This is Not Your Father’s Africa

Reflections somewhere over the Atlantic, suspended between heaven and earth, between Ethiopia time and Central time, between the Ancient and the Future returning from a pastors' conference in the Horn of Africa.

First Snapshot —

With long elegant legs striding underneath luxurious, exotic fabric — so many beautiful African women. These are the Nubian princesses rap artists extol. I notice those telltale feet, no Nordstrom’s shoe salesman has ever fitted, now loosely sheathed in leather sandals. Feet that can walk barefoot across the stoniest path and never feel the need to tiptoe. I watch them stride with fluid grace through the concourse.

I have just left a conference of almost 1,000 pastors, each one dressed to the hilt. I don’t know if I have ever seen a group of pastors so well dressed. Yet, the average pastor makes $50 a month. I felt a bit dowdy in my old navy blue suit.

I have returned to the Africa of my youth. The place I was born.  Not the exact location, but Africa just the same. Where my first memories were defined by mud block walls, grass roofs and the wood stove I soon learned not to touch. I have returned, but this is not my father’s Africa. The land of my youth where well-dressed women sported handfuls of fresh cut leaves front and back. Breasts were utilitarian tools with baby attached or later, when empty, a convenient handle for a two year old swaying on mama’s hip.

I am queuing up at the airport — an airy white structure of glass and steel, surprisingly reminiscent of the United terminal at O’Hare. I recall the days we landed on grass runways after interminable rides on roaring propeller-driven aircraft, during which we sometimes exhausted the supply of vomit bags. I watch fascinated, remembering the giggling and awestruck Africans of old watching the white man with his technology magic, somewhat as you might greet a spaceship suddenly landing in your neighborhood.

As much as I loved the Africa I grew up in, I am not disappointed to find it changed. Change was inevitable. After all, wasn’t that why missionaries went there in the first place? The growth of the Christian Church in Africa has been nothing short of phenomenal and that is the legacy of my parents and those like them who sacrificed much to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ. However, there have been other changes not so positive. I remember my father telling me how late in his ministry they attended a government function and, after dinner, their host suggesting amiably that it might be time for Mom and Dad to call it a night. “This is when some of our young women parade topless,” my parents’ host explained.

How did it change from bare-breasted women congregated on the left side of the church with the children and not attracting as much as a glance from the men and boys on the right. Did missionaries teach that? No. Where is the country that once harvested grasshoppers with sticky sap placed on the end of a cane rod, oblivious to the rest of Africa let alone the big blue planet of which they were only a forgotten part? Gradually they became aware of the curious gaze of the rest of the world and, with that realization, came a sense of shame not wanting to be some exotic sideshow. The government legislated a cover-up of sorts. Along with the cover-up came mystery, and curiosity then . . . welcome to civilization, I guess. Ironic isn't it?

Yet, for all that stands for progress, this is a land of contrasts, the epitome of ancient and future . . . side-by-side. Before coming to the airport, I had dinner at the Addis Ababa Sheraton. After staying all week in a rather down-scale lodging called the Central Venue Hotel, which is not at all central and hardly a venue of note, it was decided that we would treat our interpreters (and us to be sure) to dinner at what has been called one of the top five Sheratons in the world. An elegant, exotic buffet still only cost $20 dollars per . . . an extraordinarily extravagant price in a town where a six-dollar entrée is high-end.

News Clipping —

Now on the plane I read reports of tribal conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . . . “the UN is investigating widespread accounts of fighters on both sides cutting out and eating body parts—including livers and hearts—of their victims, partly in the belief that it enhances their strength. ‘We have gone back in time . . .’ ” Time Magazine (6/23/03).

How can that be, you ask? Africa is no different from the rest of us when circumstances push us to the limit and we revert to the old instinctive behaviors. For those of us who pride ourselves at being more civilized, that means we slice at our foes’ psyche . . . we cut them to the heart and feast on their pain. We become stronger as we slay our enemies with a look and well-placed words, many of which were once inflicted on us in the living rooms and playgrounds that shaped us. Our warfare is just a few steps up in sophistication. They will get there soon enough.

Oh, I love Africa. The eyes of the world might be focused on China’s drive to recreate itself into a full-blown market economy. However, Africa is no less a conundrum. Savoring mouth-watering Nile perch in a mountaintop restaurant, with the flickering lights of Addis Ababa in the background, a successful engineer described for me the incredible changes he has seen. Raised by parents with no more than a 3rd grade education, he managed to qualify for college and then graduate study in India, only to return and be a leading part of Africa’s journey. What are the effects of this new form of time travel on him?

I think back to an earlier conversation with a pastor who sat across from me at breakfast. Young sophisticated in glistening, undiluted black skin, sheathed with stylish glasses . . . a leader who not only pastors youth in a 4,000 member church in Kenya, but also conducts seminars all over Africa training others how to do the same. I think to myself, I would love to have him on my church staff in the U.S. Then he tells me of his quest in the last two years to get married. I almost made a joke when he shared with the group of us earlier that he hoped to be married in a year. Have you found a candidate (?) would have been my clever rejoinder. Times like this make me thankful that I am not more agile of tongue. He tells me the love of his life comes from a different tribe. The former president of Kenya hailed from his tribe, the current one from hers. The two tribes have practiced unnatural selection on each other’s members through the centuries. Now, even though these two cultured people live in the city and travel the world, they are still anchored in the old ways. It used to be he tells me, that you would get your friends together and go out and steal enough cattle to accumulate a dowry to give to the bride’s father. I will have to go out and buy those same cattle, he said. You see, in Africa marriage is not about two people becoming one flesh. It is about two families becoming one. The parent’s involvement was because the groom’s father was, in essence, selecting a daughter who would live in his household. He must pick someone who would not only be good for his son, but would be a good fit for the entire family.

It strikes me how these two conversations go hand in hand as my engineer friend explains how, according to custom, he chose an emissary to go to ask his future father in law for permission to marry. He tells how he had waited anxiously. Hadn’t she told him . . . at least given him a few hints, I ask? No, she was afraid. How did he respond? He was surprised, he says and is quiet. I wait. He eventually came around, he then adds. Well, you will soon be the one to be asked, I say, having already admired the pictures of his young children. “No,” he laughs, “by then they will not even consult me.” He does not seem displeased at the thought.

That is the challenge of Africa — beautiful, wild, exotic, mysterious, enigmatic Africa.

I am excited. God has called me for this. I have met with pastors who have been surprisingly candid about their struggles. They have seen huge growth, large churches often numbering in the thousands, and they are doing a magnificent job with few tools and no preparation. Nevertheless, they are ill prepared for the challenge of nurturing growth on that large of a scale. Like Moses, they need counsel on how to organize and train leaders. They have few models and are hungry for help.

Second Snapshot —

A weathered, but playful, face is now quite serious as he recalls . . . I was in the army during the communist era. It was a terrible time for Christians. You could not tell anyone you were a believer or you would pay dearly for it. So, did you ever discover others who were Christians in the army? Yes, his eyes brighten. You could tell by someone humming a hymn or other small clues. Then once I was sleeping and was startled awake by a voice out of nowhere saying, “You must go to camp #5, dorm room 4, the 10th bed and Berhane will be there.” So I went to that camp and that barracks and there was a man sleeping in that very bed. I pointed to him and said, “You are Berhane!” Startled he said, “Why yes, I am.” In this incredible way God brought me to a Christian brother I could not have found otherwise.

During the communist era the church suffered a great deal. All missionaries were deported and the church went underground. Yet they grew phenomenally. Now, after emerging into full-blown freedom, they suffer from stagnation and are eager and ready to learn.

Please pray that we can find T-NET churches in the U.S. that will feel a burden to go. You will not be witnessing, doing evangelism, or conducting deeper life campaigns. You will do something far more profound and far-reaching. You will equip pastors to lead their churches in evangelism, and bring Christians to fullness of life in Christ. And you will leave them able to equip their nation to complete the Great Commission. If there is a greater opportunity to make a difference, I cannot imagine what it would be.

Final Snapshot —

I am struggling to find a vantage-point capable of capturing this sight. Massive stone temples (yes, Dave Barry, that almost could be the name of rock group). Stay with me folks, the jet lag is making me giddy! Picture a mountain of rock out of which is carved a giant temple. No, I did not say it is composed of blocks of rock. This is what you would definitely call one-piece construction. And not just one temple, twelve of them. Created about 1200 A.D. by the order of King Lalibella, for whom the village is now named. Ancient future again. No one knows what sort of engineering mechanism went into this one of the world’s best-kept secrets. My picture is not yet finished. Only in the last few years has this town warranted an airport. Modern construction here means a corrugated tin roof on a small square building mortared together using the countless pieces of rock those ancient stone masons chiseled out of these mountainous rocks. Supplies are still carried on donkey back. The closest thing they have to a shopping mall is the Saturday market, where anyone with anything to sell or barter stakes out a square meter or two on the ground and starts haggling. How does a nation that had the technological knowledge to carve such splendor in 1200 A.D. surround those very artifacts with such low-tech squalor? That is Africa.

In the past, we glimpse the future. The people who produced such technological artistic splendor will once again astound the world. In the town of Axum, where the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to hold the lost Ark of the Covenant, you find numerous monuments to past achievement, spectacular stelae, tall granite slabs the largest of which has now fallen. It weighed over 500 tons and stood over 100 feet high. What sort of 13th century engineering could stand something that heavy on end is an unsolved mystery. Even greater is how such tantalizing evidence of early technological superiority did not result in continued development. We see no evidence of such capabilities indigenous to Ethiopia today. It seems there will be some time before African governments begin to stabilize and the country moves confidently ahead.

The church is the future of Ethiopia. The church is alive and well. They don't need many of the things missionaries used to do like evangelism and church planting.  What they do need are leaders who are equipped and able to raise up other mature Christian leaders and maximize the potential of their churches.  Their greatest need is T-Net's greatest strength. Strong churches will bring stability to these countries, instill the values God created us for, and enable believers to survive persecution, or an even more threatening prospect . . . prosperity.

Come make a Kingdom difference that will echo through eternity filling heaven with African drumbeats and rhythmic chants of thanksgiving from people who are there because you cared enough to equip African churches to fulfill the Great Commission.

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