Lutheran Miracles in Tanzania

Lutheran Miracles in Tanzania

Is it faith that heals?
Does unmitigated faith cure, kill, lead or mislead to victory? Ask the tens of thousands of people flocking to a faith healer near the Serengeti. Or ask the ragtag fighters pushing into Sirte. It’s all the same. And who are we to interrupt the jihad?

An endless line of cars, bikes, walkers trekking into a remote mountain location near the Serengeti in Tanzania has caused turmoil in Tanzania’s government, eight traffic fatalities, more than 50 deaths of those waiting for the “miracle cure,” and raised serous questions about the role of traditional medicine in Africa.

It may be hard to believe 76-year old Lutheran pastor, Ambilikile Mwasapile, that he can cure everything from AIDS to diabetes to all forms of cancer for a 30¢ cup of herbal medicine “touched by God”, but nothing seems to deter an unprecedented pilgrimage into the Tanzanian bush.

Tanzania is a very superstitious society, and there are healers and medicine men everywhere. But to my knowledge this is the first time that established, traditional clerics have supported such an individual. Monday, Mwasapile gained support from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT). Western trained Bishop Thomas Laizer told one of Tanzania’s major newspapers that he would begin raising funds to build a large healing center that could better serve the thousands of people seeking treatment daily.

This ideological breakthrough followed Sunday’s decision by the Tanzanian government to send paramilitary troops into the remote area to stop further lines of cars, trucks and helicopters from visiting “Babu,” as Mwasapile has been affectionately named. The government said this was only a temporary halt. Needed to bring some kind of stability to a pilgrimage clearly getting out of hand.

But the humanitarian move by the government may have backfired. Not only did the established Lutheran church then issue its unequivocal support, but Parliament got uncharacteristically rattled. Member of Parliament Steven Ngonyani told the government “Hands off!” the work of the healer.

“The government …should show its support to him and not break his heart by imposing modern methodologies… What has Tanzania Food and Drug Agency to do with regulating the works of a traditional healer?”

According to Nairobi’s Daily Nation 24,000 people were lined up and waiting for the cup of elixir Saturday night. The BBC said the line of cars, trucks and bicycles was more than 15 miles long.

People wait for days to pay Tsh 500 (about 30 U.S. cents) to drink a cup of tea brewed from a root more commonly used as a poison, personally handed to them by Babu himself. In fact, Babu claims that if anyone else brews the tea or hands it out, it won’t work.

There are no hotels or hostels in the area and sanitary conditions are appalling. Businessmen from the cities have set up tent camps offering bottled water and places to sleep at outlandish prices.

The deaths and injuries to those waiting forced the government’s hand. Most of the deaths are of persons who were dying and had been whisked out of traditional hospitals by relatives and transported into this rugged, remote and mountainous area of northern Tanzania.

Reports that all of Tanzania’s main government officials, including President Jakaya Kikwete, as well as officials from Oman and the Emirates had come to take the cure, remain unconfirmed yet strangely undenied as well. And helicopters do arrive regularly with persons who break the queue by paying ten times the normal rate (Tsh 5000, about $3.50).

I cannot find a single published testament that the cure works, despite my own employees in Tanzania recounting many stories of relatives and friends who have been cured of a whole range of disease. But no one will come on record. Neither will the President of Tanzania deny the widely circulated rumor that he’s taken the cure.

On record are physicians decrying the hoax (see YouTube below), but none have so far published their skepticism locally.

The 76-year old cleric has a Facebook page that is – remarkably – well serviced for an old man who is supposed to be handing cups of cure to supplicants for 12 hours a day. All the entries I could translate were requests for the cure; I didn’t find one testament to being cured.

Nor have journalists diligent to gather evidence found any that the cures are working.

On my safari last week into the Serengeti, we saw trucks and cars stuffed with clearly sick people in an unending journey into this remote wilderness.

Tanzania is a very superstitious place. The most educated Tanzanian remains worried all his life that he’ll be cursed. My Mzungu (white, European) boss for many years in Tanzania regularly visited Maasailand for herbs. Some of the finest tourist lodges in the country refer to themselves as “Spas” dispensing herbal remedies.

The tsunami of optimism breaking over earth at the moment comes not without the turmoil of death and destruction. It is this same dialectic that infuses the thousands of sick people making the pilgrimage to the Serengeti.

Wandering children run over by cars, dying patients left on the side of the road, children “wailing and flailing as they were forced by their mothers to swallow the concoction.”

What the heaven does this mean?

That faith heals?
That people are desperate?
That the spirits rattling the world at the moment are alive and well?
That freedom and democracy will follow the slaughter of Tiananmen Square. That transparent and uncorrupt government will now rule Egypt. That despots like Gaddafi will be replaced by Mahatma Gandhis.

That faith in the struggle is the single most important ingredient to victory?

Is there anything wrong with this?

17 thoughts on “Lutheran Miracles in Tanzania

  1. Very interesting report, Jim. It calls to mind two comments: 1) A recent study (forget where I read this) reports that medicinal drugs are statistically shown to be a few percentage points more effective if the user believes they will work; and 2) the observation by church people in sub-Sahara Africa that indigenous churches stand or fall by their reputations as successful healing communities. Yeah, sometimes faith healing really does work. –Chomee

  2. Hi Jim

    All I could think of was the covered wagon where the “hawker” sold an elixir that cured everything.

    Sylvia Berman, CTC
    President
    Post Haste Travel

  3. Jim,

    I sent this forward to a good friend, a Lutheran minister, telling him that I knew he had these powers all the time, but wished he had been a bit more generous with them when we were together.

    But there’s still a lot of “successful” faith healing being done in the United States. Whether that is because it just changes people attitudes towards their affliction and gives them a bit more time to live or whether the belief in healing actually causes healing is unknown.

    The tea is probably only the medium for the belief in healing, which is a powerful thing.

    Interesting though….

    Anthony

  4. Jim, I am an American Baptist minister. I believe that God does heal individuals, but when a human claims to have God’s power to heal and administers a “medicine” to mass peoples with the claim that it will heal the person, then I cringe. This claim will keep people from pursuing legitimate sources of healing – or for lessening the pain of the ailment. This is the kind of claim that causes those who are not healed to believe that their faith wasn’t great enough. That isn’t biblical! (Sometimes this claim is used to extort money from someone who is poor but desperate.) Jo Ellen

  5. Certainly the elixir has no effect. However, the placebo effect cannot be underestimated. Christian fundamentalist faith healers, the brazilian “John of God”, Lourdes, etc., etc., all do result in cures but it requires a suspension of rational belief. Personally, I would be far likelier to be cured by a placebo imitating a new miaracle drug than by some religious mumbo jumbo.

  6. These people are likely to get even sicker by drinking this filthy concoction from these filthy cups. Babu’s a charlatan and should be shut down. Gov’t not doing its job. Perpetuating ignorance. And people profiting from others’ misery. A disgrace.

  7. Hello Jim,

    My only regret in seeing this report from you is the stress put on “Lutheran”. There are thousands of quacks who don’t represent the various religions with which they are affiliated. If you want to learn about Lutheran belief, study the Lutheran Small Catechism, not some erratic, strange anomaly from the majority if us believers. Also, ELCA is a relatively new, very different kind of Lutheranism compared to Missouri or Wisconsin Synod. I don’t really think that this guy represents ELCA (or ELCT) either. Are you Christian? Is this blog report stemming from an anti-Christian bias? I hope not. I think you are a genuinely good-hearted guy.

  8. 500 shillings is about 33 US cents… not three. You consistently fail to do your research and publish your opinions before considering a mess of other things.

  9. We all wish for miracle cures, and a few people actually get them. I admit being skeptical regarding Tanzanian tea, along with Lourdes, etc. For a few of those with faith, though, it does work. I guess we must stay open and not succumb to cynicism. We know so little..and believe even less.

  10. I have no doubt but what a person’s belief in a particular medication or procedure goes a long way towards increasing (or decreasing) its effectiveness. As we know, there are entire Christian organizations, such as Christian Science and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) that shun modern medicine in favor of faith healing. They claim that prayer and the “laying on of hands” can cure or heal cancers, broken bones, migraines, mental disorders, erectile dysfunction, multiple sclerosis and many other ailments. I know that our mission doctors had to deal with cases, brought into our hospitals, of people who believed a spell had been cased on them by a maganga (witchdoctor). Many of these people died, not because there was anything physically wrong with them but because they believed they would die. The converse is also true. If a person is convinced that a procedure or substance can cure them the chances of it doing so are increased. However, this business in Tanzania reminds me of the “snake oil” peddlers that claimed their concoctions would cure almost anything. Today you can get the same less than effective remedies from many “health food” stores and herbal medicine shops. Some, such as Aloe vera, coffee, cranberry and chocolate these have been shown to have some positive health benefits. However, no drug, (herbal or otherwise) or procedure has been proven to be effective in curing all, or even several, diseases. Accordingly I have to think this Lutheran “minister” is promoting a substance that can, at best, give only a limited benefit and using both the ancient traditions of the African people and the credentials of the modern church in a deceptive way to promote and market his “miracle drug”. In my opinion this action should be considered a criminal offence.

  11. The wildebeest migration makes more sense than this scene!! Am reading “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” about the Hmong culture in America and the author notes: “Medicine was religion. Religion was society. Society was medicine. ..the Hmong preoccupation with medical issues was nothing less than a preoccupation with life.” Probably true of any culture that has little or no access to health care. What a safari you are having!!!

  12. The Kenyon class of 1982 heard Alan Alda say, and i will paraphrase, when you get to the top of the mountain, you find another waiting.

    Hope and dreams, I believe, are patterned in us, and if we choose to acknowledge them, they are very powerful.

    Living, the grandest of all adventures.

  13. I am healed by the medicine given by the man of God who was prompted by God Himself in a dream to give the medicine to God’s people with chronic diseases that the scientists have not found a cure. Only God can cure and He has cured me. I have not taken even a paracetamol in a month since I visited and drank the cup. I am healed of a chronic cough and hypertension that the doctors could not heal or find the reason why I was coughing. The pharmacist told me that my chronic cough was caused by the medication I was taking for healing the hypertension. I made the pharmacist rich by the amount of cough remedies that I had to buy. I was chocking and no one knew why I had such a cough, My brother had serious diabetes with both his legs and toes, plus his finger tips all going numb, and his kidneys hurting. It is over 2 months, he is well and has not taken one medication for this diabetes. He is eating free diet. The devil is a lair. He wants us to go to the grave early before our children grow. Faith in God who gave this instruction for healing of His people, gave me the healing. Do not despise this you healers who have not healed HIVor cancer. I have met those who had HIV and are up and running errands and gaining strength. Would your clever speech of downing this command to heal the people deter me from my faith? I am healed, glory to God. Jesus gave different instructions for healing, some were given mud on the eye John 9:6 and told to go and wash at pool, others touched His garment in faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Jesus healed and is still healing today and He has faithful servants, even the poor ones like babu. How much money is babu charging, nothing because God told him not to charge money. This is not a get rich quick mission. He could be rich in one day, for the multitude that is visiting every day. Thousands. God’s anointing is on His servants. So allow me to enjoy a new life of good health and I give this testimony like the one lepper that went back to Jesus to thank Him for healing him, but the 9 kept quiet. Allow me please. I thank God for this healing and I know it is from Him alone. Come on you people who are healed, what are you waiting for. Why allow the man of God be rediculed? Come forth and testify! The devil does not want this truth known. He is proud because people are saying it is not God. Do not let him take the credit. Thank you, Jesus. Happy Easter everyone. He was wounded for our transgressions by His stripes we are healed. Glory to Him.
    Josephine.

  14. We find it interesting that the miracle of today that has cured hundreds could not have been available for those who have passed away.

    Keep up the good work.

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