The Office

Last Thursday was cleaning day at the office. Today after the daily devotion, the whole central direction of EELC (that is the people I work with at the office, sort of including me at the time being) went out into one of the quartiers, to the home of one of the office workers to pay our respects. Her uncle had just passed away. The term "office work" keeps getting new meanings as I work there...

It was something nice about it, paying respects to this employee's family. You don't see that as a normal thing for a group of colleagues to do in Norway when someone is dead. At least, I don't. Here they did it as the most natural thing to do. We went over and the president of the church said some words, the uncle's older brother said a few words in fulfulde, we prayed and sang some songs, before we had some soda and went back to work. Nothing odd about it. Death is also a part of life, and I found this a fine way to embrace it. Natural, relaxed and at the same time very respectful.