The choir had nothing to compete with
"For the first Sunday, we hear the organ small small — no gen dey shout."
The hall in Abakpa seats about three hundred, and for years the loudest thing in it on a Sunday morning was a 15 kVA diesel generator sitting eight metres from the back wall.
Everything was built around it. The PA was set louder than it needed to be. The choir pitched up to be heard over the drone. The sermon paused when the gen surged. Nobody thought of it as a problem because there was no version of Sunday without it.
Six kilowatt-peak and 10 kWh later, the first generator-free service happened in March. The choirmaster describes the silence as disorienting for about ten minutes, and then simply better.
The parish also stopped buying fuel on Saturday evening, which was its own small ritual, and now buys nothing.
The hall is now used on weekday evenings for lessons — a thing that was never viable when running the lights meant running the gen.