Flora
I shared breakfast with two new people to Flora, both from different parts of Kenya. They have come for business. One was an Anglican priest, the other a Catholic priest. We had a great conversation. It always comes to Obama. His nomination has done something very powerful here in Africa. It has given so many people a new understanding of America, given people hope, and lots of joy. The newspapers have many articles about him.
Class
Today Dr. Katola talked about the ideas about God in African Religion. The critical moment came for me as he talked about the names of God. We have people from 8 different countries in the room, and then at least 5 different tribes of the people who are from Kenya. He went around the room and asked people what they called God. He wrote this long list on the board.
In an area where there are 42 different languages spoken in the same country we have a communication problem that African’s just don’t get. We (westerners) have told them or God is different than their God. They say, “Yes, you call God something different than we do, just like the Luo, the Kikuyu, the Massii everyone has a word in their language for God, but we are all talking about the same thing.” In a massively multi-lingual world, the fact that people switch frequently between languages and words that refer to the same thing, means that for us to teach anything distinctive is going to first have to be filtered through the this cultural idea.
African Question: “Why should I try to get someone to use my word for God when we are all talking about the same thing?”
It is a totally foreign concept to them to convert others. Both Muslims and Christians have faced this idea. What we have mostly done is condemn their God (definitely monotheists) and told them that their God is false, but then they read the Bible and get to Romans that says that God has made himself known in the world. Africans say, “Yes, that is what we believe.”
I really am going to have to think on these things. This feels like a huge issue for the reality of evangelism.
Yaya
I made my daily journey to the Internet. Read lots of email responded and posted by blog. Then I went to the travel agent and tried to purchase some air tickets that we will be using later, but after a while they finally decided they could not help. They could find the reservation, but they said I would have to deal with the airlines directly at the airport. They told me not to worry and that the reservations are firm. I still want to get them purchased, as they are the only ones that are not yet paid in full.
Imperial Reckoning
Caroline Elkins won the Pulitzer Prize for this book. The newspaper had printed excerpts from the book and it intruded me. It tells the story of the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950’s. It is a shocking tale. The British displaced the Kikuyu tribe when they took over the country. This ancient tribal land was given to the new settlers with no compensation and the tribe was driven to smaller less productive land.
Through the early 1900’s there was a growing resistance to the British rule and with India’s revolt and independence the people of Kenya moved to fight for their freedom. The British were determined not to loose Kenya and to protect the white settlers.
The British governor decided to reeducate the entire tribe. Nearly 1.2 million people were captured and imprisoned in camps for about 8 years. A series of torture camps were set up in which a person was broken from their dedication to a free Kenya. I they would not renounce this idea, they would be sent to worse and worse camps and tortured more and more until they finally broke.
Officially 11,000 people were killed in the process, but according to census data by the time it was over between 150,000 and 300,000 people were missing. The government destroyed the documents and has tried to keep the information sealed even until today. How can people come out of WWII and the Nazi camps and 10 years later be doing the same thing?
The evil, racism, violence was staggering. The clear violation of all the conventions signed at the end of WWII was explained away as a country emergency. I have talked to many people about it, but most do not want to talk about it. It is as if it never happened. There were never any “war crime” trials, never any reckoning, and no memorials.
At the end of the time when they had broken the last resistors, enough information had finally gotten out and the British realized they had to get out of Kenya. They turned the country over to the people they had been torturing.
I finished the book about midnight. It made me so sad and hard to sleep. So many of our problems come from our view of other people. Are they like me? Do they deserve what I deserve? How do we treat enemies?
Jesus is clear about this. How can we keep people locked in Guantanamo for these last 5 years without real trials, real charges, and real justice? Will people look back at us and wonder why nobody did anything? Is torture a good way to proceed even if it gets information that we want?
I keep my discomfort with our policies to myself because we seem to think it disloyal to the “War on Terror” and to our military to say anything. But as I read the accounts of what the German public said during the Nazi camps, when I read the accounts of the British officers and people who were quiet during the torturing and murder of at least 100,000 people in the name of “supporting the government” I am not convinced that this is a very valid stance. I was glad to read that the Supreme Court has said that the detainees can get access to some justice.
I don’t want the terrorist to go free, but I don’t want us to give up our values because they are evil people and I don’t think we will win the world through violence and the lack of a real judicial system.
In the book it describes the silence of the church during the killings in Kenya. The explanation was that they were trying to stay in the good graces of the British government. People actually went to the camps, saw the torture and still preached to the Mau Mau that they should convert to Christianity. The hypocrisy was so chilling.
Bugs
Mosquitoes. In Texas, I dislike mosquitoes. In Africa, they carry Malaria. I’ve met enough people who have had it to know I don’t want it. This morning when I got up there was a fat mosquito flying around inside and at the top of my mosquito net. I killed him knowing he had gotten me in the night.
I have taken my medicine, but as I’ve been reading into the night it has been a nightly battle. This evening about 11:45 PM several of them must have found their way into my room. I swatted (they are much faster here than at home) missed, jumped, lunged, chased, lost them in the ceiling, threw my newspaper at them and hit them against the wall with my book. After one such battle I realized that my neighbors might call the police and report a struggle in the room. I just can’t figure out how to kill them quietly. It all contributed to a difficult night of sleep.
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