One Sunday in late 2008, I overslept and was late for church and just couldn’t see myself taking the two matatus I needed to get there. I called a friend who was on internship in the newsroom about this new church she had started going to and couldn’t stop talking about.

That’s how I ended up at Mavuno Downtown, which held its services in a Chinese restaurant in the  Nairobi city centre. “This is a church where real people with real issues meet a real God,” they said. “And drink real tea,” they often added, to the amusement of many.

Another fit of outrage broke out on the Internet concerning a promotional poster for an upcoming sermon series. The Mavuno group of churches will cover “Different Strokes – The Sex Conversation” in September and the images used in the poster were pretty self-explanatory.

The first week, the topic will be “Self- Service”, covering pornography and masturbation. Prudes on the Internet and elsewhere think this is no territory for a church to venture into.

GAY MEETING

Kenyans are a notoriously religious people, with  80 per cent Christians, according to  people who say clever things around statistics. That is all well and good, as long as you preach a particularly conservative strain of Christianity, shed your clothes and wear only sackcloth when you sin and live like we’re still in  Old Testament times. Kenyans are basically like Pharisees, but with social media.

As soon as you start to deviate from the well-beaten path of death and damnation and how giving more money to the church can save you from all that, you’re blaspheming and are just a few twisted verses short of heresy.

Last month, I stumbled upon a church service while wandering around London’s Piccadilly Circus. St James’ Church is a quaint Anglican church with a large organ and hymns. Even though it was more than half-empty despite being right in the centre of London, the congregation was enthusiastic and friendly.

Before the final prayer, a pastor announced that the church’s monthly lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender meeting would be on after the service. I saved the day’s order sheet to show family and friends back home because they would accuse me of lying.

The Mavuno sermon series will also tackle what the church is calling “À la carte” on same-sex attraction. Even though Kenya has one of the world’s highest searches for gay pornography according to Google data, the sanctimonious critics don’t want a church to tackle that. It is an abomination to even imagine that homosexuality can be a topic in church.

It is best to bury our heads in the sand in the classic ostrich model – if you ignore it, it will go away. I do not claim to be a biblical scholar and I have written here before about my evident lack of theological chops. That said, I believe “Do not judge”, in Matthew 7:1 is a verse some Christians have conveniently chosen to ignore.

As a relatively old member of an offshoot of Mavuno church, I often field criticism for the church not being “Christian enough” or misguided. I am an open admirer of what its modern-day missionaries have achieved with the churches.

GO YE INTO THE WORLD

Instead of preaching to the converted, they deliberately set out to evangelise to a generation that had long abandoned church and gone “into the world”, in Biblespeak.

Over the last decade, they have been walked the tightrope between being “in the world” but not “of the world”, with measurable results.

Thousands of congregants gather every Sunday at three Mavuno-affiliated churches in Nairobi and elsewhere for a reason. It is easy to pontificate from afar without ever stepping into a service because your preconceptions will not be challenged.

Too many people are comfortable with churches that pass off motivational speeches as sermons every Sunday. If a different community tries to reach out more aggressively to a massively under-churched world, they jump at it with their self-righteous outrage and declare how it is ruining Christianity.

The original commission that Jesus left his church “to go out and make disciples of all nations” is lost in the ignorant echo chamber of the present-day commentary machine.

I went to Mavuno Downtown and have never returned to my original church because, like thousands others, I found a community that was relevant to me.

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MIGRANT CRISIS

Europe should deal with the world it created

African history has always fascinated me. I found it amusing that a bunch of European “powers” divided up Africa among themselves, formalising their colonisation of these exotic lands. For almost a century afterwards, they did as they pleased, plundering, raping and getting up to no good all over the continent.

I picked up the Daily Fail, sorry, Daily Mail, the other day and was disgusted by the headline: “Migrants: How many more can we take?” I tweeted my disappointment and got a response from Dr Auma Obama. “Don’t be upset about ignorance.

If we go far back enough, you will find that we are all immigrants.” That might well be so, but this is the world Europe and its kingdoms of yore created. The many flashpoints, crumbling democracies and war-torn countries are all a by-product, or result, of all the conquests of European ambition or greed.

Calais is teeming with hordes dreaming of a better life in England because Europe  had a part in making their original homes uninhabitable.

Now Europe should enjoy the view and deal with it.

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TIRING OUR HEROES

Too long a welcome for athletes

I fortuitously landed at Jomo Kenyatta International just after 6.30am last Tuesday, only 15 minutes apart from the history-making Kenyan team from Beijing. There was a GK Land Rover on the airside, which is odd. Closer to the parking that acts as the temporary international arrivals terminal, a sea of cameras waited for the team from the World Athletics Championships.

As I pushed my luggage out of the terminal, I walked past the deputy president and several MPs there to welcome the team. Fitting, I thought, that they should receive such a high-powered welcome. I battled the Mombasa Road traffic home, freshened, unpacked and repacked for the next trip.

I passed by the office to pay homage to my bosses (and to make sure I still had a job), got a haircut and drove back to the airport.  By the time my flight took off at 1.30pm, the welcoming ceremony was still under way for the obviously tired athletes but the politicians showed no signs of stopping.

What a spectacle. And what a shame!

__________

FEEDBACK 

Dear Larry,

I am a regular traveller between Nairobi and Washington, DC, connecting via either Amsterdam or Zurich. There is nothing like being “randomly” selected for secondary security checks. The profiling starts with the colour of the skin. And when connecting in Europe, there is a series of questions one is asked by a passport control officer and a sticker placed on the passport. If you falter, this is communicated to the point of entry in the US and by the time you get there, you are already shortlisted for secondary checks.

Oh, and about Royco and other stuff, they passionately hate anything with animal products and pests. Forget about carrying quail eggs and the Royco labelled “beef flavour.” They will be trashed on the spot.

When travelling, I carry quite a number of items like Royco, Ketepa tea leaves, tea masala, black and pigeon peas, ujimix and Jogoo maize meal among others, but steer clear of items containing animal products. And none of my checked luggage items have ever been trashed! 

Antony Alex Irungu

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Hi Larry,

My mum experienced the same thing when she flew to London and was the only black woman on the BA flight. She was stopped for questioning for more than 12 hours, and when threatened with deportation, in desperation she called an online lawyer and was released with many apologies since the security officer had made a mistake. (It did not help that at the time she was trying out a dreadlock look).

Wanjira, Daniel. K. 

********

Hi Larry,

I thought as I read your article because I suffered the same indignity  two years ago in transit at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, on my way to Germany.

I checked in at JKIA, with all the necessary documents  - my passport with the Schengen visa, the invitation letter, and all the other supporting documents indicating that I was a promising young professional banker with a leading financial regulator in Kenya going to attend a banking conference at the Deutsche Bundesbank.

On landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport to connect to Frankfurt, I was randomly pulled aside (probably because of the colour of my skin) by two young men who did not even have the courtesy to identify themselves and taken to some room where I was grilled in a manner suggesting that I was an illegal immigrant escaping misery in Africa.

Despite my  protests that I was a young professional going for  a one-week workshop, with enough money on me in the form of cash and debit/credit cards and would be accommodated by my hosts as per the invitation, they were not convinced. 

The worst came when I reminded them that it was almost time to board my next flight and I was told I was going nowhere. I didn’t know that even my luggage had been offloaded until it was brought to the holding room where they rummaged through it with wanton recklessness and arrogance, and in the process broke  a small wooden artefact my boss had given me to take to a friend of hers (they referred to the artefact as African magic and everybody in the room laughed at me).

I ended up in an airport prison for two days in the company of West African drug peddlers and Iranian immigrants seeking asylum as I awaited  to be deported at Kenya Airways’  cost, I was told.

Thank heavens I had the contacts of my bosses and hosts, with whom I managed to communicate and was finally released – of course with no apologies.

Josiah A. Mayieka