Travelogue #15

Dateline: Abuja, Nigeria; November 29, 2009—The last ten intense days are now past, this six and a half month journey is coming to a close, and so I sit on the side of my bed in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and begin this final travelogue of the year. It has been a great trip and I am thankful to have finished it in Nigeria, although I came here with a few reservations.
We all have a paralysis of analysis at times about people, countries or whatever. But I am learning we need to judge for ourselves. Granted, there may be some justification to being extra cautious in certain lands. Today I will fly to Lagos, arriving at 16:15 and not leaving until 23:45. My friends, and I do have good friends now in Abuja, warn me not to wander about, to take a sightseeing excursion in the environs of Lagos, as it is not a safe place. To the north of Nigeria it would also not be a very comfortable place for those such as I to rummage about, especially as I am dressed right now. I am wearing my USMC tee shirt. Up there is where the Moslems predominate. Up there is Boko Haram.
A loose translation of boko haram is Western Abomination. What is Western Abomination? Education, medicine, progress, freedom, rights. Now, I might agree that much of modern medicine is boko haram, but the rest is an ill-conceived attempt to “protect” their children from the evils of Christianity. Maybe they need to be informed that Western education, as it is in the West, is doing everything but lead the children to the Christian belief. It just seems strange to have so little faith in the righteousness of your own beliefs that you have to shackle your children with ignorance of anything that could expand their horizons beyond the mosque and the herd of goats they will tend until they wear out their lives in the struggle to survive. We see but history repeating itself. The Dark Ages were dark, not because of some atmospheric anomaly, but because of the predominant religion’s desire (the Roman Catholic church) to keep the people in the dark about the principles of the Bible. People were put to death for possessing the sacred Scriptures. Voila! Welcome to the 21st century, welcome to the new dark Ages.
Oh, there is education for the sheltered tots in the north. Beginning at age 3, they are sent to the Mosque from 6 to 8 each morning to memorize the Qur’an under the faithful tutelage of an Imam. They sing it, chant it and recite it. By five years old the little girls are wearing the hijab no matter how hot the weather. From this public head covering they will never escape. From their ignorance they will never escape. They will eventually learn to read the Qur’an in Arabic, but their education will end there. Women are on the same subservient level as children and exist to serve man and bear his young. Not a place for a women’s libber. And yet our current president cancelled the traditional prayer breakfast last spring as not to offend the Moslems.
Abuja is more of a mixing pot of religion. The massive mosques stare sullenly across the littered sward at the equally colossal Christian edifices, mostly evangelical in tempo. Everyone gets each other’s holidays off which makes everyone relatively happy I am sure. This is the weekend of Eid el Kabir, or simply Sallah. The holiday commemorates the event recorded in Genesis 22:1-18 with an Islamic twist. The story is of the command to Abraham by God to sacrifice his son. Of course here is the rub; Moslems say the son was Ishmael, from whom Mohammed was descended. Christians claim the son was Isaac from whom Jesus Christ was descended. Jews agree on the Isaac part but reject the Messiah part as being Christ. What confusion Abraham caused by his lack of faith in the power of God. It created a unique tension here which is palliated by periodic holidays.
Now Sallah, being a holiday that commemorates a past event that culminated in the sacrifice of a ram and not a man, continues the tradition of a blood sacrifice. Whereas in America this past Thursday many turkeys laid down their lives to keep the Thanksgiving tradition alive, here it was mainly goats bearing the brunt of the celebration. I can’t recall how many goats I saw, blood spurting from their severed carotid arteries, bleatless faces bent toward Mecca, as the light drained from their terror-stricken eyes. It is not just a meal here, it is a ritual. It is so much easier to buy your turkey frozen; it separates you from the hell the animals endure to get to their final destination; your table. Part of the Sallah meat is a sacrifice, part of it the people eat, and another part is given away. Of course those familiar with the Bible know the animal sacrificed on Mt. Moriah was a ram, meaning a male sheep, and not a goat. I am sure some rams met their Waterloo this past week in Moslem lands, but probably goats are a bit cheaper. Tradition even yields to status as those with more wealth sacrifice a bullock or cow. It is like the difference between driving a BMW and a VW. “You’re having goat this year? May Allah smile on you more this coming year than he has in the past. Care for some fresh beef?”
If anyone reading this travelogue has been to India, you know already a bit of what Abuja sounds like. There is a constant cacophony of impatient horns coming from a thousand green and white taxis. Green and white are the national colors, the color of their flag. The sounding of the horns might be their national anthem. If it weren’t for Zimbabweanesque queues lining the roads to the filling stations that happen to be open, there would be even more traffic on the roads. And this in a country that produces oil for export. Trouble is they have to import gasoline because of mismanagement of their three or four refineries. My Nigerian friends tell me graft and greed mixed with a healthy dose of native born incompetence has placed the fine people of Nigeria under the iron thumb of African colonials. They traded one oppressive power for another.
In an insightful editorial by first generation African-American writer L.E. Ikenga, whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, she labels what has happened to African nations after “liberation” has been nothing more than subjugation by another colonial, this one being from the tribe next door. Interesting, she also says, “My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country (the USA) into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel.” If you want the rest of the editorial, I will send it upon request.
Driving in Abuja, and I am so thankful I didn’t have to do the driving, has to be some of the most challenging I have ever seen. The roads are in perfect condition, and traffic lights are suspended over nearly every intersection. One problem is I don’t recall ever seeing a traffic light working. But not to worry, there are police kiosks in the middle of almost every large intersection. Often they are not manned and when they are, the policemen and women take only a casual interest on the din and confusion around them. Cars slow down, sound their horns and fling themselves into the fray. More angry toots, a dodge and a weave and you are safely throughÉthis one. Only one time did I see a policeman actually directing traffic and if I had been in charge of the police department, he would have been a chief instructor. He was actually fun to watch.
The official language of Nigeria is what some call English. I was watching the Gaither Homecoming on a TV here and they were of course speaking English but the station was running subtitlesÉin English. The accents are so thick is was as if it were a foreign language. I can just imagine how I sounded. I was counseling a woman the other day and her blank stare told me something wasn’t getting through. “Probably one of those who only speak their native languages,” I thought. A man who had brought her to me said, “She can’t understand you; I am going to translate.” I greatly appreciated his assistance.
“So, how long have you had these symptoms?” I queried.
The man turned to the woman and said, “He wants to know how long you have had these symptoms?” He was translating my English into their English. Quite a new experience. And there are so many health concerns here.
My mission in Abuja was to give public health lectures every day for ten days and then to conduct three all-morning simple remedies training programs for those who were interested. We had probably 30 or 40 for those training sessions. I was also taken to the Ministry of Health and met the minister of health for all of Nigeria and spent a couple of hours talking with some of his department heads. It was a very productive time. We then went to the main legislative compound, like our capital building, and was taken to a senator’s office for a meeting. It was all very impressive.
On my last Friday I was taken to a village outside of Abuja. As in much of Africa, most regions have chiefs and they are the rule. So an appointment was made to visit him first before speaking to the people. Being Sallah he was out so we repaired to the village SDA church. While there the chief came in. A tall young man, quite austere, he sat on the front row as I was giving an impromptu talk. He was insouciant, not letting on whether he was annoyed that a white man had invaded his village or just bored. Today we received a call from the chief; he was neither annoyed nor bored. He called to open the village to our group to do anything they want to improve the lot of the people. You just never know the influence you will have but one thing I have learned over the years is health in an international language and concern.
The SDA church provides a free eye clinic periodically and we held one the day some of us went to the village. Many, many people came and were examined and fitted for glasses. It is a good work. We held the clinic and all of the meetings in a large building used by many organizations, many of them the popular evangelical religious groups proliferating in the city of Abuja. One Friday evening one of these groups held an all night “prayer meeting” in the hall. What a time they must have had.
On Sabbath morning some of us arrived early to make sure the premises were ready for church. It looked more like they had had a rock concert than a prayer meeting. Well, the drums had been used as evidenced by the quickly stowed trap set in one of the small wings of the stage. The more noise, the greater the decibels, the more syncopated the beat, the more powerful the emotions that can be gendered. And in these meetings it is all about the emotions; get them yelling, jumping and down and crying and call it the impartation of the Holy Spirit. Everywhere in the city of Abuja there are slick posters announcing an “Evening of Smoke,” a “Weekend of Miracles,” a “Savannah Campmeeting of Ever Increasing Glory,” a four-day “Prophetic Harvest of Miracles Crusade.” The latter one, on its poster, stated, “That nonsense Must Stop.” Amen.
It took us an hour to sweep up the trash, rearrange the chairs, and bring some semblance of order to the hall. If heaven’s first law of order, and I believe it is, the meeting we were seeing the aftermath of was not of heavenly origin.
I leave Nigeria with an anticipation of returning, but not just to Nigeria. Kenya is calling, Malawi is calling, the other African nations I have previously visited demand more help. So not I turn my attention to 2010. I solicit your prayers, your suggestions, your encouragements. I will soon be shifting to the blog or to a website if I can come up with one. Speaking with the president of the Transvaal Conference of SDA’s in South Africa, he challenged me to record my meetings and make them universally available. This, by God’s help, I intend to do in the next two months while I am in the States. It is time to expand the ministry. Thank you and God bless all of you.
Have God, Will Travel,
Don