John Padwick(Photo: © John Padwick/CMS)After a different kind of Christmas and New Year with members of an African Independent Church in western Kenya, mission partner John Padwick joins the marchers against new regulations attempting to make Kenyans quieten down
Staying in a village forces me to adjust. Over Christmas and the New Year I was relearning basic skills in a village in Vihiga, Western Kenya – physical skills like taking a bath in a traditional bathroom (let’s just say a village bathroom – the really traditional bathroom was the river), cleaning your feet
without falling over (some of us have difficulties with that in situations too) and not dropping the soap in case it gets dirty.
But I was also learning inter-personal skills, such as when and when not to greet people spontaneously (err on the generous side) and when and when not to respond to requests for ‘Christmas’ – a small gift. I seemed to have lost the knack of the latter skill because some of the local underemployed youth went about the village singing how mean I was. Well, that’s a change for the positive, even if I did feel guilty.
A different kind of Christmas
There’s something about Christmases in Western Kenya that I can’t quite get my mind around. On 23 December, members of the Holy Spirit Church climb a hill for a night of prayer among the rocks. (This year – regrettably – I decided to stay in bed.) This is a time for repentance and prophecy. Repentance so that you can finish the old year with a clean heart and enter the New Year ready to serve God and be filled with His blessings; prophecy for whatever the New Year may bring. These are themes that occur throughout the Vihiga denominations (at least those rooted in the local community and not subject to too much outside control).
On 25 December Christ is born into the heart of the long holiday to offer redemption and cleansing, and to accompany us through the period of reflection and preparation that lasts until the New Year. In Holy Spirit Church during this time we have the annual church convention. But we need Him also to ‘cross the boundary’ safely from the Old Year to the New. (Crossing boundaries is risky. In the New Year people congratulate you for having ‘crossed over’ successfully.) Christ then continues with us into the activities of the New Year. Repentance – Incarnation and Redemption – Reflection – Trust and Hope. Quite a profound way of making the whole holiday period a Christian event, but still challenging for someone brought up on a different kind of Christmas.
Make some noise
On 2 January we started the New Year with the Holy Spirit Church in a colourful procession and an open-air meeting in the District HQs at Mbale. Towards the end of 2009 the government introduced new environmental regulations on noise – if you make a noise that can be heard 30 metres away you can be fined or imprisoned, unless you have a licence.
Immediately street-traders in Nairobi were in the media spotlight – and toned down their shouting.
But life in Africa is simply not lived like that. Lie awake in the village at night and listen to the circumcision parties parading up and down the roads beating drums and singing abusive songs (like how mean I am), the funeral wakes (for three days and nights), the overnight prayer meetings, the Pentecostal pastor who gets up at five every morning to sing out-of-tune hymns through his loudspeaker, or the calls to prayer from the mosque – none of these ‘noise-makers’ were obeying the 30 metre rule in Vihiga.
However, the new regulation has worried some churches and mosques – the Pentecostals and evangelicals because they regularly preach outside with loudspeakers, and the African independent churches because they beat drums and much of their worship is customarily in market places, under trees and on the side of roads. So on 2 January we preached in the open air in the District Centre against the new regulations.
How long they will last is uncertain. They seem to be a middle-class gesture. But one good thing – in the Nairobi estate where I live the nightclub next door has certainly become much quieter.
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