Email: Kirk Harris

Two months in Kenya

Two months and it feels like a day. Two months and it feels like forever. Although I’ve been in Kenya for two months now, I’ve only been at PROCMURA for a little over a month due to our extensive orientation in Kenya. PROCMURA is an African Christian organization whose name is an acronym for Programme for Christian–Muslim Relations in Africa. It has two main goals; the first is to work with churches throughout sub-Saharan Africa promoting a responsible and faithful Christian witness to their Muslim neighbors. This type of witness is best understood by what it is not. It does not mean antagonizing Muslims, threatening them, or attacking them with polemical arguments aimed at destroying Islam. But it doesn’t mean compromising the principles of the Christian faith or being a doormat to extremist Muslims who are intent on suppressing Christianity or harming Christians. Rather, the approach involves peacefully engaging Muslims out of respect to their status as people made in the image of God.

PROCMURA’s second goal is in line with its first; the organization brings together Christians and Muslims in dialogue over practical issues of pressing importance to both communities. In the past this has meant working alongside Muslims in building peace between communities that have been in conflict, in places as varied as Sudan and Sierra Leone. As these peace-building projects continue, PROCMURA is also bringing together Christian and Muslim women and youth in separate forums to discuss how adherents of both faiths can join to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS in their communities. Many of these workshops have been very successful and contributed a great deal to positive Christian-Muslim relationships throughout the continent. It is an honor to be serving with an organization that is at the forefront of this very important work. God has richly blessed me with the opportunity to be here.

I attended one of these HIV/AIDS conferences with Christian and Muslim youth in Morogoro, Tanzania. The workshop had its fair share of challenges, not least of which was the fact that the proceedings were carried out entirely in Kiswahili, since Tanzanians have a pretty rough time with English. My Swahili is abominably poor, and the fact that I couldn’t understand the proceedings or carry on an occasional conversation with any of the participants made my experience slightly frustrating. I was able, however, to get a general sense of the events from my colleague, Okok, who was facilitating the discussion. As it turned out, this particular conference, unlike previous ones in Ghana and Rwanda, did not produce a great deal of fruit. There were some unfortunate misunderstandings between the Muslim participants and the organizers of the conference. Despite these difficulties, the workshop was successful in one very important sense. It uncovered a desire on the part of many of the youth to continue this type of interfaith dialogue. On a smaller scale, I believe that it helped to soften the adversarial stance taken by members of both faith communities in Morogoro, but only time will tell if that is the case. As a whole, the experience was a valuable one, for me, for the participants, and for PROCMURA. I hope that God will continue to bless the organization as it seeks to leverage the social power of religious communities around the continent to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The Tanzania conference came at the end of an interesting first month here at PROCMURA. I have found myself both excited and frustrated about my work, sometimes at the same time. As I swing between these two extremes, I’m starting to gain a greater understanding of my role here at PROCMURA. As the organization’s first intern, there was no framework in place regarding what I would be doing when I got here. So, at the beginning of my service I read a few reports, wrote some articles, helped out with writing a grant, and sat on my hands on occasion, all while I tried my hardest to carve out a niche in the operations of PROCMURA. All of the work that I managed to do was meaningful and valuable (most importantly, I was able to learn a lot about the organization by doing it), but I operated on a day-to-day basis, without really feeling a sense of purpose.

Slowly, however, things have begun to pick up for me here and I am involved in a number of fascinating projects. First of all, I am editing a series of journal articles for something that PROCMURA calls its “occasional papers series.” I think that the title refers to the fact that they put out a journal called “From the Cross to the Crescent” on an “occasional” basis. Hopefully it will start coming out on a more regular basis. At any rate, the editing process has given me a newfound appreciation for my dedicated professors at Whitworth College who taught me how to write by scrutinizing my essays and shredding me over points of style, organization, and grammar. My second major project involves sifting through some primary source material for the second volume of a booklet PROCMURA is printing for churches in Africa, called “Questions Muslims Ask.” Finally, my boss, the Rev. Dr. Johnson Mbillah, the general advisor of PROCMURA, has started me on a massive project that will catalog the history of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria from independence to the present. The document will analyze how the nature of these relationships varies between the four major regions of the country: the West, East/South, North, and the Middle Belt. Those of you that know me probably can guess how excited I am about this final project. I can’t wait to really sink my teeth into it and start getting some results.

My two months here have been full of new and exciting experiences. In the past month alone I’ve traveled up to Gatundu to meet my friends who are teaching at Icaciri High School, been a guest at a “monking” (the ordination of some Benedictine novices as provisional brothers), visited Malindi (on the coast) with my host family, and traveled to Tanzania for an HIV/AIDS conference. In that respect, it feels like time has passed as quickly as a #23 matatu on Wayaki Way (that is to say, fast). In another respect, I am amazed at how quickly I’ve settled into a routine here. Life seems relatively normal. I have my daily routine, I know my way around town, I visit the same grocer down the road every time I need to stock up on vegetables; I have even started to make friends with some people from an Anglican church that I’ve started going to. Although the kind of life that I’m living right now is pretty different in a number of regards from the life that I would be living in the United States, there are some essential similarities. I go to work, I go grocery shopping, and I try to make friends.

Last weekend, our site coordinator, Phyllis, gathered all nine of us volunteers together outside Nairobi at a Catholic retreat center called Resurrection Gardens to reflect on our experiences and share with one another how we’ve been doing in our placements. While there, I had some time to walk through the beautiful gardens while praying and reflecting on my experience. I was very moved by all of the plaques they had around the gardens with the Lord’s Prayer written out in over a hundred languages, which reinforced in my mind the beautiful diversity within the body of Christ. The fact that the words of Christ can be communicated in such a dizzying array of tongues filled me with a sense of awe. Yet what is truly astounding is the fact that the prayer retains a universal meaning that transcends each of these languages.

As I entered and exited the gardens, I noticed a pair of signs hung above the gate. They said, “Come in to pray” and “Go out to serve.” As I walked out of the gardens that day, God gave me a renewed sense of purpose for my time here in Kenya. Obviously this year is a unique opportunity for me to “Go out to serve.” This may mean that I serve God through the work that I do in the office for PROCMURA. It might mean that God is calling me to serve Him in my relationships with my Kenyan friends and family. It might mean something else entirely that I haven’t discovered yet. Just as God is calling me “out to serve,” however, this year is an opportunity for me to “come in to pray.” God has put me in an isolated position where I am forced to listen carefully to his voice and to prayerfully discern his call for my life. Whatever direction God calls me in, I will follow with the knowledge that His grace and mercy is what sustains me through each new day. As for all of you, I pray that the Lord will richly bless all of your comings and goings in the month of November and that His grace would rest on you in all that you do.

Kirk Harris

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