When prayer warriors strike

Tumie Modise | Monday September 22, 2014 16:27

I witnessed a very bizarre thing last week. For as long as I can remember, I have always hated hospitals. It does not even matter whether they are government or private hospitals, all of them just freak me out. Every time I am at a hospital, I feel like a student outside a principal’s office, or worse, like a sex worker outside Tebelopele premises. I get very nervous; most times I even sweat profusely! If I had my way, I would never, ever go anywhere near hospitals. Oh well..

It so happened that a week ago a loved one was admitted at one of the local hospitals after a freak accident. Each day I would grind my teeth as I faithfully made numerous trips to that hospital. Now, when you visit a patient during the normal visitation hours, the routine is pretty much the same.

You go in, politely wave to everyone else in the ward (well, I do), check your patient then leave, until you return for the next visit. There is nothing ever exciting about hospital visits and there’s never any motivation to come back, well at least with me. That most people go to hospital very sick and days or weeks later emerge out of hospitals completely healed is just nothing short of a miracle to me!

So last week Wednesday I made the usual visit to the male orthopedic ward (for broken bones), at lunch hour. A few minutes later after I had settled down on a chair, two young men then casually strolled into our cubicle. This cubicle accommodated about eight males; seven men and a young boy.

The two very friendly men then proceeded to greet everyone, before announcing that they had come to pray for the patients. Curiously, none of the patients said anything in response, everyone, including my patient, just kept quiet. Feeling uneasy and a bit embarrassed, I immediately signaled to the two men that it was okay, that they could proceed with the prayer. Honestly, I did not even know that the big fuss was all about. Who doesn’t need prayers in the hospital, anyway?

Now, today’s preachers command people to close their eyes during prayer, something which I find strange because according to me, everyone should already know this by now.  I find that there is no need for people to be reminded of this, especially in these trying times. I believe in prayer,

I pray for anything and everything, any time. In our country, even if one comes from a non-believing family, most of us learnt prayer and worship at school during assembly. So why should we always be reminded to close our eyes?  The same thing happened even at the hospital- the two gentlemen asked all of us to do the same, I immediately complied. Soon they both started and the prayer lasted for just two minutes.  It was touching.

After the ‘amen’s’, the men then politely offered to fetch water from the communal ward tap for the patients, a request that was then politely declined by all. Looking around, all of them were clearly out of water and needed that, but still they all declined. Now I was really confused.

I later learnt about the strict instructions from hospitals to patients who they are advise to keep their eyes open at all times during prayers, and especially if those prayers are by total strangers. It also turns out that during that prayer,  I was the only person in that ward who closed my eyes. 

I am also told, that even though I was ‘dumb’ enough to close my eyes, I at least had the sense to  hold on tight to my phone!

Now, I have a five year old nephew who is very fond of prayer. Eating isn’t his favourite pastime, so every time he’s supposed to eat, he is always full of excuses, prayer is top of that list! The boy prays from deep down in his heart and he is good at that. 

Every time he prays for food, however, perhaps like today’s preachers, he first orders everyone to close their eyes and close them very tightly! The only problem is, his prayers (they are long) are always interrupted by sentences such as; ‘hey, close your eyes wena, what are you looking at, you think I can’t see you?”, then start the prayer from scratch!

Later that day, I learnt that some patients at that Orthopedic ward were forcefully relieved of their cell phones. Suddenly it makes perfect sense!