I learnt many new words while in Zanzibar. Amongst others, one that apparently describes me: "Mzungu". That's the Swahili word for Europeans, though quite derogatory. According to my new friend, Ussi, a venerable Zanzibari wiseman, the name comes from the "mzunguka", meaning "one who comes and goes", which was first used to describe the white explorers of earlier centuries, the likes of Vasco da Gama and David Livingstone. Today, the word is thrown around willy-nilly mostly by dala-dala drivers trying to make an extra couple thousand shillings off unsuspecting tourists who never stay long enough to know better.
Zanzibar, an island of approximately 1.5 million people, is 99% Muslim. Our hosts, underground Christian "workers", have yet to meet an ethnic Zanzibari believer. For the most part, the Christians on the island are either from mainland Tanzania or Mzungus. In Stone Town, there are one or two beautifully historic church buildings that have mostly become cobwebbed monuments to a failed mission. The Catholic church in Stone Town's activities in Zanzibar mainly consist of breeding pigs and running a bar on their campus. Two of the most haram (unclean) abominations in Islam. Needless to say, the organised church in Zanzibar have for the most part only succeeded to alienate the Islamic majority in Zanzibar. In Islam, there is no distinction between culture and religion: it is one and the same. Therefore, when Zanzibari Muslims see half-naked mzungu tourists drunk on the beach, they shake their heads in disdain at the immorality of such Christians.
These preconceptions made it somewhat complicated for our Northbound team to minister to the Zanzibari Muslims. It wasn't just as simple as walking up to anyone on the street and asking if "you could spare a moment for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ", because they sure don't see Him as their saviour. Instead, he's a prophet. Isa is his name in the Qu'ran. He is described as being born of a virgin, is said to have performed the greatest miracles the world has seen, and is even called the "word of God". So close! But for the most part, He's as much an alien their world as Henry Kissinger. No more than a fleeting memory of a man from a far away country that made its way to their shores as the symbol of a white man's God.
How encouraging is it to know the truth, though? "We need never shout across the empty spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts," writes AW Tozer. The Muslims know Him as Isa; we know Him as Immanuel, God with us. But oh how He loves the Zanzibaris, though they do not know Him for who He truly is. Nevertheless, in Isaiah 45:4-6 God speaks, saying "I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me."
And He is faithful. Immanuel says "behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." He's no Mzungu. He doesn't come and go. He's here in Zanzibar, and he's here for the long haul. The Zanzibaris may be categorised as an unreached people group, but they're everything but out of His reach. And he's sending His kids there to share good news of grace with them. Not as Mzungus, either, but as under-the-radar, Swahili-speaking ministers of reconciliation. And the harvest is white...
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