African Diary

In 2002, a travel writer named Bill Bryson was invited by the humanitarian group CARE International to visit east Africa (mostly Kenya) to take a look at their operation and write a book about his experience. Profts from the book would go to CARE. The following is an excerpt from that Book (Bill Bryson’s African Diary) in which Bill describes his initial meeting with CARE officials who were explaining what the trip would entail:
“Some weeks later, I was summoned to CARE’s London offices for a meeting with Dan, his boss Will day and a rugged and amiable fellow named Nick Southern, CARE’s regional manager for Kenya, who happened to be in London at the time. We sat around a big table spread with maps of Kenya, while they outlined what they had in mind for me.
'Of course, you’ll have to fly to the refugee camp at Dadaad,’ Will observed thoughtfully at one point. He glanced at me. “To avoid bandits,’ he explained. Dan and Nick nodded gravely.
‘ I beg your pardon?’ I said, taking a sudden interest.
‘It’s bandit country all round there,’ Will said.
‘Where?’ I asked, peering at the map for the first time.
‘Oh, just there,’ Will said, waiving a hand vaguely across most of east Africa. ‘They only rarely shoot at planes,’ Nick explained. This wasn’t at all what I had had in mind, frankly. By way of homework, I had dutifully watched Out of Africa, from which I derived the impressions that this trip would mostly take place on a verandah somewhere while turbaned servants brought me lots of coffee. I knew that we would probably visit a clinic from time to time and that someone in the party might occasionally have to shoot a charging animal, but I hadn’t imagined anything shooting at me in return.
‘So how dangerous is Kenya then?’ I asked in a small controlled squeak.
‘Oh, not at all,’ they responded in unison.
‘Well, hardly,’ Will added.
‘It depends on what you mean by dangerous, of course,’ said Dan.
‘Like bleeding and not getting up again,’ I suggested. ‘Being shot and stabbed and so forth,’ I added. They assured me that that only very rarely happened and that is was nearly always one or the other. You had to be very unlucky to be shot and stabbed, they said.
‘It’s mostly disease you have to worry about,’ Nick went on.
‘Malaria, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis.’
‘Rift Valley fever, blackwater fever, yellow fever,’ said Dan.
‘Dengue fever, bilharzia—the usual tropical stuff,’ added Will. But they pointed out that you can be inoculated against many of those and for the rest most people manage a more or less complete recovery, given time and a considered programme of physiotherapy. Many even walk again.”
For someone such as myself who has been part of such a conversation before, I found great humor in Mr. Brysons account of this conversation. Certainly there are dangers anywhere a person goes, but when we aren’t accustomed to certain dangers, we tend to overreact.

This conversation reminds me, though, of a very serious statement Jesus made to his disciples. In Matthew 10, Jesus says, “I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16). Unlike the CARE officials in London, our Lord seems very straightforward about how difficult this task of going into the world will be. Still, he sent them. Jesus commanded them to go, teach, and make disciples. That mission is still underway. We too must go, even as sheep among wolves, to teach whomever will listen about the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. It may mean risking social awkwardness at best and our very lives at worst. Still, he is sending us.