My travels brought me to New Orleans. I was there over a weekend, so on the sunday I went searching for a church you'd see in Sister Act. I wasn't really interested in the church, I just wanted to see Whoopi Goldberg. I think she'd be the sort of person who'd welcome me with a huge smile and give me a very massive but warmly comforting hug - and say 'Nice to see you, honey' [big smile]
Yeah.
I didn't find that type of church with a funky choir nor did I find my friend Whoopi, but I did find a church of about forty people - all of them black - about an hours walk from town.
I stuck out like the stuffing in an Oreo.
They welcomed me warmly, offered me donuts + drinks, and let me watch the big-deal, local football game with them. I asked them heaps of questions about Katrina (hurricane), teased one another with them and shared many a laugh about life. I also taught the kids a new handshake and then watched their cute little faces explode like fireworks.
It was then that it hit me like a frisbee to the head.
I want to be black!
Black people make everything look cool - college marching bands, lawyers with glasses, obese tuba players. In Samoa the locals who donned a 'man-bag' were cool, but trying to replicate that back home you get called a homo....and I'm not talking about the sapiens type.
Plus these guys at the New Orleans church had a warmth that was so genuine, so raw, yet so beautiful. Nothing was fake, most things were acceptable and everything was funny. Even if it was themselves. Do you think the Old Spice ads would be as popular if they were done with a high talking Mexican or a Texan cowboy wearing cargo pants?
I may not have found my old mate Whoopi, but I did find smiles, warmth and a welcoming embrace - which is just what a foreign city made me want.
Either there's a Whoopi in all of us, or else the thing that made Whoopi come to life in the film still lives on in churches no matter where you are.
Your call.
