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Prayers Cannot Deliver Food? Ask Afghanis and the Taliban. It is Working Wonders 

12 mins read
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President William Ruto has summoned Kenyans to come to Nyayo Stadium for national prayers, to ask God to provide the nation with food and help starving people address hunger.

The president also wants God to help end the drought in Kenya. I am not making this up so don’t laugh, please. This is our head of state at work for his country which is facing big problems with basic things.

I don’t know if that God will also deliver subsidized fertilizers or if that may be too heavy for the poor old man to carry all over the country, but I am hoping we will not burden God to deliver fuel. You don’t want God to go up in smoke when the fuel pump breaks down. Plus, God and his son Jesus always just fly to heaven on their own. I doubt they use gasoline to fly.

“For those who will not be able to make it to Nyayo Stadium, have services anywhere and pray for the country,” Ruto told Kenyans.

He also said his government has set aside seeds and fertilizers for agriculture, but all plans cannot go well if God doesn’t provide rain. 

“We need God in order to move forward,” he said. 

The prayers will be held between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm, religious leaders are also expected to attend. 

After hearing that piece of bad comedy from Kenya, I turned to my workmate who is from Afghanistan who still has family there and is often scared that the Taliban could cause a lot of harm to people. So I asked him how prayers are working for the people in his country since they actually have a government there that speak directly to God and issue orders from above.

I didn’t want him to think that I am making jokes about the serious situation people face in Afghanistan so I showed him what the Kenya president is planning for Valentine’s Day. He asked me if Valentine’s Day in Kenya is not about people with their families and lovers.

I told him Kenyans today are supposed to love God more than they love their families, particularly when they are starving. In any case, Kenyans and their families need food and the old man is sitting on it up there hence the state-ordered prayers.

So my Afghani friend and co-worker in Toronto told me the Taliban ordered 5 issues for Afghanis to pray and everybody has to do it.

My co-worker told me the first focus is to pray for the People of Afghanistan. “Do not fear for I am you” is the prayer. The second Prayer is for the Troops and their Loved ones. Then there is a third prayer for the Leaders. The last and most important prayer is for the Taliban.

I asked him if the prayers are working and he told me so far it is working only for the Taliban to stay in power when people have no food and schools are being closed.

The other country in the world where prayers took a whole new meaning and became the official government plan and policy was Haiti where a brutal dictator, Francois “PAPA DOC” Duvalier, the Haitian president from 1957to 1971 actually had a prayer in his name, provided from his office to all the people of Haiti to cite every morning when they wake up and also at night before they go to sleep.

Here is Papa Doc’s prayers presented to the people of Haiti.

The Lord’s Prayer According to Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier

“Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for life, hallowed by Thy name by present and future generations. They will be done in Port-au-Prince as it is in the provinces. Give us this day our new Haiti and forgive not the trespasses of those anti-patriots who daily spit upon our country…”

Here is Papa Doc who can provide exemplary ideas to modern-day dictators on how to run a country on their own terms and steal every penny belonging to the public. Papa Doc trained his son there with him to do the same things he was doing and that started in 1971 when Papa Doc’s son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” took power from his father.

Baby Doc continued the legacy from God with the prayer still applicable. It was not until 1986 when the great Haitian revolutionary preacher Jean-Bertrand Aristide led a mass movement that threw Baby Doc out of office as he flew to the US as an exile.

So yes, prayers can work as we can see it worked for the Duvalier family to rip off Haiti for 29 years. It is just that those same prayers never worked for the people of Haiti. I know we have our own Papa Doc and now Baby Doc in Kenya politics and we all know how much they love God as well as you and me. Bwana Asifiwe.

Here is our Papa Doc with one of his victims, Dr. Robert Ouko, Kenya’s Minister for Foreign Affairs when Moi killed him and had his body burnt to ashes in Got Alila forest. We will talk about our new Baby Doc later. He is just getting started. Bwana Asifiwe tena. But Papa Doc did his thing.

The whole history of Haiti is so sad so we will have that discussion, but remember Haiti was the first ever Black Republic in the world which got its independence in 1804. That country is probably the only country in the world that has been colonized by Spain, France, and the United States at different times in their history.

So on Valentine’s Day with God in Kenya, I would like to tell my fellow Kenyans that I too love God very much.

I was brought up in constant prayers something my mother took very seriously. I went to a Catholic School for my Primary School education even though my family was actually Anglicans. That is one good thing in Kenya. As long as you love your God they don’t care about the details. My parents had no problems with me citing Catholic prayers in school and it was all good for them.

So in the morning before classes, we recited Catholic Prayers and it was a good environment for kids and the teachers. Now if my headmaster or school principal had started to ask us to pray so God can give us books and food to eat in school, I don’t know what I would have thought about that because I know my mother gave us food to eat and I never saw any God deliver anything to her to feed us.

I knew you got food from the farm and occasionally my mother would ask us to chase that chicken for some good food and boy we would chase the poor chicken with gusto. It was going down. That is how we got food. If a school head was to tell my nieces in school that their food is about to arrive from God, I am calling the psychiatrist for that dude if there is any available or that niece is getting another school.

Our kids are starving all over the country and it is not because God is mad at them or their parents. It is because we have terribly incompetent people running our country. I am sure any God would love these kids. So why can’t they find food if it is all in God’s hands to deliver it to them?

If there are some genuine Church people in Kenya close to Ruto and his God’s cabinet may be they should ask the president to stop belittling God. The idea that if your are starving it is because God is not providing you with food is insane. You are making God look bad for starving and killing people. Why would God do that? Does God want people to get to heaven in such a hurry that he is willing to help get them there faster by killing them through starvation?

We have food scarcity and drought because our leaders have no idea to help Kenyans use our natural gifts, which are boundless, to help us produce what we need to feed ourselves and make our lives better. There is no God out there who will fix that for us.

Why do you think we have so many mercenary preachers all over the country collecting money from politicians and poor Kenyans every day to live lavish lives? Why can’t God give them the money they need? Why are they demanding stuff from politicians to feed themselves when they have God with them 24/7? Because they are not stupid.

The money-making pastors pray with Ruto so that you as a Kenyan get food but before they leave Ruto they have their pockets full of money from the boss. Why not ask them to get money and food from God like other Kenyans are supposed to?

That is for dummies which is what these people think ordinary Kenyans are. We will find out about that soon enough. Happy Valentine’s Day everybody.

Adongo Ogony is a Kenyan Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada

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