Last time, he sat beneath the great fig tree with the sisters, the night warm and still around them, while they spoke quietly about what it really meant to be a missionary in a land worn thin by war. As the moon hung above the tents and the sound of distant singing drifted through the dark, old memories of bombings, narrow escapes, and hard choices came back to them, yet so did the small wonders that had kept them going — a school built by many hands, a clinic brought to life with almost nothing, and the steady feeling that even in such a broken place, they had not come for nothing.
Every week we come together in this small Christian community. We meet in the house of one of the members or, when that house is too small, under a tree. The small Christian community is an attempt at supporting each other in everyday life. The meetings are not strictly structured, but proceed somewhat informally, spontaneously; after all, we must leave room for the Spirit. Usually part of our meeting is a period of Bible sharing. Tonight there are twenty of us sitting in the small courtyard of Makokha’s house. At the end of our last meeting Makokha had said that we could meet in his home today and had asked his neighbours to bring chairs, because he has only two. It is a bit cramped but we all manage to find a place.
Together we read the Bible and we try to see what it has to say about our lives here and now. We mostly read the Gospel of the coming Sunday. In that way I also get some suggestions for my homily. This evening we read the Gospel of the weeds which grew among the grain, (Matthew 13.24-30). The man sowed good seed in his field, but his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. The weeds showed through when the heads of grain began to form. The servants wanted to pull out the weeds, but the master did not want this, afraid that they might pull out the wheat with the weeds. He advised them to wait till harvest time and only then to pull out and burn the weeds while harvesting the wheat and putting it in the barns. We had read the story but quite a few of the group are illiterate and they are inclined to think that they do not understand what is being read. So, after a silence the story is recounted by one of the participants, and we listen in a different way. Most members of our community who can read don’t read very well, but many are good storytellers. Hearing the Gospel told freestyle, it becomes apparent to me that many of the Bible stories come from an oral tradition.
After this there is a silence and then gradually people start to share what the story means to them. Some share elaborately, others share just a short prayer. Again, we have not made too many rules about the procedure. People can share what they wish, and everyone listens with respect. One of the few rules is that there is no discussion of another’s feelings and ideas: there is no right and there is no wrong in what somebody has heard in the reading or its retelling. People share freely, not shyly or self-consciously as we often do in other circumstances.
After some silence Makokha speaks.
‘What I have heard today is beautiful, but’, (and he looks sideways at me) ‘it is different from what the missionaries have told us. I am that field and there is good and bad in me. But at times I do not know what is good and what is bad, but that has not to be my worry. The Lord knows, and the Lord will sort it all out in the end. I only have to grow.’ Now he glances sideways once again, with a look in his face as if to say, ‘I cannot help hearing what I hear’. Then adds once more, ‘It is different from what we hear from the missionaries who tell us that we must get rid of all that is bad in us.’
At moments like this I am glad that we have the rule that we will not discuss what somebody shares. I don’t have to answer Makokha who has a way of putting me on the spot, usually with a smile. We have become friends because I know his tribal language and that gives me some special standing with him. We often have talked together, especially when his son was in prison. At a party, after drinking a lot of local beer, the son and his cousin (in Africa, read ‘brother’), got into a fight.
Makokha’s son grabbed a knife. The fight ended with one person dead and Makokha’s son in prison for manslaughter. He had been in prison for more than five years when I heard that he would be freed. His period in prison was shortened because of good behaviour. I accepted the job of going to collect him by car and Makokha had asked to come along with me. I knew that it was not an easy step for the man. On our way to the prison I tried to talk to him about it. What was it like to get your son out of prison? What did people say about it, and would he be welcome in the community again? Makokha’s only answer was, ‘My son is always my son’. In African society one is hardly ever rejected. People know that being human means making mistakes. Maybe Makokha has a point when he implies that we missionaries were often more concerned about eradicating what is evil than in cultivating what is good.
Often Makokha could smile about it when he was caught poaching. Yes, he knows that it is forbidden, but he can hardly afford to buy meat. For him, part of surviving is not getting caught. One way of doing that is by staying out of the limelight. Maybe he tries to live his own name. He has explained the name Makokha to me. In his tradition, when a child has died in the family, and a new one is born, the baby is taken away from the mother and placed somewhere outside, next to the road. Another person, usually a woman, is alerted and goes to find this baby and brings it back to the mother, shouting and telling everybody, ‘Look, by the road I found some dirt, some rubbish’ (perhaps we would say ‘a good-for-nothing’). In that way the people hope to deceive the evil spirits, and prevent them from taking this new valuable life too. A good-for-nothing has a better chance of survival; evil spirits won’t bother about him.
Makokha had learned to survive in this world, and he is by no means young any more. In some ways he is a wise old man, but at the same time he has still something of the naughty child in him. As I listen to him I hear them both. The wise old man, patient with all that is in him, and the naughty boy who with a smile puts the missionary on the spot.
I listen to Makokha and I think that he has a point. Perhaps we missionaries have been often too moralistic. It also might be that we have read the Bible only with our own eyes and have not listened to the Bible with African ears. Compared with listening to Makokha, it strikes me that it is easier for me to read one of the Church Fathers: I believe it was Saint Irenaeus who said, ‘Gloria Dei est homo vivens: God’s glory is a human being fully alive’. In his own way Makokha is saying the same thing. It is true we often talk about a God of mercy, but for the Africans this is more a matter of course than it is for Europeans.
A few months later, when I am on leave in Holland, I talk with a friend of mine who is a Bible scholar. We talk about new approaches to reading Scripture and about new interpretations. He trots out the names of the current authors: the German scholar, Eugene Drewerman and some others. Yes, I have heard some of these names, but I have not taken the time to read them. I remember our Bible sharing in our Christian community and I think of Makokha implying that we missionaries did not preach the merciful God of the Bible. Often we seem to be more obsessed with not making mistakes than with doing good.
My friend is an academic and I am hesitant to introduce him to the thoughts of Makokha. I frame my approach with care: ‘The Bible exegesis of many African theologians is often different from ours’. And I see he wants to know more. I tell him about the exegesis of Makokha, listening to the parable of the weeds in the wheat. I expect some criticism but I receive an enthusiastic response.
‘You see,’ my friend says, ‘such explanations can only come from a continent which has not been heavily influenced by Calvinism as Europe has. We have all become Calvinistic in our thinking whatever denomination we are in Europe. European and American Christianity is Calvinistic whether we are willing to accept this or not. We are obsessed with the evil in our lives and we would not be able to understand the Bible in such a liberating way. Only an African theologian who is free from this Calvinistic thinking can listen in a different way. Who is this theologian and what has he published? I would like to read something of him.’
I tell him that this theologian has not written much, occasionally he goes to an adult literacy class, but he can hardly write his own name. My friend looks at me, ‘Didn’t you say that he was a theologian?’ Yes, I did call Makokha a theologian, but then who isn’t a theologian?
My friend smiles and he admits that he would have listened in a different way if I had said, ‘An illiterate old man in the African bush gives this explanation of the passage’. However, this does not mean that he rejects the exegesis of Makokha, but it shows once more how prejudiced we are against oral cultures.
I am glad that the people were able to cheat the evil spirits at the time of his birth by calling him Makokha, just a little bit of dirt, a good-for-nothing. Maybe, with a friend like that, I will survive myself.
He thought he’d seen the worst of it, but Bor was waiting with something far heavier. What began as another journey into the heart of Sudan would soon pull him into choices, losses, and truths he could not laugh off so easily. In the next episode, he steps deeper into a land where survival is only the beginning.
