La Variante

Since the bus last night was fairly delayed and consequently none of us slept before 2.30, it took pretty long in the morning for everyone to get up. Therefore, after our really late breakfast we just did a little trip to the central point of Colombia, which is just 10 minutes by motorbike from Damaris' house, and saw where some of the boats stop on the rivers. Since right now it's wet season, you can't even see where the river is supposed to be - it overflowed its banks everywhere in the surroundings. Even the cattle had to stand inside the water.
Damaris' parents both are pastors at an Christian church, so in the evening everyone went to "culto" (=worship). I didn't want to be rude, so I went with them. Besides, I was curious about the differences between Christian (a type of protestant) and Catholic church.
At first it seemed pretty much like a mixture of poetry slam and a concert, only with religious texts. Apparently it was important to be the loudest and most passionate of all, using a facial expression of suffering, while the other people where in a kind of global hypnosis. Up to this moment I only thought “well, it's still not my thing, but they seem to like it“. But after around one hour came the turning point, when the guy at the front started to shout even more an half of the people had a mental breakdown, crying, lying on the floor, not able to do anything else but screaming. It was one of the worst things ever, and I still wander why anyone should go to such a service.Read more