and stared sleepily at the strange mzungu who had appeared in their home in the middle of the night. Next, he fished out a bottle of homemade hooch from his bedroom, one he had been specially saving for just such an occasion when a stranded mzungu would call to his house at 3am on a moonless November night. A bewildered expression met my decline of his offer. I had shipped too much Tusker already. Then he brought out the motorbike from the back, and after a good few attempts managed to start it.
‘OK, Brendan, you will drive,’ ordered Mwangangi.
I was not convinced that that was a good idea.
After the disappearance of the rains, it became too hot to cycle on the boneshaker to Kitui, so I had borrowed a motorbike from some of the priests a few times. You rarely met anything on the dirt tracks other than a few wild animals and some people herding goats or donkeys. But, in truth, I was still a novice biker at this point. I hesitated, but Mwangangi cajoled me into agreeing. Confident we would not meet anyone, we headed back over the dirt track at a steady pace in a happy Tusker-induced daze.
Mwangangi was seated behind me with his arms out like wings, looking up towards the stars, which thankfully had now appeared. Caracal cats and other unidentified creatures were jumping out in front of me as I drove. The road from Letterkenny town out towards home was never like this, I kept thinking. One kilometre before reaching Nyumbani, we ran out of fuel. It was quite an effort to push the bike the rest of the way over a sandy track.
I woke up the next morning realising how dangerous it had been; never in a hundred years would I even dream of contemplating such a journey in Ireland. It was like the time Leo and I staggered the fifteen kilometres back one other starry night without the benefit of a lamp.
Kimanze told us a cautionary tale the following morning.
‘One of the Nyumbani workers was walking home one night full drunk. He fell asleep, out cold on the side of the road before he could make it home. He woke up to find a hyena eating off his left buttock.’
Kimanze was not joking.
C HAPTER 7
T HE M ISSIONARIES OF A FRICA
A RCHBISHOP T UTU OF S OUTH A FRICA once famously declared, ‘The missionaries came with their bibles, and taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, we had the bibles and they had the land.’ That happened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is a bit different now.
I always had a childhood picture in my head of missionaries walking around, throwing holy water over naked spear-wielding black people. The reality proved very different. The Catholic missionaries in Africa are remarkable people: priests wearing colourful shorts fluently conversing in an African tribal language with a Kerry accent, perhaps; or elderly white nuns riding motorbikes over treacherous dirt tracks. As well as spreading Christianity, they do a tremendous amount of practical work to improve the lives of Africans; setting up schools, health centres, water projects, and creating employment opportunities. They are outstanding people whose extraordinary efforts are rarely acknowledged at home.
The Irish Catholic missionaries in Kenya install the infrastructure for entire communities, for Catholics and everyone else indiscriminately; infrastructure the government would not or could not establish. For example, Fr. Liam introduced me to a nun from Leitrim who was largely responsible for eradicating leprosy from Kitui District in the 1980s. The disappearing old-style missionary, who has lived amongst the community for decades in much the same basic conditions as the people themselves, does great work, albeit affecting the cultures of entire tribes in the process.
This has always been a prominent topic for African writers, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o in The River Between, and Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart. These two authors brilliantly narrate the life stories of fictional African
‘OK, Brendan, you will drive,’ ordered Mwangangi.
I was not convinced that that was a good idea.
After the disappearance of the rains, it became too hot to cycle on the boneshaker to Kitui, so I had borrowed a motorbike from some of the priests a few times. You rarely met anything on the dirt tracks other than a few wild animals and some people herding goats or donkeys. But, in truth, I was still a novice biker at this point. I hesitated, but Mwangangi cajoled me into agreeing. Confident we would not meet anyone, we headed back over the dirt track at a steady pace in a happy Tusker-induced daze.
Mwangangi was seated behind me with his arms out like wings, looking up towards the stars, which thankfully had now appeared. Caracal cats and other unidentified creatures were jumping out in front of me as I drove. The road from Letterkenny town out towards home was never like this, I kept thinking. One kilometre before reaching Nyumbani, we ran out of fuel. It was quite an effort to push the bike the rest of the way over a sandy track.
I woke up the next morning realising how dangerous it had been; never in a hundred years would I even dream of contemplating such a journey in Ireland. It was like the time Leo and I staggered the fifteen kilometres back one other starry night without the benefit of a lamp.
Kimanze told us a cautionary tale the following morning.
‘One of the Nyumbani workers was walking home one night full drunk. He fell asleep, out cold on the side of the road before he could make it home. He woke up to find a hyena eating off his left buttock.’
Kimanze was not joking.
C HAPTER 7
T HE M ISSIONARIES OF A FRICA
A RCHBISHOP T UTU OF S OUTH A FRICA once famously declared, ‘The missionaries came with their bibles, and taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, we had the bibles and they had the land.’ That happened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is a bit different now.
I always had a childhood picture in my head of missionaries walking around, throwing holy water over naked spear-wielding black people. The reality proved very different. The Catholic missionaries in Africa are remarkable people: priests wearing colourful shorts fluently conversing in an African tribal language with a Kerry accent, perhaps; or elderly white nuns riding motorbikes over treacherous dirt tracks. As well as spreading Christianity, they do a tremendous amount of practical work to improve the lives of Africans; setting up schools, health centres, water projects, and creating employment opportunities. They are outstanding people whose extraordinary efforts are rarely acknowledged at home.
The Irish Catholic missionaries in Kenya install the infrastructure for entire communities, for Catholics and everyone else indiscriminately; infrastructure the government would not or could not establish. For example, Fr. Liam introduced me to a nun from Leitrim who was largely responsible for eradicating leprosy from Kitui District in the 1980s. The disappearing old-style missionary, who has lived amongst the community for decades in much the same basic conditions as the people themselves, does great work, albeit affecting the cultures of entire tribes in the process.
This has always been a prominent topic for African writers, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o in The River Between, and Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart. These two authors brilliantly narrate the life stories of fictional African
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