walu.

We sat down in the church, listened to the sermon in French (the jist was “if you listen, you will succeed”), sang in French, and also sang in two West African languages (one of which I recognized as Twi! From Ghana!). The whole experience was great, except that there wasn't as much dancing or loud singing as I expected, which was sad. The music was still great, though.

I didn’t take communion because I was confirmed in a Presbyterian church (which felt weird because pretty much everyone else got up to take it and I AM Christian, but anyways…), I have no idea how to kneel on those prayer bench things, and I don’t know how to do the “father, son, holy ghost” sign in the correct order. But I loved it! And the best part? After the service ended, we listened to a couple more songs as the congregation cleared out, and then Mira asked the choir director about choir opportunities in Rabat and was promptly offered a spot in theirs! Huzzah! Shoutout to Mira for knowing what she wanted and getting it, despite not being Catholic or West African.

I may join the choir, too, depending on how lenient they are about singing abilities. I have the spirit, if that helps!

After church, I went to the gym and did a quick workout, and then started to walk home (it’s about an hour’s walk). I got a little lost on the way, and suddenly noticed that two men on huge white horses, wearing white uniforms and Fes hats, carrying spear-like sticks, were trotting along beside me! Huh! #justMoroccanthings am I right? But, it turns out I was by Tour Hassan, which is THE landmark of Rabat, and perhaps the most touristy place, so the horsemen's presence was less bizarre.

It was quite a sight, though: just a lost ginger girl and her two horse-back buds, alone together on a random street in Rabat, living their best lives.

I got home, ate lunch with my host mom, lay down for 20 minutes, then went back out to meet my language partner Meriem! We walked in the park as she quizzed me on vocab, and then sat down in a McDonald’s (McDonald’s is called MacDo here, and is surprisingly expensive! It is considered a nice place to eat here… still tastes fake, though) as she taught me new verbs. Then we met Mira again and went to the French Institute for a French Indie film! The audience was homogenous (old, French, white), and the film was 2ish hours long and the WEIRDEST thing I’ve ever seen. Which is saying a lot, because I once watched a play about a gorilla cult, where all the members had foot fetishes and got high on shrooms.

But anyways, here is my attempt to explain the film:

There is a guy who is a bad rapper. He gets a new fridge with artificial intelligence that helps make his music better and becomes his friend. He and the lady who sold him the fridge start having a relationship. His rap songs become famous and he cheats on her with 2 girls in a very graphic scene. The fridge texts the lady to come over, and then lets her inside the rapper’s house so she can see that he is cheating on her. She gets mad and leaves, and then the rapper pushes the fridge into a lake because he’s mad that the fridge texted his ex and let her in while he was cheating on her. Oh, by the way, as the fridge is getting pushed into the lake, he texts the ex girlfriend to ask for help, and she comes and is too late. He goes to court and is tried for murder (of his fridge), and his fridge is able to testify against him because its personality and memory was saved in the cloud, even if the actual physical fridge is permanently damaged, at the bottom of the lake. The rapper is deemed guilty and starts having weird skin issues because he’s sad that he lost his girlfriend and his fridge friend and he was tried for murder. Then his fridge is famous because it becomes known that the fridge made the music and the rapper didn’t do that much. Meanwhile, his ex girlfriend is seduced by the artificial intelligence fridge and somebody catches her strip-teasing the fridge and the photos are spread everywhere. And the rapper punches some guy in the waiting room of a doctor’s office for no reason, and then his doctor by accident, and then he challenges the fridge to a rap-off. The rapper guy wins after rapping a lot, then throwing a used condom at the fridge and screaming (in French, as the whole film was) that the fridge doesn’t even have sperm. The fridge starts spilling water everywhere, which apparently signified that the rapper won the rap-off. Then the ex-girlfriend goes back to the rapper after seeing him rap, and they have a threesome with the fridge and that’s the end. That. Was. The movie that I watched today.

On the way home, I got a banana-nutella crepe, walked Mira home as we discussed the movie, ate nuts with my host family (and then dinner briefly), and then I called my dad. All in all, an amazing day. I love the church and my language partner and weird French movies AND I learned about a language cafe where I can go practice my Darija with Moroccans while they practice their English… for free!

School starts tomorrow and I am very scared. That is all. Goooood night!