Reflection: COVID-19: Analysis from an East African Perspective
WCIU Journal: Cross-Cultural Communications Topic
Jim Harries (PhD, theology, University of Birmingham, UK), has been researching aspects of African culture and lifestyle while engaging in mission work, since 1988. He has authored 10 books and numerous articles. His primary ministry engagement in non-COVID-times, is with indigenous churches. Jim is single, while keeping 12 African orphan children in his Kenyan village home.
April 23, 2020
by Jim Harries
In terms of it being yet another example of the West telling Africa what to do, little that is happening with the COVID-19 crisis is original. Africa, in practice, has had to discount a lot of “good-sense” coming from the West. The sharpness of today’s COVID-19 concern is heightened by its life and death nature, and its sheer magnitude. But the way it is unfolding in Africa I should say is typical: serious advice sincerely given, that neither makes sense nor “works” in the African context.
Do Westerners realize, I ask myself, how they can appear, when they so seriously present things as important, vital, and necessary, that make little or no sense to African people, and are totally impractical in implementation? African people are so used to hearing nonsense spouted by contemporary Westerners, that they may no longer know what to take seriously, when, or how. I here speak, in part at least, from personal experience. Having lived in one African community since 1993, I see that Westerners who come to visit are often taken very seriously by my African colleagues (of necessity, as they carry, or potentially carry, money), while saying things that make little sense.
Confused and restrained reactions in Africa to the West around social distancing and isolation strategies for dealing with COVID-19 follow the same pattern as have responses to other Western interventions. For example, much of the way the global community has insisted on locking-down has (largely of necessity) been ignored by the poor in Africa. The reasons this Western advice has to be ignored, include:
1. Vast numbers of people acquire their income for their day’s food from their day’s labor, so they cannot simply cease from going to work.
2. African ways of life are deeply communal. A refusal to behave communally is typically interpreted as indicating “evil,” as in witchcraft. “Apendaye upweke ni mchawi,” says a Swahili proverb. This could be translated as “he who likes to be alone is busy killing other people.” No wonder people don’t want to self-isolate! (http://swahiliproverbs.afrst.illinois.edu/association.html.)
3. Necessary resources such as firewood, water, vegetables, even toilets and bathrooms, are often shared between households.
There are many cultural reasons as to why it is difficult to implement Western-style policies on handling the COVID-19 crisis. For example, Kenyans are reluctant to concede to testing for COVID-19, knowing that should one be discovered to be sick one might be forced into strict isolation in a facility chosen by the government, possibly in dire conditions under police guard, at one’s own expense (https://www.nation.co.ke/counties/mandera/32-escape-quarantine-in-Mandera/1183298-5523690-lkoyiv/index.html). The first man in Siaya, Kenya, to die with COVID-19 was ignominiously buried at night—something extremely shameful for the whole family. (See https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001367836/village-shock-as-covid-19-victim-is-buried-at-night and https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001367884/our-son-deserves-decent-burial-siaya-family-tells-government.) If people fear that attending a medical establishment will identify them as having COVID-19 and so result in shameful conditions, this may well result in their suffering and even dying while excluding themselves from whatever minimal formal health services are available.
What I am suggesting is that today’s prescriptions for dealing with COVID-19 build on, and presuppose, a thoroughly Western-Christian worldview. The “individualism” in the West (as opposed to the communal mind set of East Africa) includes a valuation of oneself over and beyond one’s relationship to one’s family members. It includes a certain not-caring regarding the circumstances of one’s burial. It includes some ability to withstand social-isolation from other people. It includes the notion that one’s own suffering, e.g. arising from self-isolation, can bring net-benefit if it is in the interests of the whole “human family,” e.g. the population of one’s country or the world as a whole. It includes also a faith in science, that people discovering the laws of science do so while disinterested (i.e. they are being honest, and not making up things that will result in their own fame or enrichment), resulting in science being a trustworthy and helpful acceptable foundation to life—to the extent that one can afford to accept family estrangement for the sake of the broader good.
It seems clear to me, that each of the above is plainly rooted in the gospel of Christ. Jesus, the “hero” of Christian believers, accepted rejection and “social isolation” by people at his crucifixion. This was the means he used to save the world. Many biblical heroes withstood social-isolation with fortitude, such as Jesus himself, John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul (the latter two spent significant periods of time in prison, but have not ceased to be considered heroes of the faith as a result), Moses (on mount Horeb, alone with God), Elijah (alone in remaining faithful to God, being fed by a raven) and so on.
On the contrary, the indigenous African system of values, sometimes known as ubuntu, is about always being together, and does not value any loner-activity. In fact, as mentioned above, this can be seen as evil. Certainly it will not be expected that loners will make a key contribution to the whole human family. Another African proverbs says, “If you want to go far, go together” (https://www.passiton.com/inspirational-quotes/7293-if-you-want-to-go-fast-go-alone-if-you-want).
Even the possibility that someone alone, like a scientist shut up in a lab working away at resolving a problem using a means that no one else understands, could be engaging in helpful activity, is an enormous stretch in an African community, while a mainstay of Western life. That mainstay has resulted in people in the West both being happy to concede their lives to the hands of science, and to accept that purveyors of such science can be trusted.
Who the West is today by comparison with other parts of the world, leads to the realization that the strength of the West arises from its profound Christian history. This strongly implies a need for evangelism and mission work as prerequisite for successful implementation in non-Western societies for anti COVID-19 strategies.