I’ve been thinking constantly about the photo of my great-grandmother. I put it in an old frame and set it on the side table in the dining room. No, I can’t see her in any of these faces. Raising my hands in the air as the lead woman’s voice commands, it occurs to me that she could have been baptised right here. Or was she Catholic? Sanjolama Yahweh nabito, sanjolama, sanjolama! I listen, try to understand. The programme says the choruses are in Zulu. I feel the voices inside me, a tickle in my veins. The lights pulse purple, blue, green again, and a breeze sifts through the open windows. After the electricity of two celebrations in a row, the choir takes on an air of supplication, singing a ballad we sit to receive. The space fills with white light as the choir files offstage. I clap, enthralled, and the tunics descend, stamped with messages encoded in mosaics and animal print. The Jamaican singer is almost ready, announces the affable fifty-something host in a polyester suit.

We welcome the star of the night with applause as fervent as what we’d offered the local chorus. He’s wearing a high-collared shirt, dressed all in black, looking exactly like his photo on the poster. He begins with a heartfelt prayer. The notes unspool perfectly as his voice rises, rises, rises. The woman beside me starts to clap and the whole church follows suit. I look around as the crowd leaps to their feet and I start to do the same. No – I make as if to stand, but my vision ripples, blurs. For a moment, the music sounds distant, distorted, as if the church had turned into an enormous tin can.