"The Troubles", Part Two

Think of a chemistry experiment where two elements are combined - cows and crops. Add a dangerous catalyst and stand back from the ensuing explosion!

For years and years in the northern part of Benue State, where we are in Makurdi, the Fulani grazers and the Tiv farmers got along very well. Bishop Inyom tells of Fulani playmates and easy mixing between the two. The farmers were happy to let the Fulani graze their lands until the early plants emerged.

So what has happened to bring the troubles here to the northern part of Benue? It's complicated, especially to those who live here and certainly to an outsider. It seems probable that Fulani from the outside, from Cameroon and Chad, have come into the camps and stirred up animosity. Perhaps some Tiv leaders have looked the other way when the Fulani raiders attack the farmers. Perhaps something altogether different has been at work.

The result? The Fulani have raided and burned farms; the farmers have raided and killed cattle. Over 100 people have been killed in this uprising of last Spring. This has meant that the farms are no longer safe for the Tiv, and most have become displaced and have moved in large numbers to their relatives in Makurdi.

Sadly, this kind of violence disrupts and destroys even the memory of better times between the Fulani herders and the farmers.

Home on the range - Fulani Style

What follows is a description of home life that has served and pleased Fulani herders and families for years–no, for centuries. Read it not with amazement at what they put up with but with appreciation for the home life they love and want so desperately to keep.

First of all one notices its cleanliness. Dirt is everywhere and throughout, but dirt that is swept clean.

The camp where I visited comprised about twenty homes. That would be twenty families. Just outside the door of their huts would be a fireplace. This would be used for cooking, for preparing milk, and for many other uses. The fireplace is small, but then, so are the chores.

All around the huts and fires are the children. Too many to count because of their playfulness. I had heard that the bishop's wife had spent a day learning their numbers and teaching the English numbers. As an experiment when I was around several of the children, I said, "Seven!" to which two or three of them replied with, "Eight!". One of them went all the way to 15.

The huts resemble igloos, with the substitution of straw for ice blocks. They stand about four feet high and are maybe ten feet in circumference. Inside, judging from a brief glance, is one bed and a few scattered articles. My surmise is that the entire family sleeps on the bed, but they may well have different and better arrangements.

The twenty or so huts stretched about one hundred yards from one end to the other. The delineation by family seems to be invisible for the play of the children went everywhere. I checked with the bishop who said that, yes, this probably was the children's first encounter with a figure from outer space whose skin was white.

"The Troubles", Part One

That is the term used to describe the tense relationships that have arisen in recent years between Christians and Fulani. These times are caused by a variety of circumstances. In one place, Kafanchan, the cause can be pinpointed.

The election of a Christian president in 2011 incensed many Muslims, and some Hausa Muslims went on a rage in Kafanchan. They attacked Christians and torched their houses. I saw blocks of houses that had been burned and left abandoned. The home of Bishop Diya, the Anglican bishop, was attacked, and the bishop and family had to flee over their surrounding wall and wait in the bush for things to quiet down.

Though most Fulani were not involved in the violence, they knew about what was coming. Most of them left just before the attacks with their cows. So bitter has been aftermath that the Fulani are only now returning to the camps they had once occupied in the vicinity of Kafanchan.

The District Head and his village leaders, as well as the two owners of the camps, knew the significance of the gradual Fulani return. Their hope is for peaceful relationships. When I asked for prayer requests they all said for reconciliation and trust to be restored. They know very well that evangelism can only occur with those who know them well. For that witness to have a hearing, there must be trust and friendships restored.

Stay tuned...

Stay tuned - more to come

But not for 48 hours.

For each of these items in the post below this, I have glowing and fascinating posts written. However it would take me too long in an un-air conditioned cyber cafe to get them posted.

These are designed to bring focal points for the Fulani Prayer Group that will be starting soon. If you live away from Virginia's Northern Neck and and want to be part of prayer for Fulani, you are welcome! (That is a Nigerian expression of invitation and acceptance.)

Stay tuned, revisit in a couple of days.

Ratios and radical revelations

During one of the plenary sessions of the Anglican Frontier Missions training, I was sitting beside a church planter from Sokoto State. Bishop Inyom was asking the participants what ethnic groups they wanted to work with. One after another told of a group on their heart, and one after another they named groups right there in River State, the very place where we were meeting. There in the heart of the Christian south, surrounded by Anglican dioceses, churches of all stripes, Christians numbering well over 80%, Christians bumping into each other at every turn–that was where this group wanted to go to find the unreached.

I leaned over to speak to Lucas, the church planter from Sokoto. I asked him how many Christians there are in that state. He said Christians amount to less than 2%. I asked how many people there are in Sokoto State. He said, "About three million."

When Bishop Inyom paused in the reporting, I rose to make an observation. A simple statement of ratios is what I made, a comparison of the ratios of Christians to population in Sokoto State (2%:3,000,000) and in River State (80%:7,000,000),an appreciation of church planting in our own neighborhoods, and the obvious conclusions of the two ratios, conclusions of need, of neglect, of wrongful priorities, and of the obligation of reversing that trend. At that point I should have used an expression I heard many times from Nigerians: "Are you getting it?"

Julian Linnell gives the motto of Anglican Frontier Missions as, "Where the need is greatest".

Fulani cows

They are large, with a huge hump on their back, all white. And they are vegetarians. Yes, I know, all cows are vegetarian, but the cows you and I know have large pens or fields set aside for their grazing.

Not so for the cows of nomads. Remember, as nomads they own nothing but their cows. These herders must find grazing lands for their cows every day. So much the better if the lands they go to are open lands with no farmers with their crops.

They love their cows. Their cows are their bank account, their charge card, their stock market investments. No wonder Christians who know Fulani well put them forward as models extraordinaire of the love of the Good Shepherd for His people. The Fulani exercise uncompromising, unselfish, unconditional love for their cows. Nothing comes between them and their cows.

So every day the herders take down the barb wire that encloses their herds, pick up their stick, and move their livestock to the day's grazing land.

Returned from Fulani trip

Where I saw:

Two Fulani evangelists;
One District Head with his five "lieutenants", heads of villages;
The Nomadic Team under Bishop Mutums, Bishop for the Nomadic Peoples;
One retired bishop, the Rt. Rev. Wm. Diya;
One bowl of fresh (read "unpasteurized') milk;
(NB to my docs, no I did not drink --- but did put fly-littered bowl to my lips)
Three Fulani men milking their cows;
43 Fulani boys and girls playing;
one Fulani boy scared to death and crying at seeing his first white man;
16 Fulani wives and daughters sifting maize and preparing milk for the market;
pens with 50 cows, more than 50 cows, and some with many more than 50;
pastures in the distance where the men would later take their cattle to graze;
two owners, Christians, of the land who want very much to re-establish peace with the Fulani for an easier witness.