alex jabaro

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The Gospels Of Colonization By Frequency

as a girl my family emigrated from Kenya
to the United States new country new
people new language but the one thing
that remained was the presence of my
Savior Jesus Christ this didn't surprise

me I grew up knowing my God was
everywhere that he saw everything I
believed him to be a benevolent being
whose image I was created in even as I
looked up at his portrait that was
hanging in my grandmother's home a frame
full of blond hair pink and pale skin
eyes A light blue piercing enough to draw blood, an image so holy
but one that did not allow me to see myself in my creator
but as a child
it didn't matter I believed in the Word of God I read it like a love letter that
he wrote me I saw the preacher as the
postman's weekend deliverance each
service until one day in Sunday school
we were wrapping English Bibles for poor
kids in Botswana and I wondered in what
language to God listen, did he hear my prayers clearly in Swahili?
did he hear me better now that my amens were sent up
in a foreign man's tongue a foreign man
whose face looked more like his
blue-eyed son l've seen growing up i thought maybe we sent English Bibles
because his ears they tasted the sweet
sound of prayer better when spoken in
this tongue I know looking back it
sounds like a silly moment to start
questioning your faith but that day I
learned that once the seed of doubt is
planted its roots will always thirst so

i began to read about God each page was
like a raindrop of history
I lost my religion in floods of
understanding but I grew closer to
divinity and eventually branches on that
tree in doubt spread so wide that they
blocked out even his divine light it was
around the same time that I realized
that the poor kids had sent Bibles too
they were poor partly because of how
that Bible had been used see when the
missionaries came to Africa Christianity swept our lands like a biblical plague
our first Born's were smothered under
the cover of the night our waters they
flowed red and full swollen like the
bodies of stolen daughters
we were left in the darkness of colonization for eight decades
we became a continent of jobs promised salvation but seeing
suffering tenfold from those who came
claiming grace for Belting Gospels of Genocide
from those who beat tradition
from elder tongues and called the tithe
from those who called losing our culture attacks for
finding salvation in Christ and ain't it
funny how they used their God to justify
the taking of what ours has blessed us
with for centuries
how they claim to introduce God to our lands when
our lands birth even their humanity see
jumbo Kenyatta once said when the
missionaries arrived the Africans had
the land and the missionaries had the

Bible they taught us how to pray with
our eyes closed and when we opened them
They had the land and we had the Bibles
do you see how swiftly they pull wool
from the Lamb of God over our eyes the
greatest lie colonialism ever told was
that it brought God to Africa yes
they brought their Bibles but they did
not bring God to our lands yes they
brought their churches but they didn't
bring God to our lands yes
they brought their guns but they did not
bring God to our lands what they brought
was an image made to justify the
breaking of our bodies like communion
bread a false idol that told this day I
still see hanging so many Kenyan homes a
frame full of blond hair pink and pale
skin eyes a light blue piercing enough
to drive blood to have already drawn
blood

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