AFRICA, WAKE UP FROM SLUMBER

AFRICA, WAKE UP FROM SLUMBER

For over one week now, I have been going through over 842 Anioma Proverbs in Ubulu Okiti dialect written by my father. It opened my eyes to see and appreciate the debt of wisdom of our forefathers. I saw brilliance, knowledge and insight in that work. The thought that has been in my mind in the past week is, if only these wise sayings were documented.

Suffice to say that our forefathers were not timid, ignorant or illiterate in our own standard. It is the Western world that made us to see it so because they brought their own education. The problem our forefathers had was inability to document the wisdom God impacted on them.

Unfortunately, we in the present generation in Africa have not learnt from the mistakes of our forefathers. Presently, our people are not willing to write and document words of wisdom God has graciously given to them for the good of the masses and  posterity. For example, I have always challenged my fellow priests on this. Many of them preach good messages which end only in the four walls of the church they pastor. They are many of them God has used mightily more than what we see in the Western world but not a greater number of people heard about it because they were not documented.

Presently, we are fortunate to live in a time where documentation is easy with computers and internet. We should maximise this singular opportunity to write on our rich cultures, proverbs, wise sayings of our elders, etc and bring them online in a bid to present true picture of Africa and not what the Western world told us about ourselves. It is one great way to show the world that Africa is not a dark continent. We should act now that we have the opportunity.

DID REV FR MBAKA SAY SO?

DID REV FR MBAKA SAY SO?
I have read a story online where it was written that Rev Fr Mbaka said he is going to suffer in his new station. It has kept me wondering for days now. How can he say such thing? Has he turned against God that took him to prominence? Has he now lost faith that God is able to turn his desert to a flourishing land? Has he forgotten that God can make a way where there is no way. Such actions and utterances that you have been transferred to suffer has now given room to people who are now speaking evil and condemning the decision of the church as witch hunt.

I am a priest and I know that our call takes us to different parishes. In some parishes or station, the priest may have the privilege of enjoying good vicarage and in some other places the priest will live in a house that is not good enough for pigs. I left a vicarage where I lived in a storey building containing two flats and well furnished to a vicarage of two rooms. I lived in the two room apartment for nearly 6 years. From there I am now in a four bedroom flat.

For Rev Fr Mbaka to have said that he is going to suffer in his new station because it is a one room apartment has led me to question his spirituality of recent. Has he forgotten God? Was it not God that made him? Why not get your friends in your former station and other places to help you build a decent vicarage? Will going to your new station stop your ministry or reduce your anointing?

If you have something to offer as a priest, no matter the 'cave' or remote area you are transferred to, people will come there, looking for you. The mistake Rev Fr Mbaka made was to think that he has built an empire for himself and could not be transferred. You don't have to think that way.

That good thing you were doing in your former station, go and continue in the new station. No parish has the sole right to or autonomy of your ministry. Fr Mbaka should remember that in his ordination vows, in promised to serve wherever he is sent. He should not make mockery of God that called him because He is able to take care of him anytime, anywhere.