Easter 2005- Monastere de Koubri

Easter 2005
Monastère de Koubri, Burkina Faso

We arrive at the Monastery de Koubri early Easter Sunday morning. We see through a lattice of trees a steady stream of people from the surrounding villages coming on foot and by bike. The chapel is spacious and light and airy. We sit in the men’s section with a few other renegade women. All these babies tied onto their mothers’ backs, and none of them crying. Is it the narcotic of the cola nut passed on through breast milk? Blue trumpet lilies burst out of the patterned shirt of a man a few rows in front.

West African scenes of the Stations of the Cross circle the walls of the chapel. The choir and musicians sit together in the center section of the congregation. They play jembé drums and calabashes with shells, and percussion instruments with chinking metal pieces. The choir responds antiphonally to the song leader. A light breeze blows through the sanctuary. It blows joy through the West African harmonies and percussion.

We are the only non-Burkinabé, but in this sanctuary, we worship along side the village people. The fault lines here are parochial rather than social: Black brothers in white robes sit separated from the rest of us on benches at the front, and the young boys who outside will try to sell me Kleenex or phone cards, sing and dance and pray beside me. My body sways to African rhythms. The metal percussion clangs and changs and rings as women ululate to announce the empty tomb.

The service is conducted in Mooré. I listen in Mooré, and read in French and English, and the Holy Spirit translates all. An old white Father with the bushiest white cotton beard I have ever seen blesses the body and blood of Christ. Father Easter. He lifts the chalice high for us all to gaze upon, like Moses lifting the serpent-stick in the desert.

We lift our palms skyward
to welcome the bread and wine,
We hold our palms upward
to receive the wafer of body.
We join our palms inward
to pass the peace.

Jesus, rise here
in the heat of the Sahel,
hold your palms out to us,
the light of this Easter morning
shining through the pierced holes.
He is Risen Indeed!