Nowhere to call home in promised land

As popular Christian folklore, mythology and scriptures go, the place variously referred to as Canaan, the Promised Land or the land flowing with milk and honey in the Bible is somewhere in the Middle East.

The book of Exodus, which gives account of the great escape of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, led by Moses, precisely locates the Promised Land between rivers Euphrates and Tigris — which would be in the present-day Iraq.

But if you are in Kenya and you believe the teachings of one of the least known religious groups in the country, you are actually living on the Promised Land today.

Citing a 1956 prophecy by its Zimbabwean founder, Baba Johane Masowe, members of the group known as the Gospel of God Church hold that Kenya is the Promised Land.

Roots in Zimbabwe

The Gospel of God Church has its roots in Zimbabwe, where it has a larger presence to date due to its original unravelling as an indigenous African Christian grouping against colonialism and foreign values in the faith. They are also known as Vapostori, which is Shona for the apostles.

In a story line that has echoes of Dan Brown’s controversial book, The Da Vinci Code, Baba Johane, the first generation of the group came to Kenya some time in 1963 in search of a Mona Lisa-like symbol key to unlocking a vital secret, possibly of the Ark of the Covenant, as contained in Isaiah 19: 18 and 19.

Baba Johane, whom his followers consider John the Baptist of the Bible, supposedly told them to do so in his prophecy in 1956.

“He told his followers to go to a country called Kenya, where they would find a monument erected by wise men,” says Wellington Mumbi, a 48-year-old senior member of the group.

“He also ordered the chosen disciples to make Nairobi their permanent base. Although they were also told to preach the gospel to all the corners of the earth, they were told to make sure they returned here.”

Discovered altar

In Kenya, they discovered their altar — the globe-shaped monument next to the General Post Office (GPO) on Nairobi Kenyatta Avenue.

However, inscriptions on the Nairobi monument indicate that it was erected by the Royal East Africa Automobile Association in 1939 in memory of its founder, Lionel Douglas Galton Fenzi, who died on May 15, 1937.

Fenzi founded the Royal East Africa Automobile Association — the forerunner of the Automobile Association (AA) — in 1919 and was its honorary secretary at the time of his death.

The controversy aside, the original members of the church, said to number less than 20, did not just stumble upon their religious symbol, they also established a small colony of Zimbabweans in the quiet Kiambaa village on the Naivasha Highway, in Kikuyu Division.

Other members of the community are to be found in Githurai estate in the outskirts of Nairobi. Mumbi estimates that their population is currently close to 4,000.

“Most people call us refugees, but we are not. Our parents came here to spread the word of God,” he says.

Mumbi, who says he came to Kenya as a two-year-old in the company of his parents, told Lifestyle that the last of the original adults in their family, Samuel Chinyanga, died about five years ago, aged 106.