Mid-month news June 2024

Mid-month news June 2024 (from Jim Harries, +254721804282)

Dear Friends,

I am planning to present a paper at a mission’s conference in South Africa, 28th to 30th August 2024. I hope to be there together with the research coordinator of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, Dr. Marcus Grohmann, who is also to present. Amazingly, the theme of the conference is to be ‘vulnerability in mission’! More details for those interested here: https://missionalia.journals.ac.za/pub/announcement/view/4
Marcus and I are looking for openings by way of other groups to talk with, in churches and/or local universities, while I am there. I also plan to take advantage of being in South Africa, by while there having the cataract removed from my left eye. I note that this eye is deteriorating quickly. I plan then, God willing, to have my right eye operated on in the UK in autumn 2025. Pray for all these plans, and for this first op, to be on 3rd September, to work out well.

“Absurd”

Joseph Errington uses the term ‘absurd’ more than once, in his complicated academic book entitled Linguistics in a Colonial World. Errington might in many ways be writing a critique of contemporary Western ways of engaging mission and development in Africa! Errington, in an academic way, explains one major reason why I stick to missionary work. The reasoning that underlies ways in which mission and development are done by the West in Africa today, troubled me almost from the day of my arrival in Zambia in 1988. I have searched for answers ever since. Things seem to be getting worse rather than better.

To download Errington’s book for free: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228006873_Linguistics_in_a_Colonial_World_A_Story_of_Language_Meaning_and_Power
For my review of Errington’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1GTGEJJ3VZI9V/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Gradually … while engaging different kinds of ministry, like theological education, and looking after orphan children, I have been ‘chasing down’ and ‘pointing to’ the problem. Errington contributes to this: Philology was the name for linguistics, up to the 20th century. Looking back, in the light of what people think today, the work philologists did, was laughable. Yet much of their so-called wisdom continues to underlie what is happening today, especially regarding language policy in Africa, and secularism in the West. It is absurd … that ‘we’ are amongst the people deceived. The ‘problem’ is that ‘we’ see language as an ‘organic’ thing that sits out there, that all people have an equivalent of, that one can ‘simply’ translate between one culture and another.

Does the West have a Right, by Default, to Define who African people are?

I get occasional queries, over what I mean when I say, that I am in some ways opposed to anti-racism as practiced in the West. I hate to have to criticise anti-racism, knowing how central it is to the managing of relationships in Western countries. But, I believe I should be honest. I do not like to mislead my supporters. I see Western anti-racism as a largely-invisible (from the Africa that I know) practice that nevertheless in a hidden way prevents things from happening in Africa in ways they should happen. I feel it would be deceptive, my having realised this, to keep it secret. All this is to say that: I believe it is important to accept people as they are. This is what the Gospel of Jesus encourages us to do – to accept sinners, and introduce them to Jesus, not to insist (as I see anti-racism doing) that they be the same as ‘us’.
I assume racism to be provoked by people behaving in ways that grates. They may seem to act proud, slothful, rude, be dirty, irrational, whatever it is. Non-native Europeans in the West can sometimes seem to behave in these kinds of ways due to cultural differences. To be against racism, is to try to pretend those differences are not there. The standard is European, and others are (gently) pressed to fall in line with this standard. This standard / system for anti-racism is globalised, by the media, Hollywood, formal education, legal systems, European languages, and so on. Hence an ‘invisible hand’ obliges policy in Africa always to treat African citizens as if they are European / American Whites.
Here in East Africa, I am the European on the ground. That means, I should be the model for everyone. In formal terms, I am expected to be more clever, cleaner, richer, while more humble, hard-working, rational, successful, and so on, than others. Young children know that from school. That is why they laugh and shout happily wherever I go, and they all want to learn my language. Adults are more reserved, but know the same thing.

To help the West be less racist, I must live up to this standard of being the role model when I am in Africa. That is, I must ‘prove’ that I am better in everything, so that African people for that reason imitate me. Then, should any go to Europe or America, they will fit in more easily, and there will be less racism there. Ironically, for me not to be ‘better than’, wealthier and more capable than native African people, can be very threatening to people in the West. This is very ironic, when at the same time in the West there is supposed ‘equality’.
Trying to be better in everything has its difficulties. I actually think that my role should be the other way around: to imitate locals so as to fit in with how local people are living. I need to learn from them, not them from me. If I do not imitate them, I continue to stand out like a sore thumb. If, however, I value African ways of doing things, then to the West, unfortunately, I become racist. My experience is, that some Western people hate this. They just refuse to accept it.
This catch-22 affects me. It affects everyone in Africa. It means that to be respected internationally African people must demonstrate (pretending if need be) that they are like Europeans. The education system, the media, the law courts, the official language, all endeavour to make them do this. Maybe that is OK. I mean – maybe European people really are better or the best in the world, so should be imitated even in Africa? Unfortunately, though, the process is confusing. People cannot just ‘let go’ of who they are, their languages, traditions, beliefs, and habits.
Actually, I believe, to help people requires identifying with them. Thus one can begin to see their problems as they see them, and solutions that fit. This requires me to imitate African people (language, habits, even culture), not them me. Then, and in a sense only then, can I begin to be a model that they actually can imitate. Then, and in a sense only then, can I begin to be able to share about Jesus in a way that makes sense to people. Anti-racism as practiced by the West is the brick wall that is trying to stop me from doing this. Also – instead of encouraging African people to build on who they are, it tells them they are ‘wrong-people’, and measures them by how ‘white’ they are.
So, you may ask, what should we do? There are various options. For the time being, I am just trying to help people in the West to understand that their opposing racism in Europe and America, is creating many problems in Africa.
If you ask me, anti-racism, is basically a lie, and it is unhelpful. It’s effects on us here in Africa are horrific. It arises from Western people wanting to treat Africans like themselves once they step onto Western soil. This is encouraging immigration. It is a massive misguided excuse for Western people to think that by being so-called non-racist (to foreign nationalities on their own soil) they are doing their duty to the poor, etc. They are not. Back in Africa, we might be as poor as ever. If we in Africa try to do something about that, you in the West declare it to be illegal (Africans being racist to themselves). The precise prescription of the West must be followed. This is what is doing a lot of damage.
(I am not writing this to force people to agree with me. I appreciate that anti-racism is very foundational to life in the West today. I am merely informing you, that to me it is a bit like a brick wall, trying to prevent the work of Christian mission, to help you to understand and to pray. I hope I am wrong. Please convince me that my analysis is wrong!)

‘No Problem’

Tanzanians do indeed make much use of a term that parallels ‘hakuna matata’ of Lion King movie fame! They say ‘hamna shida’, it seems all the time, typically without even thinking about it, in response to any situation … Hamna shida and hakuna matata mean much the same thing: no problem, or ‘there’s no issue’.
Now, the fact that it translates this way into English, does not mean that they understand ‘hamna shida’ as we might ‘no problem’! Surely they don’t … but there are some parallels. I received an explanation on 31st May (from a Tanzanian – my translation) – ‘no matter what happens, illness, death, disaster, problems, we are not going to allow ourselves to get stressed about it’. I think that’s hard for Westerners to understand. In the West, there is by contrast a powerful orientation to avoiding issues and ‘problem solving’. This runs very much in the face of ‘hamna shida’. The ‘hamna shida’ way of life is indeed wonderful! That is – while things are going well. When things cease to go well, then there are few resources to deal with this, and ‘disaster’ may quickly follow. It is, it seems to me, important to bear this kind of thing in mind if one wants to ‘empower’ Tanzanian and other African people. Also, frankly, if one wants to understand what they mean by other things they say. (I think actually the West ‘can’t’ understand what a ‘typical’ African means when they talk. They need their own people to translate Africa to them!)

Visiting and Food

I recently accompanied a local pastor here in Tanzania making pastoral visits to church members. The sun was unbearably hot over our heads. We walked from house to house being scorched, while stepping on the dusty and dry sand. It would have been great to have finished together by having a good meal. He did not offer a meal, but only a drink. I really wanted to ‘splash out’ (perhaps £1.70) to get a good meal for each of us. I resisted the temptation. … I believe it was correct to resist it. I was volunteering my services for free. But for many reasons that I can see, I should not ‘privilege’ the pastor just because he agrees for me to walk with him. For example, next time he might say ‘yes’ not because he wants to, but because he’ll get a good meal out of it. (Or he might say no not because he doesn’t want me to come, but because he fears the envy of others should I always be with him buying him, not them, meals.) (If my reader thinks I’m nit-picking, welcome to spend a few decades working with African pastors in Africa, then tell me that again.)

Asking the Question that one must not Ask

I have of late been spending a lot of time turning over certain questions in my head. I decided to request a Tanzanian colleague for some help. So, I asked him bluntly (using Swahili, he is a bible school and secondary school teacher so with far above average education): ‘How is it helping Tanzania to teach their children a language (and in a language) that they do not understand?’ (That is, English that is increasingly being used in Tanzania in secondary schooling.) What came out in his response was very clear, and that which I already knew, catch 22, something like this: “If you don’t know English, you are an ignorant nobody. If you do know and use English, you may be taking your people into an abyss, but you can get on in life.”
This is the horror of post-colonialism. This is the horror, of one people, following having faith in Jesus, sharing the outcome of their faith rather than their faith. This is the horror of routinely linking aid and development assistance with English and foreign financial perks. This is the horror that the West is desperately trying to conceal by prohibiting racism.
I agreed with him. His observation was apt. There is no evident easy way out of this trap that I can see! Reminding people of this predicament is a bit like reminding someone at a party that they’ll soon be dead, but worse. Politically and economically, Africans cannot stem the flood of English into their countries and into their people’s heads. Yet, their ‘possession of’ English is a resounding disaster from which it looks like they might never recover.
Why do I say they might never recover? Well – here’s a simplified version: If we were to teach professional actors to use the language of nuclear physics in the course of their acting, they would appropriate that language to the way they do their acting. Subsequently, a nuclear physicist could not explain nuclear physics to them, because they would already know what he is talking about, even without having any understanding of nuclear physics. African children being taught English in school by fellow Africans, is in effect immunising them against the possibility of learning benefits of Western ways of understanding.
The only alternative remaining, by way of trying to make sense of acting in the example above, is for a nuclear physicist to endeavour to engage those actors who have not yet learned the language of nuclear physics, or who ignore it. He must seek to understand how they act, and how they express their acting, then to try to build nuclear physics from that, from scratch. For me as a missionary in Africa, this means that in order to understand people well and to be helpful to them, I must relate to them in their own languages. Trying to relate to them using English is far too confusing.
In other words, people in Africa are being taught to speak as if they live like English people, when their actual way of life is very different from that of native British people in England. Because they are taught to talk as if they live in England as English people do, English people cannot teach them anything in English except to carry on as they are! They continue with their previous way of life, but express it using English. In the AVM (the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) we say some missionaries should work in Africa using indigenous languages. Thus they can bypass this confusion.

‘A Free Man in Prison’

I was doing pastoral visiting in a town near Babati in Tanzania on 7th June. After visiting 8 or 10 homes of church members, my host said ‘let’s visit an old friend of mine’. We found an old man, whose cap indicated he was a Muslim. He referred to my host as John. (‘John’ later explained, that was because he was always saying he would baptise his Muslim friends!) The old man was alone. ‘John’ encouraged me to share (as if we were in a Christian home). I do not know what was going on in the old man’s head … but … I think he was very intrigued by how Jesus can forgive people. Before I finished, the old man’s wife came home. I guess this made him nervous – Muslims can be very free and express great interest in Jesus when they are alone. They fear doing so in company as someone might tell on them.) I am only hoping that God will use my presence and activities here as a witness, in one or another small way, of the love of Christ.

Jim

Jim’s news is archived here: https://www.jim-mission.org.uk/ To receive this news to your email address, write to Colin Morgan (colin_rosemary@yahoo.com ). To receive news via whatsapp, go to here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/EprSCdrPmW9HZgSsuw0m16