“When the elected leaders come for meetings and start talking and thrashing their competitors, we ask them difficult questions. The people no longer want to listen to mere politics; we want to listen to issue-based politics. We ask them to tell us what measures they are taking to ensure bridges are not swept away every time it rains, when they will put up the dams they promised during their campaigns, we ask them what they are doing to ensure that that the lack of sufficient medicines in the various health centres is a thing of the past.”
After attending a three day conference in March at The Christian Organizations Research and Advisory Trust for Africa(CORAT –Africa), Pastor Harrison Olala says it was a wake- up call and more so for the church leaders who have not been doing their best to change the systems.
When he went back to his church and community, he spoke to many people and it hit him hard that most of them are “in darkness.” “The people in the rural areas do not know much about their rights, or even privileges as enshrined in the new constitution. They do not even know how to voice their concerns in order to be heard and thus the lackluster development in these areas,” he stated.
He says that after the conference he was started where he knows best, his church.
“When the elected leaders come for meetings and start talking and thrashing their competitors, we ask them difficult questions. The people no longer want to listen to mere politics; we want to listen to issue-based politics. We ask them to tell us what measures they are taking to ensure bridges are not swept away every time it rains, when they will put up the dams they promised during their campaigns, we ask them what they are doing to ensure that that the lack of sufficient medicines in the various health centres is a thing of the past.”
After attending a three day conference in March at The Christian Organizations Research and Advisory Trust for Africa(CORAT –Africa), Pastor Harrison Olala says it was a wake- up call and more so for the church leaders who have not been doing their best to change the systems.
When he went back to his church and community, he spoke to many people and it hit him hard that most of them are “in darkness.”
“The people in the rural areas do not know much about their rights, or even privileges as enshrined in the new constitution. They do not even know how to voice their concerns in order to be heard and thus lacklustre development,” he stated.
He says that after the conference he was started where he knows best, his church.
“We had a meeting with the church leaders two weeks after the CORAT conference. I was able to share with them some of the lessons learnt during the conference and how we as a community should be pro-active in demanding for what is rightfully ours,” he said.
“As church leaders we are supposed to be the voice of the voiceless but we have continuously kept quiet in the midst of the ills happening in society. We have either kept quiet or joined the community in supporting that which is not right” he added.
He says the issue of politicians being allowed at the pulpit to talk politics is still rife and is a challenge that they are seeking to address as church leaders. “A politician comes to the church uninvited, and all of a sudden everything comes to a standstill, or even when a councillor comes to church and demands to address the congregants and this has to change,” he stated.
He decries of the fact that in some instances, Christian songs have been changed into political tunes to appease the visiting politicians. He sees hope however, as he has been able to speak to different gatherings about the importance of understanding issues so that they can ask relevant questions to the elected leaders.
Pastor Olala says that he is happy with the progress of advocacy as more people have been sensitized on the need to question and seek answers rather than just watch as things go wrong. The fact that now, more people are aware of their rights is encouraging and he says that he takes any opportunity during gatherings like weddings, funerals and other village meetings to talk about issues affecting people and the best ways of addressing them.
He however, states that the task is not easy. Some of the challenges he and other like minded people face include: Hostility more so from the Provincial Administration who may think that they are going beyond their jurisdiction and the politicians who demand to speak to the congregants yet they don’t want to be questioned.
“It has not been easy but when addressing the elected leaders we have in many instances asked the difficult questions as we demand for answers to issues like why the poor health facilities are still the order of the day and in many instances you will find that they evade those questions and even pretend that they did not hear,” laments the pastor.
He says that despite the politicians evading the tough questions they put through to them, they repeat them and insist that they address the issues rather than telling them what their opponents cannot do. Most of them will however, give answers that are usually excuses rather than reasons.
The Pastor says that in many instances they have challenged their manifestos but the sly politicians ignore that kind of discussion and switch to other topics.
“In Luo we talk about “Gonywa.” This is when the politicians give the electorate handouts that are normally as little at Shillings 50 and this ensures that they are not questioned if they do not fulfil what they stated they would in their manifestos during campaigns. This is why the rural areas lag behind in development as the people’s voice has been bought with a mere Shillings 50. The roads are in a bad state, the bridges are always swept away during the rainy season, and this is the order of the day,” he laments.
He says that he is happy though that development projects are being spearheaded by the Churches as development agencies have identified them as the appropriate people on the ground to ensure that there is tangible development.
For instance the Ministry of Agriculture through extension officers are using the churches and other Community Based Organisations to help with the distribution of seeds and other pilot programmes.
“Anyway, all is not always smooth sailing especially when the churches being contracted have people who ask many questions since they are in the know. For instance when the officers are supposed to give 10 bags of seeds for distribution and only 6 are given, when we ask questions since we know there has been some corruption somewhere. The trouble is that when you ask many questions, the next time, your church is sidelined as they do not want to be questioned,” he says.
Some of the issues that are still affecting the people in his home area include; The lack of sufficient health centres and considering that the area has a high prevalence rate of malaria is a big issue. The troubling part the pastor says is that the government advertises on radio that malaria drugs are supposed to cost only Shillings 40 but when one goes to the dispensaries, they don’t get the medication required and when available one is forced to churn Shillings 80 instead of the stipulated shillings 40.
Organisations like Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) are coming in handy as they work hard to ensure that issues like HIV/AIDS are dealt with appropriately. He says that the infection rates have gone down as people are living longer compared to the earlier days. He also notes that awareness levels have gone high and people no longer believe that it is Chira- curse-. KEMRI has ensured that they engage the infected to work in the various centres to encourage more people to live positively with the condition.
“In funerals, relatives of people who have died as a result of HIV related complications are not ashamed to come out and call a spade a spade and this has distigmatised HIV. The fact that there are very many counsellors who are always ready to counsel people to live positively with the condition has enabled more people to go for testing. Stigma levels have plummeted as more people visit the Voluntary Counselling and Testing centres (VCT’s) freely and the positive behaviour change is something worth noting about. ,” states Olala
Various organisations have also been able to donate mosquito nets to residents as well as spraying their houses to ensure that Malaria is kept at bay.
He is happy that they will soon get piped water which has been a pipe dream for a long time.
He is glad that more people now understand that dependence on handouts denies them substantial development.
Olala says that most people had not read the constitution and depended on the politicians to tell them what it was all about, and many were misguided. During the gatherings he attends, he gets to answer many questions about the constitution and he is glad that people want to know what the contents of the document are so that they can able to ask questions from a point of knowledge and understanding. “There was a person from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) who gave out some copies of the constitution and more people are getting themselves acquainted with the contents,” he says.
Pastor Olala says that despite Theological teaching being the best way of getting through to people, some of the Ministers ordained have not been the best examples as they do the opposite of what they preach.
Accountability in the churches is also one of the things they are looking to change in the African Instituted Churches (AIC’s) as the lack of proper systems have prevented the documentation of development reports.
The fact that churches need to think outside the box and come up with income generating activities, is being though through. He says that proper management systems need to be put in place to ensure that churches are managed properly.
“These are some of the reasons that are making the young people leave AIC’S. They ask questions and since we cannot give them satisfactory answers, they simply leave in droves, “he laments.
The pastor, who is the General Secretary of the Nomiya Roho church in Bondo a member church of the OAIC, says that his church has been in existence since 1907 and they recently celebrated its 105th years of existence on March 1st 2012.
The church has 8 branches in the country claims stake to 5 million members across the East African Region with its headquarters in St. John Oboch in Asembo Bondo.
By: Fiona Imbali, OAIC Communications
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