Clovers In The Atmosphere

I had a crazy thing happen last night. For those of you who don't know, I have been attending nigerian evangelical church. it is really fun. There is lots of singing and dancing and if you ignore some of the more strident sermons, it is a good time. I think I started going out of curiousity and kept going because it is basically an immigrant community church (mostly Nigerian with some Ghanaian and Rwandan) and I am basically an immigrant here. the really involved community feel was really nice. I actually have a nigerian immigrant staying in my spare room right now. he was in a roach motel.

but that's not what happened last night. I got invited (maybe because my english is good and I understand economics, or maybe just because Ike thinks a white guy will give him credibility, I don't know) to go to a meeting between an NGO that nominally specializes in home ownership for immigrant communities and the church (it was me, the pastor (Ike), his wife (Grace), and another guy (Immanuel)). This NGO is called Heart Housing, and it seems to consist of 4 christian bankers with guilty consciences and a new age-y preist. they have this vision of selling houses to "immigrant communities." only problem is: you can't sell a house to a community, you can only sell it to an individual/family. so they are trying to use the pastor to get to the immigrants in the church to buy houses (but it is totally unclear if they help wiht money or just advice or what they do), and the pastor wants them to help finance a church. He has presented a business plan that just doesn't hold a drop of water in western financial circles. I spend this time feeling a little embarrassed for him and wondering if this is a cultural difference (he is pledging his word, but with no savings and no prospect of significant income) or just Ike not having a lot of business sense. so that gets nixed pretty quickly.
then we get to the obvious idea that this NGO help Ike and his wife buy a house which they can hold church in if they want. this seems like a good idea. the guy I've never met before keeps talking about how god sent him a vision of the logo of Ike's church, but not the name and he had to seek it. and the banker's keep wanting to talk him into buying a house. and the priest keeps speaking slowly and making gestures and talking aboutb being able to save money by buying a 50lb bag of rice to share between the families. It is obvious that he is either experienced with immigrants with poor english, or has polished this shtick past reason, because all the nigerians speak fine english. We all feel good. I try to push the NGO about what it actually will do--they stammer and equivocate.
oh, and the whole thing is in an office at the big downtown mall (Portage Place) where we are served dinner, and Immanuel refuses to eat and gives the excuse of being overweight and one of the bankers keeps trying to tell him that losing weight is about portion control not skipping meals. again big glaring cultural differences. and the meal is all homemade by the preist and consists of a salad of raw kale, tomatoes and nesturtium flowers as well as garam masala beef stew and tang. and at the end Ike wants to end with a prayer and a song. The prayer tkaes 8 minutes and has an intensity that makes the NGO lutherans look at each other, and for the song, in trying to think of a song everyone will know, we wind up sitting around the table, heads bowed, singing "Oh come all ye faithful." we might as well have been the soldiers at the end of full metal jacket singing the mickey mouse theme for all the absurdist incongruity.
it was interesting, because I have certainly been on the side of the helpful establishment white folks when helping the "needy" (soup kitchens and clothing drives and whatnot) but it was weird to actually be on the immigrants negotiating team and see the NGO through their eyes. it was also sortof funny to see all the good intentions and handwringing and fuzzy planning to famously typify non-profits. I don't know. I haven't fully processed the experience, but I wanted to share because it certainly was memorable.