Another Pleasant Vogan Sunday

 I thought I would get much more written this weekend, but yesterday (Saturday, February 19) turned into a busier day than I thought. So I will write a quick post now.

I am currently taking a brief rest after lunch. It is the hottest part of the day:  right now my weather app says that it is 90 degrees, but the heat index is 101,  so I am not alone in that activity. I am sitting in my living room with the fan pointed directly at me. Vivian has just left, so my floors, windows, and dishes are clean. 

Shortly before 3:00 I will make my way back to Hammer's to pick up passengers to go to our evening services. We will be singing some hymns and traditional songs, and the ladies will be doing traditional dances. An elderly gentleman in our congregation died a couple of weeks ago and we are rehearsing for his funeral, which will be held on March 11 (the wake) and 12th (the funeral and burial). Hammer and the other leaders of the congregation are quite concerned about our sounding and looking good, so we have been practicing since last Sunday. What that means is Sunday evening, Wednesday evening, and Thursday evening, our meetings have been given over to this activity. There was, apparently, even a practice to have been held yesterday afternoon, but no one showed up.

One of the concerns is that we have song leaders and dance leaders. Another is the drumming. The traditional songs are sung to the accompaniment of the traditional drums. The church has 3 or 4 of them, but they apparently need new heads. And our volunteer drummers are rather inexperienced. So a call has been placed to someone from a sister congregation who is skilled in drumming and another to a woman who knows the traditional songs. 

Back from the practice, where I took the picture above. I think, by the end of the evening we sounded pretty good--I say "we" but I just joined in the clap track occasionally. I took some video, but it is not loading properly. I have only managed to upload one video, and I am taking the briefest of clips--7 seconds, for example. If anyone knows what I can do to make it work, please let me know in the comments!

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I had an "American vs. African" time issue again. We were supposed to meet at 3:00 and actually got started at 4:30, but that didn't last too long so that I can truthfully call it a pleasant Sunday.

P.S.  I created an album to which I will upload videos. It still takes forever to upload them, but they should be complete when they are finished.  

View videos here.