Muslim Karaoke

When we first got into Kenya this summer, we stayed at a little hotel called the Sapphire Hotel in Mombasa. Mombasa is a really cool town because it’s got a very interesting cultural mix of traditional Africa with very heavy Muslim influences, as well as a whole lot of Western influence. There was a very large mosque near the hotel, so as we walked around town visiting the little shops or sat by the pool at our hotel we heard the Muslim Call to Prayer probably about five times a day. Super cool.

One thing that really caught our attention was this building across the street from our hotel where cars and trucks kept arriving and unloading tons of women in traditional Muslim body coverings. But the strange thing was that we didn’t see any men. None at all. It was as if all the Muslim women gathered together on this night together without the men to get away for a little while.

The funniest thing about the whole situation and what really caught our attention in the first place was the music coming out of the building. At first, it was a very talented woman singing in a language I didn’t understand, and it sounded like something that would come out of a country in the Middle East. It was absolutely beautiful music, really. The people here sing very differently than what you hear on the radio back in the States and it’s positively enchanting.

But pretty soon the singers started changing. And as the singers changed, the singing started getting...well, let’s just say ‘not as good’. It almost sounded as if these women were doing karaoke. Actually, we were pretty sure of it.
A bunch of Muslim women getting together without men to sing karaoke.

Muslim Women Karaoke.

Cool.

I guess it must have been nice to get away for a night, maybe take off the veil and the head covering and have some fun singing karaoke for each other without the men around. The freedom to just let loose and be you. Muslim women don’t seem like they get to do that very often. Muslim Women Karaoke sounds like a good idea, a great idea even. I kind of wanted to go over there, but sadly realized I’m neither a Muslim or a woman. Darn.

While we were still in Mombasa, we met a man named Omali. He approached me as we exited our tuk-tuks at Fort Jesus (tuk-tuks are these little half-motorcycle, half-car that’s cheaper than a taxi and much easier to get around in). Fort Jesus is this really neat tourist spot in Mombassa which charges foreigners about ten bucks a pop to get in. Omali wanted us to pay him as a guide of the Fort and for downtown, which he called ‘Old Town.’ After some bargaining by Jim in order to get the price down, we agreed and were on our way.

Omali took us through the Fort which has some pretty cool history, but cool history that’s different than what we get in the States. See, U.S. history goes back to 1776 and maybe a couple hundred years earlier. But here in Kenya, history goes back to creation. When we were on the train into Mombassa, we passed fields that had probably remained virtually unchanged since the last day of creation. So in this fort you could see the years of history where it had been built and rebuilt and changed many times by Spaniards, Arabs, Brits, Africans--you name it. You could literally see where each group had added stuff on top of other stuff. The bricks on the wall would go up to a certain point and then change color and style and material. When one group would take over, they would add to the Fort what they thought would make it better, stronger, or more fitting to their own situations.

And we witnessed the same levels of change on our train ride into Mombasa. When we first woke up that morning, we saw nothing but Bush with an occasional hut here and there. As we got closer into town, the small gatherings of huts turned into larger gatherings which turned into small villages which turned into many huts connected by farm lands. Next came closer and more compact villages which faded into what must have been very crowded houses built out of scrap metal. They looked very similar to the slums I’ve seen on T.V. where there are kids barely wearing any clothes looking as if they hadn’t bathed in weeks or had anything to eat in days. Soon that turned into city and we were at our destination.

After our tour of Fort Jesus, Omali took us into the heart of Mombassa, past the tourist spots and into the inner streets of the city. I could tell we were there by the smell and the piles of the trash lying everywhere. There were literally mounds of trash everywhere with flies swarming around and plastic bottles scattered about the landscape and the smell was almost unbearable.

This is where a large portion of the people of Mombassa LIVED.

How Africa had turned from the beautiful sights of the a small family living in a hut in the Bush to this concrete and plastic prison, I don’t know. Honestly, I’m amazed at the vast difference within just a few miles. I kid you not, I saw a chicken pecking through garbage, eating styrofoam. It was as if, like at Fort Jesus, different people had come to this once beautiful place and just kept adding on what they thought would make things better until somehow, everything got worse and kids resorted to huffing glue to satiate their hunger and chickens ate styrofoam.

I think so often I am like Africa. God created me as His beautiful child, a being precious in His eyes, a treasure beyond even the safety and well-being of His One and Only Son. And so often people come along and make me feel as if there is something I should do or add on to myself or take away from who I am to somehow make me better. Maybe if I lost weight I would be better. Or maybe if I spoke this way instead of that way people would think I was smarter.

And these things aren’t evil and horrible things in and of themselves much like cars and cement can be used to do really great and amazing things. But when a thousand attempts at self-improvement leave us with chickens eating styrofoam, I realize my only problem to begin with was the search to be better than what God created me to be. Because there is nothing more beautiful than the handiwork of a God like ours; nothing more beautiful than the imagination of God.

I want to be like the women singing Muslim Karaoke. These women, hidden by their veils and covered up by the men seem to be invisible outlines of what their society expects them to be. But they get to come together on this one Saturday night. This one special night without any of the men so they can sing into a microphone, unbridled and free. They get to dance and sing together and forget just for a few hours who they are supposed to be, who others have tried to make them, and instead just be who God created them to be--themselves.

I want to sing Muslim Karaoke.