Category: Resources

Announcement of a forthcoming book:
Under One Roof: A New Collection of Gikuyu Proverbs

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Compiled and edited by Gerald. J. Wanjohi

The ongoing African Proverbs Project assists various research projects. It has now helped to bring together Gikuyu (Kenya) proverbs found in different collections. Through the use of certain devices, it was possible to reduce 2411 proverbs to 1527 proverbs. This should prove helpful to those trying to learn Gikuyu proverbs as well as to those engaged in research and writing. This is the first phase of the research. Paulines Publications Africa is publishing this “New Collection.”

The second phase of the project consists in appealing to the Gikuyu population to supply new proverbs. It is hoped that many proverbs will be collected. It is hoped that Paulines Publications Africa will also publish the results of this second phase of the research.

Dr. Gerald. J. Wanjohi
Nairobi, Kenya
CDs Page” under “Resources”.

Reviewed by Peter L. Kimilike

This valuable multidisciplinary research tool is a recent contribution by the Global Mapping International and African Proverbs Project. With regard to biblical studies it comes just in time. Today’s new openness, methodologically speaking, for tools and material provided by the social sciences, makes this a most interesting contribution.

What we have here is a modern technology, multipurpose electronic research device with enormous efficiency and capacity. Its foremost advantage is that it makes available over 28,000 African proverbs from numerous published and unpublished African primary sources. This fact greatly reduces the time and financial costs incurred in field research. In addition, it has a wider ethnological scope and geographical coverage of over 1,200 languages from Africa south of the Sahara. For instance, to mention just a few, there are proverbs collections from the Akan, Ewe, Grebo, Jabo (West Africa); Lugbara, Kaonde, Mongo-Nkundu, Bore, Lobi (Central Africa); Oromo (Horn of Africa); Swahili, Sukuma, Luganda (East Africa); Tswana, Sesotho (South Africa). The latter point is even much more important in enhancing a balanced representation of the African proverbial material. It is possible now for a study to make general assertions over a variety of themes in an African contextual proverbial study. In the past it was difficult to do the same because many of those collections had been made in isolation.

Another major difficulty in a comparative study has been the lack of African cultural contexts for the validation of African proverbial sources. Many scholars had taken to atomistic treatment of proverbs. The preceding problem posed it difficult to establish a proper performance context necessary to their understanding. The result was a violation of the anthropological methodology which obviously affects the final theses. In addition to the continued predominant lack of material to provide for a coherent study of the complex, short, pithy and mnemonic sayings has been the greatest hindrance and a cause of the stagnation in their study. Many interested scholars had abandoned their study. This fact is true even on the studies of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs which has a lower number of comprehensive scholarship when compared to other books of the Bible.

The African Proverbs CD-ROM has advanced a step further towards alleviating the preceding problem. First, by the provision of an update of studies, reference books, maps and abstracts or booknotes on the subject. Second, the provision of an updated bibliography of African proverbs collections. This includes a few reprints of books and a major part presented in key pages, i.e. the title page, the content, the introduction, a page or two of the text and the bibliography. And third, the provided translations, explanations, illustrations and indices to the proverbs. These together are by all means a great help to the research. The facility is enough to enable the researcher recognize, appreciate and evaluate the themes and patterns of proverbs one deals with at a click of the fingertip. The main challenge now lies in the non-availability of modern technological electronic research facilities in African theological institutions. In such a case the instrument stands a chance of being a motivating force for the improvement in the research systems necessary among the African institutions. The benefits of which will be a maximum exploit of the treasure invested in such a marvelous device at a very economical price.

NOTE: This review was originally published in Issue 6 (May, 1999) of the Newsletter on African Old Testament Scholarship.

Peter L. Kimilike (from Tanzania) is doing M.Phil. research on African and Old Testament proverbs in Stavanger, Norway. His address is School of Mission and Theology, Misjonsveien 34, N-4024 Stavanger, Norway; e-mail: pelki@stud.misjonshs.no

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Book Review of Towards An African Narrative Theology

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By Joseph G. Healey and Donald F. Sybertz

Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, Reprinted 1999.
Paperback, 400 pages. $25.00
Publication history: ISBN: 1570751218,
First printing, 1996, by Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.
First printing by Orbis Books, New York, 1997.
Second printing by Orbis Books, August 1999.

Reviewed by John Kwami Nyamidie

Something Good From Africa: Enriching World Christianity with African Wisdom

Two American missionaries with a combined experience of 75 years in Africahave come up with a model of spreading the Gospel by using parallels fromAfrican oral traditions. “One who sees something good must narrate it,” says an Ugandan proverb. The following true story comes from Kilimambogo, near Nairobi in Kenya, East Africa and is taken from Towards An African Narrative Theology (page 75):

“A 10-year-old child went out playing outside his home. He wandered down the path toward the forest and was attacked by a 12-foot-long python. At the child’s screams, the mother came running. The men ran off to get their weapons to kill the beast. The boy screamed even louder so his mother jumped on the huge python as it wound itself tighter around the boy. With her bare hands, she forced it to release the child. Both the mother and the child went free.”

This story illustrates the saying “where there’s love, nothing is impossible.” And the authors of the book say such stories can be used to preach the Gospel to Africans.

For centuries, missionaries in Africa believed that indigenous culture, beliefs and the people themselves had nothing worthwhile to offer the world. Their indigenous practices were pejoratively called “tribal,” “fetish,” “heathen” and “pagan.” Instances of this treatment by missionaries in Africa abound. Laurenti Magesa in his 1997 book, African Religion from Orbis Books, NY, cites the example of Father P. Perlo of the Consolata Missionaries in Kenya, East Africa.

Perlo wondered “how … morals [could] be found among this people who intheir age-long abandonment have become so corrupt as to raise practices openly immoral to be a social institution…” To Perlo “every moral principle in which our [Western] civilization glories and which our religion commands is here, at least in practice, simply reversed in terms: … whatever inference is drawn in this connection it must always confront us with a state of things essentially deplorable, barbarous, inhuman.”

Missionaries with this kind of mindset did all they could to “civilize” the Black Man. This civilizing mission involved programs aimed at making Africans forget their way of life and culture. For example, remembering ancestors was considered pagan and one could not be healed by the traditional medicine man. In the colonial schools indigenous languages were not taught.

Needless to say, many Africans protested. Writers such as Mongo Beti,Ferdinand Oyono, Wole Soyinka, Okot p’Bitek, and Chinua Achebe criticized the missionary enterprise in their works. Politicians satirized Christianity. African Christian converts led two parallel lives. In the Church they were Christians. At home they were authentic Africans.

This shouldn’t be so two Maryknoll Catholic priests Joseph G. Healey (61)and Donald F. Sybertz (71), say in Towards an African Narrative Theology,now in its third printing in three years. Healey, who hails from Baltimore, Maryland, has been working in East Africa since 1968. Sybertz comes from North Weymouth, Massachusetts. He has been working in Tanzania, also in East Africa, for more than 44 years. Both can read, speak and write Kiswahili, the common African language of East Africa.

Healey and Sybertz claim that they have found something good in the wisdomand values expressed in the oral traditions of the indigenous communities they have come to know and understand so well. And they want to tell others about their discovery. “Deep African values, such as community, hospitality, the ‘living dead,’ patient endurance in adversity, unity, and holistic healing bring something new and truly enrich world Christianity and the world Church,” Healey and Sybertz emphasize.

What these two Maryknoll priests who have a combined experience of more than 75 years in Africa are saying about Africans is a complete departure from the general attitude of early missionaries who were prejudiced against the indigenous people and ignorant of the positive elements in their world view.

Healey and Sybertz say that to reach the African mind one must begin from the Africans’ perspective. After many years of listening to the people in their indigenous language, the authors think that African “oral traditions” can be a point of departure for constructing a new model of African Theology in a dialogue of mutual respect.Proverbs, sayings, riddles, sacred stories, myths, fables, legends, plays, songs and folktales, personal testimonies, dreams and cultural symbols all contain “Seeds of the Word” which must be nurtured and allowed to grow among the people. “African proverbs, stories, myths and other cultural examples are used in their own right as a means of God’s revelation. At the same time Christian tradition fulfills African culture,” they say.

Some African theologians, such as John Mbiti, Peter Sarpong and LaurentiMagesa, are talking and writing about the richness in African oral traditions. However, African theologians have been unable to come up with the systematic and workable model that Healey and Sybertz propose in their work. This model, constructed from the dual sources of African human experience and Christian tradition, has three aspects. First, it is “doing” theology based on African narratives and it includes stories, myths, proverbs, sayings, and riddles. The second aspect is the actual writing of this narrative theology. Finally, it involves local African Christian communities writing a narrative theology.

With scores of biblical passages and refreshing parallels of proverbs and stories from almost every major Sub-Saharan ethnic group, Towards an African Narrative Theology is essentially a handbook of “earth and water” theology for missionaries in the context of indigenous communities.

The authors show how to present Jesus Christ, the Church, concepts of Godand many other biblical mysteries in ways that the African can relate to in their daily lives. For example, the authors say that Africans are receptive to Jesus Christ when he is described as “Chief Diviner-Healer and Eldest Brother-Intercessor,” and God is called “Father, High God, Sun, Supreme Being, Ancient Deity and Spirit of Life.” The idea of Church takes on a special meaning for Africans when it’s called “the extended family of God.” It is the authors’ belief that this model of evangelization, when properly adapted and applied in indigenous societies, will ensure that more people will be receptive to the Gospel.

Towards an African Narrative Theology is a carefully researched work withthe grassroots participation of Small Christian Communities in East Africa. It is a landmark work that truly echoes what some have called “A Fifth Gospel,” the Good News in its power and splendor in the lives of today’s Christians. This is not to say that this book will be useful to only the clergy or Christians. Rather, non-Christians, mystics, politicians, social workers, playwrights, poets, scholars and the general reader in search of new insights into the human condition will find it a valuable source for fresh ideas. They will have a better appreciation of the Ganda, Uganda and Kamba, Kenya proverb that says: “The person who has not traveled thinks his or her mother is the best cook” (page 337).

Healey and Sybertz have found a key to communicating with the mind of Africans. They have built the connection between the two parallel lives most African Christians experience. “On the overall journey of life, African human and spiritual values can call people back to their roots and give them new meaning and purpose.”But if the authors truly believe in the inherent goodness of African wisdom and values, why are they trying to change it by engrafting them to Christianity? Their answer: “Nothing is complete outside of Jesus Christ.”

Also, their treatment of polygamy and the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests, two deep concerns of Africans, deserve a more thorough treatment. Otherwise they fall into the trap others have fallen to which they eloquently describe in their book in these words: “It is not a matter of taking the traditional customs of African culture and making the best ones fit into Christianity…The priority is to be an African Christian rather than a Christian African” (page 19).

John Kwami Nyamidie, a former Catholic seminarian from Togo, West Africa, writes from Seattle, Washington State, USA.


Some of the African Prayers in this book can also be found in A Maryknoll Book of Prayer 


How to order :

• Click on the above cover or HERE to order directly from Amazon.com.
• In the United States order directly from Orbis Books http://www.maryknollsocietymall.org.
• For international distributors of Orbis Books (bookstores outside the United States) http://www.orbisbooks.com/international.htm

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Book Review of Were You There? Stations of the Cross

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Text by Diana L. Hayes. Art by Charles S. Ndege

Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books
1999, xi, 99 pp., paper, $15

Reviewed by Joseph G. Healey

Scripture Meditations as Written Theology,
Religious Paintings as African Symbolic or Visual Theology

Diana Hayes is a professor of theology at Georgetown University. In these mediations on the Passion of Jesus she tries “to reveal the continued significance of the man and the message for me, an African American lay woman,” (x) and for others. As we enter the third millennium of Christianity she believes that Jesus and his message are just as relevant today as they were long ago.

Hayes creatively uses lyrics from religious songs especially African American spirituals to reflect on the different stations. The 18 songs quoted include “Hush, Hush Somebody’s Calling My Name,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “Were You There.” Her meditation on Station XI (“Jesus is Nailed to the Cross”) ends:

“Our God has not, our God will not abandon us despite ourselves and our actions. God calls and calls and calls yet again, holding out a hand that will ease the pain and suffering. He continues to shower us with the grace to respond to that call.

Hush, hush somebody’s calling my name

Oh, my Lord, oh, my Lord, what shall I do?

Listen. Hear. And say yes” (73-74).

The artist Charles Ndege is one of the best-known religious painters in Tanzania. Originally from Maji Moto in Northwest Tanzania, he studied art at the Sukuma Cultural Center, Bujora near Mwanza. Some of Ndege’s art has been published in Towards an African Narrative Theology (Paulines Publications Africa, 1996 and Orbis Books, 1997) and various books, booklets and calendars published by Paulines Publications Africa. Ndege also had done paintings and illustrations of African proverbs and sayings.

Ndege was commissioned to paint African-style Stations of the Cross on the cement walls of St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe Catholic Church in Nyakato outside of Mwanza. The vivid, full-color paintings depict typical scenes of the Sukuma Ethnic Group around the southern shores of Lake Victoria. The work took nine months during which he lay or sat on scaffolding. In her “Introduction” Hayes states: “It is fitting that Jesus is depicted as a Black man, one of African descent. Just as he has been depicted over the centuries attired in the robes of the Jewish poor, Middle Eastern nobility, Renaissance princes, Flemish merchants and English nobles, he is today rendered in a style and manner representative of the largest and fasting-growing Catholic community in the world, the church of Africa” (xi).

Ndege feels passionately that the Jesus of contemporary faith should be portrayed as an African, as a Tanzanian, as a Sukuma. Just as Hayes’ series of meditations are a type of written theology, Ndege’s religious paintings are a type of African Symbolic or Visual Theology. His art implies a theological interpretation of the biblical narrative within the Tanzanian context. In Station V (“Simon Helps Jesus Carry His Cross”) the distinct African flavor is portrayed in the large rock formations of the Mwanza area on which lizards sun themselves. The blue waters of Lake Victoria are in the background. Coming in from the fields Simon of Cyrene drops his hoe and helps to carry Jesus’ cross. Two other Tanzanian farmers are depicting running away with their hoes in their hands. Hayes comments: “Today, we continue to flee, turning our backs on those less fortunate than ourselves, those who may be different for whatever reason, those seeking to bring about change…We turn away, too busy, too full of our own lives, never realizing that in so doing we are turning away from God, condemning ourselves by our own selfishness and fear” (34).

Were You There? Stations of the Cross is a book of meditations that should be read slowly, reflectively, prayerfully. An ideal time is the season of Lent. Other times could be periods of physical or psychological sickness and at the death of a relative or close friend. Our Western culture often tried to deny suffering, death and other “down” moments. But Hayes says: “Death is not an ending, but a beginning. The cross does not stand for suffering and pain but for life, a life in Christ” (96).

Father Joseph G. Healey, M.M. is a Maryknoll missionary priest who teaches a course on “Small Christian Communities as a New Model of Church in Africa Today” at Hekima College (Jesuit School of Theology) and at Tangaza College (CUEA) in Nairobi, Kenya. He is co-author of Towards An African Narrative Theology (Paulines Publications Africa, 1996 and Orbis Books, 1997). He is the co-editor of Small Christian Communities Today: Capturing the New Moment. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005 and Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2006.

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Book Review of African Proverbs on Peace and War

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By Annetta Miller

Reviewed by Joseph G. Healey

Collected and compiled by Annetta Miller. Mennonite Central Committee, Nairobi, Kenya: Privately Duplicated, 1998. 41 pp. A collection of 1,031 African proverbs in English (with the original African language or country cited) “on the general theme of peace and its immediate corollary, conflict … these proverbs are in the service of all people – instructing, guiding and generally reflecting the wisdom of the continent.” There are proverbs on 13 themes: peace, war, fighting and friction, quarrel, abuse, enemy, revenge, anger, caution, reconciliation, diplomacy, justice and cooperation. Two examples: “It is peace that provides milk (Somalia).” “War has no eyes” (Swahili). This booklet is presently in draft form. The Nairobi Peace Initiative will be publishing it.

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