MISSION IN SOCIETY
Vol. XVIII x No. 5
JUNE 2006
The Tree of Life
The ancient symbol of European medieval Christianity – a cross flowering on Easter Sunday – was given beautiful local expression in a remote corner of Kenya. The concurrence between traditional culture and Christian symbolism once more came alive as, for the Turkana, the green leaves of the ‘ephuu’ tree symbolize life beyond death.
By Fons Eppink
Mill Hill Missionary
This year I had the privilege of spending Holy Week and Easter with a fellow missionary in the refugee camps of Kakuma. This sprawling string of settlements for refugees stretches over a huge area in the Turkana plain of North-Western Kenya. The majority of its estimated 80,000 occupants hail from Sudan and Somalia. But there is also a fair sprinkling of Congolese, Burundese and Rwandan nationals and lately, I was told, the UN had started flying in victims of the ongoing violence in Darfur. The UN, together with a wide variety of NGOs, help to set up the basic structures for life in the camps providing material for housing, water, sanitation and food. The Indian Salesians of Don Bosco run a variety of well organized vocational programs for the youth and take a leading role in the pastoral and missionary outreach to the refugees.
A walk through a few of the ‘sooks’ or markets fills me with amazement at the spirit of creativity and enterprise among the inhabitants. Logging on to the Internet in a shack, made of metal sheets and with a dirt floor, definitely is a novel experience for me! My American colleague refers to these market areas as ‘cowboy town’ for their resemblance, I take it, to situations in such places, as Dodge City of Hollywood fame. Of late, the provision of food has been rationed, a gentle reminder and incentive perhaps, in particular to the large contingent of Sudanese, that time has come to begin thinking of returning home now that their country has reached a – still fragile – peace settlement after more than twenty years of civil war?
Stations on the road
In various locations right on the edge of the refugee settlements you find clusters of round huts built in traditional style with sticks and covered with grass, or, in this ‘modern’ environment with multicolored bits and pieces of plastic. These are the dwelling places of the Turkana, a fiercely traditional nomadic grouping of cattle herders, whose tribal homeland this is. Their typical dress, the multiple layers of brightly colored necklaces around the necks of their women, to say nothing of their distinctive physical features, make them easily recognisable wherever they go. It is among them, on Good Friday, that I have an experience that will stay with me for many days to come.
This is what happened: we were on our way to one of the camps when suddenly, on the main road, we ran into a large crowd of people kneeling on the tarmac. A makeshift cross consisting of two roughly hewn stems of thorn trees lay in front of them. A young girl held up a picture of an African Jesus on the way to Golgotha. I noticed the many Turkana women among them holding branches with green leaves. What, I wondered, was the meaning of that? After a brief moment of silent contemplation, they all got up again, picked up the cross and continued on their way improvising stops for prayer and silence as they went along in the burning heat of the midday sun. These were the Christians of the parish of the Good Shepherd in the centre of Kakuma, I was told. They were praying the Stations of the Cross along the main road from Lokochoggio to Kakuma.
When they arrived at the centre of the town, they veered off to the left and made their way slowly up a small hillock overlooking the parish church. Arriving at the top, all gathered around the young parish priest, himself a Turkana, who led them in a final prayer and blessing. What followed after that made me sit up in wonder and amazement. A few strong men picked up the cross and planted it in a hole that had been prepared beforehand. And then all the Turkana women in their striking traditional outfits slowly moved forward one by one and deposited the green branches they had been carrying at the foot of the cross. The mount of green grew and grew until finally it looked as if a riot of green foliage had sprouted from the dead wood of the tree of the cross – it had turned into a Tree of Life. There, before my eyes, the ancient symbol of European medieval Christianity – a cross flowering on Easter Sunday, as in the apse of San Clemente, Rome – was given beautiful local expression in this remote corner of Kenya!
A sign of fertility
Some time later Elisabeth, one of the Indian Sisters working in the parish, spoke to me of the beautiful concurrence between Turkana traditional culture and Christian symbolism. For the Turkana, the green leaves of the ‘ephuu’ tree symbolise life beyond death. They are used extensively in burial rituals. The body of the dead person is laid on a layer of green ‘ephuu’ branches. And so the cross, an ugly sign of torture, the symbol of humanity ‘s ability to reject love and to do what is utterly sterile, could almost ‘naturally’ be transformed into a sign of fertility and new life in the context of the local culture. Good Friday prefiguring Easter, indeed!
As St. John Chrysostom put it: “The Tree is my eternal salvation…. Amidst its roots I cast my own roots deep. Beneath its boughs I grow…. I flower with its flowers….” <WM
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