Followers of some fake prophets are required to eat the towels they buy from their churches, with a photo of the “man of God” on them. Followers, in hired buses and matatus, go to the settlements where these “mega churches” are built to buy from the “man of God” a cloth towel.
They must cover their heads with it every night; if they don’t, the demons which have been “removed” from their lives will return, the diseases they have been “cured” of will attack afresh and the curses that had been “broken” will renew their grip.
Even in a matatu, the “believer” is expected to cover his or her head with the towel, which allegedly provides a “covering” against road accidents. On top of that, every night, the “believer” removes a piece of string from the towel and eats it. Many “believers” have half-eaten towels in their bulbous handbags. When they have eaten their entire towel, they make a fresh pilgrimage to the church and purchase a brand new one.
Also in their handbags is a small bottle of “anointed oil”, which is, allegedly, a cure for all earthly diseases: If your throat hurts, you take a drop; if you have a headache, you swallow one drop, your high blood pressure, diabetes, venereal disease, cancer, whatever ailment, one drop fixes it.
Believers get “miracles” by entering into covenants. I have not had the time to research all of them but there is the Abrahamic covenant which is in three stages. All three involve the payment of Sh50,000 and supervised fasting—a total of Sh150,000 and a hell of a lot of hunger to complete the stage. So, if you have a need, you sell a cow or do whatever you must to raise the money and then make the journey to the mega church, make the payment and do the fasting and then you will have completed the stage of the Abrahamic covenant.
I suppose there could also be Nuhuian, Mosesian, Daudian and enough covenants to enslave an lifetime, their number only limited by the linguistic abilities of the “man of God”.
My extended family is spread across central Kenya—from Mathira in Nyeri, Nanyuki, Wamba in Samburu, Meru and Tharaka Nithi counties. They are a religious lot, as they have been for most of this century. On top of those who are members of the Catholic, Methodist, PCEA and other more “formal” churches, there are also those who follow more “passionate” denominations where there is a bit of “speaking in tongues” and dancing vigorously in church.
In my circles, many are “saved” and very active in the Christian movement, serving in church and the community, preaching the Gospel and comforting the afflicted. It is really not among the most religious that you will find the towel eaters; it is among the borderline cases who profess the faith but are not known for their piety. Neither are they confined to the illiterate and the poor; prosperous professionals with a master’s level of education are eating strings, the same lot you might find lining up at a withdoctor’s for snake oil.
My people have done unspeakable things in the name of faith. They are addicted to prophesy and fortune telling in their hunger to control, perhaps even eliminate, the normal uncertainties of human existence. Most are not munching textile to book their seat in Heaven; they are doing so to solve the normal problems of human existence. They also want to procure advantage in life, get ahead at work, accumulate wealth, without bothering with the struggle and hard work that goes with it.
Just like the gambling and bribery culture, the trooping to the cults is rooted in our corrupt culture of greed and shortcuts. We want to own the heavens but don’t want to work for it. Or we don’t have the smarts or the appetite for hard work to be successful but we can’t face this fact and, therefore, comfort ourselves with the belief that somebody is standing in our way, witchcraft has been planted outside our house, we are cursed, and so on.
In other words, we are looking for a supernatural explanation for failure and are preparing to do the most humiliating and insane things for a con man who cheats us that he can hook us up with supernatural solutions for completely human problems.
But not everyone is submitting to this nonsense. I heard the story of two young ladies who were frustrated by the fact that, though beautiful and with jobs, they were not on a sure path to marriage and a family. So they trooped with the rest to see a “man of God” to be told what was cutting.
After prayer and a spot of speaking in tongues, the “man of God” “prophesied over them” and gave the word he had “received from God”: Their way to marriage was blocked and none of them was ever going to have a family. Ever. The only solution was for the “prophet of God” to “clear the way” and remove the blockage.
The young ladies told him to go to hell on a Black Mamba.
But the naivety of Kenyans and the evil schemes of some criminal preachers has the population eating towels.
I’m lost for words. BY DAILY NATION