Christmas Mashing of the Mass

America is known for its obsession with political correctness. Have any public figure make one slip or slightly slanted joke, and the horse race media takes it over to spin every angle and proportion out of the story. Senegal for one, runs on a very different scale of political correctness, neatly exemplified by how I’m always greeted by the name toubab, or whitey. I’ve always thought of myself as a person who’s pretty good at handling humor or politics, whether I agree with them or not. Then I went to mass on Christmas morning, which had been moved from the night before due to the fact that the Pastor didn’t show up. I knew that it wouldn’t be the same as Duke Chapel, but expected consciously and unconsciously, the same love, peace, and nondenominational message. While the people at the mass call themselves Christians in general, it was a very distinctive Catholic service, complete with Holy Communion. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, but it was just a bit surprising. Then the Pastor went on to preach. It started with the peace and love message, and then slowly turned into a joke about how God did not, in fact, make an original fish that then turned into man- Church 1: Evolution: 0. Then he really got rolling: while the Muslims should be applauded for asking for forgiveness each year, how can they believe in more profits than just Jesus? While we are all good Christians, we must remember to set an example for others. Look at Rwanda, they are 94 percent Christian and have had the genocide of the century! Something about Taiwan and Toubab (Alec and I) followed when the Pastor switched to wolof. Finally, it was all capped off when I met the Pastor at the end of the service… and he commenced to try and get me to marry him and bring him back to America with me. While this may have just been a very…individualy interpreted holiday message, it was quite an experience. Touché Senegal, for now being called toubab is on the politically correct side my scale.