God's will

I went to a funeral earlier this week. It was the fourth funeral or wake I have attended since I arrived less than two months ago. While waiting for a car to go to the burial, a friend of mine said to me “when God decides it’s your turn to go, there’s really nothing you can do…"

I was speechless. The thing is, this wasn’t the first time I had heard that phrase. It wasn’t even the fourth time. And I was concerned to hear someone so well respected spreading a philosophy I believe may threaten the wellbeing of the people who live here. Let me explain.

The principle seems to be this: God won’t take my life before it’s my time – regardless of whether I wear a seatbelt, or use a mosquito net or practice safe sex – and when God decides it’s my time to go, there is nothing I can do about it.

I understand that it’s not my place to attach value statements to the beliefs of others - who am I to judge? But this particular belief system worries me because I believe it gives people an excuse to live their lives without taking responsibility for how their actions impact their lives and the lives of others. I also have a problem with the notion that God is somehow in the business of taking lives - which seems an odd hobby for someone who's moniker is "the Creator" - but that’s a different matter.

I discussed this with one of my friends while walking into town this afternoon. How can NGOs here help reverse the chief threats to people's wellbeing when highly respected members of those NGOs are perpetuating belief systems that seem to devalue the precautionary measures they are distributing? He completely understood. He gave me a great anecdote. When he goes home, he often has to tell his mother to shut the door to his sister’s bedroom at night, or else the mosquitoes will get her, and she will be at a greater risk of getting malaria - which is too often a death sentence for children under the age of five. “Oh, no,” his mother tells him, “God won’t take her life unless it’s her time.”

There was a similar story when I traveled through Dar when I first arrived in TZ. I was told that Mothers were not using car seats because, they said, if God wanted to take their baby, they wanted it in their arms when it happened. Car seat companies had a hard time convincing mothers that if they used a car seat maybe God wouldn’t take so many of their children. The story went that car seats only started to sell when one manufacturer had them blessed by a Priest.

One of the first times I heard the phrase was when I was talking to another respected community member who grew-up in a local village. “Did you swim there as a kid?” I asked. “Oh, lots,” he said. “Were there crocodiles there then?” “Oh, yes.” “Weren’t you scared?” "Why would I be scared? If a crocodile ate me, it would mean God had decided it was my time to go."

Perhaps that kind of blind faith is comforting when, as one person told me, death is "so simple here." But I am concerned because it seems that this blind faith may actually be part of the problem. A big one. Malaria and HIV/AIDS are killers, and it requires precautions to keep from contracting them. Those precautions - mosquito nets and condoms - are becoming increasingly available, and yet the death toll keeps rising. Over one million people die every year from malaria; that's more than twice the toll a generation ago. So what are we doing wrong?

If we are going to make an impact, I think people need to take responsibility for the choices that they themselves make. Until they do, I fear that all of the money and medication and condoms in the world won’t be able to abate these threats in any sort of long-term way. And for someone like me, who came here hoping that a little work and money could go a long way, it is disheartening to see that one of the chief barriers to our success may be paradigms of the very people who need help.