Tuesday, April 3, 2012

‘Not even a jail term can shake my faith in God’


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Margaret Nduta outside Nyahururu court on 27.03.2012 shortly after she was released to serve two years suspended sentence for failing to take her children to hospital for immunization and for treatment citing her strong Christian faith that bars them from seeking medical treatment. Her husband Joseph Njoroge is serving 2 years in prison for the same offence. Photo/JOSEPH KURIA
Margaret Nduta outside Nyahururu court on 27.03.2012 shortly after she was released to serve two years suspended sentence for failing to take her children to hospital for immunization and for treatment citing her strong Christian faith that bars them from seeking medical treatment. Her husband Joseph Njoroge is serving 2 years in prison for the same offence. Photo/JOSEPH KURIA 
By JAMES KARIUKI kamaukariuki@gmail.com
Posted  Tuesday, April 3  2012 at  00:00
To 48-year-old Joseph Njoroge, two years in prison is small price to pay for upholding the teachings of his church. Last month, he denied his daughter medical treatment despite orders by a Nyahururu court.
His faith in God, he told the court, was so robust that it would translate in the healing of his 14-year-old daughter, who had been raped by a neighbour.
Meet Mr and Mrs Njoroge; the unfortunate personification of Kenyans who will not let anything stand in the way between them and their religion, for these two as that religion is professed by the Kanitha Wa Ngai sect.
On the day their daughter was raped, she had taken unusually long to get home from school. Her parents and a search party had found her rain-soaked after hours of searching. Fortunately, she regained consciousness as the heavy downpour subsided.
Instead of reporting the matter to the police, Njoroge and his wife Margaret Nduta, 44, summoned elders from Kanitha wa Ngai and spent the whole day in something of a prayer marathon.
Unamused, neighbours took up with a volunteer social worker named Edith Nyaga and the area chief, who stormed the home and took the child to hospital.
Upon treatment, medics gave a date on which they would review her condition. Njoroge and his wife would hear none of it and blocked all efforts to take the girl back to hospital or take the prescribed drugs.
Neighbours had the rape suspect arrested and later arraigned in court by police from Ol Jororok. This saw the court open a progress file to monitor treatment and counselling of the girl, setting the parents on a collision course with it. It didn’t take long.
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When Njoroge was summoned to brief the court on the girl’s progress, the pin dropped.
Conventional drugs
“I prayed for my daughter and maybe God is punishing me for sins that I do not know of. I do not believe in conventional drugs and the court should not waste its time telling me to take her to hospital. Not even a jail will shake my faith in God,” he told Resident Magistrate Vincent Kiptoon.
A patient Kiptoon gave Njoroge a chance to heed the orders, but Njoroge would not comply, prompting the court to direct the children’s office to monitor the child’s progress and treatment while Njoroge was behind bars.
His wife Nduta was later be asked by the same court to explain why she should not be jailed for denying her two children, three-year-old Edward Chege and one-year-old Nancy Wamaitha, immunisation.
She also cited her faith and risked being jailed, but the court handed her a suspended sentence, observing that, if it jailed her, her five children would suffer with both parents in prison.
Monitor progress
The court directed the Children’s Office to ensure the two were immunised as well as monitor the progress of the rape victim. It also warned Nduta that she risked being jailed if she failed to take the children for treatment for any ailment.
The Kanitha wa Ngai followers are mainly peasant farmers who rely on one of their own to read and interpret the scriptures. They have not built any churches and worship in their compounds.
At Bahati village in Gathanje Location in Nyandarua West District, we visit the Njoroges in their mud-walled houses. As we exchange pleasantries, we can’t help noticing their children’s impressive knowledge of selected verses of the Bible.
Neighbours say Njoroge’s family is reclusive and prefers to worship at a place called Kasuku, where the sect enjoys a large following.
The Njoroges’ eschewing of modern medicine and the attendant documentation comes with its own problems. When the children have to enrol in school, the Njoroges have to sweet-talk civil servants to issue them with birth certificates and medical examination cards.
Nduta is calm during the entire interview, talking only about the punishment one will meet for defying God’s orders.
“I am willing to obey the (secular) law to the letter but I pray that my God will help me keep his commandment of not going to hospital. I mean, my children will remain protected as long as I’m a believer.”
As she tells us how she lost a child to disease, a lump easily forms in the throat.

“Church elders joined my mother in prayer when my daughter’s condition got worse. I was away for three days and only learnt that my daughter had died while prayers were still on.
“For three days, the one year-old child coughed non-stop, surrounded by her grandmother and some relatives who were praying fervently,” she recalls.
“God preordained that the child should die that day. Even you and I have a definite (death) date with our maker. You cannot term that (the child’s death) neglect as we were there all the time,” says Nduta.
She battles tears several times as she remembers that another child died at birth, “just as God had planned”.
In her world, there is a divine ring to everything. “My other daughter abandoned our church to be married to a Gatundu farmer, but her day came and she died as predestined by God.”
Nduta had just returned home after a two-week stretch a the Nyahururu Women’s Remand Prison, where she had been held awaiting completion of two reports from the Children’s and Probation departments that convinced the magistrate that she deserved a suspended sentence.
She admitted denying her year-old-daughter Mercy Wamaitha and three-year-old Edward Chege immunisation and subsequent medical treatment immediately after birth.
“What I did was according to the Book of James 5:13 (Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray…). It is our faith that heals or condemns us. All we need to do is to go direct to God and ask for healing,” she says.
But now things are tricky with the court order in force. So she will comply lest she is jailed for defiance, like her husband.
But there is a rider. “I will repeat what I did last time. I went to hospital but I am not the one who handed over the children to the medics for immunisation,” she says, maintaining that she and the husband are innocent.
“Did anyone find a sick child locked somewhere in our house?” she asks. “I have faith that God will ensure my children remain healthy so as to show the world that He cares for His people.”
Her church members believe the Church of Christ resides in one’s soul. This is why none of Kanitha wa Ngai believers has been chosen as the supreme leader, she says.
“God uses the Holy Spirit to choose the speaker of the word when we congregate at a faithful’s house, just as Jesus did,” she explains.
Another believer, Nduati wa Ngemi from Nairobi, is emphatic that the congregation relies on the holy spirit for guidance on who is to preach at any given meeting or worship service. No offerings are made.
Nduta believes the tribulations they have encountered as a family are meant to test their faith. “It happened to Job and even Jesus,” she says, adding that there is no running away from tribulations as long as one is on earth.

“It’s murder. God has a plan for every child born and all we need to do is to obey Him by populating the earth. We remain faithful to our vows to remain sinless,” says Wa Ngemi.
And the sect will not hear of birth control.
But Nduta’s brother, Peter Mwangi, is shocked by his sister’s transformation, saying it had led to several deaths in her family that would have been avoided were it not for the no-hospital-but-prayer tenet.
Mwangi, who runs a transport business in Nairobi’s Ongata Rongai, blames Nduta’s husband Njoroge for her “indoctrination”.
The Kanitha wa Ngai sect has numerous restrictions for both men and women, but women seem to bear the largest burden of the doctrine.
Men in this church must never work in their farms or any other place bare-chested, wearing a vest or a pair of shorts. The legs must be covered at all times and shirts buttoned up to the Adams’ apple, temperatures notwithstanding.
Hipsters, pedal-pushers, ‘three-quarters’, pipes, flares, or any type of trousers is a NO for women. They must wear round, ankle-length pleated dresses. Open shoes are banned unless one is at home. Mascara and allied facial art is a taboo. So is nail polishing and various skin lightening creams.
“Pedicure and manicure are alien to us,” says Nduta. “We do not even advocate plaiting hair or shaving. We hardly blow-dry, dry-set, or ‘perm’. We only wash our hair nicely inside our bathrooms or bedrooms where no one sees it. No one should ever see our hair.”
As for child-birth, traditional birth attendants (mainly from the sect) are at hand to help expectant mothers deliver ‘safely’ at home amid singing and praying as Kanitha wa Ngai doesn’t believe in hospital-based ante-natal care.
Desecrate vessels
“In hospitals, one has to remove clothes at times in front of ‘strangers’ who are just as human like us. These people desecrate God’s vessels. It is a shame,” adds Ngige Njoroge.Children are taught from the onset that a curse will befall them if they go against biblical teachings and will never see ‘heaven’’.
Nduta says that nutritional foods are recommended and members taught how to embrace a balanced diet, including fruits after every meal.
Children are encouraged to attend school to the highest level possible, but they must avoid medical courses like the plague lest they start questioning the teachings of their church.
“We only encourage those things that will enhance the word of God but not those which put God’s ability in question. Let those who attend hospitals do so. As for ourselves, we are out of it,” says Wa Ngemi. As for education, neighbours say Nduta and her husband were forced by local administrators to pay fees for their 17-year-old son’s secondary education.
Volunteer social worker Edith Nyaga says Kanitha Wa Ngai has made deep impressions on some local children. They hardly mix with others and spend most of their time with their siblings praying and talking about God’s miracles in their lives.

As we leave her home, Nduta reiterates that she and her husband are innocent faithful whose only mistake is being on earth where their faith is being put to test for them to ‘pass or fail’.
“Even at school they lead secluded lives as they keep scaring their colleagues with ‘hell-fire’ for this or that offence. Their time is spent in seclusion, prayer and attending church meetings held in members’ homes,” says children’s officer Albert Wanjohi.

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