End-month news March 2024

From Jim Harries, jimoharries@gmail.com, +254721804282

Welcome to Webinar

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Aware of Academics?

I am not sure how aware my readership is, regarding the amount of academic work that I continue to produce, in between serving God in other ways here in Kenya? If you want to know more, please inform me, and I will be happy to add you to the mailing list of our free monthly (by email) AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) Bulletin. I need assistance expanding my platform, especially in academically-oriented circles.
I am constantly trying to find the right balance as I engage this work. On the one hand, I continue to value my role ‘on the ground’ in East Africa, of theological education, looking after orphan children, and so on. On the other hand, some of the issues I uncover require me to blow whistles so as to draw attention to people engaging enormous contemporary ongoing injustices. Please pray for my getting this balance right!

Eyes

Your prayers are appreciated for the condition of my eyes. I realised that they had ‘changed’ when in UK last year. The vision in my left eye especially has seriously deteriorated. I have had tests done at a couple of places in Kenya, that have confirmed that I have a cataract in both eyes. The one in my left eye is serious enough, that if both eyes were that way, I would need to consider giving up cycling. Please pray as I consider courses of action.

Home-Church Conference

Give thanks for my home-church (here in Kenya) local conference, that took place over the weekend 15th to 17th March. Due to other commitments, I only attended it for two short periods. I was very struck by one speaker. He went back and forth between Old Testament heroes, Abraham, Jacob, etc., and Luo ancestors, like Ramogi, as if they were all friends experiencing God together. Amazing! (As always, I was busy trying to understand what was going on! I am aware that for most people, the highlight of these events, is the opportunity given especially to women, to have demons removed from them. Everything else leads up to this experience for them. This time I did not attend any demon-casting sessions.)

Where-forth Justice?

In our local town, I recently came across shops owned and run by Somalis. “I guess they made their money by pirating,” I thought to myself. It didn’t seem right that citizens of a neighbouring country that was itself embroiled in internal conflicts and falling apart, should come to Kenya, and due to their illegal pirating of ships, be amongst the most prosperous people around.
Local people often face the most severe economic predicaments. I learned long ago that this is because envy and witchcraft work with relatives. The effect is aggravated if one lives in one’s ancestral homeland. Moving to another community can free one from relational binds. (As, of course, does faith in God.) So, ‘strangers’ can prosper, while local thriving stagnates. In other words: a fundamental difficulty of the human predicament, is living with one’s relatives! If you can’t live well with your relatives, and your relatives are all around you, you can stare hunger and poverty in the face.
Seeing the great poverty around me all the time as I live and work in Africa, has me cry out to God: why must this be so?
In the past I used to stand more aloof from poverty than I do now. When a white man amongst Whites even in Africa, one is not expected to share in local’s poverty. Being ‘alone’ amongst indigenous people has enabled me to do that more. I operate on the basis of the conviction that I am not here to pull a few people up to a platform of prosperity that I can create using donor money, so that we look down on others. Instead, I try to manoeuvre into a position where my view of ‘others’ is more ‘across’ and not ‘down’. This means, not raising a few friends to live in Kenya as if they are in the UK, but providing relief to everyone!
Justice and injustice are many sided. Some in the West (in Europe) have become hardened to the issues the globe are facing. Some think that because they have food on the table, why should they care. Many more are too scared to do what needs doing. They rarely realise, that the problem of poverty, is often the problem I have mentioned above, of ‘how to live with neighbour’. This is important, because if one doesn’t recognise a Christian solution to this problem, one leaves the door ajar to other alternatives. (Jesus confronted this problem head-on in the parable of the Good Samaritan.)
It would be deceptive for me to pretend that I have a singular corner on all easy answers. Yet, knowing more through living amongst the poor in Africa for 36 years can have me doubt actions that to my fellow Brits may seem no-brainers. That is not to say that I don’t appreciate Brits! Many people’s generous giving over many years has kept me going in my work. I do not take the responsibility that my supporters’ faith in me gives me, lightly. I am heavily engaged in sharing God’s Word in our complicated world. And in assisting the poor, and even more, assisting others who want to help the poor in Africa and beyond, to better know how to do so.

Shocking Statistic

Our doctor here at the Coptic hospital recently revealed a statistic regarding HIV in this community. He told me that 80% of people who attend the hospital for one reason or another, almost all of whom agree to be tested, are HIV positive. If one assumes that many young children will not be positive, yet young children also come to hospital, this implies almost a 100% infection rate amongst adults. The reason he gave, because people do not respect marriage, so end up having sexual intercourse with a variety of partners. (On checking the internet, official statistics are that only 4% of people in Kenya are infected with HIV!)

Translating Books

My Egyptian colleagues have recently asked me to help them to translate some booklets on Christian doctrine into Swahili. Originally written in Arabic, then translated into (poor) English, this is a fascinating challenge. Translation is always, it seems, incredible. The ‘attributes’ of God, I have discovered, translates into Swahili as ‘what God is praised for’. The logic of these books is also very not-Swahili … but still, it’s a valuable challenge, and helping people to grasp Christian doctrine is important.

Currency Exchange

The strength of the pound vis-à-vis the Kenyan Shilling has recently plummeted. This means I am getting over 20% less per pound than I was a few months ago. I understand this is due to some EU policies, aimed at trying to reduce immigration to Europe from Africa.
Yours,

Jim