Angels came to sing at St. Monica's

St. Monica’s church is near the centre of Kwanokuthula, the township that lies at the very edge of Plettenberg. Every day streams of black people move between the two. Plettenberg Bay is not integrated. While racial apartheid is slowly breathing its last, the economic variety lives on. As it does the world over. Bombay, Bradford, Cape Town, Lima, Liverpool, Manila. Of the over six billion human beings who live on the planet, around a billion exists in absolute poverty, which the UN defines as anyone living on less than a dollar a day. Another billion live on less than two dollars a day. That’s a lot of starfish.

For a few hours every Sunday, the angels come to sing at St. Monica’s. The minister has left – they come and go here – but the dark-suited men of the guild and the purple clad women of the union, the alter boys and girls in their sparkling surpluses and soltanes, the deacons and the choir, they come every week. Regardless. With such colourful splendour and eager hearts, the heavy tide of their material burdens, the hardships of township life, seem to recede for this Sunday time.

They sing with great beauty and passion to the beat of the African drum in the sanctuary, the hoover attachment held by an animated chorister and the many hand-held leather pouches in the pews. The stand-in vicar is thirty minutes late, dozes while the deacon preaches in Xhosa and then leaves abruptly at the close. But he’s only there to do the business end of the altar and hardly notices the heavenly host dotted around the church building. Robert W had arrived with a crooked gait, sign of a painful back. It had gone by the end and he demonstrated the miracle with a little pirouette over coffee at Le Fonteril. Miracle?

Nobody is saying a word!

The generous donation to the plate by Jim and Lynne was graciously spoken of by one of the purple ladies as she gave the notices. Then it was back to everyday as the tide came back in and we steered around a young teenage boy high on something in the middle of the street outside.