Reflections on My African Adventure

Abstract

When I originally announced to family and friends that I had accepted an invitation to teach at Hekima College, the Jesuit-run theologate in Nairobi, Kenya, in the spring semester of 2010, the response generally fell into two broad categories. The one group of respondents said: “How exciting! What a great opportunity to learn about the Church in Africa and African society.” The other group typically said: “Are you crazy? Don’t you know of the dangers in East Africa for Americans in being robbed at gunpoint, taken hostage for ransom by criminals, or even killed by Islamic terrorists?” It would have been futile, of course, to point out to those same individuals that such events could also take place in most of our larger American cities. In any case, since the Provincial Superior of the Chicago-Detroit Province had at a bi-province gathering officially missioned me to Hekima for the spring of 2010, I turned a deaf ear to the second group and said a prayer that the first group was right in their expectations. As it turned out, they were right. None of the terrifying possibilities presented to me by the second group ever happened, and I do feel that I learned a great deal in a short time about the Church in Africa and the hopes and fears of the young men and women enrolled at Hekima College who will be active in Church ministry for many years to come. In what follows, I will simply summarize some first-hand impressions which have stayed with me during these past four months.