Amahoro Africa

My main reason for going to Uganda was to participate in Amahoro Africa (www.amahoro-africa.org), an international gathering of 150 African church leaders from mainly East Africa. The African countries represented were Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, Sudan, Nigeria, Liberia and South Africa. There were also about 50 participants from the US.

The meeting was held at the Colline Hotel in Mukono, which is near Kampala. Did you see "Hotel Rwanda"? Colline was the chain of hotels referenced.

Besides the bus ride from the airport, what I saw of the outdoors for 3 days was through a window. This was the view from my hotel room.Amahoro Africa's conversation discussed the post-colonial Church in Africa. It is a topic I hadn't pondered much beforehand. In fact, during my sabbatical, my brain has become quite underutilized. To go from inactivity to heady theological, social, political, psychological and spiritual discussions was overwhelming, but in a good way. We spent a total of 40 hours over 4 days in this conference room. Buzz words used included orientalism, post-modernism, post-colonialism, marginalized, context, apartheid, accountability, leadership development, partnership, transformation, reconciliation and empowerment. Does that give you an idea of our time together?

If you would like to follow some of the discussion, please check out the blog at www.amahoroafrica.blogspot.com. I'm also happy to interact with you more in-depth than what I will cover in my blog.

TIA moment(s): The electricity went out intermittently each day, sometimes for several seconds, other times for many minutes, always when Monique or I were showering. TIA.

A few highlights of the gathering for me were:

worshiping with Africans in Africa, . . .. . . discussing African womens' roles in the Church, and. . .

. . . interacting one-on-one with a large number of people.

My FAVORITE part of the conference was meeting each afternoon with my break-out discussion group. It was such a privilege to bring 7 nations together with our different perspectives and discuss the main session topics. From the left: John (Rwanda), Dan (Kenya), Nyantito (Tanzania), me (US), Onesphore (Burundi), Judith (Uganda), Louise (South Africa) and Rita (Uganda).

Being in Africa, we must dance! We had a celebration barbeque with traditional Ugandan dancers to inspire us.
We even had each country take turns on the dance floor. Once again, the stereotype was confirmed - white people can't dance.

The one exception was Brian McLaren. Way to go!