You can’t understand Tanzanians without understanding their view of the spirit world. It permeates every facet of life. Witchdoctors are often present at national soccer games, fending off the curses of the other team. Albino children have been known to have a limb cut off in the middle of the night, the appendage sold by a family member to a wealthy businessman who uses it in magic rituals. A herd of witchdoctor’s goats on our street ran free, tended by a spirit creature.
These beliefs were not just seen as superstitions or old wives tales. They were embedded in the worldview, part of the air the people breathed. Coming from our western, enlightened, scientific worldview, our heads would spin from these stories. But we learned, early on, that this was serious business. We needed to pay attention.
If we had come in scoffing and mocking, critical and judgmental, how well do you think Tanzanians would have listened to us? They would have written us off. Though some stories were speculative, every Tanzanian has experienced situations with the spirit world that defy western imagination. They know what they have seen, or felt, or heard. Blowing it off was not an option. If we wanted to have a voice in Tanzania, we needed to first be learners.
Steven Hawthorne* wrote, “If our impression of another culture is that it ‘makes no sense,’ then we can be sure that we are not making sense to them either. The solution is to become a learner.”
My job these days is to help prepare new missionaries to move overseas. What I am discovering is that the same things they are learning can be just as easily applied to American Christians.
