Being African, that Is to Say, Christian

Poverty, AIDS, underdevelopment. These seem to be the only topics considered regarding Africa, but there is something that comes first, which sees man as a whole

The experience of a Christian of Africa and in Africa. There can be nothing simpler and more banal than this, but we have to take it seriously. When that continent is brought up, someone with average information is drowned in concepts of helping and doing good and fighting hunger. At the forum organized by Traces, there are no European missionaries, but Africans belonging to CL. Is the Movement the badge of an organization to wear on your coat, or something crucial for our experience? Kizito Omala (Kampala, Uganda, 38 years old, lecturer in statistics) In order to answer how the Movement touched my awareness, you need to understand the African situation. For our culture, the identity of the individual is not important; only the clan exists. The Movement helped me to recognize the unique value of my “I.” Previously, I didn’t know what it was. In the past, Christianity was presented, especially by the British, as if it was a superior culture, canceling our family education and even our tribal languages. In the Movement, I learned that the tradition of my people was the expectation of that fulfillment in Christ. The proposal of the Movement leads to the unity of the person and unity with others. Many of us here are Christians, but they live in fear, so much so that they seek help in witchcraft. Instead, the Movement is a companionship where it is possible not to be afraid. Christianity is the most human fact there is.

Francis Nkafor (Lagos, Nigeria, school administrator) CL gave me the link between faith and life. I was a Catholic, but I had gone into crisis; there was no relationship between what I had been taught and day-to-day life. Fr. Giussani brought the two lines together in me, speaking of African problems. I had thought that in order to be a Christian I had to stop being African, and leave my tradition. This had been inculcated in me and I felt torn in two. Instead, Giussani taught me that I couldn’t abandon my tradition, it wasn’t a trick of history. This introduces me to reality; Christ encounters me there. Following Gius, I rediscovered the continuity between Christianity and my parents. Christianity is not European! It is a proposal that Europeans accepted a long time ago. Now it is up to us. A revealing episode: A couple of years ago, one of our girls, Fideles, was killed in an accident. We went to her village. For her clan, that death was unacceptable; it was due to dark forces that had to be investigated that someone caused by witchcraft. Our position was different; it had changed. They were weeping and we were weeping, too, but our awareness was different–for them, a total negativity; for us, the relationship with a friendly Mystery. George Pariyo (Kampala, Uganda, Professor of Public Health at the University) The fundamental point of the African problem is that of humanity. The Movement has reawakened and made this awareness an experience we began to live. In a moment of great political difficulty in Uganda, the faith showed itself in the “Act of Consecration to Our Lady,” where Christ becomes the source of new life. The mistake is to think that the Christian proposal is not true for everyone. “We have one wife; you Africans have three,” as if change were impossible. In the Church, inculturation is often talked about, meaning a way of extrapolating what is good in Christianity, adapting it to African culture. This mentality reduces the faith to a social fact, to cultural mediation.

An encounter, instead, changes everything, with patience, but it changes. Examples? The AIDS question. They look at us as animals beyond salvation, people who are unable to control their instinct, so they give us the condom… Instead, education is possible, our experience tells us that belonging to Christ gives form to places where different relationships are lived, and changes, for example, the way of living sexuality. Peter Karanja (Kenya, engineer) In Africa, there is poverty and AIDS, there is no development, etc. But this cannot be what defines us! The fundamental thing is how we conceive of ourselves in this desperate situation. There are those who come from outside and expect to solve all our problems. In this way, we are facing a twofold attack, from the West and from Islam. Both of these want to cancel our tradition and offer a false answer to the question of the Mystery that is present in our tradition. The proposal of the Movement has been, first of all for me, becoming aware of the value of my person, in whatever situation I am. I have been led to go deeper into my life. I am not the fruit of chance or of an evil Mystery. I am a gift, not a problem. This changes everything. Only from this conception can positive works and different relationships begin. Priscilla Ndonga (Nairobi, Kenya, bank clerk) I want to touch on the point of education, which is reduced, in the various development projects, to instruction or specialization. People see they have a piece of paper and it counts more. This kind of education has not helped us at all. Maybe we receive donations, money, but this doesn’t change anything; the people are the same as before, because the education of the “I” is missing. In the Movement, we are helped to understand that we have to be protagonists, not as part of a social development program, but for our own fulfillment, and this happens in the encounter with Christ. To answer this educative need, we got together as parents and we are setting up schools. But the first real school is the School of Community. Unless the “I” is educated, we do not change and we are not protagonists of anything. Veronica Ndung’u (Nairobi, Kenya, high school principal) You may not believe it, but Africa’s first problem is not hunger, but the same nihilism that pervades the West. It is infiltrating especially at the university level.

The young people don’t hope in anything any more. What counts is to get on, and if you don’t pass your exams you are finished. So the real need is that of a total education. Ester (Kenya) Yes, from this method works are born, close to the real needs. Thanks to the encounter with the Movement, my brother set up a “food bank.” Fr. Peter Kamay (Nigeria, seminary teacher) There is, sadly, another factor to remember: the spread of the Pentecostal sects. And among my students, future priests, there is a tendency to imitate them. They play on fear and not on the experience of a full humanity. Among my seminarians, things have begun to change, by working on Fr. Giussani’s Why the Church. Francis In Nigeria, the Pentecostals respond to Muslim violence with violence. They have the same vision of faith; Christianity is a non-Christianity. Faith is not a proposal to the person, but moralism. What is lacking is the identity. In Lagos, our clinic and our school are open to all, even Muslims. Christ is for everyone. Those who come to us meet what we are, and are free before the proposal. Pascal Ouma (Kenya, university lecturer in information technology) Many Africans are fragile, even those who have a Christian background. They believe in nihilism and are impotent before Islam. This is because the faith is an aspect of life. Instead, Christ is the point of fulfillment of life, of the whole desire of the heart. The Christian experience proposed in a true, total way is the greatest help against nihilism, which takes hold of people in the West as it does in Africa. Veronica In Kenya, but in many other places too, there is a great penetration of Islam.

They are trying to introduce the Sharia, the Koranic law, into the constitution. George Our Muslim students get help from Islamic countries; money comes for the teachers, too. Kizito I teach in a school with a Muslim headmaster. The previous head was a Catholic, but he was sent away. There is a strong movement on the part of the Muslims to occupy the State schools. Fr. Peter Islamic proselytism does not use only money (which in northern Nigeria comes from Saudi Arabia), but violence, too. We have recently had four large conflicts with many deaths. George Islamic penetration is systematic, even in the field of health. Since, with the economic crisis and in the name of liberalism, all social institutions are decaying, Islamic organizations come in and take over. From this point of view, the European countries offer no help. World funding has reduced its support. And who takes its place? “Private” Islamic organizations. Traditionally, the Catholics were working at the school level; now that the financing has collapsed, we have the Muslims.