More Thoughts

I don’t know if I have spent any time on this blog discussing how it has been to be around missionaries here. It’s bizarre. A bunch of my professors also teach at Makumira, which is a Lutheran University. One of my music professors is an American missionary with the Evangelical Lutheran church.
Alright. I don’t quite know where to start or how tactful to be about my opinions of missionaries. When I first got here I was open-minded about the missionaries that are here today. A lot of them talk about old missionaries in terms of their bad policies and consider themselves different. The role of missionaries has become much more complicated for me, but my experiences here have led me to the current opinion that I fundamentally disagree with the missionary role in Africa (and anywhere else).
Now, to all my Christian family members and friends, I’m not trying to be offensive. I have thought through this a lot. And to all you heathen ( :D )or not Christian family members and friends, please don’t use my opinions to strengthen a fanatic attempt to demonize Christianity or other religions. Although I disagree with missionaries, I don’t think religion or Christianity as a whole is wrong (in fact I think the opposite).
This is my struggle. I think that during colonization colonial governments were acting out the physical war and missionaries were acting out the ideological war. They were a tool, whether they knew it or not, that was meant to assimilate Africans into Western customs, erase the indigenous ones, and subjugate the population so that the European governments could use them for land and labor. Of course there were always exceptions to that extreme.
It seems as though the general missionary population that I have met agrees that the missionaries during colonization did a lot of bad s***. Missionaries today seem to try and evangelize without totally erasing the “not so bad” aspects of indigenous cultures. I don’t know that they would agree with my opinion that they were part of an ideological war, as my opinion is extreme.
So, what of the missionaries today? Most of them don’t outright say the words “uncivilized” or “primitive” and will actually talk about how awful those words are (except the other day a pastor I know did say that when he first got to the Maasai boy he knows, he gave him a toy truck – his first “real toy”…no more playing with “goat terds”). They don’t use violence to convert people. They build schools, have capacity building projects, and encourage the use of traditional African music in churches.
These things are inherently patronizing and conditional, though. First of all, we have definitely not reached the level of mutual respect. Even if we don’t use the words “uncivilized” or “primitive” we do use “undeveloped”. They are the same thing. Why don’t the missionaries try to convert me? I’m not Christian. I’m not complaining, but the only people that have ever pushed about my not being Christian were Tanzanians. So how come missionaries will convert Tanzanians and not me? Because I’m white? Because I can make up my own mind about things?
Today my fellow classmate and my professor referred to the large number of Maasai converts as “progress”. Progress towards what? Civilization? This is where my biggest problem is. Evangelism inherently brings the idea that the people who are doing the evangelizing are right and others are ignorant to the truth. I don’t believe in telling someone else that my culture or religion knows better than theirs, but I also don’t know what it is like to honestly believe that it is my duty to save people. How do you have a conversation about the effects of missionaries with someone who deeply believes that anyone who hasn’t accepted Jesus is going to hell? You can’t argue with G-d.
This is another source of struggle for me. I do have things that I think are right and wrong. I do believe that it’s my duty to do what I can to save someone’s life if I see them dieing. If I knew that millions of people were going to a horrible place for all of eternity unless I did something to stop it, I probably would. That just doesn’t happen to be what I believe. I am a universalist when it comes to human rights, though, so I do think that every human being should have certain human rights that are the same no matter the culture they are in. But who decides those rights? Who am I to say that I know the way people should do things in terms of human rights and then turn around and say that acting like you know more than other people is wrong when it comes to religion?
I could go on and on about my problem with missionaries and why I think they are more destructive than not. That’s not really my point right now, though. My point is that I’m really struggling with how to engage with all of this. I have pretty much sat through it with my mouth shut for the whole semester. I feel kind of guilty for not saying anything, but I also don’t want to alienate people before I have figured out how to best approach it.
One of the most interesting (and difficult) parts about all of this is that most Tanzanians either don’t share the same opinion as me or don’t say it to me (remind me, that’s a whole other story). For some reason I guess I expected African culture (whatever that means…I guess I mean I expected African cultureS) to be more similar to African American culture. They are SO different. Like, as weird as it feels to say, I truly feel like I connect with African American culture in a lot of ways. Those points of connection, though, are not things that are shared with Tanzanian culture. There doesn’t seem to be any anger here. Hardly anyone talks about colonizers very negatively, and it is really, really rare for anyone here to say anything but nice stuff about Westerners.
So all this time I feel like screaming, “DON’T ANY OF YOU SEE?! They came in and destroyed things, how can you not be mad? How can you keep the religion of the colonizers?” But that’s equally patronizing. It’s not like people here can’t see that and can’t choose their own religion. So I am just constantly stuck in between all these different ideas and I’m so hesitant to say anything even though deep down I know there are certain people that I want to punch in the face (not that I would do that, I’m a Peace Studies major ;D ).
As much as I hate to sound like that “F the po-lice”-stupid-hippy-girl, I don’t think colonization is over. I don’t mean this only in terms of missionaries; I am talking about a lot of things (including “development”, many NGOs, and corporations). I know this all sounds negative, but I am not saying any of this lightly or without serious consideration. I’m sure my opinion will continue to be fluid, but as of now, that’s what I think.


I haven’t written for a while because Dad came to visit! It was really, really awesome, and I want to write about it, but I’m tired of writing. The highlight, I would say, was going to Ngorongoro Crater. On the way home, I was taking a little nap in the car. We stopped at the entrance of the park as we were leaving to go to the bathroom, and I stayed in the car. I was half asleep when I suddenly realized that I was no longer dreaming and a giant baboon had climbed into the front seat and was right in front of me! Now, baboons are some scary animals. It probably weighed as much as me and it was hungry. Really hungry. Ok, I don’t really know that, but it was persistent. I got out of the car and was laughing and freaking out when out of the corner of my eye I see it try and make a break for it. The car door was open, Kaliya was still inside, and she starts screaming, “Don’t let it in here!!!” Dad and Peter, the driver, jumped in front of it and blocked its way. It was close, though, and the thing was pissed. As we were leaving we saw him jump into another car and all of those people freaked out too. I think Dad was satisfied with his trip to Africa after that and we pretty much watched movies for the rest of the time :)

What’s that you ask? How many days until I return home and grace you all with my soothing, enlightened presence? Oh, I don’t know…ONLY 15! And in this country today is almost over. So really I am coming home in two weeks. What’s up Massachusetts.