Tales from Tanzania

While I was in the Kenya, one of the big stories, both in the national media, and among Christians particularly, concerned events in the Arusha region of Tanzania, near a town called Loliondo. Significantly, given where we were, this is only just over the border between Tanzania and Kenya, in Maasai territory. A retired Pastor there in his late '70s felt God tell him to provide a "medicine" for people, and has started doing so. This has apparently resulted in miraculous healings of cancer, AIDs and all kinds of ailments. The twist is that you have to take the potion in his compound. If you try and take it to drink elsewhere it can prove fatal.

This is having an enormous impact across the whole of East Africa, and the queues to see Babu (as he is known) stretch for several kilometres. People are taking their relatives out of hospital to get to see him - and some have died before they make it. To get a glimpse of how huge this story is, try typing "Loliondo healings" or "Loliondo miracles" into Google; you'll get pages and pages of results. If you click here, it will take you to a video from Kenyan national TV about it.

Perhaps inevitably, Christians are divided about this. Babu is a retired Pastor, who, I understand, had a respected ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran church; and it seems that the testimony he gives about all this is framed within a Christian context. On the other hand, to others this seems more like the work of a pagan medicine man than Christian healing (but equally we in the West are quite happy to accept the medicine of secular atheism...). All the information I have about this is, of course, second hand, though some of it comes from people who have been to Babu and drunk the medicine. I think, on balance, I was relieved that there was unlikely to be any pastoral necessity for me to have to make a judgement on all this! But equally, it serves as a reminder to pray for those of our African brothers and sisters in positions of responsibility who do. Discernment needed, methinks.