Welcome to Africa column: Church bells and mosque prayers

In nearly every European city and town, you can count on being able to hear the bells from the tower of the medieval church in the center. In Geneva, the hourly chimes and other carillon music coming from the Cathedral of St. Peter became part of the city noise we were used to. We heard it all the time when we were outside our apartment, but to hear it from inside, we needed to open our bedroom window and stick our head out. Church bells are very much part of the landscape of cities and towns in Europe.

Now, in Kenya, it’s a very different scene. Although Kenya is an overwhelmingly Christian country, there are very few bell towers on Christian churches to be found. Instead, every neighborhood has its mosque with its minaret that projects prayer chants five times daily around the surrounding blocks of houses and businesses. The first day’s Muslim prayer session is usually before 5:00 a.m., but we have gotten used to this and don’t even hear it most days (although the dogs in the neighborhood have never grown used to it and still howl at the sound, day or night). As I sit in our upstairs back bedroom writing this, I hear an extended prayer this morning to mark today’s celebration of Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan (it’s also a public holiday in the country). On Fridays at the lunch hour, Sarah and I can hear the day’s sermon being projected from our neighborhood’s mosque. It’s a different scene than in Europe, but one that still provides a rhythm for the day and week, and one that is comforting in a way, the same way that the songs from the bells of Geneva’s cathedral, sitting high on the hill over the city, meant that everything was normal. The sounds from the mosque have become part of the neighborhood for us, a fixture in our senses.