The Missionary Position

If there’s one thing Tanzania has more of than corn it’s God. God is everywhere. He is the reason for a good harvest, a safe travel, and recovery from a bad case of malaria. The phrases “If God wishes…” and “thanks to God” are on constant repeat throughout my village and around Tanzania. The strength of the church in my village stems from a missionary presence dating back to the 1940s. Long before Ujindile was Ujindile, before paved roads, schools, and independence, twenty years before the Peace Corps was even formed, there was a tall white man with a bible preaching the word of God. Man did that word spread—it spread like wildfire in the dry season, destroying native beliefs and traditional customs in its path.

The Lutherans were first to Ujindile followed by Catholics, Pentacostal, Anglicans, and Seventh Day Evangalists. Currently there are five times more churches in my village than schools. At the primary school there are seven teachers for over 500 students, one of those teachers only teaches religion. In any given week there is about as much preaching going on as there is teaching.

One sunny Saturday afternoon I relaxed on the porch of the Chani (a guest house in town). A Land Rover pulled up with a white guy in shades, shorts, and a big friendly grin. He introduced himself as “Jehovas Witness…from Colorado by way of California.” He had two Maasai Jehovas Witnesses in tow, which I found surprising since all the Maasai I know are Lutheran. I listened to his witnessing about the Lord and what not for about an hour and a half—such is the state of desperation amongst an almost entirely female volunteer population. He was a nice witness, he liked Tanzania so much that he planned to move to Dar es Salaam.

Last week on a bus home from Dar I met two more missionaries. They were from Pennsylvania and were involved with some cultish sounding church. They preached to the bus for a half hour (thirty seconds of which I captured on my disposable video camera). They were two men in there early twenties, here with there wives and children. After some deliberation my friend Meesh and I decided to give a health talk—to preach the word of Prevention. We asked the conda (short for conducta) nicely when would be an appropriate time to conduct our presentation. He smiled nervously and turned us down, putting the wooden penis back into the bag of condoms.

Hotuba is the Kiswahili word for speech or sermon. Yesterday I gave a hotuba about nutrition at the village dispensary. Once a month all the mothers in Ujindile bring their infants to get weighed and have a quick health check up. As I stood on the platform reading passages from “Where There is no Doctor” and stressing the need to grow more varieties of vegetables, I felt very much like I was giving a sermon; in a way I was.

The missionary is a respected position in Tanzania. People in my village respond to longwinded sermon like speeches, it’s what they’re use to. We volunteers are in our villages everyday teaching about things we hope will increase the quality of life for those around us. Whether it’s lecturing about safe sex in a classroom, soil fertility on the farm, or gender equality at the local duka (store), it’s all things we believe in. We’re on a grassroots mission, hoping that word will spread—maybe a bit more peacefully than a wildfire.