Ukombozi

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Content Warning: This post is about the work that we are doing to protect young women, ages 9-13, from FGM. It is a serious, shocking subject. I hope that I can shed a little light on why this awful practice continues, as well as offer some hope that it will slow down and eventually stop.

This past December, we protected 95 young women from the FGM rituals by hosting them at a safe location for 20 days and nights. When I say “we”, I mean that The Emmanuel Center for Women and Children worked together with me and my community here at QuadW Tarime, while The Sunflower Foundation in Melbourne, Australia provided the majority of the funding. I can’t possibly credit all of the Kuria and Tanzanians who have joined together in fighting this, but a few names, listed alphabetically: Anna Migera, Dinnah Sylvester, Doto Francis, Gloria Sentozi, Happiness Wikendi, Mwita Baita, Pili Nyangi, Raphael Musa, Rhoby John, Sarah Sabai, Sarah Wambura, Simeon Mwita, Wikendi Juma, Veronica Marwa Rhodes.

What exactly is the practice? Here in Tarime, the Kuria tribe holds a religious ritual called the tohara where they clear a field about twice the size of a football field and ask all of the families within several miles to send their daughters who have recently gone through puberty. The tribal elders and the waangariba (the ones who do the cutting) sacrifice a strong, healthy bull to the 8 Great Spirits and then blow milk through the bull’s horns. Then the cutting begins.

Girls begin to arrive and are told to stand naked, in a line, until the first one is called for. She goes to the waangariba, alone, pays the required twenty dollars and hands them her razor blade. Two of them hold her thighs while the third removes her clitoris with the razor blade. She is told not to stop the bleeding, because her blood is an offering to the 8 Great Spirits. Then one of the tribal elders throws flour on her now-mutilated vagina, throws flour on her face, and wraps her in a kanga, a traditional wrap skirt. At the exit, some of her family members are waiting for her. They walk her down many of the streets of the village, waving tree branches, blowing whistles, and singing celebratory Kuria songs. When she finally arrives at home, she is showered with gifts, money, and expensive foods. Neighbors and distant family members show up and give livestock and other gifts to her family, to celebrate their daughter being cut.

We estimate that somewhere between 600 and 1,800 girls are cut during each year that the ritual is performed, and some small percentage of these girls die due to blood loss and infection; I don’t have exact numbers on this.

I say, “here in Tarime” because FGM is done very differently in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, the Middle East, and the countries in West Africa.

The ritual is deeply religious. At some point in November, the chief of the tribal elders says that he has received a message from the 8 Great Spirits about when the cutting is to begin, and when it is to end. During that time, the tribal elders and the waangariba are strictly forbidden from showering, farming, carrying water, wearing red, burying any dead, attending any funerals, leaving the Tarime area, and slaughtering any animals (aside from the sacrificial bull). When they reach the day when the cutting is to end, everyone takes a shower, and then the 8 Great Spirits forbid them from cutting any more girls for another two years.

When I first heard about this practice, I could hardly believe that it was real. I was even more puzzled when I realized that the Seventh-Day Adventist, Catholic, and Anglican Churches arrived in full force in the 1960s and attracted large numbers of Kuria members. Pentecostal Churches started popping up in the 1980s and were willing to go to even more rural areas, on lower budgets, than the more institutional denominations. With so many churches, why had such an unloving, harmful, superstitious practice been allowed to continue?

I was further disappointed this past year. We are working to increase the number of girls who we can protect in 2024 and the coming years, so we started doing research and trying to make contacts in Kuria villages that we had never been to before. In these new villages, an obvious place to start was with the churches. But as we went from village to village, and church to church, we learned that many of the church leaders continue to send their daughters to the cutting.

But being from Alabama, I could not help noticing the similarity to an equally bizarre practice; owning human beings, treating them like animals and using them for farm labor, and claiming that this was a good thing due to them having a bit darker hue of skin.

In both cases the practice is bizarre; an outsider couldn’t make heads or tails of it. In both cases, the practitioners identify with Jesus Christ, a man whose life and death were all love; only love; a man who never harmed anyone, and who never held anything back for himself.

In both cases, the practice slowly decreased in power, mainly through the intervention of outsiders. We know about how it took a tragic and bloody war to abolish slavery, and how its practitioners developed new systems of prison slavery, sharecropping, and segregation to keep some semblance of slavery going even after it had been formally abolished. Though these systems have slowly become less pronounced, they still exist, and continue to devour the lives of countless real people every year, while making countless others miserable. (Here I’m referring to those who are given long sentences for minor drug infractions, who are given far longer sentences than their white counterparts for the same crimes, or who lose their lives to police brutality, as well as many other forms of race-based oppression that continue to thrive.)

The practice of FGM is steadily dying. I know many Kuria women who were able to get a good education and delay marriage; none of them have had the practice performed. People from other tribes now intermarry with the Kuria and this steadily decreases the power of the practice. It is also illegal; at least two practitioners were arrested in the Tarime area during the cutting season last year.

As myself and my (mainly Kuria) team researched ways to protect girls and weaken the practice, we found another shocking parallel. We wondered if we might be able to go directly to the tribal elders and the waangariba and simply persuade them to stop. We knew of a woman who had been one of the waangariba, but who had decided to stop and follow Jesus. So we went to her house and asked her if it might be possible to persuade others, too. She shook her head sadly, and she said that she had been trying for years. Their reply was always the same: “What else could we do that would make this much money?”

This made sense of something that we had seen last year. Originally, the tribal elders had announced that the 8 Great Spirits had told them that cutting season would be December 9th until December 24th. We understood the decree of the 8 Great Spirits to be set in stone, unchangeable. But around December 22nd, we heard that the 8 Great Spirits had changed their minds, and cutting season could continue until December 29th. Some of our Kuria team laughed cynically when they heard the news. “C’mon, the tribal elders always do like this. If they see they haven’t gotten money enough, they say the 8 Great Spirits have changed their ideas. They add more days so they can get more money.”

In both cases we see a practice that oppresses a large group of real people. In Alabama, slavery oppressed people of a darker skin color; in Tarime, FGM oppresses women. In both cases, greed keeps the practice alive. Greed motivates the oppressors to see this group as less human. And because they see this group as less human, they feel comfortable and justified in going farther with their greed. Last year during the camp, we protected a girl who was 5 years old. I asked why, since she hadn’t gone through puberty. I was told, “That girl… she doesn’t really have parents. During the daytime, she runs all over the place, playing with other girls. Normally, it’s fine, but during cutting season, these elders, they want more money. They’ll find her, entice her, cut her, and then find a distant relative and make them pay the twenty dollars.”

In both cases, change comes slowly. We start churches, we become members, we say that we want to follow Jesus, but we stop short of unconditional love for all. We embrace the elements of Jesus that are easy for us to embrace; when he challenges the harmful vestiges of our own culture, we ignore him, or rationalize it away.

It’s the same question that I ask myself as I re-read the gospels of Matthew, of Mark, of Luke, of John. Do I live like Jesus? If Jesus was in my position, how would he live? How would he love? How would he deal with the tangled dilemmas that present themselves to me every day; how to love every person fully with limited resources; especially limited time, the most limited resource of all?

When am I choosing Jesus, and his way of unconditional love? When am I choosing to hang on to some of the harmful vestiges of my own culture? Do I see my harmful attitudes as normal, because they are just the water that I’ve been swimming in for so long?

One of my favorite authors reminds us,

“In the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hand. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile. Their ability to torture is in me, too.”

– Henri Nouwen

Just as the Kuria Christians, or my great-great-grandparents, need to examine their own faith and admit that this practice is not something that Jesus would participate in, I also need to look for where my hand is the hand of the oppressor, or where my hand is becoming the hand of the oppressor, by slow, seemingly minor changes in my habits. Where am I hurting the people around me? Where am I making things harder on them? What are the long-term consequences of my habits?

I’m thankful for a small group of committed, thoughtful Kuria disciples at the Emmanuel Center and at QuadW Tarime who have chosen to examine themselves, and who have decided to choose Jesus, rather than the harmful vestiges of their own culture.

In 2023, there is no cutting ritual, so we are using this opportunity to educate the girls. We learned in 2022 that many girls go to the cutting because of the disinformation that is spread by the adults; some of the most common lies are that it is just a tiny, superficial cut, and that the clitoris grows back. From December 8th to December 21st, we will host 150 girls, overnight, at the Emmanuel Center Primary School. We will teach them in detail what the cutting is, that it is irreversible, the risk of death, how to stand up to peer pressure, and how to share the truth with other girls.

During the coming year, we will spend time getting to know government officials, pastors, and respected elders in villages around Tarime, doing our best to find as many people as we can who are actively opposed to the practice. These faithful few will help us to identify the girls who are in danger.

And then, when the cutting rituals take place again in 2024, we will protect 300 girls, as we join in sweeping this practice away.

As they let go of this practice, I wonder if the Kuria people will become more Kuria, not less so. The title of this post is a beautiful Swahili word that means “deliverance”. I’m looking forward to the majesty that will be unfolded when the brave, proud, Kuria women are delivered from their oppression and free to be their real, Kuria selves.

You can make more of this happen by donating to QuadW Tarime (tax-deductible) at:

https://www.wesleycollegetzfoundation.com/donate

Or to The Emmanuel Center (tax-deductible) at:

https://advance.umcmission.org/p-495-emmanuel-center-for-women-and-children-tarime.aspx

Or to The Sunflower Foundation (tax-deductible) at:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EYN7JEBDDD5AQ

Ujasiri kwa Upendo

~ dwr0003 ~ Leave a comment

In 2018, I started pursuing a vision of helping Tanzanian young adults to become servant leaders who will make Tanzania a better place. Originally, I thought that my primary task would be to show them that a life of love and service could really be better than a life of being served, taking bribes, and embezzling church funds.

Well, don’t get me wrong, that has been a major part of our transformative work here. But I learned very quickly that many Tanzanian young adults don’t serve because they just don’t think that they have anything to offer. Selfishness is an obstacle, but so is self-hatred.

Maybe you remember something that happened to you that suddenly made your life a lot worse. For Rebekah Willis (not her real name), it was when her father died, when she was 14. Her father had had a good job as a military officer. Her father’s brothers had never liked Rebekah’s mother, and they immediately took all of her father’s property, and they told Rebekah and her mother (and Rebekah’s 3 younger siblings) that they had 24 hours to leave the house.

A soft, spoiled life suddenly became a life of doing their best to sell potatoes. Rebekah wanted to distract herself from her new reality, so she would steal from the already tiny amount of money that her mom had and go watch movies on the tiny screen at the thatch-roof-and-wooden-benches cinema.

Her mother wasn’t used to disciplining her, so she didn’t. She just told her to stop, Rebekah didn’t listen, and the conflict built up, day by day. One day her mother had had enough. She had never beaten Rebekah before, but that day, she grabbed a stick, grabbed Rebekah by her hair, and beat her mercilessly. She screamed at her about how she was a dog, how she wished that she could have any other child, how the oldest child was supposed to be helping her, but how Rebekah had turned out to be a worthless firstborn. The wounds were so severe that she had to take Rebekah to the hospital, once she realized what she had done. After Rebekah was treated and discharged from the hospital, Rebekah’s mother called her own mother and sent Rebekah away to go live with her.

Rebekah grew up with her grandmother, but she never did recover from the idea that she was a terrible firstborn child who had really let her mother down. I first met her in February 2021 when she joined QuadW Tarime. She was anxious to please, while also having no confidence in her own abilities, or even her own thoughts. I could sense that she was deeply sad, and yet she laughed at almost everything. I remember one day we cooked plantains together, and then I asked if she could go ahead and serve everyone’s plates. She immediately became downcast and fidgety. I was confused, and I said,

“I’m sorry sister, is there a problem?”

“Brother Davis, I don’t know how…”

“You don’t know how? You don’t know how to serve the food onto the plates?”

“Well, it is… I don’t know, I don’t know how to balance.”

“To balance?”

“It is, it is… I don’t know how to balance the food evenly between five plates.”

I involuntarily laughed, a confused chuckle, and Rebekah burst out laughing with me.

Still chuckling, I said, “But sister Rebekah… you can do it. It’s just a few plates. And if you get it wrong, I’m sure it won’t be a big deal”.

She laughed, looked at the ground, and said, “Me, I’m used to just serving for me and my grandma. Five plates is so many, and what if I give someone too much, and others not enough? Can we please just wait for sister Veronica to get back? Veronica can do it; me, I can’t.”

What do you say to someone who doesn’t have enough confidence to serve food onto five plates? I didn’t know. I just hoped that a loving community would be a good place for her to rebuild her self-concept.

We put her on a ministry team with two fellow community members, so that she wouldn’t have to do anything all alone, and then we started to give her tiny little opportunities to succeed. At the same time, we continued to show her that we loved her unconditionally and that she no longer had to fear criticism.

Sister Rebekah, do you think that you could ask to borrow a knife from our next-door neighbor?

Sister Rebekah, do you think that you could go to the market today, to buy the food items that we need?

Sister Rebekah, you did a great job going to the market last time. When you go this time, do you think you could ask the neighbors if they need anything from the market? That would be a good way to build our friendship with them.

Sister Rebekah, our neighbor, Mama Esther, lost her child, and she is grieving. Could you go cook dinner with her? I think that would really comfort her.

Sister Rebekah, do you think that you could go introduce us to our neighbor, who lives near the banana trees? She’s a bit older. People say that she is a witch. I doubt it, but one way to find out.

With each successful step, Rebekah seemed to be rebuilding a fragile, glass-like frame of self-confidence, slowly growing more sturdy as the days went by. One day we were having a community meeting; Rebekah was always as silent as a stone during community meetings, believing that she had nothing to contribute. And this was a particularly important community meeting; we were about to start our first neighborhood group, and we were discussing what the group’s focus should be. Myself and 3 other community members went back and forth between an economic empowerment group, or a group about loving and valuing children, or a women’s empowerment group, and suddenly,

“I’ve seen that we need to do something for comfort and healing. A healing group”, Rebekah said.

If the coffee table had spoken, we would have been less surprised.

I tried to hide my shock and just said, “Yeah, yeah, good idea. I’d love to hear a little more about what you are thinking.”

“Well, many women in this neighborhood are hurting. Mama Esther and Mama Vero lost children last month, Mama Baraka has been beaten by her husband, and Bibi Nchagwa… people keep saying that she is a witch, but she’s actually just a lonely old woman. We could teach them to comfort each other and help each other heal.”

As we overcame our shock, we slowly realized what a perfect idea this was. Faraja Group was a huge success, and it continues to this day. As the days went on, Rebekah’s growing confidence built on itself, snowballing as she found her voice, and as she recognized the many gifts that she had always had.

These days, Rebekah is a servant leader who is actively making Tanzania a better place. She was one of the key leaders who protected 95 girls from the FGM rituals last December, and she used her new-found confidence to stand up to relatives who wanted their daughters to be cut, fighting for the girls to be sent to our safe location instead. When a neighbor’s daughter was dangerously sick, she escorted the neighbor to the largest hospital in the region and stood up to the doctors, nurses, and hospital officials until the child was given the attention care that she needed. When a dear friend’s husband sent their daughter far away to be treated by a team of witches, she took her shy friend’s side. Rebekah stood up to the husband, then stood up to the mother-in-law, and then Rebekah even enlisted the help of the child’s school principal and some government officials who handle truancy cases, on the grounds that the girl wasn’t attending school. After about 3 months, the husband saw that this was becoming more trouble than it was worth and brought the child back home, re-enrolled her in school, and ended the witchcraft treatments.

Rebekah hasn’t forgotten her days as a frightened, ashamed young woman and now leads a house church for teenage girls and 4 house churches for young mothers. She teaches them that to slowly, gradually develop their confidence, in a community of love. The title means “courage to love”.

New Life; Following Jesus Together

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We are so thankful that 141 different people have decided to follow Jesus and enter into a life of love, leaving their lives of selfishness behind. Here’s a story of what this has looked like, as well as a brief overview of how disciple-making works in rural Tanzania; how exactly we are able to disciple so many people simultaneously. I’ve also attached a summary report of the new house churches and disciples, for anyone who is curious.


Matende (not his real name) is a farmer, of the Kuria tribe. He is a hard worker, waking up around 4 each morning, grabbing a jembe (similar to a hoe, but larger, heavier, made of wood and cast iron) and working the hard earth into furrows for hours. He works hard for his wife and children, and he expects to be obeyed. He also believes that you cannot trust a woman, and that his tribe has the best way of dealing with this. The Kuria use force. He always keeps a sturdy stick around, and if his wife is late getting back home, he beats her. If the food is a little burned, he beats her. If she does anything to raise suspicion that she might be cheating, he beats her, sometimes for an entire hour. If she does nothing wrong for several days in a row, then he beats her for no reason at all, because he believes the Kuria proverb, “If you let too much time pass without beating your wife, she becomes rebellious”.


One day a distant relative, Amos Mwita, arrived at his house, together with a man named Musa Damas, and they wanted to talk to him about God. He was interested. He knew that the Kuria believed in the Mizimu (Great Spirits, spirits of specific ancestors), but also, he knew… everyone knew… that the Mizimu aren’t all that great. They are selfish and unpredictable, not really good, and not really evil, either. Not worth bothering with, anyways. Amos and Musa both shared their testimony… what their life had been like before following Jesus, how they had decided to follow Jesus, and what their life had been like afterwards. These were the kinds of stories that he didn’t hear every day, so he invited them to come back and share some more. They returned several times, explaining the good news of the Gospel, and how you can turn away from your old behaviors and trust God to make your heart new. 


This sounded like a good deal, and he agreed to be baptized. That Sunday, Musa found him out on his farm, making furrows and told him that it was time to be baptized. Matende said that he was ready.

20231001_131620.jpg

Matende, with a group of new disciples after the baptism. To protect his identity, I won’t say which is Matende.

It was a day of rejoicing, a day of entering into a new life. The following Friday, Amos and Musa went back to his house to see how he was doing with following Jesus. They reminded him of his promise to change his life. He talked about a few things he had done to change his life, and they asked him if he was still beating his wife. He said that he was. They told him that he couldn’t beat his wife and follow Jesus; that the two were incompatible.
“Ah-ha… God doesn’t like it when I beat my wife?”, he asked.
They explained that God hated it, and that God was on the side of the weak, the ones who couldn’t defend themselves… that every time that he beat her, he was standing on the wrong side of God.
Matende called his wife to come over to where he was talking with Amos and Musa. Right then and there, he promised to never beat her again, as long as he lives. He asked Amos and Musa to visit him regularly and make sure that he was keeping his promise, and he told them to ask not just him, but his wife, to make sure that they were getting the truth.
This change will be hard for Matende to stick with, but so far, Amos and Musa confirm that he has not returned to his old behavior.


Since April 30th, 2022, we’ve seen many stories of both women and men deciding to follow Jesus, deciding to let go of their old lives and enter into a life of love.

I am sure that some people are wondering how I am able to disciple so many people. It may even lead to suspicion and cynicism, that I’m not telling the truth, or that we are baptizing people, but not discipling them.

That suspicion is fair. It is common in East Africa for missionaries, as well as African church leaders, to overstate the number of people who one is discipling. It is also common to overstate church membership numbers, or to brag about how many people “came to Christ” at an open-air evangelism event… without any follow up.

I’d love to answer those questions.

How am I able to disciple so many people? I am not able. In fact, most of these disciples, I only met at their baptism.

I only disciple five people, named Raphael Musa, Musa Damas, Dinnah Sylvester, Doto Francis, and Gloria Sentozi.

I’ll explain a bit about the network of two of these five disciples, and then here is a spreadsheet that lays out everyone’s networks:

quadw-tarime-disciples-and-house-churchesDownload

Musa Damas and Raphael Musa disciple the following 15 people: 

Amos Mwita, Samweli Mwita, Michael Pius, Gati Juma, Pendo Mwita, Mama Patrice, Mariamu Tanu, Mama Sosi, Gati Marwa, Esther Msando, Joseph Mwita, Catherine Kinyara, Gati Nyamhanga, Simeon Mwita, and Eunice Ferdinand. 

They, in turn, disciple others.

Amos, Samweli, and Michael spend most of their time finding new disciples.

Gati Juma disciples her husband, a married couple, and another young woman through their house church, every Monday at 2.

Pendo Mwita disciples a young woman and a married couple through their house church, every Tuesday at 3.

Mama Patrice disciples 3 people through their house church, every Tuesday at 2.

Mariamu Tanu disciples an older married couple through their house church, every Tuesday at 2.

Mama Sosi disciples an older woman and her two older children (both adults) through their house church, every Wednesday at 2.

Gati Marwa disciples a large family; an older man and three of his wives, as well as several of their older children, who have all decided to follow Jesus; every Wednesday at 2.

Esther Msando disciples 3 young women, as well as her husband, through their house church, every Friday at 3.

Joseph Mwita disciples 2 people through their house church, every Thursday at 1.

Catherine Kinyara disciples 2 young women through their house church, every Thursday at 3.

Gati Nyamhanga disciples an older woman and her two sons, as well as her husband, through their house church, every Friday at 2.

Simeon Mwita disciples 18 people through Jordan House Church, every Friday at 4.

Eunice Ferdinand disciples 8 of her fellow young adults through their house church, every Saturday at 2.

We make sure that every new disciple has an audio version of the New Testament on a memory card, in a language that they can understand, and some way to listen to it.

How do these house churches work? Basically, the members pray for each other, listen to the Bible, make promises to change their lives, and then hold everyone accountable to their promises the next week. They learn to interpret the Bible through practicing interpreting it, together. They don’t stop there, though. Since knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, every member makes a promise for how they are going to love, in action, during the coming week. Each member knows that they have made a promise to God, and also that they will be held accountable to their promise, one week later. The full house church meeting program is attached here:

english-house-church-meeting-format-1Download

With a group of family, friends, and neighbors holding everyone accountable to their promise each week, change happens slowly and steadily. People slowly realize that many of their actions have been hurting the people around them, and even hurting themselves. They let go of these unloving actions, week by week, and start to become kinder, more giving, more loving, closer to the way that Jesus lived in the four gospels.

A few examples:

Pendo Mwita was addicted to witchcraft and was being bullied by demons, voices, and terrible dreams. She also fought constantly with her husband. When she broke her ties to the world of witchcraft and evil spirits, she found freedom from the spiritual attacks, and has been able to repair her relationship with her husband.

Esther had been holding a grudge against her neighbor, Gati, for 5 years. She decided to visit her neighbor and tell her that she forgave her. She also shared her testimony about how she had been changed. Her neighbor was so surprised that she decided to follow Jesus, too, and was baptized recently.

Robina has decided to follow Jesus, even while her husband is deeply committed to witchcraft. Their daughter is blind, and her husband has repeatedly tried to get various witches to do animal sacrifices to restore her eyesight. Robina has consistently stood up for her daughter, while also learning how to speak to her husband in a way that makes him respect her. He has finally stopped trying to use witchcraft on their daughter, and they all live in peace, together, these days. You can see more of her story here: https://davisrhodes.org/2022/06/23/imani-ya-mwanamke/

Joseph Mwita stopped beating his wife, stopped trying to control her every move, and stopped trying to break down her confidence. He also started to spend more time with her, and they are learning to enjoy being together.

Samweli believed that men were above women, and also that all women should have FGM performed, as soon as they were old enough. He was a bully towards younger women, and would be especially hard on anyone who hadn’t had FGM performed. He has stopped bullying young women, and he even helped to protect women from FGM this past December.

Baba Mariamu was always suspicious of his wife, tried to control her every move, and beat her regularly. He has stopped beating her, given her freedom, and they have reconciled.

Mama Baraka was frustrated with her life, and she took this anger out on her children, beating them heavily for the smallest mistakes, or even out of suspicion. She would also insult them, calling them “dogs”, or “brainless”. A couple months ago, she promised to stop doing this, and everyone agrees that she is keeping her promise. She says that she is most surprised at how well her children behave now and how much peace there is at home.

There are many more examples that we could give. This post is already too long, and I won’t make it longer. If you would like to hear more examples, I would love to set up a phone call; it’s surprisingly easy for me to call you, almost anywhere in the world.

Finally, here are some pictures of these new disciples being baptized; a baptism into an entirely new life.

You can make more of this happen at by donating in whichever way is easiest:

Venmo: @DavisRhodes
PayPal: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com
Zelle: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com

We Lost Our Friend

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Content Warning: What follows is a very sad story, concerning the death of a child.

Christopha Paulo Matiko (Topha for short) was a dear friend of ours here at QuadW Tarime. Last year, we had started a Bible study group for children, and at the children’s insistence, we transformed it into a house church; Topha was a part of that group. Cassidy Barker, Doto Francis, and Gloria Sentozi would go meet with them every Monday evening. Topha was a lovable young man. He had an undiagnosed mental illness; possibly autism. Everyone agreed that it was exciting to talk with him about the Bible and hear the creative things that he would come up with; thoughts that no one else would have thought. He never quite understood the concept of raising one’s hand; he would just blurt out his answers and his prayer requests, adding so much life to the meeting every week. One night, we got the news that he drowned, and it really cut us all to the core. We still do not understand how he ended up in a small pond that was fed by an underground spring. Maybe he just got curious about the water and didn’t understand that it could be dangerous. He was 12.

Many people talked about him in the days following his death. One of the comments that people made over and over again was that two other children had also drowned in the same pond recently. Obviously, we were deeply disturbed, even angry, that the danger was already known and that Topha’s death might have been prevented, so we started asking the people of the surrounding neighborhood (called Rebu) about how this pond could be made safer. Every neighborhood in Tanzania has its own elected official, called a “neighborhood chairman”; we requested that the Rebu neighborhood chairman call a meeting of everyone living in Rebu to discuss what we could do.

We were grateful to see that the people of Rebu really had the will to do something about it; they agreed that it was unacceptable, and that a little construction work could transform it from a dangerous pond to a protected and useful well. They couldn’t quite afford the materials for the construction, but they were willing to help with the work if we could bring some materials. The Tarime town government gave us a budget of $2,000 for the materials, but something didn’t seem right. Knowing the selfish side of our own human natures and how construction often presents an easy opportunity for theft of materials and money, we asked the Rebu neighborhood chairman if we could go with him to the pond and make another budget. He brought his own construction workers, but again, we could tell that even their budget of $900 was heavily inflated. Finally, we went back to the pond with a long-time trusted friend and church member, and he was fully honest with us, that the whole thing could be done for $400. We went back to the neighborhood chairman, who said that sounded good, and that we shouldn’t waste any more time.

This morning, we brought 3 dump-truck-loads of large construction stones to the site, as well as a dump-truck-load of construction sand, to start making the area safe. To protect all other children, in memory of Topha.

Elder Mwita checking the depth of different places in the little pond.

This is the best picture that we have of Topha.

Mvumilivu

~ dwr0003 ~ Leave a comment

Good morning friends,

Here at QuadW Tarime, we are looking for some American team members; young adults who are willing to commit 12 months to working with us here in Tanzania.

If you know anyone who might like to join us, or if you know someone who works with young adults, I would love to be introduced. We take care of housing, food, health insurance, health care, immigration permits, Swahili, ministry, and cultural training, and we pay a $210/month monthly stipend. 

And here is some good news:

We are very thankful to see quite a few folks finding new life and new joy out in Gamasara.

If you read my previous updates, you may recognize Gamasara as the place where we worked with local women to protect young girls from the FGM rituals back in December. (You can read about this at https://davisrhodes.org/2022/12/17/kulinda-hawa-mabinti-wapendwa-wa-mungu/)

It’s not a happy place.

Besides being one of the last strongholds of FGM, it’s also a place of male domination and domestic violence. Men often murder their wives and remarry, with impunity. Men cheat and practice polygamy, and oppressive, destructive forms of witchcraft are common.

So I wasn’t sure how to reply when QuadW residents Tucker McDonald and Raphael Musa told me that they wanted to start a house church in Gamasara.

But Tucker and Raphael were persistent. And we decided that they could start, as long as they started by being introduced to the people of Gamasara by Pastor Wikendi, a friend and long-time resident, born and raised in Gamasara.

Tucker, Raphael, and Pastor Wikendi spent a long, long day trudging from house to house as Wikendi introduced them to family after family in Gamasara.

As it turned out, the introductions were surprisingly helpful. It was only two months later that Raphael and Tucker had started a first house church. It was an exciting time.

There were plenty of challenges. The message of changing your life, following Jesus, and choosing a life of love was hard for a lot of these folks. One man, after hearing the good news, told Tucker and Raphael that he never wanted to see them again. And he went farther, and told them never to come near his house again.

But a few folks really started to change their whole lives, across the board. They started to let go of witchcraft, violence to their children, violence against women, and their commitment to FGM.

And one young man, Amos Mwita, started to tell more and more of his neighbors about how his life had changed, and how a life of love could be better.

Some weren’t interested, but others were. And Amos was persistent (the title means “one who perseveres”). And since March 12th, Amos has led 24 people to follow Jesus and enter into a life of love. We’re feeling so much joy, and momentum, about what the Holy Spirit is doing. These 24 new disciples currently make up 5 house churches (in addition to the original house church). 

If you get a chance, please pray:

  1. That every one of these new disciples would lead one new person to follow Jesus
  2. That every one of these house churches would start one new house church

Here are some pictures of these new disciples being baptized into a new life:

Moyo wa Mtoto

~ dwr0003 ~ Leave a comment

Good morning friends,

I really appreciate each one of you who is praying for us so steadily.

A quick review, we are a team of 5 Tanzanians, 1 Mexican, and 3 Americans who are making disciples, starting house churches, and loving the neighbors who live around our house.

We’ve been doing our best to make disciples among all age groups. 3 members of our team, Cassidy Barker, Dinnah Sylvester, and Nancy Martinez, have a special calling for children. They wanted to make disciples with children, but they weren’t sure where to start. It seemed harder, somehow, for a child to understand the idea of changing her life, turning away from selfishness and deciding to live a life of love. It seemed harder for a child to be able to make a long-term decision and stick with it. So we weren’t quite sure what to do.

We didn’t want to let that hold us back though; we decided to just try something, though we weren’t quite sure what we were doing. If it didn’t work, we would learn from it. We started a kids group, meeting on Monday nights at 8, hoping that it might one day become a house church. We kept it very simple at the beginning; just singing a song and teaching a Bible story.

For a while, it looked like it wouldn’t go too far. So we comforted ourselves by saying that the kids were learning about the Bible, which was a good start. Then, when they got older, they could remember what we taught them, and they might change their lives and start living like Jesus. We were just happy on the weeks when they paid attention and didn’t turn the Bible story into a joke.

But slowly, we were pleasantly surprised as they started to take it more seriously. One girl, 11 years old, started to take a leadership role. We noticed this, and then one Monday night when we were on a break, this girl led the group to meet. We hadn’t even told her to! That was encouraging.

Here are pictures of the first weeks of the children meeting:

Then one week, this girl accidentally went to a meeting of one of the house churches that we had started. She saw the adults reading the Bible, teaching each other about it, praying for each other, and then making promises about how they would change their lives to live more like Jesus.

I guess she told all of the other kids, because the next week, when we showed up for the kids group, they had some demands. “Why don’t we make promises in our group? Why don’t we pray for each other’s needs?”

We responded, “You have a lot of heart. You know it’s not a game, making a promise in front of God every week. It means you have to keep the promise, you know. Are you ready? Are all of you ready?”

It took a couple weeks, but they decided that they were all ready. So we allowed them to turn the kids group into a house church meeting. They worship. They pray for each other. They read the Bible, and then they teach each other what they learned from the passage. Then, everyone makes a promise about how they will live out the passage in the coming week; a promise before God about how they will change their lives.

We were really touched when several of them promised to meet some homeless kids and help them. We wanted to support them, and I knew from a couple years of working with homeless kids in Tarime that these homeless children are bitter, tough and mean. It wasn’t something to rush into. So this last Saturday, we hosted everyone at our house. We invited a few hand-picked homeless children, who weren’t quite as bitter, and we invited the children from the house church. We prepared food for everyone, so that this could be a time for them to meet each other, so that the kids from the house church could hear from the homeless kids about what they need. It was a happy time. It’s good to see a little of the kingdom of God here on earth. The title means “the heart of a child”.

Tumlinde Huyu

~ dwr0003 ~ 1 Comment

Content Warning: This post is about protecting 95 young women from the Tarime FGM rituals. Some of the information is disturbing, and may be triggering. Certainly not for younger audiences. The final message is one of hope, though.

At QuadW Tarime, we are a community of 5 Tanzanians, 1 Mexican, and 3 Americans who follow Jesus. We do our best to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we make disciples; disciples who make disciples.

In May, Dinnah Sylvester and Nancy Martinez noticed that there were quite a few young women in our neighborhood. Dinnah is of the Kuria tribe, the majority tribe in Tarime, and she knew from her experience that the Kuria tribe generally does not value girls and young women. They make them work hard, insult them, and generally try to break down their confidence. Men do this to maintain their power, and then older women do this to younger women because this is the way that they were treated growing up. There are some beautiful exceptions, but by and large, it is very hard being a young Kuria woman.

So Dinnah and Nancy took an obvious step to start a disciple group for young Kuria women. They meet every Sunday at 4, anywhere from 8 to 20 girls. Dinnah and Nancy affirm their worth in God’s eyes, and they teach them to affirm each other. They give them decision-making power in deciding the group’s activities, and teach them how to lead our evening prayer meetings, doing their best to rebuild their confidence.

As they journeyed with these young women, they realized that the tohara season was coming up. The girls were talking about it in guarded whispers, and some adults were bringing it up as a prayer request during our evening prayer meetings. “We are nearing the twelfth month, the season of the tohara, a season of danger for young women, let’s ask God that he would be near to them, that he would help them.”

It’s a sad fact of life that some of the Kuria tribe (the majority tribe here in Tarime) continues to practice female genital mutilation (FGM). Different villages do this at different dates, but it is generally done from late November until New Year’s Day. It is a religious ritual, and the ritual itself is called the “tohara”. In the Kuria version of the practice, the clitoris is removed with a razor blade. It is generally done to young women who have recently gone through puberty. Once the wound heals, she is considered to be ready for marriage, and is normally married within 1-2 years.

These days, most Kuria women who I know have not had the practice performed. Inter-tribal marriage steadily decreases the power of the practice, and it is also illegal; at least two practitioners were arrested in the Tarime area over this last month. The growth of Christianity, Islam, and health education have also steadily poured water on the fire. There are, however, a group of rural Kuria elders who cling fiercely to the practice. They organize a secret tohara ritual in every rural Kuria village, every year, and then persuade as many people as possible to send their pubescent daughters. Many Kuria men who live in rural areas also continue to pay higher bride prices for Kuria brides who have had the practice performed. I don’t have any hard data on this, but my dear friend Mwita Baita, a Kuria, estimates that anywhere from 600 to 1,800 young Kuria women are cut each year.

So as Dinnah and Nancy were doing their best to love these young women, they asked the rest of the QuadW Tarime community what we could do to protect the young women during this season.

We agreed that they would need to have some careful, vulnerable conversations with them, to help determine who might be at risk. And not only them, but also any friends or neighbors who they knew who might be at risk.

And then Raphael suggested an idea, “I know at Gamasara UMC the Emmanuel Center does this camp to protect young women from the tohara. At least, they used to. Maybe, if anyone is in danger, they could go there.”

I replied, “Yeah, they did have a camp to protect young women, in 2018, 2019, and 2020. They didn’t have it last year, though. They didn’t have the funds for it, and they didn’t have enough volunteers to coordinate it. You know, it’s a lot of work to take care of all those young girls for however many weeks. BUT I did work with the Emmanuel Center folks on a grant application for funding a girls camp for 2022. I haven’t heard back, but maybe the Sunflower Foundation will agree to fund the camp. And then if y’all feel God, you know, giving you a call, or a passion in this direction, we could be the extra volunteers that Emmanuel Center needs to make it happen. So something to just be thinking about, talking with God about.”

Soon enough, The Sunflower Foundation in Melbourne, Australia (https://sunflowerfoundation.ngo/) did reach out to let me know that they had decided to award The Emmanuel Center a very generous $4,000 Australian dollars to protect young Kuria women from the tohara.

I brought the question back to the community, and the decision was unanimous. Cassidy, Dinnah, Doto, Glory, Nancy, Raphael, Tucker, and Veronica all wanted to do their best to help The Emmanuel Center to protect these young women.

On October 24th, we had a great meeting with the Emmanuel Center leaders; Rev. Anna Migera, Sarah Wambura, and Rev. Wikendi Juma. They were excited and energized, thankful for some sudden outside help in their everyday work of protecting and empowering women in the Gamasara community.

We all agreed that the next step would be a hard one.

Over the next month we would need to seek out girls who were in danger, and persuade the girls and their families to attend the girls camp, instead of the tohara.

As we moved forward with this, we faced all kinds of complicated resistance, but I will just give one example, which may illustrate the larger situation.

Dinnah, Nancy, and Doto quickly learned that an 11-year-old young woman who I’ll call Hope (not her real name) had decided to go to the tohara, once the time came. This seemed odd, since her father was of a different tribe. They talked with her mother, a Kuria, who explained that she did not want her daughter to go to the tohara, but she was afraid that her daughter would run away to the tohara anyways. She explained that another young woman, their neighbor, was from a very traditional Kuria family. It was her year to go to the tohara, and she had been doing her best to persuade as many young women as possible to go with her. I’ll call this young woman Bhoke.

Bhoke had told Hope that the tohara was how you become a real woman. She had told her that it’s just an injection, and you’ll get free candy and gifts if you go. Everyone will celebrate you. And you’ll be a woman, ready to get married.

Hope had been easily swayed by Bhoke, so Dinnah, Nancy, and Doto went to talk to Hope. First, they listened, to get a full picture of why she wanted to go. Then, they explained in detail about what the cutting is, how terribly it would hurt, and that it is irreversible. They explained that we can be good Kuria and followers of Jesus, but we have to leave the ancestor worship behind. Some things we just have to leave. God loves us so much, they explained, and if we follow him, he will be faithful to us.

They explained about the camp as well, and by the end of the conversation, Hope had agreed with them, and agreed to go to the girls camp instead of the tohara.

A few days later, Bhoke came back from visiting her extended family. It was heartbreaking; she had been given new shoes, new clothes, and some spending money. Her family had printed invitations to pass out to everyone for her upcoming tohara. She came to Hope again, with two friends who were also planning to go. They showed Hope the gifts, and told her that she had to come as well, if she was going to be a real woman.

Hope replied, “Myself, I cannot. I am a servant of God, and that is wrong.” They were startled, but then they laughed at her and skipped away. Shortly after, Doto saw Hope again, and Hope told her, “Please remember to take me to the camp. If I don’t go to the camp, I know I will give in and go with them. They are pressuring me so much.”

These sorts of interchanges played out all over Gamasara and Tarime as we did our best to persuade young women and their families not to go to the tohara. On December 9th, Hope and 66 other girls showed up at Gamasara UMC (which hosts King Emmanuel Primary School) for the Emmanuel Center girls camp. It is an overnight, 19-day event where young women ages 8-15 play together, learn about their value in God’s eyes, learn the truth about FGM and child marriage, and learn to affirm one another. It covers the entire duration of the tohara in Tarime and Gamasara, so that there is no danger of them being cut. Many strong women, including pastors, nurses, and government officials have come to teach them. Every day, more young women arrive, and we counted 95 young women on Thursday.

We are having a great time.

Duck, duck, goose ❤

Today’s Lesson: You have been wonderfully made

The Emmanuel Center heroes; Kuria women brave enough to host the camp. Here, they are preparing cabbage for dinner.

Each day, I marvel at the courage and the hard work of the Kuria women who are putting on the camp. They are choosing, every day, to stand up to shame, verbal abuse, and threats of violence from their traditional Kuria neighbors who want to hold on to the practice. They wake up early to care for the girls, and they watch them all the way until bedtime, preparing food for 95 girls over open fires, three times each day. Courage and hard work are two hallmarks of the Kuria tribe. I would argue that God is making these women to be more fully Kuria, not less so, as they lead their community to abandon this practice. As they come closer with God, he is returning the Kuria to be the wonderfully unique people who he created them to be. As he does so, this practice, as well as other ways of oppressing young women, will fall by the wayside.

The title means, “Let’s protect her”. I’m so thankful that what was once a normal practice in Tarime is now on its way out. I’m thankful that so many people, from 4 continents, wanted to join together to protect 95 young women from this practice, and to teach them to teach others, as we help the Kuria in their efforts to usher this out, and usher in a little more of the Kingdom of God, here on earth. Specifically, I want to thank:

  • Sarah Wambura, Community Coordinator of The Emmanuel Center for Women and Children
  • Rev. Wikendi Juma, Pastor of Gamasara UMC, which hosts The Emmanuel Center
  • Rev. Anna Migera, Communication and Reporting Coordinator for the Emmanuel Center
  • The many Emmanuel Center women who have volunteered to help care for these young women
  • The Sunflower Foundation in Melbourne, Australia
  • Evan Lorendo and Rev. Eric Soard, for introducing me to the Sunflower Foundation
  • Northside Church in Jackson, Tennessee, for your generous sponsorship of Emmanuel Center Primary School, which provides the space to host the girls camp
  • Bernadette St. Amand and Sylvia Songe for all you did to get the girls camp started
  • QuadW Tarime residents Cassidy Barker, Dinnah Sylvester, Doto Francis, Glory Sentozi, Nancy Martinez, Raphael Musa, Tucker McDonald, and Veronica Rhodes for all of your hard work to make this happen
  • Lynn Barker, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Este Gardner, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Grace UMC in Dallas, Texas, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Larry Duggins, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Anna Grace Glaize, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Katie Kirk, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Paul Ott, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant
  • Patty Holley, for giving generously to cover some expenses that were not covered by the grant

You can make more of this happen by donating to QuadW Tarime at:

Venmo: @DavisRhodes
PayPal: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com
Zelle: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com

Tax-deductible: https://www.wesleycollegetzfoundation.com/donate2022 write QuadW Tarime in the comment box

Or to The Emmanuel Center (tax-deductible) at:

https://advance.umcmission.org/p-495-emmanuel-center-for-women-and-children-tarime.aspx

Or to The Sunflower Foundation (tax-deductible) at:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EYN7JEBDDD5AQ

P.S. One frequently asked question is, “why?”

I cannot do justice to this in a few short sentences, and I do not really understand myself. But a few reasons:

  1. Traditional Kuria men pay higher bride prices for Kuria women who have been cut; they say it makes them more submissive and less likely to cheat.
  2. It is a religious practice. Many Kuria believe that their ancestors will curse them if they allow any of their daughters not to be cut.
  3. General social pressure; traditionally, women who had not been cut were unmarried outcasts, and “msagani” is still a common Kuria insult for women who have not been cut.
  4. The elders charge about $20 from each young woman to have the practice performed, and they don’t want this lucrative opportunity to end.
  5. An elder Kuria man once told me, “Long, long ago, our women were very wild. We had failed to control them. And some tribe from the North advised us to do this, they said it would work to control them.”
  6. The Masai, the Kikuyu, and several other nomadic or previously nomadic people groups from the Nile/the Horn of Africa have had the same practice( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation ). Some continue to practice, and some have stopped in the recent past. The Kuria tribe formed when a nomadic tribe from the Nile migrated south and met with the Bantu tribes on the Eastern border of Lake Victoria ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuria_people).

“Nimekuwa Kiumbe Kipya!”

~ dwr0003 ~ Leave a comment

Good morning, friends.

I am Davis Rhodes, and we are a team of 4 Tanzanians, 1 Mexican, and 3 Americans, making disciples among the Kuria people here in Northern Tanzania. We are QuadW Missional Skunkworks Tarime, hosted by Wesley College and located at Wesley House in the neighborhood of Songambele B, in Tarime.

Witchcraft is common in Tarime. In Tarime, “witchcraft” refers to attempts to persuade or manipulate the spirits of those who have passed away, as well as fallen angels, in order to receive help and favors here on earth.

I’ve heard many different things about witchcraft in Tarime, and I won’t be able to do justice to them here. Briefly, most Tanzanians believe that when an older woman or man dies, they remain active here on earth, and especially active among their children and grandchildren. They are believed to have great power over almost every aspect of one’s life, and are generally similar in behavior to how they were during their life. Tanzanians also believe that there is a separate class of spirits, often called “jini” or “mapepo”. These are fallen angels; evil spiritual beings of incredible power, who often appear in human form on earth. A recurring theme in Tanzanian folk stories, for example, is a man who looked only for physical beauty in a wife and cared about nothing else. This led him to marry a jini who had incarnated herself as a beautiful woman, and then she kills him shortly after the wedding, or works great mischief among his extended family, etc.

In Tarime, witchcraft falls into two categories. “Uganga” is cooperating with these spiritual forces to do generally beneficial things, and it is legal. “Uchawi” is cooperating with these spiritual forces to do generally malicious things. Uchawi is illegal, and kept secret. There is also herbal/traditional medicine, “tiba asili”, which does not make use of spiritual forces; this is not a form of witchcraft.

Of course, “beneficial” things depend on what the user perceives as beneficial; one very common use of uganga is for men to put spells on their wives to make them docile and obedient. Another common use of uganga, for men and women, is to put a spell on a member of the opposite sex that will make him/her agree to a marriage proposal.

In our everyday work of loving our neighbors and making disciples here in Tarime, we met a practitioner of uganga who I’ll call Salome (not her real name). Shortly after meeting her, she invited 3 members of our team to her house; Mwita, Raphael, and Tucker.

She knew that they were followers of Jesus, and she really enjoyed talking with them about spiritual things. She got excited, showing them all of her tools, herbs, and lotions, talking about where she got each of them and what they were used for. “This lotion was made from a lion’s carcass that I found; this one, from a crocodile.”

After a while, Mwita asked her about how her life was going, and the mood suddenly became more somber. “To be honest with you, I am really suffering”, she began. “Many years ago, my grandfathers came to me in a dream and told me to start living this kind of life. At first, it was good, very good. So much power, and easy money. But the grandfathers, they want more and more. I cure people of sickness, but I can’t cure myself. I help people to conceive pregnancies, but the grandfathers have stopped me from conceiving any more pregnancies, myself. And my husband left me. I used to have another business, selling clothes, but they have forbidden me from doing any other kind of work. They come to me in dreams, wake me up, and tell me to climb mountains, or to travel far away, on foot, even to the Serengeti. I’m so scared of what might happen to me if I say no. These days, my grandfathers even forbid me from taking payment for my work sometimes, and that makes us so hungry, me and my children. I have so many patients who come to me. They tell me about their problems, and I heal them, but me! I am suffering more than my patients, and there is no one to heal me! I want to go to church to see if Jesus can free me from them, but when I decide to go, I find that my feet and legs won’t move on Sunday morning. I sit in place, unable to move, until evening, until all of the worship services are over. They threaten me, too, that if I seek Jesus, they will take my mind, they say I’ll become like a wild animal. To be serious, I do not know what I am going to do.”

Mwita’s own mother had been a practitioner of uganga, and he responded with compassion and understanding. “I know it is scary, mother. It is obvious that you already know what you need to do, but it is difficult. I know. We will be here with you. We will be your friends, and we won’t leave you. Today is Saturday, and we will pray for you to be able to attend the worship service tomorrow.”

On Sunday, we were all surprised to see Salome at Rebu UMC. She said it was her first time at a worship service in years.

Over the weeks that followed, Mwita, Raphael, and Tucker continued to show patient, persistent love to Salome. They visited her over and over, talked with her about her fears, her suffering, and what Jesus was like. She really enjoyed their visits, and one Saturday she told them, “Wait, let me get a little faith, and I will gather all of my things of witchcraft and I will burn them, and then I will tell the spirits to leave. And then, I want to be baptized! I’m telling you, I am ready!”

The following week, Salome, Mwita, Raphael, and Tucker began meeting for prayer every morning at 7 a.m.

And on the next Sunday, October 23rd, she showed up to the worship service with a backpack bursting with gourds, charms, oils, and creams. She was shy, but determined, as she emptied the contents and asked that we helped her to burn them and break her ties with the spirits who had been persecuting her.

Then we all went down to the river to celebrate her entering into a new life.

The following Sunday, October 30th, the pastor asked if anyone had any testimony to share. Several people shared, and then Salome stood up. She couldn’t contain her smile as she said, “To be serious, I have become a new creature! I am free from the spirits of my grandfathers. I don’t have many things to say, but I feel so much joy!”

The title means, “I have become a new creature”. If you could pray for her as she steps into this new life, as she begins the hard work of starting a new business, and as she begins to make disciples herself, she would really appreciate that.

You can make more of this happen at by donating in whichever way is easiest:

Venmo: @DavisRhodes
PayPal: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com
Zelle: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com

Uhuru kwa Wafungwa

~ dwr0003 ~ Leave a comment

Good morning friends.

At QuadW Tarime, we are a community of 4 Tanzanians, 1 Mexican, and 3 Americans living together, praying together, serving together, and making disciples together.

Every evening at 9 pm, we pray with our neighbors.

One of the first neighbors to come pray with us in the evenings was Mama Jeni. After praying with us every evening for a while, she asked if she could make an announcement. We agreed, and in her announcement, she asked if it would be possible for us to start preaching every night. We laughed, and agreed. Since then, we have had a very short sermon each night at evening prayer.

Mama Jeni (center), with her daughters, Jeni (left) and Fatuma (right)

We were looking forward to seeing Mama Jeni the following night, to show her that we had taken her suggestion seriously, but she did not show up. This was odd, as she was usually so consistent.

The next morning, her daughter Jeni shocked us by telling us that Mama Jeni was in jail.

“Why? What happened?”, we asked, without thinking. We were just so surprised.

Jeni relayed to us how Mama Jeni and her friend Mama Kiri had never gotten along with one of their neighboring families. I don’t want to accuse this family publicly, so I’ll simply call them Neighbor 1 and Neighbor 2, a married couple.

The anger and hatred had built up after years of fighting and angry silence. Finally, Neighbor 1 saw a chance to really wound them. She had hired Mama Jeni and Mama Kiri to fill a large plastic drum with water. When the job was done, Neighbor 1 claimed that she had found poison in the drum, and that Mama Jeni and Mama Kiri were trying to poison her. No witnesses, no pictures, no evidence, but Neighbor 1 and 2 bribed the judge and the police. Mama Jeni and Mama Kiri were taken to the police station, given a very short trial (again, no witnesses), sentenced to 14 months in prison, and taken to their cells, all within one day.

We couldn’t believe our ears. How could a sentencing happen so fast? How could the judge hand them such a long sentence, without any witnesses or evidence?

The following Sunday, we went to the jail with their families and with quite a few of our neighbors. It was certainly true; there were Mama Jeni and Mama Kiri, wearing the yellow gowns that female prisoners wear in Tanzania. We greeted them, and they tried to hold back their tears. I’d never seen grown women of the Kuria tribe crying before. We prayed for them and promised them that we would do anything that we could to help them.

That Sunday evening, we had a meeting with their families. We were all confused as we tried to make sense of the details of the case. What we came up with, though, was that Mama Jeni and Mama Kiri had panicked when they were brought in front of the judge. In their panic, they had asked if we could please forgive each other and end this misunderstanding (the most common way of resolving disagreements in Tanzania). The judge replied that asking for forgiveness means that you have admitted to the crime. He ignored the other required paperwork, skipped due process required to imprison someone in Tanzania, and sentenced them to 14 months; even though his primary court only has the authority to sentence someone to 6 months or less.

We talked about what we might be able to do. It seemed easy enough. The judge had made some very basic mistakes in the sentencing. Couldn’t we just find a lawyer, point out the mistakes, and appeal the case to the Tarime District Court? Surely we wouldn’t encounter much resistance from Neighbor 1 and Neighbor 2 at the district court.

Between the two families, they could come up with $75. Hiring the lawyer would cost $140, so we put together our personal savings to help them pay the remaining $65.

It was easy enough to get an appeal granted, and the hearing was set for July 15th, which still meant 8 weeks in jail. We continued to visit them at the jail each Sunday, usually with their families and our neighbors. We felt so badly for their children, separated suddenly from their mothers. We did our best to visit these children and spend time with them, and one member of our community, Nancy Martinez, became an especially close and constant friend to these girls.

Our lawyer immediately petitioned for bail. But instead of hearing that it was granted, we were stunned to learn that the neighbors who had accused them had hired their own lawyer. Their lawyer was more skilled, experienced, and expensive than ours. He countered our request for bail, and the district judge agreed, and denied our request. We could hardly believe it. Neighbor 1 and Neighbor 2 were really willing to invest quite a bit of money, just to keep their neighbors in jail.

We met with the families again. We talked about hiring a better lawyer, and about trying to reach out to more contacts in the Tarime legal system. Shouldn’t we try and get more help, to counter this lawyer?

After quite a bit of talking it over, one of the families told us that they had good reason to trust this lawyer deeply. They simply, humbly, asked us to trust them and their lawyer. It was a difficult decision, and our whole team felt pretty anxious about it, but we agreed to trust them.

As the district court hearing drew nearer, we became more anxious. There were rumors that the accusing party had bribed the district judge. At one point, the accusing party sent a representative asking Mama Jeni’s husband to sign a vague document, on the promise that it could end the feud and free them from jail. He brought it to the lawyer, and the lawyer told him that this is a common legal trap, so he didn’t sign. Around this time, we learned that the primary court judge who had originally sentenced them had been removed from office and was now being investigated, due to multiple legal mistakes, and accusations of corruption.

Finally, the district court hearing arrived, and it was disheartening as well. Our lawyer didn’t even show up. The prosecuting attorney made an impressive showing, in spite of the original sentencing mistakes, and things looked grim. The judge said that she would review the case and deliver the sentence the following Friday, July 22nd.

We regrouped and met with their families. We all agreed that things looked bad, but we decided to reach out to Mwita, our assistant site director. Someone asked if our dear friend Anna Migera might be able to help as well. We reached out to Mwita and Anna, and they agreed to ask for a meeting with the district court judge to see if anything could be done.

Mwita Baita, a Tarime native, is QuadW Tarime Assistant Site Director, and a dear friend. I’m so thankful for him.

The meeting took place on the following Wednesday. After listening to Mwita and Anna, the judge fiercely replied that the time to take action had passed. She asked them to leave and to just wait for her to deliver the sentence on Friday.

On Friday morning, we met and prayed for the case, but we did not feel much hope inside. Friday is our day of rest, so most of us went back to our rooms after praying. A few hours later, as we were trying to rest, I became very annoyed by a large group of children who burst through our front door and ran into our house. “How many times do we have to tell them not to come in without knocking…” I said to myself.

Dinnah and Doto went to meet them, then suddenly knocked on our door, “Davis, Veronica, njoo!” (Come quick!)

“They are free! The sentence is just 3 months of community service. And even that… it’s only 2 hours, on Monday and Tuesday! They are out of jail, and they’ll be here soon!”

I couldn’t believe it. I called all of the other family members, scrambling to confirm it. Yes, yes, they all agreed. They are free, it’s over.

Evening prayer that night was a lively affair. Mama Jeni sang a beautiful, long song for us. Then she told us about how she hoped that we could continue visiting the other women at the jail. She wanted to continue showing them love, encouraging them, and helping them to become disciples of Jesus. Then, Dinnah preached. We were finally able to show Mama Jeni that we had taken her request seriously.

We had a party together the following day, here are some pictures. The title means, “freedom for prisoners” (Luke 4).

Left to right: Mama Jeni’s older sister, Davis, Jeni (Mama Jeni’s daughter), Dinnah, Nancy, Doto, a relative, Asha (Mama Jeni’s daughter), Mama Jeni’s husband, Mama Jeni

You can make more of this happen by donating in whichever way is easiest:

Venmo: @DavisRhodes
PayPal: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com
Zelle: daviswarrenrhodesjr@gmail.com

Note: We don’t really understand why they were allowed to go free. Mwita said that he did not know, but his best guess was that the judge was a basically kind and just woman. After our lawyer explained the case and the reason for the appeal, she wanted to set the women free. However, she also understood the pride of the Kuria tribe and their penchant for long-lasting, bloody feuds. After seeing the lengths to which the accusing family was going to win the case, she wanted to finish the matter by making them feel like they had won. She did not want it to be appealed, nor did she want out-of-court violence, but neither did she want the women to actually be sentenced to any time in jail. This was the reason for denying them bail, and for sentencing them to three months of light community service. I can’t say I understand this entirely, but this is our best explanation so far.

Imani ya Mwanamke

~ dwr0003 ~ 1 Comment

Good morning, friends.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? What does it mean to make disciples of Jesus?

Living as a mission team in Tarime- 4 Tanzanian young adults, 3 American young adults, and 1 Mexican young adult- living like Jesus, serving like Jesus, and making disciples of Jesus, these are two hard questions that we have been trying to answer each day.

A disciple is someone who practices a teacher’s way of living or way of thought. So at first brush, the answer seems simple… practice Jesus’s way of life and thought.

But then, of course, we are made with a lovely variety of personalities, shaped by our equally unique backgrounds, and we don’t live in 1st-century Palestine. What does it mean for me, being who I am, to live in the way of Jesus in the place where I am?

And then making disciples… it becomes more complex when we start to meet our neighbors where they are and invite them into this way of living. How can I know what this way of living will look like for my neighbor? 

This is what we have been trying:
Every evening, we pray and sing together for about 30 minutes, from 9 until 9:30 pm. To our surprise, this has been very popular with our neighbors. 30-40 of them show up each evening. It’s a happy, holy time, as everyone enjoys singing to God together. According to one of our team members, “The neighbors really like to pray at evening, because it makes them feel safe for the night. They feel like they will be protected from any witchcraft or demons for the whole night, from any evil forces that might try to come through their dreams.”

We wanted to see if any of these neighbors might want to enter more deeply into day-in, day-out discipleship; changing their everyday actions, and opening their hearts to be changed by God. So we announced that we were starting two groups, one for women, and one for young men.

In each group, we come together and read a story from Jesus’s life, and we talk about what we learned from it.

Then, everyone makes 2 promises: 

#1 Something that we will do differently during the coming week to live more like Jesus

#2 Someone who we will meet with and encourage to live like Jesus

The following week, we ask each person if they fulfilled their promises, we study the life of Jesus again, and make new promises.

Many people come once and then do not come back. Living like Jesus is a hard change for someone to make, and we continue to show patient and persistent love to the folks who weren’t quite ready.

When we do see someone steadily attending for 3 weeks, we give them a Swahili recording of the New Testament on a memory card, which they can listen to on a cheap radio or a small phone. Most folks do not enjoy reading, or cannot read, and we want them to have a full picture of who Jesus was and how he lived, so they can discern what it would look like for them to live like Jesus, in their circumstances.


Samweli has been taking steps to live like Jesus, and encouraging others to live like Jesus, week after week. Recently, he got a better work opportunity in the neighboring town of Sirari. We met with him and decided to start another group for young men, there in Sirari. It’s been going for 3 weeks now.

Manchale has been taking steps to live like Jesus, and encouraging others to live like Jesus, week after week. Living like Jesus has helped him to realize that he should start helping his wife around the house. For the first time in his life, he is getting water from the well, washing clothes, and walking his children to school.

Sabato has been taking steps to live like Jesus, and encouraging others to live like Jesus, week after week. He has realized that he should do his best to help people who have handicaps, and people who have recently lost a loved one. He spent all day helping his neighbors to dig graves, when two children (from different families) died within 24 hours of each other a few weeks ago.

I’ll refer to one woman as “Robina”. This is not her real name, and I will not share any pictures of her. Robina has been taking steps to live like Jesus, and encouraging others to live like Jesus, week after week. Her husband has no such faith, and believes that he has the right to dominate her, and he continues to appeal to his ancestors and the powers of darkness for power. Her decision has not been easy, but she continues to become more firmly committed.

At first, going to a woman’s disciple group and making commitments each week didn’t make too many waves.


A few weeks later, though, they noticed that their one child was no longer nursing, or eating. Hadn’t been, for a while now. Robina suggested that they take her to the doctor, and to the church next-door to pray for her. Her husband said they should take her out to a certain rural, remote location; he knew a good witch-doctor out there.


After a few weeks of fighting, the man inevitably won, and he took the child out to the remote village. The witch-doctor forced the 15-month-old to drink a brown herb soup, 3 cups per day, and they appealed to their ancestors each day for healing. As the situation worsened, Robina finally got desperate and asked us at QuadW Tarime to intervene. This was brave and risky; it is a big no-no in Kuria culture to ask for outsiders to intervene, against the will of your husband.


We visited them in the rural village, and were shocked to see that the child was no longer walking, or even opening her eyes. Fearing that the child could die of malnutrition, we pleaded with Robina’s husband to allow us to take the child to the Regional Referral Hospital. He told us that he didn’t think it would help, since something had gone wrong with the ancestors, but if we wanted to pay for it, he would let us do it.

We got the child to the major hospital within 24 hours, and one of the QuadW Tarime members (Gilbert) decided to stay at the hospital to help the mother with caring for the child and advocating for her in front of the doctors.

As far as I understand, the child was suffering from acute vitamin A deficiency. As they gave her IVs and fed her a type nutrient-rich milk, she slowly began to come back to health. The next day, the eye doctor came and said that the child would almost certainly never be able to see. As I understand it, vitamin A deficiency had caused xeropthalmia and major cornea damage. He told us that this normally happens shortly before death, and if we had waited a few more days, we probably would have lost the child.

This was crushing news for Robina, and made much worse by the way her husband reacted.

After returning, we realized that her husband believed that it was his wife’s mismanagement that had caused her child to lose her sight, and he saw that she was unsubmissive and unfit as a wife, due to her decision to ask for outside help. He set a plan in motion to send his wife and child to the village, and to look for someone who, in his view, would be a “better” wife.

At this point, Robina had a decision to make; to continue following Jesus, or to give up.

The prosperity gospel, so prevalent in Tanzania, would have her believe that these trials were evidence that she was not favored by God, and that she was wasting her time by following Jesus.
But after a few months as a disciple, she was beginning to learn that God wasn’t like that. She didn’t understand where exactly all of this suffering had come from, but she chose to believe that it wasn’t God, and she chose to keep following Jesus.

In fact, she doubled down on her commitment. In addition to our women’s disciple group, she joined the nearby Pentecostal church, joined the choir, and began to meet with the pastor regularly.

Instead of giving up on her husband and submitting to his tyranny, she began to pray for him each day. And slowly, she realized that he had a soft spot. If she could talk to him respectfully, softly, and clearly, he would listen to her. She shouldn’t have had to do this. But she saw it was a way forward in her marriage, and she chose it. Day by day, she would carefully communicate with him, and slowly, he began to see that she was a good, loving wife. He abandoned his previous plans to send her back and find a new wife, and a brittle sapling of love began to grow up between them.

Brittle, because he still sent the child back to the village for further treatment by the witch-doctor.

Brittle, because he chose to have a large ceremony where they killed a goat and appealed to their ancestors and the dark powers to stop interfering with his daughter.

But she stuck with it. 

9 months later, their marriage is not great, but it is better than it has ever been. 

The child still cannot see, but she has learned to walk, and to talk, in spite of the continued treatments from the witch-doctor. 

Robina has taken a leadership role in the women’s disciple group, which eventually matured into a house church.

And recently, Robina came and visited us and said that she finally had the courage to ask her husband for permission to bring the child back from the village. He had agreed, but said that he couldn’t guarantee that his mother would also agree to it. Robina is still at the village, hoping to be allowed to come back with her daughter. If you get a chance to pray for her, she would really appreciate it.