AFRICA'S FAITH
THEN AND NOW
SPECIAL REPORT
Vol. XVI
No. 1
JANUARY 2004
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by Fonse Eppink
Departing in the early morning
AN AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF PILGRIMAGE
On the evening of August 10th 2003, a motley assortment of some 200 pilgrims gathered on Nsambya Hill in Kampala, Uganda. They had come from a wide variety of countries and diverse backgrounds.
Many had come across the border from neighboring Kenya, from the parish of Milimani in Kisumu, the final destination of the pilgrimage. A sizeable contingent of about sixty had flown in from Europe, mostly Dutch, with a sprinkling of participants from other countries including South Africa.
They had come to retrace the footsteps of a band of Mill Hill missionaries who a hundred years earlier had traveled on foot from Kampala to what was then called Kavirondo in present-day Western Kenya to found the first mission stations in the area.
Introducing his plan to walk in the footsteps of those early pioneers Fr Hans Burgman, the initiator of this pilgrimage of remembrance, had written: “A favorite way of remembering is by using your feet: to go where big things have happened.”
Inspiring encounters
I was impressed with the group of youngsters from Holland belonging to “Missie en Jongeren” (Mission and Youth) who sat together with their invited Kenyan counterparts on a regular basis to share experiences and reflections. They even managed to get a regular email newsletter out to their friends and acquaintances at home, and at some point during the walk talked on the airwaves of a local Dutch radio station!
Not that there was need for such formal organization to loosen tongues and foster inspiring encounters! A walking pilgrimage like this one provides a wealth of opportunities for personal conversations and interesting exchanges on a wide variety of subjects with people one would not normally meet.
Distant at first, the two large groups of participants – African and European – with their huge differences in culture, experience, and background, drew closer together as the pilgrimage progressed.
Deeper questions
Almost inevitably our conversations would turn to deeper questions of faith, “what makes you tick”, and spirituality.
Patrick, a good-humored giant of a man from Ahero in Kenya, started off by saying: “I want to be a lay missionary”, and I half-expected him to inquire about the Mill Hill lay associate program. But after a pause he added: “in my own village”.
He explained how had been active in development work in different places in Western Kenya. He was on very good terms with a number of Mill Hill missionaries and had worked with them. Now that he was approaching what he considered retirement age he was thinking of returning to his village and helping his own to build community.
“I want to assist them to achieve integral development involving both material and spiritual progress!” He went on to explain that in his judgment the Luo people (his tribe) are born politicians, deeply steeped in religion and clever academicians – “but they have no notion of economics! They take to repeating endlessly: ‘We are poor’, but don’t do anything about it!”
Important signposts
As we progressed, we walked past important signposts of significant missionary endeavor all along our route. Clearly the seed sown by the early missionaries had borne abundant fruit.
This was visible in places such as Namilyango, one of the earliest educational establishments in Uganda, and Nkokonjeru and Buluba, specializing in healthcare.
We saw other vital seeds in full blossom in Butiru with its center for the handicapped, Mumias famous for its school for the blind, and in Ojolla we encountered a large group of widows in full retreat session reflecting on how to deal with customary cultural practices contrary to the Gospel.
Great equalizer
Pilgrimage also is a great equalizer. Walking together as we did wiped out many distinctions between people. We slept on the same floor, ate the same simple food, did not need to care much about how we dressed... “When you walk you are equal, hierarchy starts when you sit down,” as Fr Hans put it.
That is not to say that all differences suddenly evaporated! How different was our footwear one from the other, Africans from Europeans! Whilst most of the Africans wore trainers, some of the older Kenyan women made do with tsinelas or even walked barefoot, and good old Sylvester walked the whole way with an ill-fitting pair of sandals cobbled together from discarded car tires – of the type they call ‘akala’ in Kenya.
Most Europeans on the other hand were equipped with expensive footwear adaptable to every road and weather condition. If only they could also provide adequate protection against nasty blisters!
Joy of encounter
But the experience and joy of encounter counterbalanced the awareness of difference.
Welcome at Jamia Mosque
To many Europeans the experience of Africa’s sense of celebration was a real discovery. I remember one day coming back from exploring our route for the following day and finding our pilgrim Mass in full progress.
I just caught the tail end of a number of testimonies given by participants to the local community of their experience of pilgrimage. The atmosphere was electric with masses of local Christians participating. Soon everyone was swinging in the benches to the contagious rhythm of the African hymns. Hadn’t Hans told us some days earlier that “Africans can teach us, Europeans, that religion can be fun”?
This celebration certainly proved the point. What a difference with the often wordy and, as many of the European pilgrims testified, boring liturgical celebrations in Europe. Africa certainly knows how to celebrate. That must be one of the major African contributions to the global meeting of cultures!
Each culture has its own riches. Africans have something Europeans do not have, without which they are incomplete, and vice versa. The same counts for Asia and other parts of the world. Isn’t the meaning of Mission precisely sharing each others’ riches?
Warm hospitality
African hospitality – how would you feel if 200 pilgrims suddenly descended upon your parish center? - often was quite overwhelming.
The Christians of Kalamira, a mere outstation consisting of little more than a chapel with school and a bore-hole to provide water, clearly felt highly privileged for having been chosen as a stopping-place for our caravan. Some walked along with us all the way from the main parish where we had spent the previous night whilst others came to meet us half-way amid loud ululations and much singing and dancing.
We quickly found our niches in the chapel and the two or three classrooms equipped with cement floors. When this proved insufficient the villagers quickly gathered banana leaves to put on the dirt floors of the other classrooms lest the visitors mattresses and other equipment should get dirty!
Significant place
Archbishop Zaccheus Okoth of Kisumu joined us early in the morning of the final day of our pilgrimage at Ojolla and sent us on our way with his blessing to complete the last 16 km of our pilgrimage. He subsequently and rather unexpectedly walked most of the distance with us!
Upon entry into Kisumu we passed by the Jamia Mosque, where the resident imam received a small delegation from among us and said a prayer. This was indeed a significant place since it was on this site that the first Catholic church in Kisumu was built. By some strange quirk of history it had now become the location of a Muslim place of worship. The symbolism of this small inter-religious gesture on the last day of our pilgrimage came across as highly appropriate.
Coming home
The volume of our singing and the rhythm of our dancing increased as we walked through the center of Kisumu, taking over the main street.
The picture of Piet, retired bulb farmer and widower, dancing with joyful abandon in his comical shorts showing hairy legs and a three-week old gray stubble, will stay with me for a long time. He made me think of king David dancing in front of the ark not caring about what anyone might say or think. ‘Sing and dance to the Lord’!
As expected the reception at Milimani was truly exuberant. Archbishop Okoth presided over the three hour open-air Eucharist. The pilgrim cross we had carried all the way from Kampala had arrived at its destination. Quite poignantly it had been broken twice on the way – like ourselves? – but now it had come home.
As I and many others were aware all along pilgrimage is not about arrival. The meaning of pilgrimage lies in the journey itself. Hans summed it all up that day when we sat together for a moment to look back over the past 21 days: “Oh, the joy of movement”….. The gesture he made with his hand, fingers together as if signaling appreciation for an exceptionally good wine or a beautiful girl, said it all.<WMCopyright©2003 World Mission Magazine
AFRICA'S FAITH
Among Africa's many centenary celebrations over the past decade or two, the three-week walk from the Ugandan capital Kampala to Kisumu in Western Kenya certainly had an original falvor.
Pilgrims dwarfed by a giant rainforest tree
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by Philip Drake
THE STORY OF CHRISTIANITY’S COURAGEOUS BEGINNINGS IN UGANDA
“Up there is where the Christians were burned.” As my colleague and I were driven towards Kampala, capital of Uganda, from Entebbe Airport, our driver thought it important enough to point out this place to us.
It took me a while to realise what he was talking about. Had there been some recent disaster or atrocity? There have been so many in the history of this country.
Then it dawned on me. He was speaking about the martyrdom of Charles Lwanga and his companions. Their feast day is 3 June and it was on this day in 1886 that twenty-two young Catholic men were murdered with the most horrific brutality, astonishing the onlookers by their happiness at this opportunity to serve their Lord and enter Heaven.
Brave Christians
On the last day of our work the afternoon was free before the evening flight back to Paris. Our driver offered to take us for a short tour. I suggested that we visit Namugongo, the place of execution and now the shrine to the Ugandan martyrs.
We bumped our way through bustling villages with their street markets with stalls selling fruit, vegetables, live chickens, cloth and all the basic merchandise that keeps Africa alive at subsistence level.
Then we passed a corrugated shack with the sign, “The Shrine Restaurant”. And on the left through the trees we could see the wigwam shape of the towering Basilica of Namugongo. At the entrance to the grounds there were huge boards on which were painted the gruesome scenes of the torture and incineration of these brave young Christians.
Carrying the Cross
It was Good Friday and as we entered the domain we could see hundreds of schoolboys dressed in white shirts and gray trousers processing through the grounds in their class groups, each group carrying a large cross. At each station on the Way of the Cross, the group stopped for a meditation, then continued.
The basilica is huge and at that moment, during the Stations outside, it was peaceful and silent. The high altar is built over the spot where the main group of martyrs were murdered on a day far from silent. Father Faupel of the Mill Hill Fathers describes the scene in his excellent account of the martyrdoms, “African Holocaust”.
“Early on the morning of Ascension Thursday, 3 June 1886, the executioners, their faces smeared with red ochre and streaked with soot, swooped upon the huts in which their victims were confined. On their heads were fantastic wigs, fashioned from the tails of small animals and bird’s feathers and, to complete their attire, they wore the skins of leopards or other animals around their waists, strings of amulets round their necks and bangles of bells on their ankles. Pandemonium reigned as the executioners danced around their prisoners, brandishing spears or knives, beating drums and uttering their chants.”
Special treatment
Charles Lwanga was given special treatment. A pyre of wood had been prepared for him. His legs were tied straight and his arms bound at his sides. The executioners then began to wrap his body in a section of reed fencing, but Charles asked, “Will you please untie me and allow me to arrange the pyre myself?” They agreed and then strapped him down.
The fire was lit and carefully controlled to provide as extended an agony as possible. The flames first burned his feet and legs to charred bones, leaving the rest of his body unharmed. As the executioner controlled the flames, he said, “Let me punish you properly and let me see if your God will come and deliver you from the fire”.
Charles replied “You poor foolish man! You do not understand what you are saying. you are burning me, but it is as if you were pouring water over my body. I am dying for God’s religion. But be warned in time or God, whom you insult will one day plunge you into real fire.”
All Charles young companions, pages to the Kabaka (king) of Uganda, perished similarly in other pyres.
Wily king
Uganda at that time was a country of about three million people. Its central region – Buganda - was highly organized and controlled by the Kabaka. From the 1840s the Catholic Church had attempted to establish missions in East Africa but had suffered a huge death rate.
In the 1870s, the English Church Missionary Society formed a small mission led by Alexander Mackay, a Scottish Calvinist. Mackay was horrified to find that the White Fathers were establishing a mission in Uganda. He formed a competitive campaign to turn the Kabaka against Catholicism.
However, the wily Kabaka, Mutesa I, played one
religion off against the other in his political strategy. Over the next few
years, the White Fathers, led by Father Lourdel, a Frenchman, introduced the
faith to many of the young pages serving the Kabaka. In particular, Charles
Lwanga, the commander of the pages, became not only a devout Catholic
himself but also brought many of his colleagues to the Church. These young
men were remarkable for their intelligence and moral fortitude in a court
corrupted by brutality and lust. However, the Kabaka, refusing Christianity
himself because of his thousand concubines, did not prevent his people
adopting the new faith. 
Situation changed
The situation changed after Mutesa’s death. His successor was Prince Mwanga, a dissolute young man addicted to drugs and sexual immorality. He was judged by the missionaries to be capable of unpredictable and manic behavior.
Mwanga became suspicious of the Christians, associating them with the English and fearing they might be cooperating in an invasion by the English who were active in North-East Africa. In 1886 he used a minor misunderstanding among his pages to burst into a manic tantrum, rounding up all the pages and selecting all those who professed to be Christians. None of the Christians, including those who professed Protestantism, denied their faith.
All the Christians were rounded up and over the next few days some were brutally tortured and hacked to death. Most were marched for days in agonizing shackles to the execution grounds of Namugongo where the terrible massacre took place. To the horror of the chief executioner, his own son who was a Catholic, refused to renounce his faith and his father had to incinerate him with the others.
These young men not only held fast to their faith; they actually welcomed the chance to die for their Savior. Even the executioners were astonished to hear none of the usual wailing and screaming from their victims but only prayers and mutual encouragement.
In an age of insipid and weak faith we could do no better than to invoke the aid of these courageous saints who resisted all the temptations of a corrupt regime and the fear of an agonizing death to hold true to their faith to the end.<WMCopyright©2003 World Mission Magazine
When the Gospel was first preached in Uganda, a group of young laymen gave their lives, and their spilt blood became the seed of Christians
The basilica of the Ugandan martyrs in Namugongo, Uganda.