So this past weekend I went to the last 3 days of a week-long revival put on by Church C in Kakata, a ‘city’ about 45 km north of Monrovia (although given the state of the roads, the need to change cars twice, and the traffic out of Monrovia, it takes a good 3 hours to get there in a share taxi). Rev. D has been going to Kakata for 10 years now, and he’s wildly popular because of his preaching on demons, witches, curses, etc, and because he is considered to be especially powerful in his deliverance. So, this revival was a big deal for Kakata. By day the Rev. and his praise team would go to small churches and deliver people for hours. By night the Rev. and his praise team, along with every Pentecostal-ish pastor, preacher, evangelist, etc in Kakata, would lead a 5 hour service.
The pastor had arranged for me to stay in a guest house across the street from the house where he would be staying. This meant that I spent nearly every waking hour with the Reverend, his assistant pastor, and the lovely Pentecostal woman who owned the house. They insisted that I eat no less than 5 meals a day. Liberian food is good. Its greasy, its spicy, always involves meat, and if rice isn’t involved its literally not considered ‘food’. However, you’re not always sure what exactly the meat is that you’re eating, especially when you are in more rural areas. Any meat that is not goat, cow, pig, chicken or fish is called ‘bush meat’ here- I’m going to refer to it as ‘mystery meat’ because when I think of bush meat I automatically picture a giant rat. (Which is quite possibly the mystery meat being eaten). Anyhow, I ate a ton of it quite willingly and never got sick at all. They also force-fed me juice. (You’re not allowed to refuse anything offered to you. If you refuse, then the person who has offered it to you will be very offended. In the Pentecostal circle, at least, the logic is that if you refuse something, then you might as well tell the person offering you the item in question that you do not want it because you think they are giving you an object possessed by demons, and that they are a agent of Satan. If you accept the object, they you are essentially saying, ‘Thank you for the blessing’; because the person has given you the blessing, then they will receive an even greater blessing in return, one day.) So they offered me juice, always, but when they offered me juice, it wasn’t just a glass of juice. They would get a 1-litre box, open it, and bring it to me with a glass. When I didn’t finish the box, they would ask what was the matter, and what were they going to do with an opened box of juice? (Because of lack of constant electricity, refrigerators are not very reliable) So, I drank a lot of juice, too.
In our spare time, we would watch DVDs of American Pentecostal conferences, revivals, crusades, etc, many from the early 90s. We also watched what I consider to be African Pentecostal pornography: one hour of gospel music sung by 6 attractive, conservatively dressed (but still highlighting their womanly figures), Jesus-loving Pentecostals at a massive Christian crusade. When this DVD was on (and it was playing on more than 6 separate occasions), every man in the room looked at the television in complete concentration. And this music is CRAP, I’m telling you, especially when you consider the incredible sounds and rhythms that West Africa creates.
So at the nightly revivals, I was treated as a VIP. I walked into the church (which held a good 500 people) behind the reverend, and took my seat in the VIP section at the front of the church, facing sideways, so that I literally the best view. I was introduced each night, and received a round of applause during which I had to stand up and wave. The services were pretty typical – sermons were about curses, witches, demons, the dangers of Islam, the usual. There was a period before every sermon where they sold merchandise – t-shirts (I bought one that says ‘Destroying the Destroyer of your Destiny, with a picture of an angel standing over a defeated Satan), stickers with Christian messages (ex. ‘Don’t let the devil see your tears’ or ‘I will have financial increase in Jesus’ name’), cassettes of past sermons, laminated cards with various phrases relating to Jesus and salvation, and the favourite item, handkerchiefs with a painted picture of Jesus in his crown of thorns with the words ‘My agony for you’ written on them. Everyone bought them; sometimes two or three. They were fantastic for waving around during songs, and then after 20 minutes of dancing in the hot-as-hell church you could use them to mop the sweat off your face.
On Sunday morning I went to a branch of Church B (part of a large American-based ministry) because the head pastor of that church was at the revival the previous nights and knew E (my research assistant). It was a relatively small church, maybe 50 people, and relatively poor. The service was pretty standard. I had an introduction, after which I was asked to go to the front to ‘say a few words about my relationship with the Lord’. Uhhh. I went to the front, got the microphone and said ‘Praise the Lord’; response: ‘Amen’, and starting mumbling and rambling about how I thank Jesus for the opportunity to come to Liberia and see what amazing things the Pentecostal churches are doing and how everyone has been so kind and welcoming, blah blah blah. It was all true, only I don’t really thank Jesus for that, I thank my massive Stafford Loans. Everyone applauded and I went back to my seat, thankful the attention was away from me for the rest of the service. Wrong. I was invited back to the front so the pastor could pray for me. I faced the front, he put his hand on me and prayed for a good 2 minutes about avoiding car accidents, robberies, demons of sickness and lonliness, etc. Then he spoke in tongues for 30 seconds or so while shaking my head a little bit. It took the power of God to keep me from laughing hysterically, out of sheer embarrassment and the situation generally. So after that I was definitely sure the attention was away from me. Even more wrong. After the sermon was offering time. We did the first offering, like normal. Then, there as a second offering for the guest preacher who had given the sermon. Normal. Then, the head pastor stood up and said, ‘now, we are going to take an offering for our sister Gwen. She is a student and she has come to Liberia to learn more about us. She is not making any money….’ Then I was asked to come to the front, face the congregation, and a song began during which every member of the congregation danced forward, smiling and threw money at my feet. Some people threw 20 LD (5LD is the smallest note; most people will give that in an offering; next is 10 LD – 20LD is about 33 US cents.) At this point, it took the power of God to keep me from crying and/or running out of the building. I have NEVER been so uncomfortable in my entire life. These people are POOR, but they really believe that if they give me money then they will get massive blessings in return. I ended up getting about $10US, which I could definitely not refuse, from people who can hardly feed their families. So, naturally, when they started doing a donation drive 5 minutes later for objects that the church needed, I ‘returned the blessing’ just like the theology suggests. $20 worth of cement and a promise to return to the church later with more, I left. With my stack of money. I think that situation was, paradoxically, both the high point and the low point of my entire life.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Pentecostal Services, Generally
Before I go any further into my adventures in Liberia, I think its important to give a brief (hah!) outline of how a Pentecostal service usually goes, since I’ll be referring to it so often. It usually begins with lots of praying, which is not the Western/mainline church-style kneel, bow your head and be silent type of prayer. Prayer in Liberia means people are pacing back and forth, yelling at the top of their lungs, speaking in tongues, pumping their fists, jumping up and down, crying…its very vocal, to say the least. Before any service, you will have prayed for a good hour. (that said, people trickle in gradually, so that from the beginning of the praying to the beginning of the sermon, the number of people will have doubled or tripled). This praying is exhausting. I’m mentally and spiritually unable to pray for more than a few minutes, so I’ve started doing a number of things (speaking out loud, of course) in order to ‘fit in’. I’ll bow my head, hold my hands in the air, and to make sure I’m adding the speaking outloud element, I usually begin by naming all of the United States in alphabetical order (thanks to grade school for teaching me that ridiculous song), then I’ll say the pledge of allegiance, a few nursery rhymes, maybe go through a few David Bowie, Rolling Stones or Aerosmith songs, and if I’m feeling really energetic, I’ll talk through some of my thesis ideas. Its actually pretty constructive, at times. Anyhow, after praying is ‘praise and worship’, which is about 2 hours of singing, dancing and intermittent praying. The music is usually fantastic…not least because of the drum set, keyboard, 2 electric guitars, sometimes horns, tambourines and always these massive ‘maracas’ which surely have a name but I don’t know it. Usually there is a large choir who sing incredibly well, and sometimes there will be solos which are as good as any professional gospel singer. Its all very good fun, and I am getting better at dancing ‘African style’ according to the pastors and other church members. So after that are always a few testimonials, in which members will come to the front and tell everyone what God has done for them. These range from very general accounts: ‘Thank you Jesus for blessing me and for my church’ or ‘thank you for my job promotion’, to extremely detailed stories about specific events: ‘Thank you Jesus for healing me of my blindness, which I had since I was 10 years old and went to every doctor and they said I’d never be healed but I prayed and fasted and…..’ on and on for 10-20 minutes sometimes. Then are the announcements, which are very long-winded and they go on for ages because of the sheer volume of Christian activity to announce. Then, ‘It’s offering time!!!!’ The first offering, that is. Offerings are also usually called ‘seeds’. The theology here is that if you give an offering to the church, you are planting a ‘seed’ which, in time, will grow and grow so that you will reap ‘100-fold’ of what you’ve given. ‘The more you give, the more blessings you will receive’ and so on. This theology was imported from the US; it’s also called ‘health and wealth gospel’ or ‘prosperity gospel’. Its controversial, to say the least, and a huge part of my thesis, but I’ll leave it at that for now. So we hold our ‘seeds’ in the air, ask for blessings in return, and we start the offering procession to the basket (there might be up to 5 baskets, depending on the number of people at the service). The procession is very fun, you walk through the entire church, dancing to an upbeat song, and you drop your ‘seed’ into a basket. In a large service, this process can take 15 minutes. In a huge service, as in Winners Chapel, there are 6 individual processions, to save time. After ‘offering time’ is ‘The Word of God’; in other words, the sermon. The pastor/preacher/whomever is speaking goes to the podium, microphone in hand, and leads the congregation in a prayer; then everyone is seated and the sermon will go on for anywhere from an hour to two hours. These pastors can SPEAK, I’m telling you. Its hard not to get excited by them and jump up out of your seat periodically and shout ‘Speak to me!’. Well, I don’t do that, but many people do. Often the pastors are interrupted by standing ovations, massive cheering or people walking/running to the front to throw money at the pastor’s feet. Occasionally, someone will faint or fall on the ground twitching. But seriously, the pastors I’ve seen here have more charisma than anybody I’ve ever seen speaking in public. They are absolute masters. Sermon topics vary widely, so I won’t go into that, but everyone listens very intently, always with their Bibles out to follow along, and often with a notebook/pen to take notes. After the sermon is another offering. Then sometimes an extra offering for something else, for example, ‘The pastor is building his house but he’s having trouble getting enough paint, please let us have an offering for this’. Then comes a period of intense prayer and, in some cases, depending on the church and the type of service being held, a mass-deliverance session for everyone in attendance (often deliverance is done with just the ‘victim’ of demonic attack, the pastor, and a few prayer warriors and intercessors). In this deliverance session, the pastor will go through a few prayers, repeated by the congregation, and then perhaps a period of controlled breathing (breath out the name of Jesus). The build-up to the casting out of demons is phenomenal – prayers get faster and louder, drums start beating, and then the pastor will start ‘fighting’ the demon by speaking in tongues very loudly; then a few people will start expelling the demons, often first manifest in blood-curdling screams or people just thrashing around so that a general commotion occurs. This adds to the whole mood inside the church; once the first ‘expelation’ occurs more and more begin; sometimes there are not enough prayer warriors and intercessors to go around, so other members of the congregation need to catch falling individuals or pin their arms and legs to the ground to keep them from hurting themselves or someone else. If there is an idle prayer warrior or intercessor, he or she will approach an individual who looks ‘close’ to expelling a demon, and will being to shout in the person’s ear and lay hands on them, usually on their head and they will shake it a little bit. (See the previous entry about the prison revival to find out more about deliverance). After 10-15 minutes of this, the pastor will begin a prayer of thanks for the deliverance. Usually there are still people thrashing about on the floor, screaming, fainting, etc. but they are being taken care of by prayer warriors. Everyone opens their eyes and look a little dazed. After this is the benediction, and a song or two, and everyone dances out of the church.
So, now that I’ve gone through all that, VERY briefly (I’m telling you, what I just condensed will take up a good 100 pages of my thesis), my future blog entries will make a lot more sense.
So, now that I’ve gone through all that, VERY briefly (I’m telling you, what I just condensed will take up a good 100 pages of my thesis), my future blog entries will make a lot more sense.
Monday, October 29, 2007
One month, real fast
I'm going to try and condense one month of extreme activity into a relatively short entry. this means I'll write a small novel, at best.
So the reason I'm here, for those who don't know, is to write about Pentecostal churches in Monrovia. The following is a REALLY general outline of my subject. Pentecostalism is a difficult type of Christianity to define, but most simply, it is the type of Christianity that focuses on the manifestations of the Holy Spirit- most commonly healing, speaking in tongues, exhuberant religious worship, possession by the Holy Spirit, becoming 'born again', etc...to give some basic statistics:
1) there are up to 400 million Pentecostals(which can also be referred to as charismatic) Christians in the world (which translates to about 25% of all Christians worldwide, while in 1970 they only made up about 6% of all Christians worldwide)
2) In Africa (including Muslim north Africa), 11% of the entire population is Pentecostal
3) If Pentecostal churches continue growing as they have been for the last 2 decades (which they seem to be), then by 2050 there will be one billion Pentecostals worldwide, 80% of which live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In my academic field, there's a growing debate concerning the reasons that these types of churches are so popular around the world; there's also a debate concerning the potential social and political implications that theses churches might have. I'm here in Liberia addressing these debates; what makes Liberia especially interesting is the complete destruction that the country is recovering from after years of single-party rule and political and economic mismanagement, 10 years of inept dictatorship under Doe, then 14 years of Civil War during which nearly everything was destroyed; millions of people were displaced, tens of thousands (maybe up to 200,000) killed, government powerless or nonexistant, warlords fuelling the war for access to Liberia's incredibly rich natural resources; on and on and on. So Liberia is a mess, to put it bluntly. UN peacekeepers are still here, the government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is making small steps to bring about development and try to limit corruption and mismanagement; there's a million and one NGOs from the US and elsewhere here trying to help put it back together.
So, I'm here to research the role of Pentecostal churches in all this. I'm focusing on three churches specifically, for PhD purposes, but going to any and every Pentecostal/Christian/religious event that I can make it to; talking to everyone who's willing to answer my question 'so what is your church', reading newspapers, listening to the radio, etc....I'm as busy as I want to be, and I want to be really busy. So i'm doing a LOT. In this blog I'll probably be referring most often to the three churches that I'm focusing on. I'm going to let them remain anonymous for this blog, but I'll give a brief outline of each:
1) Church C- the church of my research assistant, E, lead by an extremely charismatic and charming couple, Reverend Evangelist Pastor D, Sr. (hereafter referred to as Reverend D) and wife Reverend PD. The church was born in Liberia 12 years ago and has been growing ever since. The church has 5 branches in and around Monrovia, each bringing in about 100-150 members on a Sunday.
2) Church W- The biggest church in Monrovia (and Liberia), holding 2500-3000 people on a Sunday. Church W began in Nigeria and is now a massive global ministry, with lots and lots and lots of money. The head pastor, Pastor S, is from Nigeria and has big plans for the church, which is at this point a massive open-air warehouse with a bunch of undeveloped land.
3) Church S- Part of a large American Pentecostal ministry , holds about 500 people on a Sunday and runs a fairly large Pentecostal school, attached to the church. More to come on this church, as I've only recently decided to focus on it.
So, basically by days are spent going to any and every service that these churches put on. Mondays are the only day that I have no services to go to, hence I come to a hotel near my apartment that has wireless internet, and I sit in the lounge, order a pineapple juice, and make it last for 4-5 hours. I think they're on to me. Anyway, I've already written too much so I'm just going to list some highlights of the last month.
1. Church C has an active 'prison ministry', in which they go to Monrovia Central Prison, which holds 750 inmates, i think 25 of them have been charged; the others are just...waiting. Terrible conditions, naturally. Anyway, I decided to attend the 3-day revival at Monrovia Central Prison. The first day was fine, I sat on stage while the Rev. D lead a service for about 500 male inmates, 20 female. It was all about how if you pray hard enough, and ask for forgiveness, God will bless you and you'd be let out of prison. 'Jesus is your lawyer now!' The service would end with 'deliverance', (note, I will refer to deliverance very often, it is a completely normal part of Pentecostal worship/practice in Liberia and elsewhere) which is when the Rev. says a few prayers to summon the Holy Spirit to engage in spiritual warfare with the demons that are possessing the prisoners. The rev. shouts a lot things like 'Loose, in the name of Jesus Christ you will leave this place by the power of Jesus with the blood of Jesus I cast you OUT of this place' and then he speaks in tongues a lot. This goes on for about 3-4 minutes and an individual who is successfully casting out his or her demons will do one of the following things: scream, thrash about, fall over, vomit, spit, shout profanity, urinate, defacate, jump up and down, have a seizure...things like this. Rev. D's preferred method of demon expellation is vomiting. So I'm in a scorching hot and steamily humid room with 500 prisoners, all of them breathing heavily, a few of them falling over, many of them shouting 'Jesus' at the top of their lungs, and about 10 of them vomiting. Luckily I am on the stage so I can keep my distance from all this. So that was the first day. The second day I couldn't face it so I sent my research assistant with my voice recorder to catch everything. The third day I went, and this day the church had arranged a collection so that we could bring basic items to the prison: soap, toothbrushes, flip flops, towels. The service went as planned. Singing, dancing, praying, preaching, and a good amount of vomit and screaming. Then came the drama. The rev. said into the microphone, 'Bless you all, you are all children of God now. Now the church has arranged to bring you all a few items. I know there are 750 of you here and we only have 50 toothpastes to go around, so please be patient and orderly and you can all share.' Then the church workers proceeded to pour all of the collection onto the stage, in a big, beautiful and accessible pile. Uh, right. I don't know of any situation in which a mob, much less a desperate, dirty, hungry and possibly criminal mob, will follow these instructions. So within a minute, there were 500 prisoners rushing the stage. The rev. started throwing the collection to the back of the stage, where I was, and telling us to put the items back in the bags. I'm thinking, 'uh, i didn't sign up for this job' so I grabbed my purse, and bolted through the crowd, with the help of a few prisoners or ushers i'm not sure, and made it out of the gate while hundreds of prisoners stuck their hands through the bars begging me to come back and help them. One pastor had his phone stolen from his pocket, only to have the prisoner come up to him and say, 'ok papi, i have your phone, i will give it to you for 5 dolla'. deal. After 30 minutes everyone made it out of the gate, they got about half of the 'donation' back; the rest was inside the gate and fights were breaking out over toilet paper, soap, etc. As the church group all left the prison compound, I listened to the general consensus: The reason the prisoners got so out of hand was because there were Muslims praying outside (it was Friday at 5pm), and they had invoked so many demons that the prisoners were re-possessed by them after their own deliverance.
oh man, I'm just going to leave it at that. i'll work on not being so long-winded.
So the reason I'm here, for those who don't know, is to write about Pentecostal churches in Monrovia. The following is a REALLY general outline of my subject. Pentecostalism is a difficult type of Christianity to define, but most simply, it is the type of Christianity that focuses on the manifestations of the Holy Spirit- most commonly healing, speaking in tongues, exhuberant religious worship, possession by the Holy Spirit, becoming 'born again', etc...to give some basic statistics:
1) there are up to 400 million Pentecostals(which can also be referred to as charismatic) Christians in the world (which translates to about 25% of all Christians worldwide, while in 1970 they only made up about 6% of all Christians worldwide)
2) In Africa (including Muslim north Africa), 11% of the entire population is Pentecostal
3) If Pentecostal churches continue growing as they have been for the last 2 decades (which they seem to be), then by 2050 there will be one billion Pentecostals worldwide, 80% of which live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In my academic field, there's a growing debate concerning the reasons that these types of churches are so popular around the world; there's also a debate concerning the potential social and political implications that theses churches might have. I'm here in Liberia addressing these debates; what makes Liberia especially interesting is the complete destruction that the country is recovering from after years of single-party rule and political and economic mismanagement, 10 years of inept dictatorship under Doe, then 14 years of Civil War during which nearly everything was destroyed; millions of people were displaced, tens of thousands (maybe up to 200,000) killed, government powerless or nonexistant, warlords fuelling the war for access to Liberia's incredibly rich natural resources; on and on and on. So Liberia is a mess, to put it bluntly. UN peacekeepers are still here, the government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is making small steps to bring about development and try to limit corruption and mismanagement; there's a million and one NGOs from the US and elsewhere here trying to help put it back together.
So, I'm here to research the role of Pentecostal churches in all this. I'm focusing on three churches specifically, for PhD purposes, but going to any and every Pentecostal/Christian/religious event that I can make it to; talking to everyone who's willing to answer my question 'so what is your church', reading newspapers, listening to the radio, etc....I'm as busy as I want to be, and I want to be really busy. So i'm doing a LOT. In this blog I'll probably be referring most often to the three churches that I'm focusing on. I'm going to let them remain anonymous for this blog, but I'll give a brief outline of each:
1) Church C- the church of my research assistant, E, lead by an extremely charismatic and charming couple, Reverend Evangelist Pastor D, Sr. (hereafter referred to as Reverend D) and wife Reverend PD. The church was born in Liberia 12 years ago and has been growing ever since. The church has 5 branches in and around Monrovia, each bringing in about 100-150 members on a Sunday.
2) Church W- The biggest church in Monrovia (and Liberia), holding 2500-3000 people on a Sunday. Church W began in Nigeria and is now a massive global ministry, with lots and lots and lots of money. The head pastor, Pastor S, is from Nigeria and has big plans for the church, which is at this point a massive open-air warehouse with a bunch of undeveloped land.
3) Church S- Part of a large American Pentecostal ministry , holds about 500 people on a Sunday and runs a fairly large Pentecostal school, attached to the church. More to come on this church, as I've only recently decided to focus on it.
So, basically by days are spent going to any and every service that these churches put on. Mondays are the only day that I have no services to go to, hence I come to a hotel near my apartment that has wireless internet, and I sit in the lounge, order a pineapple juice, and make it last for 4-5 hours. I think they're on to me. Anyway, I've already written too much so I'm just going to list some highlights of the last month.
1. Church C has an active 'prison ministry', in which they go to Monrovia Central Prison, which holds 750 inmates, i think 25 of them have been charged; the others are just...waiting. Terrible conditions, naturally. Anyway, I decided to attend the 3-day revival at Monrovia Central Prison. The first day was fine, I sat on stage while the Rev. D lead a service for about 500 male inmates, 20 female. It was all about how if you pray hard enough, and ask for forgiveness, God will bless you and you'd be let out of prison. 'Jesus is your lawyer now!' The service would end with 'deliverance', (note, I will refer to deliverance very often, it is a completely normal part of Pentecostal worship/practice in Liberia and elsewhere) which is when the Rev. says a few prayers to summon the Holy Spirit to engage in spiritual warfare with the demons that are possessing the prisoners. The rev. shouts a lot things like 'Loose, in the name of Jesus Christ you will leave this place by the power of Jesus with the blood of Jesus I cast you OUT of this place' and then he speaks in tongues a lot. This goes on for about 3-4 minutes and an individual who is successfully casting out his or her demons will do one of the following things: scream, thrash about, fall over, vomit, spit, shout profanity, urinate, defacate, jump up and down, have a seizure...things like this. Rev. D's preferred method of demon expellation is vomiting. So I'm in a scorching hot and steamily humid room with 500 prisoners, all of them breathing heavily, a few of them falling over, many of them shouting 'Jesus' at the top of their lungs, and about 10 of them vomiting. Luckily I am on the stage so I can keep my distance from all this. So that was the first day. The second day I couldn't face it so I sent my research assistant with my voice recorder to catch everything. The third day I went, and this day the church had arranged a collection so that we could bring basic items to the prison: soap, toothbrushes, flip flops, towels. The service went as planned. Singing, dancing, praying, preaching, and a good amount of vomit and screaming. Then came the drama. The rev. said into the microphone, 'Bless you all, you are all children of God now. Now the church has arranged to bring you all a few items. I know there are 750 of you here and we only have 50 toothpastes to go around, so please be patient and orderly and you can all share.' Then the church workers proceeded to pour all of the collection onto the stage, in a big, beautiful and accessible pile. Uh, right. I don't know of any situation in which a mob, much less a desperate, dirty, hungry and possibly criminal mob, will follow these instructions. So within a minute, there were 500 prisoners rushing the stage. The rev. started throwing the collection to the back of the stage, where I was, and telling us to put the items back in the bags. I'm thinking, 'uh, i didn't sign up for this job' so I grabbed my purse, and bolted through the crowd, with the help of a few prisoners or ushers i'm not sure, and made it out of the gate while hundreds of prisoners stuck their hands through the bars begging me to come back and help them. One pastor had his phone stolen from his pocket, only to have the prisoner come up to him and say, 'ok papi, i have your phone, i will give it to you for 5 dolla'. deal. After 30 minutes everyone made it out of the gate, they got about half of the 'donation' back; the rest was inside the gate and fights were breaking out over toilet paper, soap, etc. As the church group all left the prison compound, I listened to the general consensus: The reason the prisoners got so out of hand was because there were Muslims praying outside (it was Friday at 5pm), and they had invoked so many demons that the prisoners were re-possessed by them after their own deliverance.
oh man, I'm just going to leave it at that. i'll work on not being so long-winded.
Disclaimer
So, because I'm so crap at sending emails to my friends, and because I'm uploading photos at random times and don't want to send emails every time there's new ones, and because I'd quite like to keep a non-academic log for myself about the crazy situations I'm finding myself in...I'm starting a blog. This is intended SOLELY to let my friends and family know what I'm getting up to. It will have a number of rants, (potentially) culturally insensitive comments, uninformed judgements, rumours, ghost stories and surely an incredible level of sarcasm, cynicism and facetiousness. It is not academic. At all. That's what my PhD thesis is for...this is the fun part of what I'm doing. It's a travel journal. Its intended to be somewhat humourous and not at all educational. If you want something more educational, let me know and I'll refer you to papers and books that I think are good. And of course, when my thesis is done, its going to be goddamn EPIC. Thank you, and enjoy.
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