Watching
the news, in any country, is usually a sure-fire way to become
disheartened. In my host family, we
watch BBC News: Focus on Africa almost every night. Above all, it is the most depressing news
hour that I’ve seen. Scenes of disasters
in Gaza constantly pepper the screen, and since the rapid Kiswahili that the
news anchors speak is difficult for me to understand, I just stare open-mouthed
at the panning photographs. Terrorist
attacks in Algeria, Ethiopia, and across the continent are covered every night
– and it seems like the terrible happenings in our neighbor, Kenya – are too
common to report. In a world where death
is a glorified spectacle, it seems like stories don’t make the news unless
lives are lost. The worst part is, these
news stories cover crimes that are committed in the name of God – one brother
of faith against another.
My
village is called Masuguru, and it’s a small community just outside of the town
of Korogwe. In Masuguru, Christians and
Muslims live in harmony. In fact, even
in my house, Christians and Muslims live in harmony. My family is part of the local Anglican
church, but since we are quite well off, we have two girls staying with us from
other families. I call them both “dada,”
or sister, and it took me almost two weeks to learn that they were not the
biological daughters of my host family.
Both girls are Muslim. One,
Amina, is older, and she went home for the week to celebrate Eid with her
family. The youngest, Rehema, stayed
home. In the morning, I saw her off to
the masjid (and came extremely close to skipping my morning training session
and experiencing the mosque with her!).
She was bubbly and excited for the feasting and celebrations to
come. I was allowed to leave my training
early in honor of Eid, and I raced home to help with the holiday
preparations. I remember waking up
around 4:30 am that morning to the sound of chickens screaming bloody murder –
and now I knew why. My Baba had killed a
chicken, and it was merrily boiling in a soup on the jiko, a charcoal
stove. I chopped onions and smashed
garlic until my hands were raw. My
Christian family ate pulao, the traditional Tanzanian Eid dish, in honor of my
Muslim host sister. After lunch, we
visited some of our Muslim neighbors, bringing sweets to the children, and
filling our stomachs even more. Like
many days in Korogowe, Eid was marked by sudden downpours that left us stranded
in one home for a while! While trudging
through the mud on the way home, we passed the Mamba Club, a facility next door
to our compound. Rehema had told me a
few days before how excited she was for the Eid party at the Mamba Club. Sure enough, when dusk fell, files of little girls, ornamented in lace and
pastel dresses and with intricate hairstyles, rushed to line up at the
alligator’s mouth entrance to Mamba Club.
When
religious harmony is natural and effortless in a community like Masuguru, it is
difficult to comprehend why so many lives are lost in our world because of
religious differences. These religious
crusades seem like they belong in a different millennium. Hopefully, our world will soon realize that
we have moved too far as a society to take lives in the name of God, and
Masuguru village can be just one example of the new, modern view of harmony. In my life, as well as Masuguru village, faith is the most important gift. It takes just a pinch of tolerance to share faith respectfully, and we are praying that the world realizes this soon.
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