My driver and tour guide picked me up at my hotel in Dar es Salaam early in the morning. Now we were approaching Tanzania’s oldest city, Bagamoyo, which means “lay down your heart” in Swahili. I sensed I was walking into history!
Bagamoyo was the major slave trading post in East Africa until the slave trade officially ended in 1873. The city is home to the oldest Roman Catholic Church in East Africa. In 1874, David Livingstone’s body was held at the Catholic mission before being sent to England for burial. More than 200 years later I was covering some of the same territory that Dr. Livingstone traversed on foot and by donkey.
We drove through Bagamoyo and traveled northwest to a village that had received David Livingstone on his second expedition.
It was a Kwere village, a place of great interest to me. On Africa’s Islamic Rim, the Kwere is the only people group with a Christian majority. Of its 167,000 people, 87 percent are Christian.
The tour guide located a woman who was a member of one of three Pentecostal churches in the village. Each church had fewer than 10 members. We asked to see her church—a grass-roofed shelter without walls. We learned that her pastor came on Sundays from Bagamoyo to conduct a service.
While the community was primarily Christian, priests and other resources were only available in Bagamoyo. Two mosques and a madrassa in the village were led by one imam, and about 30 Muslims attended the Friday prayer service. The imam explained that many Muslims had come from other regions of the country for business purposes and were not faithful in attending the mosques.
The chief graciously received us under a large shade tree in his yard. Sitting on a mat, he shared with us how he was born and raised in this village. His father was chief until Tanzania’s first president set aside chieftaincy rule in favor of an elected official to lead each village.
“Do the chiefs have any authority today?” I asked.
He replied, “The people obey the elected chairman, but they don’t really respect his leadership. Permission is given by the chairman, but blessing is given by the chief.”
The chief had three wives and 12 children. His children attended the local government primary school, which was free except for the cost of a school uniform. He explained that small villages sometimes united under one name in order to meet the basic population required by the government to qualify for a school and dispensary. As a result, this village spanned about five kilometers.
I presented a tube of antibiotic cream and a ball point pen as a gift and then asked, “What is the greatest need of your village?”
“Water,” he responded quickly. Currently water was being drawn from a river five kilometers away and then sold in the village for one cent per liter.
The time had come for pictures and farewell comments. It seemed that we had known one another for a long time. Certainly a relational bridge had been built. As we said good-bye to the chief and began our return trip to Dar es Salaam, I thought of the spiritual need of the Kwere. They are Christian in name, but little evidence of spiritual life exists and there seems to be little resistance to the gospel.
The Kwere are an example of a forgotten people whose spiritual condition must be addressed. May new messengers step forward with the spirit and commitment of David Livingstone to pioneer a new advance of the gospel among the Kwere!
Kwere Profile