Personal: In the seventies of the last century I studied missiology at the

Transcription

1 APOSTOLATE TO THE MAASAI By Hans Stoks Experience Personal: In the seventies of the last century I studied missiology at the Catholic University of Nymegen in the Netherlands. I specialised in Latin America, since that was the continent I wanted to go to. As a boy I grew up with Augustinians who had missions in Bolivia. I was fascinated by the stories they told me about the Aymara in the Altiplano. This was my first missionary experience: fascination about a certain people somewhere far off. When I was studying in Nymegen, we, the very few younger students, enjoyed the company of much older missionaries who had come for the so called missionary course, a special refreshment course for missionaries who already had extensive experience in the field. Every Tuesday evening, one of them would present his or her mission to us. And one of them happened to be Fr. Jan Voshaar, who had been working with the Maasai in Kenya then for the past 12 years. Again I was fascinated by his stories about the Maasai, and decided to change my field of specialisation from Latin America to the continent of Africa, and started concentrating on the Maasai. Practical: In 1976 I set off to Tanzania for a concrete experience of living among Maasai in Emairete, Monduli Juu. I had studied Maasai language and customs through books and tapes that Fr. Voshaar and others had given me. I managed to acquire a basic understanding of Maasai grammar. I did not know any Swahili at that time. Fr. Voshaar had advised me to start learning Maasai instead of Swahili, since I wanted to go to the Maasai in the first place, not to Tanzania or Kenya as such, despite the fact that the Maasai find themselves in either of these two countries. Moreover, he told me, knowing Swahili would be a handicap in learning Maasai. The situation forced me to speak Maasai, since practically nobody in Emairete knew any English. I think that this is where I really learned to speak Maasai. This is my second experience: eagerness to speak and understand the local language, and I think it basically goes together with my first experience, viz. fascination. 37

2 Physical: Just before I left for Tanzania in 1976 two occurences were of great importance to me. Firstly, Fr. Voshaar, who had left for Tanzania some time before, and with whom I had intended to go and visit the Maasai, left a message with my mother on Christmas Eve, saying that he was going his own way, and expected me to do the same. I realised that I was going to be thrown into the deep end, but decided to go on with my plans anyway. Secondly, the day before I left for Arusha, I went to say goodbye to the parish priest. He was not in, but I met with his curate, who cynically told me that I was not going to make it. Not that I had not prepared myself sufficiently by studying missiology, Maasai language and culture, but simply because as he claimed I would not cope with the hardships of life in a Maasai village, the food there, and the lack of water for washing. I just kept quiet and swore to myself that I would show him that I would manage. Now, after years and years of experience with Maasai life, I am happy and proud to say that I am at least at home in a Maasai boma, eating local food blood, meat and milk and going without a bath for weeks, as I am in the country I was born in, if not more so. Lesson learnt: as far as missionary preparation is concerned this taught me one thing. Not only is it necessary for a missionary to study missiology, viz. acquire some understanding as to what mission is all about the crossing of enslaving borders, about religion in general, and about the Christian faith in particular, about the Good News of the Divine and Liberating Peace, which was offered to the whole of mankind through God s own Loving Kindness in giving us His Son; all of which would be idle and empty words if not linked to and rooted into the concrete lives of each and every person within his or her own cultural context; therefore, knowledge and understanding of such context being indispensable, I now realize that even such knowledge and understanding would be idle and empty if I were not able to share physically the concrete life of the people I had been sent to. Confrontation: Right from the beginning of my stay among Maasai I was confronted with events and practices that left me puzzled. Those made me many times ask the question: What is happening? and that question remained the fundamental question in my analysis of (Maasai) culture and religion. Social and Cultural Analysis Although a lot about the Maasai, who they are and where they are coming from, is not clear, at least to me, one thing is: They are living far from mainstream 38

3 culture in our modern global world, or maybe I am even to say that they have managed to keep far from this mainstream. That to me at least is fascinating and challenging. Of course, my interest in missionary activity is not because I was so contented and at ease back home. When I was still a young boy my father decided to move from the South of the Netherlands to the North, looking for employment. The problems of finding employment and thus finding a living awoke in me the awareness that things in the Netherlands were not as they were supposed to be. I discovered the difference between the Catholic rural South and the urban Protestant North, between people who seemed to me to be living quite independently and self-sufficuently by the fruits of the earth, and people who were running up and down trying to get some money to buy themselves a livelihood. Life in the South was clear and meaningful to me: Somebody was tilling the earth and living by the fruits of that labour. In the North things seemed puzzled to me: What were these people doing, and how did they earn a living? What was behind all that? Being in the North, I also felt a stranger. I am Limburger, of which I had not really been aware when I was still living in Limburg; we spoke a different dialect, and professed a different religion. I came to know that we were Catholics, and that those called Christians were Protestants. I tried to find out about how these people were living. In school I was given answers but these answers were far from convincing to me. It was suggested that the world was a harmonious whole where one works for another, was paid his wage and bought the things he needed. I remained with questions: Where do the goods we are buying come from? And what are we doing that makes other people to sell us those goods, or rather to pay us our salaries? Peasant life as I had come to know it in the South was much more clear. With the Maasai as I have come to know them, I had the same experience. This way of life was clear and honest. But at the same time it seemed and still seems to be threatened, by the same people from the North. Already I had become suspicious about the works people in the North (of the Netherlands) were doing, pretending to render services to others for which they got paid, with which money they could buy their things. And I came to realize that something tricky was going on. I have departed from fascination for and confrontation with a reality that is being threatened. What could be the meaning of the Gospel in such a situation? Is there any Good News to be discerned here? I believe so. I have mentioned the physical hardships involved in what in the sixties of the last century used to be called going native. I wanted and still want to do that. I consider that 39

4 to be an essential part of the Gospel. God went native when He was born in Bethlehem. At that time, when pastoralists were living in and around Bethlehem, in the Horn of Africa at the same time pastoralists were following their flocks in search of grazing lands. First of all, although much about the history of precolonial Africa in general and about the Maasai in particular is yet unknown, one thing has become clear from archaeological and more so from linguistic research, namely that nomadic pastoralism has been such a successful way of life in the Horn and other parts of Africa, that it has known a fairly continuous tradition for at least if not years. That is not to say that people have been living exclusively by cattle, but cattle must have been the main constant over centuries. At the same time it becomes clear from the same investigations that agriculture was practiced but not in such a wide area as it is nowadays, and for sure not with the kind of crops we see today, and which more and more are being cultivated in order to get an income, rather than to get food directly. Another aspect of pastoralist nomadic culture is fascinating and challenging for me: People manage to survive in extreme environments with minimal means. This is in high contrast with developments we see taking place in the modern global world, where peoople tend to settle in the most favourable areas (highlands and along the coast), and at the same time seem to be creating more and more needs that can only be satisfied with more and more complex systems. From experience in computer programming we know that the more complex a system or programme, the more likely it is to crash (the example of computer technology is very fruitful; because of the speed of our modern processors and the possibility of simulating situations from the outer world, it is possible to see in a very short period what else would have taken years and years). The less a system has been thought through, the more likely unforeseen situations of what if? are to occur. And the more people differ in one s cultural background the more likely somebody will think of such a what if, somebody else would not have thought about easily. Cultural diversity is at least as important for human survival as is biodiversity. Already I am trying to give an answer to the question I asked myself above: What is happening, not only in the modern global world, but also in traditional nomadic pastoralist society? If people are constantly referring to God (Enkai, Mungu) in daily life, I could first quickly conclude that those people must be very religious which might be true but foremost I would like to ask myself the question: What is happening here? Who or what is being referred to in using those words Enkai, Mungu? And at least as important: What kind of phenomenon is the very uttering of these words in itself? How does it function 40

5 in society? What is its effect and which affect does it give? These questions can be summarized in three: Quod facit; quod efficit and Quis affectus est? Conversion and evangelisation: In this context I would like to mention that mission, in my view at least, is not about making converts or converting people. If anybody, than it would be we in the modern global world, as sedentary people, who are rather the ones to be converted than the peoples we are sent to. The idea of conversion implies that one has gona astray somewhere. It means to go back, 1 and that call has been made to us, the people of Abraham, throughout our history. The so called pagans are not so much to be converted as to be given the Good News that they may be set free in the Lord. Any form of enslavement or subordination, even and especially in the name of the Lord, would be devilish. Maasai and pastoral nomadic peoples in general are masters of freedom. They have refused to be enslaved over the ages like the ancient Hebrews (Apiru, which word seems to indicate the same kind of people: nomads). But as the ancient Hebrews were used by people from the two ancient civilisations of Egypt (i.e., Misr, the Fortress ) and Babel ( Gate of Heaven, Bab-el), 2 todays pastoralists and nomads are being pressured already for more than a century and a half by modern civilisation, to change their way of life, i.e., to settle down and become part of our (labour) market. My question is: Why? Are we really concerned about their well-being? Or is it that we cannot accept that people live a different life? Or is it maybe that we have got our eye on the lands they are living on because of the soil or what might be under it? Maybe I am too negative. Maybe we are indeed concerned about these people. Maybe we take them as being poor, and lacking all kinds of basic needs. That at least is often the picture we get of pastoralists. They seem to be getting into the picture only when there happens to be a serious drought. Then we hear about their practice of cattle rustling. Of course, these people are not swimming in wealth, neither are they saints. But neither are we. But my experience is that they survive very well with what they have, and that they could even be considered rich, if we look at the size of their herds, and the vast land they are occupying, and certainly they are rich in their own worldview which is basically religious in the sense of having the constant awareness that we are living (fundamentally safe) in the armpit of God, who is surrounding us from above (Heaven) and from below (Earth) and is constantly (although there might (and seem to have) to be regular interruptions) 1 Hebr.:ĄĚŹ(šūb). 2 Cfr. Arabic (miṣrun), and (bābu l-lahi). 41

6 nurturing the earth, causing grass to grow, which is food for cattle, who provide us human beings with a sure livelihood. To condemn them as people of warriors would be the same as condemning ourselves. More bloody wars are being waged by so called civilisations than by the traditional pastoralists. So, what to do? Should we leave them alone? That is not what the Gospel is about. We are not supposed to leave anybody alone. The Gospel is about the loving engagement of God with people, and the spreading of the Gospel is about spreading God s loving kindness among all people. The Gospel is about talking and living with people, about being able to love them as they are. For the Nomadic Apostolate that means to spread God s loving kindness among them, to talk to them and live with them, and to love them the way they are. Missionaries have come to do this, to live with the people, learn and speak their language, and take up the challenges of their lives, and these people are still remembered by the names they were given. These missionaries have shared their lives, and they have gone their way as far as they could go. But then there is also the other movement, that of people who claim, pretend or even sincerely are rendering services to the nomads: building schools and hospitals, drilling boreholes, even making roads. To what effect, is what I would like to ask. Quod facit, quod efficit et qui sunt affecti? Most of these services were given from fixed places, and especially the building of schools, hospitals and the drilling of boreholes has contributed to and accelerated the sedentarisation process, leading to the crowding of many people and now very large herds in relatively small areas. We have thus created new problems, which are new challenges for the people. Nomadic herding becomes problematic; hygiene becomes a bigger issue than it used to be traditionally; diseases are more easily spread. And then there are the socio-ecomnomic challenges: what to do with all these educated people? Can we also provide all of them with jobs? Or could they improve their lives with the education they have enjoyed? It seems to me that the rendering of services as given to nomadic people reflect on the one hand our disbelief in the validity of the nomadic way of life, and on the other hand our conviction that the modern way of life is embedding the Gospel for all nations. I believe in the nomadic way of life, and would like to take up the challenge to live it as much as possible. I am in fact trying to do this against all kinds of odds, and therewith I am sharing the problems the remaining nomads have with them and thus giving them hope. Believing in the nomadic way of life in the modern global world therefore means looking into possibilities of anything mobile: mobile education, mobile clinics, mobile Church which the Church always was supposed to be: God s people on the Way and even if necessary 42

7 mobile jobs and employment. I think the modern global world has given us the tools for such a life more than ever. With ict and the use of local energy sources (sun and wind) this can be realized if we are willing to invest in it, but more so, if we are willing to invest in these people in their uniqueness instead of making them into copies of ourselves. 43