The Firewall Project on the Horn of Africa
The 2014 Church of God YWEA project is bringing hope to a lost people in a desert land.
By Heinrich Scherz
Nearly 510,000 destitute refugees crowd into the UNHCR camps near Dadaab in the semi-arid region of eastern Kenya, close to the border of Somalia. The vast complex of three camps is some 75 miles removed from the nearest town and accessible only over a sandy, rough road or by charter flight to a little airstrip. The Dadaab camp is predominantly populated by Somali Muslims who fled their country’s decades-long civil war and more recently the horrid drought and subsequent famine of 2011. Some of the refugees have been confined to the camp for 20 years, and many have no prospect of returning home.
To see how the Church of God could assist these destitute and deserted people, two leaders from our Church in eastern Africa and I met there in January with leaders of Christian congregations within the Dadaab refugee complex. The men we met were mostly Anuak tribal people from the Gambela region of southwestern Ethiopia, on the border to South Sudan. Ten years ago they survived a massacre in which more than 400 of their tribe were brutally murdered. Now 3,300 of them “live” in the camp, most of them Christians.
Hearing the reports and needs of Christian leaders in the Dadaab refugee camp.
In January the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has started to repatriate refugees to certain areas of Somalia considered to be safe again. The agency reportedly is also initiating cutbacks in food rations to motivate the refugees to return home. But for many that option doesn’t exist anymore. That creates a growing need to supplement the official rations with food aid from outside. A couple of indigenous frontline missionaries connected to the Church are doing just that, especially for Christians who are not being served by Islamic relief agencies, which also are active in Dadaab.
The much more urgent requests by the leaders we met in the camp, however, are for ministerial training and for Bibles. Our regional overseer is already actively training refugee leaders for ministry—now for outreach in the camp and for later, when they will be forced to leave the camp. Aside from training Ethiopians, leaders from countries like the Congo, Burundi and South Sudan are also being equipped for outreach ministries. It is harvest time on the Horn of Africa!
Paradoxical to us visiting from the outside was the obvious fact that people outside the refugee camp seem to experience greater poverty than those living inside. During our short visit we could tell that the traditionally nomadic people of the area are suffering noticeable want. The reason, we were told, is that they are not Somali Muslims but from other, more disenfranchised Muslim tribes. Their mound-like huts, made of frail sticks bent together and covered scantily with plastic or cloth, provide less shelter than most stick and mud huts we saw inside the camp. Added to that is the ever present threat of kidnappings and shootings in this border area to Somalia. Recently, in the nearby district town, a next-door neighbor to our pastor was shot dead because he, a Somali Muslim, had converted to faith in Jesus Christ.
The Horn of Africa is a harsh land, home to a religion grown harsh and revengeful. A palpable darkness broods over the area. Sinister schemes drift in and out of conversations. Outsiders are treated with uneasy cordiality, while indigenous Christians are frequently the target of open or covert harassment. Yet, despite the threats and uneasy situation, the men and women of the Church have the vision and commitment to reach out to their Muslim neighbors with the love of Christ.
