Topic: Kenya

[tangerine dream]

In all the research I've been doing over the last couple of days, I've seen that Kenya has hit some hard times. There's been political strife and religious issues which sometimes divide the people.   But I think what I admire most about the people of this country is their connection to the land and it's animals and also a sense of community and love and music and song and dance.   All these things which keep a spirit strong and make a soul want to sing!

[tangerine dream]

The Kaya Forests


Along the southern coast of Kenya, the sacred kaya forests of the Mijikenda tribes are a living legacy of the people’s history, culture and religion. For centuries, these once-extensive lowland forests shielded the homesteads, called “kaya,” of the Mijikenda from invading tribes and served as burial grounds and places of sacred ritual and prayer.

Social taboos prohibited the cutting and removal of trees and other forest vegetation for all but a few select purposes. Because of the forests’ protected status, they became repositories of biodiversity, harboring many rare species of plants and animals. Although the Mijikenda eventually moved out of their original settlements, the forests have continued to serve as ceremonial centers and burial grounds. However, in recent decades the kaya forests have been shrinking in number and size. An expanding tourism industry, industrial demands for natural resources, and a growing population in need of farm land are claiming kaya forest land. Diminished respect for traditional values, spurred by poverty, has also taken a toll.

Fortunately, the kaya forests and the Mijikenda people are aided by a collaboration of government and nongovernmental agencies, which have recognized the threats to the forests and the importance of protecting them to ensure the future of their cultural and biological treasures. Nevertheless, challenges persist in the struggle for kaya preservation.

Abdalla Boga, a member of the Kaya Diani elders’ group, one of many that has suffered serious threats from land developers, said, “I spend sleepless nights when I imagine that this kaya will one day disappear due to (the activities of) greedy human beings, and that we shall have nothing to show our future generations.”

 

[tangerine dream]

The kaya forests are the domain of the nine Mijikenda tribes: the Giriama, Digo, Duruma, Rabai, Kauma, Ribe, Jibana, Kambe, and Chonyi. Although culturally and linguistically distinct, the tribes trace their history to a common forced migration from southern Somalia. According to oral history, they began settling in the hills and plains of the Kenyan coast at least three centuries ago to escape the marauding tribes that had driven them from their former settlements.

In order to protect themselves, the Mijikenda built their homesteads in clearings within thick belts of forest. The entire community lived within the central clearing, which was accessible only by a few guarded paths through the forest. A protective talisman called a fingo, which represented the community’s identity and history, was buried at a secret spot within the kaya clearing. Burial sites were located within the surrounding forest, and shrines often honored the graves of great leaders.

Ancient trees and other unique landforms also held ritual importance. Social taboos, enforced by the kaya elders, regulated activities that could damage the kaya forests and sacred places. Cutting trees, grazing livestock, and collecting or removing other forest material was strictly forbidden. Villagers stayed on traditional paths to avoid disturbing vegetation and secret sites. The only permitted activities were the collection of medicinal plants and the use of forest materials to build ritual structures. A code of behavior, emphasizing decorum, respect and self-restraint, also protected the forest. Those who broke the rules typically paid a fine of livestock or fowl, which was then sacrificed to placate the offended spirit. Illness and other community misfortunes often were attributed to an unconfessed offense.

In the 19th century, as external threats diminished and populations grew, the Mijikenda groups began to establish new settlements outside the kaya forests. Surrounding areas were increasingly cleared for farming and livestock grazing, but tribal elders continued to live at the old settlement sites and care for the kaya forests. Thus, the kayas and surrounding patches of forest were preserved and continue to be used as ceremonial sites, burial grounds and places of prayer, as well as a source for medicinal plants.

Today many kaya forests are still the focal points of existing communities, and taboos often remain a powerful force in restricting access and regulating conduct. Because they have been protected over many generations, kaya forests are rich in biodiversity and high in conservation value. More than half of Kenya’s rare plants grow in the coastal region; most have been identified within the kaya forests, which comprise about 10 percent of Kenya’s coastal forest, and some are found only in the kayas. The forests also harbor rare and endemic species of birds, reptiles and insects. To date, surveyors, working with local communities, have identified more than 50 kaya forest patches in the coastal districts of Kwale, Mombasa, Kilifi and Malindi. Kaya forests range in size from approximately 20 to 2000 acres.

The Mijikenda Kaya Forests consist of 11 separate forest sites spread over some 200 km along the coast containing the remains of numerous fortified villages, known as kayas, of the Mijikenda people. The kayas, created as of the 16th century but abandoned by the 1940s, are now regarded as the abodes of ancestors and are revered as sacred sites and, as such, are maintained as by councils of elders. The site is inscribed as bearing unique testimony to a cultural tradition and for its direct link to a living tradition.

Spread out along around 200km of the coast province of Kenya are ten separate forested sites, mostly on low hills, ranging in size from 30 to around 300 ha, in which are the remains of fortified villages, Kayas, of the Mijikenda people. They represent more than thirty surviving Kayas.

The Kayas began to fall out of use in the early 20th century and are now revered as the repositories of spiritual beliefs of the Mijikenda people and are seen as the sacred abode of their ancestors.

The forest around the Kayas have been nurtured by the Mijikenda community to protect the sacred graves and groves and are now almost the only remains of the once extensive coastal lowland forest.

Criterion (iii): The Kayas provide focal points for Mijikenda religious beliefs and practices, are regarded as the ancestral homes of the different Mijikenda peoples, and are held to be sacred places. As such they have metonymic significance to Mijikenda and are a fundamental source of Mijikenda’s sense of ‘being-in-the-world’ and of place within the cultural landscape of contemporary Kenya. They are seen as a defining characteristic of Mijikenda identity.

Criterion (v): Since their abandonment as preferred places of settlement, Kayas have been transferred from the domestic aspect of the Mijikenda landscape to its spiritual sphere. As part of this process, certain restrictions were placed on access and the utilisation of natural forest resources. As a direct consequence of this, the biodiversity of the Kayas and forests surrounding them has been sustained. The Kayas are under threat both externally and from within Mijikenda society through the decline of traditional knowledge and respect for practices.

Criterion (vi): The Kayas are now the repositories of spiritual beliefs of the Mijikenda and are seen as the sacred abode of their ancestors. As a collection of sites spread over a large area, they are associated with beliefs of local and national significance, and possibly regional significance as the sites extend beyond the boundaries of Kenya.

The Kayas demonstrate authenticity but aspects associated with traditional practices are highly vulnerable. The integrity of the Kayas relates to the intactness of their forest surroundings which has been compromised for Kaya Kinondo.

[tangerine dream]

The Kaya Forests















Kaya Elder Pekeshe Ndeje




Published on 14/08/2008
By Patrick Beja

There are cheers in Coast Province following the elevation of the Kaya Forests to world heritage status.

The forests were last month included in the list of renowned heritage sites. Located on the Coastal plains, they are a living legacy of the people�s history, culture and religion.

Because of the forests� protected status, they are repositories of biodiversity, and a home to rare species of plants and animals.

 

Prayers in forests

 
One of the Kaya Forests in Kindondo.
 
Mr Ali Abdalla Mnyenze, 75, has been a leader of the Mijikenda Kayas for 20 years and has led prayers in the sacred forests.

"We have conserved the forests for worship and we really value their existence," he says.

Prayers are said at the central part of the forests where the "portent and most revered charm" locally known as �fingo� is planted.

Strangers are not allowed to the sacred site where all worshippers must speak the local language. Mr Pekeshe Ndeje, also a Kaya elder, says conservation of forests is at the centre of the Kaya institution, which covers Mijikenda homeland of lower Coast Province

[nichi]

Beautiful forests!

[tangerine dream]

Mount Kenya
Although it straddles the equator, Mount Kenya is usually capped with ice and snow. At 17,058 feet, it is Africa’s second-highest mountain; glaciers nest in its ragged peaks, forests blanket its slopes. This ancient extinct volcano, which rises in the center of the country that shares its name, has long been a wonder to all who beheld its icy peaks gleaming with sunlight. To the local African communities who live under it, Mount Kenya is not just an awesome sight but god’s earthly home. It is a holy place, a cultural symbol and a source of livelihood. But Kenya’s growing population and the poverty they endure is placing tremendous pressure on the mountain and its wealth of resources. Global warming may also be melting the famous glaciers. It will take the cooperative effort of local communities, the national government and international agencies to sustain this sacred mountain and its culture. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, described the importance of the mountain to the local communities, saying that it “supplies their material needs and enables them to perform their magic and traditional ceremonies in undisturbed serenity, facing Mount Kenya.”

[tangerine dream]

I believe this is what I have been searching for.  Mountain witches of old.   Looks like a fascinating book,  I'll share parts that I can.

Whatever this book contains is the result of the knowledge shared with me by the men of Meru, old and young. My thanks and thoughts go out to them, for their wisdom:

To Fabian Njage, Simon P. K. Bengi, Franklin Mugambe, Gerrard Kithinji, and a dozen others, all young men in their early twenties when I began my research in 1969. Their total dedication to the Meru people led to the recovery of this portion of their past.

To M'Thaara M'Mutani, Matiri wa Kirongoro, Hezikiah M'Mukiri, M'Muraa wa Kairanyi, Gituuru wa Gikamata, and more than one hundred others, all men of the Miriti, Murungi, and Kiramana age-sets and thus in their seventies, eighties, and nineties when I collected this data. Their willingness to pass on their wisdom to a stranger will have preserved it for Meru generations yet to come.

To William Henry Laughton, Hugo E. Lambert, Dr. Howard Brassington, Father Bernard Bernardi, Rev. Dr. Clive Irvine, Father B. Airaldi, Capt. Victor McKeag, and J. Gerald H. Hopkins, K. K. Sillitoe, and several others, all of whom had served in Meru long before I began my work there. Their love of this region and its people also makes them "men of Meru."

Men of Meru, thank you for what you have given me. I salute your past.

Their narrations touched on every aspect of their tribal past. The most historically significant traditions, however, are those that deal with the system Meru speakers call Urogi, which English speakers translate as witchcraft . The system has existed for more than three hundred years. It is composed of continuously evolving tools—verbal formulae (curses, incantations), physical acts (rituals), and herbal, mineral, and animal compounds (potions, medicines)—that are used to invoke specific supernatural powers. The words, actions, or compounds themselves, not the person using them, have the power. Nonetheless, from the perspective of observers, successful users are cloaked in an aura of both respect and fear.

From a historian's perspective the witchcraft traditions provide unexpected windows into the Meru past, windows that permit analysis of smaller segments of the social structure. The Meru have never functioned as a single social unit. Throughout their history smaller segments within the body politic have competed constantly with one another. Often, these segments differentiated themselves from competitors by developing their own specific rituals (incantations, rites, potions). These were intended primarily to invoke a response from the supernatural, but secondarily they were used against rival groups. Thus in the 1700s mainstream Meru cultivators contended with Meru hunter-gatherers while migrating. In the 1800s descendants of both groups competed for the exclusive use of land. In the 1900s their descendants competed, in turn, against one another and the newly arrived British colonialists. In all cases the weapons of choice were invocations, potions, and related ritual. Thus can witchcraft become history.

The Urogi traditions are not quasi-fiction. Their narrators spoke in such detail as only actual practitioners (or their victims) could. The hunting magic of "bite" and "blow," the chanted, clanging curse that tribal smiths banged out on iron, the witchman's curse to stop one's breath: these details did not originate in their imaginations but had been taught them by their grandfathers and practiced throughout their lives. To the people of Meru, the "witchman," "witch doctor," "witch finder," and other supernatural practitioners were real. They were men, now very old, with whom one could visit and from whom one could learn.

http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft8199p24c;brand=eschol

[tangerine dream]

Ritualized "Cleansing": The System Dissolves

The Meru responded to the destruction of their witchcraft system in several ways. One was an increasing willingness to accept European forms of healing. The shift was perhaps most dramatically illustrated in Igembe, where the United Methodist Mission had commissioned Dr. Brassington to construct a medical facility. Earlier reaction to the clinic had been a universal boycott, explained by those willing to discuss it as an unwillingness to enter an area where "curses [here, illnesses] are collected and people come to die." After the enforced removal of Igembe ritualists, however, much of this aversion disappeared. Nonetheless, those who did reach out for Western healing approached in desperation, and the "anxiety of the elderly over [the loss of] their former Aga [here, healers] was often pathetic to behold."[30]


Cleansing rituals were clearly rooted in Meru tradition. Even before the conquest those accused of sorcery, adultery, or repetitive theft were almost always allowed to recant, taking a cleansing oath to proclaim that any return to antisocial practices would result in their death. Oaths varied from region to region, but followed a similar pattern. The most common was that used by Mbogore: accused individuals consumed the raw liver (in other areas, the heart) of a slaughtered goat while chanting oaths declaring that further practice of the supernatural would lead the oath itself to kill them.

Neither Hopkins nor his Meru advisors saw any reason why the oath could not be modified to meet a modern need. The rituals that subsequently developed adhered closely to the Meru way, deviating only rarely because because of British sensibilities. After 1929, persons accused of witchcraft, including those released from their imprisonment, would walk with a committee of elders chosen by the administration to the edge of a river. There, each slaughtered a goat, drawn from their own herds, removed the liver, then held it high for inspection by ancestral spirits. The consumption of raw meat had been eliminated from the ritual at Hopkins's order. Instead, the liver was cast into the flowing waters, accompanied by an appropriately worded sequence of oaths.

Symbolically, each man thereby cast away his capacity to practice sorcery. The oaths, however, were also modified to preserve the most respected aspects of the witchcraft system. No oath forced those recently jailed to admit prior guilt. Nor did they prevent anyone from healing. Rather the oaths were rephrased to reaffirm the elder's declaration of innocence in the past, which allowed the practice of "innocent" rites in the future: "If I practice sorcery [in the future], let this oath kill me. If I curse [someone in the future], let this oath kill me. If I harm [someone in the future], let this oath kill me," and so on.[31]

Elders throughout Meru embraced the restoration of a cleansing oath with enthusiasm. Over time these basic versions were extended to include whatever social deviations tended to reappear (e.g., "if I ask for cows, let this oath kill me"), until every action formerly associated with the fringe societies had publicly been cast away.

Thus by the early 1930s, practitioners of the more beneficial aspects of Meru magic—such as the healers, the diviners, and the foretellers—returned unobtrusively to their work, always to the relief of elders in their communities. In theory the shadowy figure of the sorcerer returned as well, for "good" ritualists of every type still proved eager to accuse their competitors of practicing "bad" magic whenever conflicts emerged or individuals fell ill. Having thus identified the cause, they felt free to combat it in traditional fashion.

The same was not true, however, for the A-Athi, the Kagita, and the smaller fringe societies. Their songs, feasts, dances, chants, and drumming, as well as the entire complex of supernatural rites that gave them meaning, were finally dissolved, remaining only in the memories of their aging former members. Hopkins, writing in 1932, could thus declare with considerable accuracy: "The campaign against both the Aathi and Kagitha secret societies was carried out by me personally . . . as Mr. Lamb's assistant in 1928. Neither society is now active. Witchcraft has ceased."[32]

Meru informants, however, add more to the story of the fringe groups' demise. "The Kagita [or, Aathi, Mwaa, Wathua, and so on] stopped," the elders declare, "because people feared whites more than they loved feasting." Members of every group were long aware that whites were not affected by their curses. They were increasingly concerned at the spreading belief among imitation whites (Kamuchunku) that working for the British or professing their religion might also render them immune.

Fringe group members were also increasingly aware of the demonstrable effectiveness of Western forms of healing. This proved particularly true in Imenti and Mwimbi (still administered from neighboring Embu), where enthusiastic and aggressive Protestant missionaries also proved highly competent medical practitioners. Perhaps the most striking example can be found in Mwimbi, where Rev. Clive Irvine, the founder of that branch of the Church of Scotland Mission in 1923, soon perceived himself as locked in battle against what he considered the quackery of local witch doctors.

Irvine began by systematically acquainting himself with the areas of healing in which ritualists specialized.[33] Discovering, for example, that the "witch doctors of Kagita" were known to cure diseases of the feet, he actively solicited people with foot and leg problems to approach him for treatment, usually with great success. Each cure shook both the medical monopoly of the Kagita healers and the collective confidence of those who had heretofore been forced to seek its aid. To them Irvine proved a welcome alternative. As his influence grew, tolerance of his fringe competitors decreased in relative proportion.

Missionaries had also struck at the fringe societies in other ways. Their Victorian morality placed them squarely alongside Meru tradition in condemning drunkenness, dancing in darkness, and, certainly, illicit copulation. To most Europeans of that era those activities were objectionable for Africans of any age. Among the Meru they were only forbidden to youths, warriors, and family heads, who were perceived as encroaching on prerogatives (such as beer drinking) explicitly reserved for ruling elders.

Thus by the 1930s, men of the former fringe societies were trapped between two fires. On one side, rising numbers of Christian converts actively opposed their restoration. On the other, Meru's traditionalists no longer sanctioned their actions as permitted deviations from an ancestral norm. Behind them both stood the government, personified in Hopkins, prepared to reach out and imprison anyone who dared restore that portion of the past.

It was thus the change in Meru's social climate that ultimately destroyed its fringes. The unprecedented sequence of physical arrests, public trials, and subsequent imprisonment was shattering, but the shift in public tolerance was the final blow. The change was partially based on fear. What had always been perceived as minor social deviation was now redefined as serious transgression. What had once been punished by the whack of a warrior's spear and the command to disburse was now cause for arrest and imprisonment. What could once be protected by wooden sticks and creeping vines was now an invitation to destruction by a mob.

Under such circumstances, permitted social deviations became private affairs. The earlier practice of assembling at dusk to feast, drink, drum, chant, and dance "in Kiama" was gone. Over time everything the fringe societies espoused was held up to public scorn. Youngsters, now enmeshed in mission schools, were taught to belittle many of their own traditions, and none more fiercely than those once tolerated as permitted deviations. Thus meat feasts, beer drinking, nocturnal dancing, traditional drumming, and "pagan" songs were increasingly associated with sorcery and held up to the rising generation to scorn as things of a "primitive" past.

Unable to refute or even reply to these charges, former members of the fringe societies retreated into silence, many denying they had ever joined such groups or even that they had existed. Today, memories of their existence have all but disappeared, remaining only in the tales—often obliquely told—of the men of the oldest living age-set. When these men die, the rites, oaths, songs, riddles, and laughter of which the fringe groups were composed will pass away as well, and with them yet another priceless portion of the Meru past.

[Firestarter]

Im gonna move these posts over here cause fits better I didnt know Lori had a Kenya thread and remove them off the Bon thread:


Another thing I should add, found this article when I read that - but the christian missionaries - while some are good if they just 'gave' less trying to convert and proselytize - unfortunately they only worsen the problem, create 'more' superstition and duality - if Buddhists went to africa (im sure some do), then perhaps we'd see less of this stupid crap. ive spoken with christian missionaries whove been to africa many times trying to rid them of 'witchcraft' and their ways are unfortunately, far different than when the buddhists went to tibet. (though certainly was conflict but not to the level of the christian missionaries in africa). Unfortunaly some of their damage only fuels others to cause them to be 'more superstitious' than less and creates more of the witchhunting spirit.

In this country, you cannot burn a witch and all that shit - but in africa - its allowed

Sarah Palin Linked Her Electoral Success to Prayer of Kenyan Witch Hunter

http://www.alternet.org/election08/99118/sarah_palin_linked_her_electoral_success_to_prayer_of_kenyan_witch_hunter/

By Hannah Strange, The Times of London UK. Posted September 18, 2008.

The pastor who accused a Kenyan woman of causing car accidents through demonic spells "laid his hands" on Palin in prayer.




The pastor whose prayer Sarah Palin says helped her to become governor of Alaska founded his ministry with a witch hunt against a Kenyan woman whom he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells.

At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.

In video footage of the speech, she is seen saying: "As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he's so bold. And he was praying "Lord make a way, Lord make a way."

"And I'm thinking, this guy's really bold, he doesn't even know what I'm going to do, he doesn't know what my plans are. And he's praying not "Oh Lord, if it be your will may she become governor," no, he just prayed for it. He said, "Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that's exactly what happened."

She then adds: "So, again, very, very powerful, coming from this church," before the presiding pastor comments on the "prophetic power" of the event.

An African evangelist, Muthee has given guest sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God on at least 10 occasions in his role as the founder of the Word of Faith Church, also known as the Prayer Cave.

Muthee founded the Prayer Cave in 1989 in Kiambu, Kenya, after "God spoke" to him and his late wife, Margaret, and called him to the country, according to the church's Web site.

The pastor speaks of his offensive against a demonic presence in the town in a trailer for the evangelical video "Transformations," made by Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency.

"We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place," Muthee says.

After the spirit was broken, the crime rate dropped to almost zero and there was "explosive church growth" while almost every bar in the town closed down, the video says.

The full "Transformations" video featuring Muthee's story has recently been removed from YouTube, but the rest of the story is detailed in a 1999 article in the Christian Science Monitor, as well as on numerous evangelical Web sites.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, six months of fervent prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane, who ran a "divination" center called the Emmanuel Clinic.

Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Muthee to publicly declare her a witch responsible for the town's ills and order her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu.

Says the Monitor, "Muthee held a crusade that 'brought about 200 people to Christ.'" They set up around-the-clock prayer intercession in the basement of a grocery store and eventually, says the pastor, "the demonic influence -- the 'principality' over Kiambu -- was broken," and Mama Jane fled the town.

According to accounts of the witch hunt that circulated on evangelical Web sites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python they believed to be a demon.

After Mama Jane was questioned by police -- and released -- she decided it was time to leave town, the account says.

Muthee has frequently referred to this witch hunt in his sermons as an example of the power of "spiritual warfare." In October 2005, he delivered 10 sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the audio of which was available on the church's Web site until it was removed around the time Palin's candidacy was announced. The blog Irregular Times has listings and screen grabs of the sermons.

It was during these sermons that Palin, who was then preparing for her gubernatorial run, was anointed by Muthee. His intercession, she says, was "awesome."

Her June 8 speech was to mark the graduation of students from the Wasilla Assembly of God's Masters' Commission, which, as Pastor Ed Kalins explains, believes Alaska will be the refuge for American evangelicals upon the coming "End of Days." After her speech, Palin was presented with an honorary Masters' Commission diploma.

[Firestarter]

This is mama jane. If anyone cant see this woman's spirit dont know what to say.

Of course, there can be abuses in sorcery, in africa - but still, plenty of good who work in spirit. But christians cause of their devil and so forth, only worsen things.

A Buddhist would never 'kill' a python. Might stun one with electricity tho, lol:



Kenyan Who Blessed Palin Chases Witches at Home
Run Date: 10/12/08
By Zoe Alsop


Sarah Palin's Kenyan pastor has made a name crusading against witches and particularly cherishes his victory over Mama Jane Njenga, whom he claims to have run out of his town. But Mama Jane is still there, in her own church just down the road.

Mama Jane Njengu

KIAMBU, Kenya (WOMENSENEWS)--Back in 2005, when Sarah Palin was mayor of the tiny Alaskan town of Wasilla, nobody made much of a visit from a Pentecostal pastor by the name of Bishop Thomas Muthee from the somewhat larger Kenyan town of Kiambu.

Scores of African men and women of the cloth routinely travel to the better heeled nations of the world, bringing along the credibility of a continent of congregations that have had their share of brushes with war, famine and disease on a biblical scale. U.S. churchgoers hear how righteousness might prevail against the starkest of evils in faraway Africa. They might even be inspired to make a donation to support a pastor's work there.

It was one of these ecclesiastical visits that brought Muthee to speak at the Wasilla Assembly of God in 2005, when he asked God to protect Palin "from every form of witchcraft." He was speaking as a man who had already made his name around the world as a champion fighter of witches.

Palin was then a candidate for governor, but it wasn't until she rocketed to prominence as the Republican vice presidential nominee that the bishop's protective prayers drew public notice. Videos of the blessing circulated on the Web while critics compared Muthee's brand of religion to the fiery sermons about race from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former minister of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama who became a political liability.

In June, before she joined the national race, Palin credited Muthee's blessing with her election victory while addressing her congregation. "He said, 'Lord, make a way and let her do this next step,'" she said. "And that's exactly what happened."
Saved Town From Mama Jane

In a video produced in 1999 by the Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency based in Lynnwood, Wash., the Kenyan pastor relates the story of how, in 1989, he saved the city of Kiambu from the clutches of crime, car accidents, speakeasies and even late-night discos by driving a particularly formidable witch called Mama Jane out of town.

"We have not had a single accident since," Muthee said in one widely published sermon. "In fact, since that woman moved out of Kiambu, the entire atmosphere has changed. Whereas people used to be afraid to go out at night, now we enjoy one of the lowest crime rates in Kenya."

Muthee claimed that police rescued Mama Jane from a lynch mob at the time, and then whisked her away for good after gunning down a pet python they mistook for a demon.

But some residents of Kiambu were somewhat skeptical of Muthee's claims.

Not least among them is the herbalist Jane W. Njenga, a pastor with the African Mission of Holy Ghost Church, who is best known as Mama Jane.

She says she didn't own a pet python and she's never left her compound, located about a half-mile from Muthee's immense new church. Last week Women's eNews spoke to her there, next door to the Superkid Solid Foundation Faith in Every Footstep daycare center just off Kiambu's main street.

"If I am bad, why haven't people attacked me?" Njenga says, in the first interview she has given to the media. "Why haven't they burnt this building down? That is what people here do to witches."

Eleven elderly Kenyans, mostly women, were burned to death in May after locals accused them of being witches. Thirty houses were also torched. Witchcraft is often blamed here for personal misfortunes, including the death of a child, HIV-AIDS and even crimes like cattle rustling, rape and murder.
Awakenings in a Growing Town

Located amid some of the finest farmland in all East Africa, Kiambu, once the site of grim colonial work camps, is now jammed with young rural migrants in search of urban dreams. They rent rooms and compete for jobs as security guards, teachers or civil servants in the neighboring cities of Nairobi and Thika.

Amidst the influx more than 500 churches have sprung up, provoking some skepticism as to their altruism among longtime residents.

"If you want to get rich very fast, just start a church," says Jane Karande, a 46-year-old community health worker who was born here.
Mama Jane Njengu at her church in Kiambu.

Karande admits car accidents have dropped since 1989, but, like many, she attributes that more to paving the main road and adding speed bumps than to Bishop Muthee's arrival on the scene. In the 20 years Karande has spent volunteering to distribute HIV-AIDS medicines and setting up centers for orphans and at-risk children, she hasn't gotten much help from clergy.

"We don't have any support from churches," she says. "Except maybe the Catholics."

Behind a marketplace full of women selling potatoes, tomatoes, spinach and maize off of burlap mats, an administrator at the freshly built offices of Muthee's Word of Faith Church explains that the bishop is in the United States, though he won't say where.

Across the street workmen heft cinder blocks high onto the walls of the church, which will seat 4,000 people when it's completed.

On the other side of main street Mama Jane Njenga's premises have a rundown feel. Scattered about the pocked lot outside Njenga's modest office are a stained bathtub, a caved-in outhouse, two haphazard strings of laundry, an old well with a rusted crank, a few shy schoolchildren and a church only slightly bigger than a tool shed.

"The only miracle Muthee has done is to chase away Mama Jane," she says with a booming laugh. Robust and topping six feet in the trademark shiny white robes of her church, Njenga is undeniably still in town.
Photos Bear Witness on the Wall

Njenga points to old photographs along the wall of all the people she says she has healed. In one of them, she cradles a newborn baby in each arm.

"The mother was barren until she came to me," says Njenga, who never had any children of her own, though she raised many.

Angela Wambui, 34, is one of them.

"She has so many adopted children, she educated us, fed us," Wambui says. "There are over 30 or 40 orphans, so many, even now there are some who are still there."

Another, a mechanic in Kiambu, has even worked on Muthee's car, Njenga says.

At a tailoring shop a couple miles from the center of town, Agnes Muchaba, a member of Muthee's congregation, says that not all of Njenga's children came willingly. More than 20 years ago, she says, Njenga promised to cure Muchaba's brother-in-law of mental illness in exchange for his first-born child.

Four years after the child was taken to Njenga, the man's condition continued to deteriorate, and the family finally brought the child home.

"Since Bishop Muthee came, the powers of Jane diminished," Muchaba says. "He talked about Jane openly, saying she was a witch."

Njenga denies she ever took a child as payment. But she does remember being called a witch.

"When Muthee came, he took a loudspeaker into the street and he told people to pray for seven days that I would die," Njenga says. "If I was not known in the town, I could not have survived even to put my children through school."

Zoe Alsop is a freelance writer based in Kenya.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

[Firestarter]

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" loading="lazy" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S62Z37bIZHk/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S62Z37bIZHk"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/S62Z37bIZHk&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/S62Z37bIZHk&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" loading="lazy" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BmYb6lVKTEk/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BmYb6lVKTEk"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/BmYb6lVKTEk&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/BmYb6lVKTEk&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>


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[Firestarter]

And of course - as all things are never a coincidence - the odd irony that Palin's minister attacked a Kenyan woman, and Obama's roots in Kenya:

His grandmother from Kenya, where his father grew up - his father is buried in her back yard:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UreJZMY_2IY


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MLKH7__IEo

His Kenya village of his family:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TldmoSfisKM