Avocadoes, evangelists and the heavens open!

We are back in Lilongwe and the red earth blushes brilliant green from the recent rains. Andrew tells me it has been a 'dryish' Wet so far but things are looking lush all the same.

Limited tells us he has been home for a few days while we were away. Another brother is ill. He has been in hospital and is HIV Positive. It is unusual for Africans to admit to Aids or HIV and malaria gets blamed for much if not most illness in Africa because it is more culturally acceptable, as in, less shameful, a disease.

This brother is 28 and one of four surviving sons. Limited has two sisters. One presumes that the wife and children of the brother who died last year are supported by the family. From the look of it this year may bring another funeral for Limited and more responsibility for his family.

Andrew has been unwell with malaria, he says. Such things are part and parcel of life in Africa.

It poured with rain yesterday afternoon and is doing so now. The sky bulges grey and then drenchs the land. Thunder and lightning hold court and it reminds me of the Wet Season in Bombay which I always loved. In India as much as anything it was because the rain washed away the thick layer of dirt which had built up on everything and turned the leaves green once more.

There is something about drenching rain which is appealing. Although I doubt anyone in Queensland would agree with me. We lived in Brisbane for four years in the 90's and I have fond memories. Even as I write they face the deluge. Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains of that there is no doubt.

The avocadoes on our tree have grown enormously but are to get yet more enormous it seems. They are about the size of the avocadoes one normally buys but I am told they will get to twice that size. See pic below.

We arrived back on Sunday, a couple of days earlier than we had planned. The flight was full of Christians heading back to their goodly works in Malawi.. I have never seen such a large business class section on South African Airways. The place is awash, like much of Africa, with American evangelists who seem to spend more time building churches than things the people really need like homes and health clinics. No doubt they add to the Malawian economy and serve some productive purpose.

The baggage carousel at Lilongwe is a scrum at the best of times; a confusion of people, bags and trolleys. Kids run riot and the air resonated with the cries of parents: Levi, Jacob, Miriam .... all good Biblical names.

Religion seems to come naturally to Africans and it is just a pity that the most active Christians are the happy clappers, the evangelists, the 'sound and fury' Christians who from what I can see are so far removed from the teachings of Jesus Christ it isn't funny. Biblical is the word which comes to mind when one listens to them with all the backward, primitive, unenlightened echoes contained within that word. Fear seems to be the fuel of such religions which no doubt is why churches are deemed more important than homes or clinics.

There is no doubt that these evangelist missionaries are 'good people' but it seems to me, having spent quite a bit of time observing them in various parts of Africa that this is the problem. Their focus is on their own 'goodness', read salvation given the vengeful nature of their God/s and the goal of helping others is secondary. They come first no matter how much they may tell themselves otherwise and because they do not really focus on those they are supposed to be helping their actions are always sourced in something which can only be called patronising. One really does get the sense that they see themselves bringing salvation to the heathens and for heathens read 'inferiors.'

The Africans are mere fodder for their faith; a means to gaurantee them eternal salvation or at least the belief in being saved, so fearful are their beliefs. It is sad to see such destructive irrationality. As if any God worth believing in, who is supposedly omnipotent could be as petty, vengeful, mean-spirited, mistrusting and simply unkind as the religions make God out to be? I wonder what the Malawians really think of their 'saviours.'

LEFT: Another church for Malawi.

Perhaps it meets a need in the Africans, stripped as they have been of much of the support of their own 'religions' and beliefs. But what a pity it is a form of religion which is based in fear, intolerance, judgement and pompous righteousness.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that television evangelists have taken off in Africa and the same sad, bigoted ranting now appears in local form.

 But enough of a rant from me. I decided long ago to stick with God and forget about religion; made as they all are in the shape of 'man', read men, and where the original spiritual teachings are buried beneath misogyny, ignorancy, bigotry and rant. I do realise there are some very positive aspects of religions, all of them, but there is more of the negative than the positive and since God is available to anyone, anytime, regardless of religion it is a quagmire I prefer to avoid.

Then again, I have more freedom, choice and opportunity in my life than the average African which no doubt is why churches in Africa are packed on Sundays and in Australia, largely empty. That does not of course explain the American passion for religion; they are the most religious of all developed nations. Then again,  the average American also lives with a lot of uncertainty because of the lack of the sort of social welfare safety net which is found in other developed nations.

Perhaps after all religion is more easily sold to those who live in fear. Perhaps those who live in fear need the dictates of a patriarchal God who tells them what to do. Or perhaps some people only feel safe if they live within a system of rigid, unbending rules? I still think it's a pity that the God-botherers have made such inroads into Africa.