The year after Durham continues from the previous post.
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6. Some time in the fall of 1996, Kerry Kind contacted me about Africa.
Kerry had left Wilmore and his PhD program at the University of Kentucky to become head of Wesleyan World Missions (and would eventually be over Education and the Ministry). We had been at Stonewall Wesleyan Church together, and he had long felt like I might be a possibility for missions. I've already mentioned that he had asked me if I was interested in taking over as coordinator of the work in England, and of course my sister Juanita had been a missionary to the Philippines for four years (and had married the Philippines General Superintendent's son).
I do think that I had the temperament to be involved in missions. I care very little for any possessions (except for my books). I do not need nice cars, houses, or clothes (perhaps to my wife's chagrin). [1] I have always been eager to learn and adopt the culture of wherever I am. I am above average at languages and consider it anathema not to learn the language of the place you are serving.
7. Those were the days of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In 1996, Liberia was just emerging from the scourge. I believe the Pococks had gone there just before the civil war decimated the country, and they had to be evacuated.
Kerry had a burden to send someone to Liberia to help the church there know that the Wesleyan Church had not forgotten them. I was still single at the time, so I was expendable. :-)
Upon further reflection, they decided against sending me there. The sewer system was not entirely repaired and there was a real danger of hepatitis. So it was decided that I would go teach for two months at Sierra Leone Bible College in Jui, just outside Freetown, Sierra Leone.
The civil war in Liberia had spilled over into Sierra Leone. In February 1997, when I went over, it had not come to Freetown, the capital city. It was mainly up country, especially in the south. I remember a young man whom I ran with a couple times who had escaped a bus rebels had stopped by crawling away.
By the way, next to this young man I might as well have been standing still. The extreme heat (since Sierra Leone is about 500 miles from the equator) made running exhausting. More on running in a moment.
The fearful Kenny was quite present while I was there. Some nights I would look out my window at the lights of the cars coming toward Freetown from Waterloo, wondering if there were rebels in them. Jui is east of the city on a peninsula. When the rebels did come to Freetown -- less than two months after I left -- they would ransack the Bible college property.
8. Kerry prepped me for the trip over the phone, as I recall. He told me stories of the time that he was there. However, I'm not sure they were the best stories to tell me. There was the time he found a cobra behind the fridge. Then there were his tales of hunting down rabid dogs with bats. "If you hear a dog with a strange howl, it's rabid," he said.
That was all so very reassuring. I was quite afraid of snakes while I was there, although I never saw one. They had burned the ground behind where I stayed to discourage them from coming toward the house. There was a day I came across several men preoccupied with a tree. They were at various stages of height in it. When I asked what they were doing, they didn't really say. I wondered if they were fetching a black mamba.
There was a rather large spider in my room for a time. I wasn't particularly troubled by it until I realized it was pregnant. And then, with apologies, I dispatched it to the afterlife. There are limits for such things, after all.
There were large cockroaches that would come out at night. And of course there were many ants that carried off various and sundry things. One night I decided not to throw away the remains of a squashed cockroach. Sure enough, it was gone in the morning.
Another episode of "fun with cockroaches" was when one set of ants from the back of the house were in a tug of war with a set of ants from the front of the house. They were pulling in opposite directions on the parts of a dead cockroach. It was quite entertaining and I watched for some time.
9. The trip to Sierra Leone was like passing through zones of foreignness. The first step was still Western, a stop in Brussels to change planes. It struck me that airports are like liminal zones between countries. You are neither in the country you are leaving nor the one to which you are headed.
The flight south was another zone of greater foreignness. We stopped in Conakry, as I recall, although we didn't deplane. I remember seeing a 747 take off, but then I saw a plane very similar land a few minutes later. Was it the same plane, I asked myself. I imagined some young men taking a joy ride with a 747. I had the feeling that I was entering the theatre of the absurd.
I was picked up from the airport by a Seventh Day Adventist missionary couple. They were perhaps the only Western missionaries still in the country. Everyone else had evacuated. They were living in the Wesleyan house in Freetown. I would spend a couple weekends with them.
In fact, they were going to take me up country to the famed Kamakwie hospital and I think the Gbendembu Bible college. But the very weekend we were to take the trip, the civil war rekindled up country. I would never make it past Waterloo.
10. I taught two subjects: Communication and Historical Books. I'd never taught either. The classroom format was old school, imported from Western colonization, a blast from the past.
As a side note, I once heard a critique of American college teaching for being cultural, and without question it is true. However, the person critiquing was from abroad, and I at least had the question whether what was being advocated was some element of colonial pedagogy from a century ago. I don't remember the details. I just remember wondering whether what was in fact happening was Western colonialism past critiquing Western pedagogy present.
The students in those classes would go on to become leaders in the African church of the future: Usman Fornah, Warren Fornah. Abu Conteh was the Academic Dean at the time. The Principal of the college at that time was a Baptist.
Probably enough time has passed for me to share some of my feelings. No doubt it was in part cultural, but I felt there was some of a "big man" dimension to senior leadership in Africa. You get into top leadership, and you operate like a king.
Suffice it to say, this grates against my holiness background. Leaders who lord it over those under them seem flatly to contradict the teachings of Christ and the New Testament. So, when I was given the opportunity to preach on the campus, I chose Philippians 2 -- how Christ, although having the authority of God, humbled himself and became a servant.
I suspect it is a human dynamic. We like "strong" leaders. And pseudo-masculine guys who get in positions of leadership love it a little too much. In short, we stupidly appoint jerks as leaders. And this happens in holiness circles just as much as anywhere else. And we should know better.
I remember a conversation I had with Keith Drury about someone appointed as a leader that I thought was a horrible decision. Keith's remark was that this person was a strong leader, and that's probably why. Let's just say I believe my reservations were justified by history.
11. I remember a moment in the Historical Books class when I was talking about the contextual nature of Scripture and how passages need to be interpreted in the light of context. A fairly strong reaction, a quote from Malachi 3:6: "I the LORD do not change."
I do not usually think fast on my feet, but my immediate response was that God doesn't change but culture does and that God meets us where we are so that we can understand. Also, God's values play out differently in different contexts.
If you've been reading these posts, you know that there was over a decade of my own struggle in that exchange.
I did enjoy covering that part of the Bible. I had not really focused on Joshua to Esther before. As for communication, I only remember that I leaned into logos, pathos, ethos, which was in my bailiwick.
12. I enjoy learning about other cultures. There were numerous moments of learning. First, there were the easy ones. Food. I paid a woman a certain amount each week to prepare some easy dishes. Probably the most striking to me was cassava. I liked it.
It is also toxic if it is not cooked enough. In 2005, at least 30 elementary school children died in the Philippines because the cassava was not prepared correctly by an outside vendor.
One question was with meat or without. My first week I did try some goat. I determined that I could easily be a vegetarian in Sierra Leone.
The rest of the time I didn't bother with the meat. It also cost more and I was on a very thin budget. I think the Wesleyans gave me $200 a month (it might have been $200 for the whole time). I didn't have access to an ATM and there wasn't any easy way for my parents to get me money either. This would have to do.
This amount was tight because I was immediately cast in the role of patron. I understood the construct well enough from Bruce Malina's The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. However, by the time I got on the plane to go home, I had PTSD from all the entreaties. Even at the airport, a boy asked for money. I had no money. I had nothing. I had given it all away.
I gave the last $50 to a minister in training to buy a sewing machine. Remember those were the days of "Ken can't say no." I hope that it provided a great livelihood to that family. I remember eating with the man. As men, we ate in the foreroom. The women prepared the food and ate separately in the back room afterward. And the children ate separately. It all grated on me, although I understood it was the culture.
13. I was given three offers in marriage while I was there. In two cases, there was an intermediary. One man said, "If you as an American man marry an African woman, you are getting a good deal. She will do whatever you want. It doesn't work so well when an American woman marries an African man." I'm sure that's not universally true, but I wouldn't be surprised if this would be a fairly common sentiment there.
In one case it was an upper class woman who came to me herself -- the elite can always break the rules. As I recall, she boasted that she was not circumcised. She told me that if you look around at all the women I can see, almost all of them have been circumcised. But not her. She said that even in Christian circles, they secretly do it, even though it is frowned on. She said they come for the girls in the night and take them somewhere in secret to circumcise them because it is the cultural tradition.
Female circumcision is a heinous practice. What they do is cut off the part of female anatomy that is key to pleasure during sex. The limitation of pleasure is thought to discourage cheating. Of course, as usual, men are freer to do what they want.
I remember hearing after I left that a man who had a fairly prominent position in the Wesleyan Church -- secretary of the country or some such -- had a second wife up country. He had been using the relative wealth he received from the Wesleyans to support two families.
The Wesleyan position on polygamy was that one should not put away multiple wives when one became a Christian but should not take on any additional wives. That seemed like a very wise and just position to take.
Mind you, polygamy is never prohibited in the Bible. I was very sheepish to mention that in my early days of teaching. I could still see my mother's reaction when I taught. But polygamy is a perfectly normal practice in the OT (e.g., Deut. 21:15). If someone responds, but what about Genesis 2:24 -- a man leaves father and becomes one flesh? Yes, a man becomes one flesh with each wife.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe that polygamy should be a Christian practice. I'm just pointing out that this is a point where we have (rightly and legitimately) played out biblical principles in ways that go beyond the Bible itself.
14. I noticed a stratification in both language and denominations. The highest class spoke Krio, the lingua franca of the country. It is a pidgin English. A prayer might begin, "Papa God. We go tell you tanke for what you done done for we." I went to the HQ church on Easter Sunday (March 30, 1997) about half way between Jui and downtown Freetown. I was able to catch some of the Krio sermon because of the proximity to English.
I remember one stretch of the sermon. He was talking about how resurrection is not resuscitation. He told a story (I think it's a well known trope) about a man some gravediggers were burying. They noticed the man had some valuables that they decided to come back and steal that night.
But the man was not actually dead. So when they dug up his coffin, he sat up and said, "What's going on?" One of the graverobbers was so scared he had a heart attack and died. Then the not-so-dead man ran into town and said, "There's something crazy going on at the cemetery."
The preacher's point was that resurrection was not like that.
At another time, I went to the wake of a man. The body looked very old and I asked how old he had been. As it turned out, he had been in his thirties (I think). But they did not embalm, so the body had deteriorated that much in one or two days.
15. There was a wealthy Wesleyan church in Freetown. That's where the Wesleyans who were involved in government went. I frankly didn't have a good feeling about some of the dynamics there. One of them -- I can't remember his name -- was later murdered during the civil strife. I think they pulled his car over. Kerry would have known.
During my time there, we did some evangelism on one afternoon each week. I remember talking to a young Muslim man and him expressing how difficult it would be to change religions. He would be shunned by his whole family. Again, Malina's material on group/collectivist cultures provided important framing for these discussions.
I remember thinking how much more easily an African might understand the culture of the Bible than an American. In fact, I think maybe it was a comment on greeting the brother with a holy kiss that set off the comment on Malachi and God not changing. They pointed out that many Africans do greet each other with a kiss on the cheek. It was harder for me to find areas where they didn't practice things the Bible addressed to believers in ancient culture.
I remember a girl coming out of a hut in a school uniform. It was a clash of paradigms, I would later reflect. In Freetown, you had normal houses near huts. And you had a modern school uniform coming out of a hut. It was surreal to me at the time, but I couldn't quite find the words to express why.
Kuhn later helped. There was my paradigm of the modern city, my paradigm of the private school with uniforms, and my paradigm of the primitive hut. These were clashing together. My assumptions and frameworks were clashing together.
16. I remember having a conversation with one of the Wesleyan leaders about his son, who had sickle cell anemia. You may know that African genetics have a weakness here. He indicated that his son would not likely make it to adulthood, and I believe that turned out to be the case.
The way he said it struck me because of how resigned he was. I have long wondered if death was much more normal in other times and places. When a significant portion of children die as children, do you assume it will happen? Does it become somewhat normal? When women die frequently in childbirth, does it become normalized to some extent?
I've wondered if the problem of evil and suffering looks different in a world where it is just the way it is. Similarly, I've wondered if we are more sensitive to it because we are so blessed with modern medicine and science.
17. One of the highlights of my time was a field day. The slow white man was going to run the two mile race. Everyone knew I was a runner. How would I do?
Horrible! I mostly blame the heat. I slowly made my way around the dirt track eight times (it might have been sixteen). The front runner lapped me. Pretty embarrassing. Someone on my team who had never run was way ahead of me. He may have lapped me too.
But near the end he suddenly ran off the track and got down on the ground to rest. He couldn't finish. He was exhausted. So Ken the tortoise continued his rounds and finished second to last.
A compliment (I think it was genuine) given me was that I was not like a lot of missionaries. The person talked about growing up in the shadow of the great Kamakwie hospital up country. I am in no position to say whether his critique was fair, but he clearly thought that the doctors and nurses lived in their own world and stayed separate from the people of the town. With perhaps a small hint of anger, he spoke of the mansions they effectively lived in, and how they would go to work and go home without interacting with nationals much.
I don't know if that was fair or not, but it reminded me of the fact that Albert Schweitzer lived too long. Seen as a medical benefactor for the first part of his service in Africa, he ended being thought of as a condescending colonialist.
I've already mentioned that I felt the weight of the expectation that I would be a patron. By some it was perhaps seen as a moral obligation. I dreamt of a college teaching job that might start off paying, who knows, $40,000 a year? I would be able to support them from afar.
But because I didn't like to say no, by the time I left I felt like I had less than everyone around me. I don't know if I had $5 in my wallet. I was so drained from all the asking and fear of civil war, that I didn't believe the trauma was over until the wheels of the plane had left the ground.
18. The day after Easter, maybe a day or two before I left, I took a taxi to the beach. Somehow it seemed I was charged significantly more than everyone else in the van. Because I didn't want to pay for the taxi back, I walked all the way back to town. It was a very long walk. I was so sunburnt on my ears that I had scabs and eventually had a dermatologist remove the remnants of the scar.
I took public transportation back to Jui. From what I remember, there were people hanging out the sides while the bus like vehicle went at high speeds.
As I said, on May 25, 1997, less than two months later, the rebels did in fact break through to Freetown. The people suffered greatly, including many Wesleyans. Arms were amputated. Pregnant women were cut open. Young boys were recruited and then made addicted to drugs. They did unspeakable things.
I believe Usman Fornah would play a significant role in negotiating peace. I believe he even went to the United Nations (correct me, those who know). I would see him a couple times while he was visiting the States.
I started a family the next year, and the starting salary of a professor turned out not to go as far as I thought it might. In the end, I was not able to give much after I left.
19. I had an old laptop of my dad's from work while I was there. As usual, I had a novel idea afterwards. I think it was titled something like Out of the Darkness. It was to be about a short term missionary abducted by rebels. It was to have a theatre of the absurd feeling to it. He would be freed after appealing to the childhood Christianity of a captor.
Never finished it, of course.
[1] Dare I say that, like Diogenes, I find so much of the rules of tidiness to be foolish (e.g., the Kehrwoche in southern Germany). There are individuals I know whose houses are so immaculate that I hesitate to step on the premises. It's a fine hobby. But dare not think it important to spend undue time doing something elective that you'll just have to do again tomorrow! Don't consider yourself superior or me inferior because I don't get alarmed for accidentally wearing two different shoes! Order is practical and cleanliness is healthy, but anything beyond that can be a sickness.
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