So I was invited to a Silver Jubilee Ceremony at the church I was staying at. For those who don’t know, the ceremony celebrates the 25th anniversary of a priesthood. The priest being celebrated was someone whom I’ve never met, but this church was hosting it and it therefore was a big deal. I wouldn’t have thought too much of it if I hadn’t received three separate invites. Okay okay already, I’ll go.

Sunday morning comes, and as I’m laying in bed, my mind goes back to something one of the currently serving volunteers mentioned during training. They were often invited to celebrations in their village, and when they show, find out they are the “guest of honor” and are expected to give a sizable donation or gift. Crap. I grabbed my phone and furiously type this SMS:
“Quick question, should I bring a gift?”
“Yes.”
“Like what? I have no idea what is appropriate.”
“You should bring a vest, size XXL.”

What?
I’ve heard that at ceremonies like funerals, it’s good to bring a gift like a kilo of sugar. Many people will be drinking chai, and a lot of sugar will be used. Practical enough.
But a vest? A vest? Even if this were a priest I knew, that would still be weird, perhaps even weirder. And how on earth would I go about finding a vest?

I quickly got ready and consulted my roommates, who, much to my dismay, agreed to the suggestion of a vest. “But what if I don’t want to get him a vest? Aren’t there any other options?”
“Yes. You could get him a shirt.”
Great. “What type of shirt?”
“Long sleeve.”
What the eff. Keep in mind that this is rural Kenya. There’s no JC Penney men’s formal-wear department that sells shirt and tie gift-sets. Here, clothes are sold on the street in large piles that you must sift through for hours and talk down the price. Also keep in mind that it was 9:20, the ceremony started at ten, and it was twenty minutes away.

“How am I supposed to find a shirt or vest that he will like in twenty minutes?”
“First of all, this is African time, so it probably won’t start exactly at ten.”
Okay, valid point. But I still needed to find a gift in a pretty short time.
“Secondly, he is not necessarily going to wear the shirt you give him.”
“So it’s a ‘for show’ gift, I get it. Okay fine, how much are one of these long sleeve shirts?”
“Five hundred shillings.”
Umm, what? I won’t bring in US dollar conversions because then this whole story would sound ridiculous, but trust me when I say five hundred shillings is a lot of money, especially for a non-practical, “for show” gift. That’s about a week’s salary for an average Kenyan. No way was I going to buy a dumb expensive shirt.

“Okay, maybe it would be better to buy him a cloak. Yes, buy him a cloak. It will only be 150 shillings.”
Okay, that’s much more like it. They direct me to the cloak store (?) and I was about to leave, I decided it was best to clear something up due to thoughts of Harry Potter and invisibility cloaks popping into my head.

“One more thing, what exactly is a cloak? I don’t even know what that is.”
“You know, a cloak, you hang it on the wall to tell time.”
A clock. If I refused to buy him a shirt, there was no way I would buy him a clock. Talk about useless gifts. First of all, if that is the fall-back inexpensive gift, he’s going to end up with 30 clocks, and I know for a fact Kenyans don’t keep time, solidifying the gift’s uselessness.

So I set off to town at 9:30 without a clue as to what to get or where to get it. What would I get for a ceremony like this in America? A Blockbuster gift card? Yeah, I wish. A rosary? A bible? No stupid, think of something original. A planner? Yeah, a planner! It’s December, and they’re selling 2011 diaries, as they call them, in all the bookstores. I’m sure the church provides them with something like this, but at least it had the potential of being practical, a lot more than a for-show shirt or a clock. Unfortunately, bookshops that sell these are closed on Sunday mornings (figures), so I’m frantically searching for some sort of practical store that is open. All the while, I’m receiving a ridiculous amount of attention because I’m wearing a nice dress (worst. idea. ever.)

I finally find a children’s bookstore, which is much less than ideal, and I start grilling the seller about items. There is one diary but she doesn’t know the price, so she spends ten minutes on the phone trying to find out, just to tell me that it’s 500 shillings. Um, no.
Buy this hymnal. But it’s for a Catholic priest and the hymnal is for Anglicans. No.
How about that book, Common Mistakes in Speaking English? 500. That stapler? 1200. That calculator? 1500. Jesus.

“Listen lady, I need to be there in ten minutes with a wrapped gift and I’m not spending more than 150. Just tell me what I should buy.”
By then her friends had arrived and joined in the madness. “Buy a CD. A music CD? Is that appropriate? Well, it’s gospel music.

I would’ve felt weird bringing a CD, but at this point I really didn’t care. They hand me a bunch of CD’s with cheesy pictures of people standing with their hands outstretched in front of the ocean. Think horrible photo-shopped version of Creed and Jars of Clay.
“Okay, how much is a CD?”
“300 shillings.”
I really should’ve just stuck with the damn vest.