Doubt, however, does not only apply to belief, but to disbelief as well. As much as I rejected belief, I was also becoming agnostic in my atheism. A change of scenery confirmed this when, in 1996, quite apprehensive about a journey across a continent, I travelled to Tanzania in east Africa. When my plane touched down in Darussalam on a very warm winter’s evening I felt some sense of relief. Sweating in the unexpected heat, I was greeted affectionately in the airport lobby by my uncle and aunt, who worked as missionaries in the country. That night we slept in the Catholic Secretariat beneath mosquito nets, the song of insects outside cheering my arrival.
Darussalam was bustling on Sunday morning, a scene far removed from the sleepy Sabbath days of suburban England that I was used to. Warm conversation greeted our arrival in town, a Tanzanian at the telephone kiosk engaging my aunt with Swahili chit-chat. After a telephone call home, we were soon on the road again, heading out of the coastal city in my uncle’s white Land Rover. All along the edge of the potholed tarmac road, salesmen could be seen selling every conceivable ware: bananas, bricks, Coca-Cola, clothes. Into the countryside, their numbers lessened, the stalls replaced by fields, homes and forest. Out here the vegetation was lush and green, revealing banana palms, coconut palms and even rice on the low river-fed fields.
We stopped for lunch in Morogoro at the New Green Restaurant, 2,000 feet above sea level. Though there was a short rain shower during our stopover, the vegetation was not as fresh here as it had been towards the coast. The journey onwards was long, for we were heading far into the interior where the land was dry, the earth dusty and the plants pale in colour. The smooth road afforded us some comfort, nevertheless. To our left and right, graceful mountains rose out of the plain, each one veiled beneath a layer of trees. Forty kilometres from our destination, we finally cut off the good road and took to a dirt track across Kongwa Ranch, passing through Kongwa town and then the village between it and St Philip’s Theological College. After a full day travelling, we arrived at our destination at six in the evening.
The Iona community—in whose company I had lost my faith—out in the Sea of the Hebrides thousands of miles from here was famous for its African choruses: I used to love those atmospheric gatherings in the abbey. Yet those Celtic renderings of Swahili and Zulu verse paled now as the native voices rose into the heavens from the evening service in the white-walled chapel. Those songs were my welcome to this college in the heart of Tanzania. I loved my hosts’ flat at the head of the road: its views were spectacular, while its architectural style appealed to me. I slept well that first night on the campus.
The following day was a national holiday in honour of 500 people—many of them students returning home following their exams—who had died in the MV Bukoba ferry disaster on Lake Victoria a month earlier. All around there was a sense of mourning. It was a sad day, but at the time I considered it a blessing in a way: it gave me pause to reflect on my own approach to death. It seemed to me that death was not a taboo as it often seemed to be within my own culture, two years before the very public outpouring of grief that marked the passing of a princess: a taboo which seemed to leave behind so much pain as the consequences of loss and sorrow were hidden away. I wondered whether the source of this was a greater appreciation of life and death. In the afternoon, a service was held in memory of the mother of one of the college workers, who had just died from tuberculosis. In England in our era, I thought, we do not know of TB, polio or pandemic flu and the survival rate among children is good: and so death is perceived differently, I believed. As the departed soul was remembered in the chapel, beautiful African hymns were drifting through the air once more.
Despite my own shyness, everyone I met seemed to be extremely friendly and kind. A young man called Yohana brought me his school exercise book one evening in an effort to help me grasp his Swahili tongue. Everyone I met on a personal level was welcoming and yet that paranoid discomfort remained. Travelling up to the capital, I interpreted faces and eyes in my own way, worrying about those glances from strangers.
Dodoma was hot and dusty, its climate distinct from coastal Darussalam, just like Ankara compared to Istanbul. My uncle was visiting the bishops at the cathedral and so I spent the day wandering around the town with my aunt. In that suffocating heat, a chilled bottle of ginger beer was most welcome, but it did not set my mind at ease. I was a self-conscious visitor to that unfamiliar country in 1996. I was anxious about the legacy of the European colonial past and about how I would be perceived in that now independent land. What was I to make of the glances of the people I passed by? These were amongst my thoughts throughout my stay as a white-faced guest in a proud African state, despite reading the following advice in my Swahili textbook:
In Tanzanian culture there are conventions about who is the first to speak. It is usually the person of lower status who greets the other person. A stranger entering a village should greet the villagers who will then welcome him. These are conventions that should be noted, for the visitor will feel unwanted because nobody speaks and everyone looks unwelcoming, likewise the villagers may misinterpret it and feel offended because he is wandering around in their territory without even having the decency to make himself known to them. It is important in Swahili culture to greet people properly. A smile or a mumbled word is not sufficient and it is considered rude to ignore people.Adapted from J Maw, Twende! A Practical Swahili Course (Oxford University Press, 1985), p.7.
This discovery proved to be a valuable lesson for the years that followed, as I navigated my way between various unfamiliar cultures. How many misunderstandings could be avoided, if only we replaced assumption with learning? In Tanzania, for every encounter with strangers and my perception of it, my meeting with individuals seemed to throw doubt on my previous conclusions.
Tuesday, 18 June, was a day of conversation, surprising me given my frequent reversion to silence. From next door came the Rwandan sisters, intent on bringing more Swahili through my lips, for my lack of words was quite an aberration in this land. After lunch I ventured down the road to the student accommodation closer to the chapel where I met three trainee priests: Amon, Suleman and Mote. Mote had excellent English and thus acted as an interpreter between the others and myself: Suleman explained that they had been expecting me to visit and that not visiting would usually be interpreted as a sign of hostility. Taking his obvious upset to heart, I found myself visiting almost every day after that.
One evening, a very sick child was brought to my aunt as the doctor on the campus. Tending to the frail girl in her mother’s arms, she gave her an injection. It struck me as a strong reminder of how fragile life is and how precious people are. The previous night the father of one of the night watchmen had died of illness and now there was this sight of a hopelessly weak child. All I could do was pray. I did not know what the illness was, or how serious it was, but the concern that I saw in my aunt’s face after the family left told me that this was a delicate situation. I felt sad realising that this family was lucky in being able to see a doctor and I wondered how many other families would go without healthcare at a time like this.
That night I prayed, seeking the aid of our Creator. As an agnostic without the strong faith of my family it was something that did not come from me easily, but the sight of that poor girl prompted me to take the only action that was within my grasp. With genuine concern and true sincerity, I prayed in the darkness until I was too tired, begging for an answer well into the night, asking that the girl would be blessed and return to health. Were my prayers answered or was it just the dawa (medicine), I asked the following day? I did not know, but hearing news of her recovery, I decided not to reject my initial reaction: that someone up there had listened to me. I did not know if I should read unnatural causes into what I encountered, but sometimes I believed strongly that there was something guiding me.
I found myself in the heart of Tanzania with a group of theological students who, despite myself, had offered me great friendship. I found myself listening to their beautiful choruses and gripped by discussions about how the church should act in our world. At the time I thought that I might be searching all my life for faith, but just then I decided that I would not give up. The previous day I had seen a vomiting, dehydrated child. Today she was looking so much better and was eating at last. I wanted to praise the Lord for that.
