More about Africa...

When I speak to Americans and Europeans, most seem to have very specific assumptions about Africa and African people. Many assume that all Africans live in extreme poverty and are always being chased by snakes. However, the truth is that the great continent of Africa contains many different worlds, some of them only miles away from each other.

In August, I spoke at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya at Africa Nazarene University. The experience was so different from the work I'm used to doing in the rural African villages that I almost forgot sometimes that I was in Africa at all. We had power-point presentations and modern music, and many of the people I worked with seemed like they came from an entirely different place than many of those with whom I was accustomed to working.

After long days of plenary sessons and workshops, I also spent time with the university students who attended the conference. Large groups of us would crowd into one of the dorms and talk about God and life, and the conversations sounded to me like the same kind of conversations you might expect to have in London or Los Angeles. They talked about the same television shows and movies, and the girls even wore blue jeans instead of traditional African dresses.

One young Kenyan lady told me she thinks God may be calling her to be a missionary but that she's not sure how she would handle living in difficult conditions. "I went on a mission trip to one of the villages on the border once," she told me, "and it was really difficult. There was no electricity and no running water. I mean, I'm used to being somewhere where I can just plug in my laptop!"

It was really quite an eye-opener to realise how much some of the cities in Africa have become so similar to the West whilst in other parts of the same countries people still live with their ancient traditions and cannot even imagine how their neighbours live. This jounral entry is not meant to be a critique of either situation but simply an observation. We live in an interesting, ever-changing world.