A Journey from the Botanical Garden to the Baptist Communion

Throughout my trip to South Africa, I had many moments where I was surprised or impressed. The first day when we arrived in Cape Town, half of the group decided to visit the Kristenbosch National Botanical Garden. Kristenbosch is one of the largest botanical gardens in the world with over 7,000 different plants and flowers. What I admired most when I entered Kristenbosch were the large and mighty mountains surrounded by various green plant species. Here you could walk along paths surrounded by flowers and trees. It was a very quiet place where you could hear birds singing, which gave me a sense of peace. This was my first “wow” moment of the trip because the view left me speechless. Other incredibly beautiful views that I saw were when we climbed the Lion’s Head and visited the Constantia Wine farm. I can safely say that South Africa has the most beautiful nature and scenery.

What also impressed me was the university life in South Africa. When we visited the Stellanbosch University campus, all the faculty houses looked like the White House in America from the outside. In the middle of the campus was a three-story shopping center for students. There were restaurants, a pharmacy, a movie theater, a hairdresser and the university’s own store. During our stay in Stellanbosch, we were allowed to participate in the in the so-called Dream Walk at the university. Every year at the beginning of the academic year, the new students write down their dreams and march with people from their own house to a certain tree where they hang their dreams. Everyone can then come to the tree and read what students’ dreams are. On this march, all the students’ family and friends come to watch them march past with lots of music, instruments, jugglers, their own house mascot, and lots of cheering. This was clearly a big event, with sponsors like Red Bull and a DJ with a host.

Toward the end of the trip, we attended the Sunday service at the Baptist Church in Langa. It was a lively and energetic experience with lots of singing, clapping and dancing by the congregation. The service was filled with powerful gospel music and songs of hope and joy. The sermon is another important part of the service, where Pastor Sipho Zondi spoke with enthusiasm and passion to get the message across. What was both impressive and a new experience for me was the way the church celebrated communion. It was not a traditional communion where you go up to the altar to receive the bread and wine, but instead the congregation was served a small plastic cup from a silver plate that contained both the wine and the bread. These little communion packages were created by a company called The Miracle Meal in South Africa. I have come to call these little packages take-away communion. The church probably had these little communion packages because the congregation was very large, and their church was being renovated.

This course and study trip to South Africa gave me a completely new perspective on both Africa and the Abrahamic religions.

Siri Mathisen

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised forms of religion, and to deepen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of interreligious and intercultural dynamics in religions. This blog text is the second of eight blog texts to present reflections of the Finnish students visiting South Africa in January-February 2025.