Mid-month news April 2025
Mid-month news April 2025
Jimoharries@gmail.com
Dear Friends,
Please find some news items below.
Breaking news: Here is an article commenting on this investigation conducted on me, produced by the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission). Entitled:
Statement on investigations against Dr Jim Harries
Breaking British Laws while in Africa
Perhaps it’s never been so difficult not to break the law! Following UK safeguarding regulations, some say that I should not be living with children in my house. Now, what to do? Trying to explain things, seemed more than mission impossible. Local people wouldn’t believe me in a month of Sundays. I tried to imagine it: ‘chike thurwa kwera kik adak kodu koro, emomiyo, ok abiro medo biro ka ka nyithindo gintie’. That is: the rules of my home (country) say I am not allowed to live with you children. Therefore, I am not going to come again when you children are here. You will not see me here again’. If I had said that, some would have laughed, others would have got angry, people would have thought I was crazy, neighbours and church pastors would have come to convince me that I should not say things like that. How can I abandon kids I’ve lived with for decades, just because of a change in the law, in faraway England??!!
I would like to acknowledge the value that safeguarding laws endeavour to bring, especially to the life of vulnerable people. Their implementation presents challenges when it comes to inter-cultural understanding. I can also add, that I was anyway planning to end my keeping of children in 2 or 3 years, by which time I would no longer have had any (informally) binding commitments to any children.
Had I abandoned the children … or chased them away … who knows what the fallout would have been. Suspicions. Anger. Arguing. People concluding that I didn’t like them … I had no choice. I had to hope that no investigation would be done. But, if it was to happen, I had to wait for it to happen. Once people saw how serious this was, 12 government officers descending on me and, and, and, and, then it wouldn’t have to be me against everyone else. Then they would agree, that I just had to close-down my home, and the children would have to go somewhere else. It seems to me that I had little choice but to wait for the police raid to happen!
The day came on 26th March. I was hardly ‘surprised’ … the others were more so. The leading police officers in the group were trained from the UK, and sent by the UK. The investigation was thorough – as it was paid for by the UK. Many questions, trying to probe who I might be relating to sexually. (Nobody!) Other questions on how I was funding the keeping of the kids. (From my own pocket!) Then came the orders: ‘you must not stay here any more! Close this home down!’ In a way, they were doing me a favour. Backing away from my charitable rearing of kids could have been difficult. The showing up of that police force has made it easy, and removed responsibility for withdrawal from me. (To them, it was a ‘children’s home’. To me, it was my home, and I had children stay with me.) Nine days after the police came, all the children left. Three days later, we removed everything, and we abandoned the home I had lived in happily for around 23 years. (I have looked after children for a total of 28 years.)
I am under investigation. I have not formally been told what is being investigated from the UK, although it seems to be related to not being safeguarded, and suspicions of financial irregularity. Kenyans’ piggy-backed their own issues on top of these, telling me I was running an illegal children’s home. The police took my computer, computer backups, and phone. They took a statement from myself and the housemother. They left, but not without threatening words: I may be arrested, tried, have to pay bail, be imprisoned, extradited to the UK, etc. This was, and is, no joke.
One wonderful thing that became very clear: no issues were of local origin. I have no known local ‘enemies’. Locals have greatly valued what we were doing; looking after some of their orphans. The issues came from the UK.
The basic source of the difficulty, is that Jim stays too close to the people! I use their language. I live in their village. I visit their churches. I eat their food. I begin to think like they think, and do like they do. Certainly in terms of children. From when I first came to Africa (Zambia) in 1988; people were informally looking after other people’s children. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to do also. Almost all my time in Africa, I have lived in a house with children. On the day the police came, someone asked ‘did you know for you to look after other people’s children is illegal’? That sounded very strange. Then I realized – the police were implementing British-style laws! That in a sense was the problem. I had learned to do things as local people did (well, always with a British flavour added), but the police and formal government structure, was trying to make sure British laws were upheld. Actually; that is why I never established a formal ‘children’s home’ in the first place. I believe God led me to be WITH the people. To rear their children, as they rear their own children. I wanted to be a part of a family – not a ‘donor’ or ‘patron’ standing on the edge.
In fact, in some ways, I thought, I MUST live close to the people. It is so so sad to see time and time again ways in which well-meaning foreigners with little understanding do the wrong thing in Africa. We need people from Europe who understand, but you can’t do that from a distance! But now, what I was doing so as to be ‘close to the people’ was being evaluated as ‘wrong’ (illegal) from the basis of the very British laws that are such a poor fit in Africa! It was like; ‘power speaks back’. I have for years been telling Brits; ‘do not interfere as you do not understand’. This time they came by force, and I had no choice but to listen.
I must say, I have been enormously encouraged by the support and encouragement I get once people realise what I am going through: losing my home of 23 years, not replaced. Losing my role of rearing children in my home, that I loved. Living with the clear possibility that I could be arrested, incarcerated, even deported to the UK, facing court, bail, and expensive lawyers! Things have taken a major turn for the worse. Thanks for those who have already offered financial backing, encouragement, prayer (new prayer meetings for Jim are running), fellowship, and so on.
British People go to Church
I find this fascinating: More people attending church in UK, says report.
Ministry Opportunities and Positive Things
Losing my computer and phone, and the disruption to my home, took up some time I could have used for ministry. But I have not been inactive. When I cycle from my office in Maseno instead of my one-time home near Yala, most journeys are 6-miles longer each way than they were. As always, I find it an enormous privilege to just be able to show up at an indigenous church gathering, and to share the Gospel with people, in their own language(s)!
I think sometimes they do wonder. While it is great to sit and talk and get to know people before and after a gathering, this does not always happen. Sometimes I arrive after an event has begun, and leave straight away afterwards. (If one hangs-around, and women start cooking, then one has to hang around for longer!) So, I can cycle 20 miles, just to sit in their church, and share for 15 minutes, then cycle 20 miles back again. Yet in another sense – that is wonderful! It shows a love for the people.
As I write being in Nairobi, partly so as to acquire a new computer to replace mine that was confiscated, I just attended a fellowship in the famous Kibera slums (a short walk from the Coptic hospital). Although some of the slum’s contexts are maintained to attract donors, it is still amazing how hand-to-mouth people live, how low the life-expectancy can be, and how people miss out on so much that we in the UK tend to think is ‘necessary’. Getting to this slum-house required maneuvering through a maze of narrow passages and pathways, up and down stairs … Eventually we sat, shared from the Scriptures; ‘be encouraged, serve the Lord’ … etc. One lady, who I had got to know a little, and used to sweep in front of the Coptic hospital early in the mornings, was now in the mortuary, I was told.
I will, God willing, spend Thursday evening till Monday morning at the Coptic mission that is focusing on reaching out to local Prostitutes. Usually that provides many opportunities to share from the Scriptures. Pray that I will be able to do that clearly, when my head can be over-occupied by recent traumatic events. Monday I hope to meet some missionary colleagues – who have already offered to help me financially if needed to get through my currently challenging anticipated legal battles. Then Tuesday, well, not to home, as I don’t have a ‘home’ any more. Let’s see what’s next.
Another wonderful outcome of this ‘crisis’, has been the way in which my children have rallied together. Some came to witness the dissolution of what for many of them has been the location of their childhood memories. Others have been intensely interested: ‘what is going on!’ Then they realise – it’s because I am British. One night I travelled alone to Nairobi, and arrived late in a very ‘hostile’ place (slum, where if you are White you feel like everyone is about to steal your bag) alone. I had no phone. I borrowed phones. I called one or two of my children ‘help. Tell someone to rescue me’. They pulled out all stops to find one of their number who could come and find me and take me to their own home for the night.
Join me in giving thanks to God for all the wonderful things that he does.
Yours,
Jim
PS Please note that my above newsletter is not written using ‘universal English’. There is no such thing as ‘universal English’. This is not a legal document. It merely represents a perspective, written using English by a native-born English person who has long lived and functioned in East Africa in local contexts using indigenous languages.