March 2007 Archives

Last week we were blessed to be able to listen to Godfrey Melissa who is a pastor from Tanzania who grew up on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. He has lived in the United States for the past 12 years and he has reached out to the Swahili speaking community in the US. There are about 100 million people speaking Swahili. Only people from East and Central Africa speak Swahili, but the governments of Africa are trying to make Swahili the African language. There are over 70,000 Somalis in the Twin Cities and some of them speak Swahili. What has happened when they come to this country and settle here things start to change for them? In Africa about 85% of the people who speak Swahili are Christian (Catholic, Lutheran, and Pentecostal). They come here either to go to school or to work. The Swahili speaking people are struggling. They make about $600 a year, they live on a dollar or less a day. There is what they call the “brain drain” from that part of the world because their doctors and such are coming here and making tons of money that they could not make in East Africa. Sadly, they slowly slide away from their faith. The Lutheran Church is growing in Africa and declining over here. They are ministering to the African community as a whole. It has been a challenge, it’s not easy. They still have the African hospitality, but many cannot come to church on Sunday because they work on the weekends. He is homesick, but he feels called to the US. He has been a minister fro about 19 years. They are not trying to recruit people to join their church; they are reaching out to the people in need. He often visits them in their homes. The Swahili population in America is largest in the Twin Cities. The Kenyans especially tend to congregate in their tribes and they speak their own tribal languages. Most Africans are trilingual. Umoja, meaning togetherness, are a group of several Kenyan tribes and some Tanzanian tribes that have gathered together. They get money from the government based on the project they have. They have their own stores where they buy their food from Africa. Where they live depends on their income; so they do not all really cluster in one area. There is a paradox because when it comes to church they are isolated, but if there is something like a party then hundreds show up.

A very strange connection that I made between Pastor Melissa speaking and the honors course was Amazing Grace. It is so hard to think that 200 years ago Africans were brought over as slaves and now they are coming freely to find a more prosperous life. There are also those people such as Pastor Melissa, who come to America for mission purposes. I guess that for me this connection that I made was not what I had expected, but definitely made me ponder for a while how drastically situations change over time.

Hearing Godfrey speak reminded me of my friends Fofana and Johanna, one is from Liberia and the other is from Tanzania. They had shared with me some of the same information about African culture as Pastor Melissa did, but it was good to hear again. I think that his mission is amazing and I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to do all of that away from home and family. I think that Godfrey is doing amazing things for the Lord and it makes me very happy that he is able to do these things. I know many people are astounded when they hear of missionaries coming to America, but it is true. As Godfrey said, the church is growing in Africa and declining in America, so it is apparent why we would need missions. God is so obvioulsy with Godfrey Melissa and he is a wonderful testament to what Christians believe and should practice. So much so that he is inspirational.

Okay, so I'm not sure if this will count, but I'll write and then ask...

I attended Concordia Academy's production of Titanic the Musical this weekend. It was about the sinking of the famous ocean liner that had been thought to be unsinkable. A very prevalent theme throughout the play was the obvious separation of classes. The first class felt superior, the second class women would love to be first class while the second class men could really care less, and the third class simply wanted to be treated as humans. In the end most of the third class ended up dying, along with a significant majority of men from any class. Some of the rich were able to buy their way onto the life boats and the ship's owner actually snuck on using a child. One rich couple decided to stay on the boat to avoid being separated because they knew that money meant nothing if they didn't have the one that they loved.

It was remarkable how much this production fit in with our study of Hearing Their Voices. I was definitely reminded of House of Spirits because of the clashing of the classes. It also reminded me of a book that I read when I was younger called Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry in which there is a fire and the ashes cover everyone so that no one could tell the difference between blacks and whites. Both that story and Titanic showed that when a time of crisis comes death and tragedy cannot tell the differnce between classes, although the peoples' resolution of the problem may.

I enjoyed the show immensely, not only because I knew over half of the cast, but also because of the message it gave. It seems that now I hear the voices of the marginalized wherever I go, they just pop out at me. I wish I could have taken more people from our class to the musical, but I did not know that it's message was going to connect with what we were learning until it was too late to spread the word.

Due to a commitment that I made to my church I saw Amazing Grace with my mother on Sunday night. This movie was about the works of William Wilberforce, a young member of British Parliament in the eighteenth century who set out to abolish the slave trade. The title comes from the main character’s relationship with John Newton, a former slave ship captain who repented and then wrote the song “Amazing Grace”. The movie covers about twenty years of Wilberforce’s political career in which time he is able to see his bill passed to end the slave trade for his country.
Again while watching this film I was reminded of the syphilis film mainly due to the racism. It is still astounding to me to see that people were treated as animals or second rate humans because of the color of their skin and the language they used. It also reminded me of how LBJ declared a war on poverty, which was similar to how Wilberforce seemed to declare an unofficial war against slavery.
I absolutely loved this movie. It was about two of my biggest passions: faith and history. It is so inspiring to see someone with a passion to do good (not well, but good); especially when that passion is fueled by faith. I could strongly relate with the main character “Wilber” because I have similar passions and struggles about wanting to make a difference in the world but also wanting to serve God, and we also shared some of the same health problems. The song was used in such a moving way throughout the movie and I was in awe with the way they performed it at the conclusion of the film. This movie could not have been more perfect for our class because it talked about being a voice for the marginalized when they have no voice to speak for themselves. I am very glad that we were assigned the task of watching this wonderful work of cinema and it has immediately become one of my favorite films.

Because Roxanne and I were gone during class on Friday we used our Sunday afternoon to watch Spike Lee’s when the Levees Broke. It was about Hurricane Katrina and the levees that broke in New Orleans. It wasn’t only about the hurricane itself though; it was about the people that were affected and the political aspects of how it was dealt with. Katrina and the way it was handled were often compared to Hurricane Betsey, which occurred in 1965. During Hurricane Betsey LBJ wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and go down to where the people were, but during Katrina the people saw President Bush as being very separated from the disaster as if he was above it somehow. Condoleezza Rice went to Spamalot instead of dealing with Katrina. The film consisted of footage of the disaster and aftermath, as well as interviews with victims and politicians.
In a very strange way this film reminded me of the syphilis video. It had to do with people of the South being treated as less than regular citizens because of where they lived and because of their skin color. Some of the African Americans in the Levee film were positive that the rescue teams that would pass them by were on their way to help white families instead. It brought back the haunting memory of the syphilis video where blacks would be used as medical guinea pigs so that whites would know more about how to save themselves when it came to that terrible disease.
This film could best be described as eye opening and it was actually traumatic for me to watch the catastrophe happen all over again. I admit that I am a CNN addict when I have the time and so during the summer of 2005 I was able to watch many of the horrific scenes of the aftermath of Katrina while it was happening. It was and still is so hard to imagine that something like that could happen in my own country, and in a place that I’ve been to in the past five years. I’ve been in the Superdome, which made it all the more real. Watching people float on air mattresses and beg for help from the top stories of their homes is like watching an unrealistic movie, yet I cannot deny the fact that it happened. The government turned its head the other way in the sense that they did not do all that they could to help the city in crisis and more terrible things happened as a result. I suppose that one of the only positive things I can say after watching the movie and remembering the disaster is that New Orleans and the surrounding areas that Katrina hit will never be the same again because of the devastation that has caused living conditions to change and so when things are being rebuilt the standards will be checked and held higher than before. To conclude I would just like to say that it was hard to watch again and so to imagine living through it and having to experience it first hand in unthinkable for me and I do not think I would be able to recover from such an episode.