Nourishing Memories Chap 10: Kabare, Kenya, 1985-88
by Graham Kings
Date added: 09/10/2025
First Impressions
Our first impressions of country life near Mount Kenya are of extensive greenery, fertile red soil, ox carts carrying water in oil drums from the river, children following closely behind us saying Wazungu (white people), crickets chirping through the night, the soft light of paraffin lamps, wonderful night skies with the constellations in unusual positions, extended greetings on the road, people walking and walking, women carrying babies on their backs, exciting driving on mud roads in our CMS car, the relief of the tarmac, multi-coloured birds, plants and flowers, stone house and schools next to mud houses and stores, the sound of Kikuyu (the local language), some Swahili and English, colourful markets with many kinds of fruit and vegetables , the taste of freshly picked and cooked maize (corn on the cob), meat chopped on a tree stump in the butcher’s shop, and packed churches. (Kings CMS Link Letter, Sept 1985)
I wrote this description of living at St. Andrew’s Institute (now College), Kabare, 40 years ago. From May 1985 to October 1991 (with a break for leave for six months in England), we lived at about 6,000 feet above sea level, just south of the equator, 85 miles north of Nairobi and seven miles up a mud road. This essay features reflections on our first period at Kabare, May 1985 to July 1988.
St Andrew’s Institute
The Principal of St. Andrew’s Institute was Gideon Ireri, who had studied at St. Paul’s United Theological College, Limuru, and at St. John’s College, Nottingham. Later he gained a master’s in mission studies at Yale Divinity School and became the first Bishop of Mbeere. Gideon gave us a warm welcome. The Director of Pastoral Studies was Bedan Ireri, mzee (revered Elder), who had survived the Mau Mau rebellion and experienced an extraordinary filling of the Holy Spirit when he and his friends spoke in tongues during an all-night prayer meeting. Joyce Karuri taught African church history, and visiting lecturers in African theology and African traditional religion included Jeremiah Mwathe and Justus Mbogo. Anne Murage and Beth Ngarambe taught community health, employed by the Christian Community Services department of the diocese, led by Josphat Mugweru.
Paddy and Eleanor Benson, in whose house we stayed at first for a few days, were mission partners with Crosslinks (then called BCMS). Their children, Tabitha, Evelyn and Tom, became great friends with our children. Paddy was director of academic studies and Eleanor taught Church history and was librarian. The library was in the Old Mission House, built in 1910, where the gospel was first proclaimed in this area of Kenya by CMS missionary Edmund Crawford and his Kenyan colleagues. They had served the college from its beginning in 1978, were wonderful hosts and guides and have been friends ever since.
When we arrived, the college taught two subjects: theology (in English) to ordinands, training for ministry in the Church of the Province of Kenya (now the Anglican Church of Kenya), over three years; and community health (in Kiswahili) to parish health workers, over two months and with a later refresher month. The latter course was pioneering grassroots medical education, including, at an astonishingly early date, HIV/AIDS. In 1988 a secretarial course was added, taught by Pam Wilding, a CMS mission partner.
Our Family
My role was to teach theology to ordinands. Teaching was in English and my Eurocentric theology was turned upside down and expanded as I learned from my Kenyan colleagues and students and from Dr. David Gitari, the Bishop of Mount Kenya East, who founded the college in 1978. Before Paddy and Eleanor left for leave in England after our first nine months, I was teaching New Testament, doctrine, worship, and mission: sometimes we would use role play. When they left, I was appointed director of studies. I was soon given a Kikuyu name, Mugo, which means medicine man.
Ali was given the Kikuyu name Njeri and her role was being a mother to our three children and a hospitable friend to staff, students, neighbours and visitors. We arrived with two daughters, Rosalind (three and a half, who was given the name Wanjiru) and Miriam (nine months, Wanjiku). Katie was born in 1987 and was baptized with both her English and Kikuyu name, Wambui. These female Kikuyu names were from four of the nine daughters of Mumbi and Gikuyu, the Kikuyu Eve and Adam.
Ali’s two best friends were Faith Wanjiku, who helped us in the house and lived at the bottom of the hill, and Faith Njogu, the accounts clerk at the college:
Rosalind spent the night in Faith Wanjiku’s mud house recently and had great fun sleeping with her 6-year-old daughter, Ciru, on a single bed. “We talked in Kikuyu for an hour before going to sleep,” reported Ros. Then she added, “When I didn’t understand something, I guessed and said ‘ee’” (which means “yes” and is pronounced something like the vowel sound in air). (Link Letter, Dec. 1986)
Our first task was to learn Kiswahili, the general East African language. Language is the basis for any culture, and it was good to receive this gift from Kenya, at language school in Nairobi for three months, soon after we arrived. We loved especially the proverbs and riddles. We picked up our local language, Kikuyu, during our first three years, and I preached through a translator, Gate Njogu.
As a family we enjoyed staying with the families of students for weekends. We visited Joseph Gichunge in Meru and Benjamin Mutia in Kitui. During the Easter vacation 1986, I stayed for a week with Daniel Sankete, in the Maasai area of Kajiado, south of Nairobi, and I baptized his son, Samuel Kasaine, on Easter Day.
Holidays in Mombasa, on the coast, and Naivasha, in the Rift Valley, were very refreshing. With BCMS missionary friends in Embu, Rob and Sue Martin, and others, I walked up Mount Kenya, to the third-highest peak at 16,355 feet. The twin peaks, 1,000 feet higher, need climbing equipment. It was exhilarating to see the curvature of the earth.
Bishop David Gitari
Dr. David Gitari (1937-2013) served as Bishop of Mount Kenya East, 1975-90, Bishop of Kirinyaga, 1990-96, and Archbishop of Kenya, 1997-2002. He was immensely impressive, and I learned so much from him about ministry, mission, liturgy, and theology. I wrote his obituary for the Anglican Communion Office and mentioned that he was:
an inspirational Bishop, Archbishop, expositor, theologian, evangelist, prophet, liturgist, entrepreneur and bridge-builder. His legacy in the Anglican Church of Kenya, the nation of Kenya, and the Anglican Communion is profound and will continue to bear fruit for many years to come.
I remember vividly the service he led at Epinding, near Isiolo, northeast of Mount Kenya, in November 1985. On this plain, surrounded by hills and shaded by acacia trees, 125 Turkana and Samburu people were confirmed. Gitari built Embu Cathedral, and dedicated it on July 12, 1987, with 45 bishops and seven archbishops, who were in Kenya for a pre-Lambeth Conference meeting.
His major book is In Season and Out of Season: Sermons to a Nation (Regnum Press, 1996) and autobiography is Troubled but not Destroyed (Isaac Publishing, 2014). In 1996, I wrote an article about his biblical interpretation in action, and presented a BBC Radio 4 program on his ministry. Ben Knighton, my successor as director of academic studies, edited Religion and Politics in Kenya: Essays in Honour of a Meddlesome Priest (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). In 1998, he stayed with us in Cambridge, before the Lambeth Conference, and received an honorary DD from the University of Kent.
Three International Conferences
Bishop Gitari chaired three international conferences at Kabare in our first period there. In July 1985, the inaugural week-long conference of the Africa Theological Fraternity (ATF) was held. It was very stimulating to meet scholars from Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zaire, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, as well as from other parts of Kenya. I was especially impressed by the Ghanaian Secretary of ATF, Dr. Kwame Bediako, who became a good friend and, in 1992, preached at my commissioning service in Cambridge, as Henry Martyn Lecturer. I was asked to present a paper on “God the Father in the New Testament” and the papers were published as The Living God, edited by the Bishop and Paddy (Uzima Press, 1986).
In July 1987, the bishop chaired the third conference of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians in the Two-Thirds World. Fifty-seven theologians from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, plus a few from North America and Europe (including Yugoslavia), discussed “The Living God in Contemporary Life.” As the consultation secretary, I found these the most hectic, challenging, and thrilling days since I took my finals 10 years earlier:
The most exciting moment for me was when I was given a hand-delivered letter saying that the three black South Africans, whom we had been trying for days to get into the country, were arriving at Nairobi airport at 11:30 p.m. The bishop immediately drove down the 85 miles to collect them and I welcomed them here at about 2 a.m. The Rev. Frank Chikane is the new General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (a post Desmond Tutu once held). After his paper on Black theology, he gave a moving testimony of his six periods of detention without trial: one period of torture lasted for 50 hours nonstop and, horrifically, one of his torturers was a deacon in a white church. When he was eventually brought to trial he was acquitted—but then had his house burned down at 2 a.m. (Link Letter, Sept. 1987)
In February 1988, the bishop chaired a Provincial Partners in Mission Consultation facilitated by the Anglican Communion Office:
For the first week of the PIM the 25 external partners [from outside Kenya] were distributed around the dioceses. For the second week they all came to Kabare, together with four people from each of the 12 CPK dioceses. (Letter to my parents, March 5, 1988)
Kenyan Service of Holy Communion
The PIM Consultation was the first time an international conference had experienced the Kenyan Service of Holy Communion:
Each morning began with a service of Holy Communion, which used the new liturgy written by the staff and students here. Its interesting Christianising of African traditional prayers has been enthusiastically reviewed by News of Liturgy (Oct. 1987) and Colin Buchanan is including the eucharistic prayer in his next book. (Link Letter, March 1988)
I remember the genesis of the rite:
This past week—Wed to Mon—has been half term and most of it, Wed to Fri, I was writing a new Holy Communion liturgy onto the computer using some prayers and ideas from the students on our worship committee, some prayers of African traditional religion and some ASB ideas. I’m very pleased with it. The CPK Liturgical Committee liked our 8-page report on their first draft and asked St. Andrew’s Worship Committee to produce some new ideas. (Letter to my parents, June 28, 1987)
The liturgy was published as A Kenyan Service of Holy Communion (Uzima, 1989) and used for the opening Eucharist of the Lambeth Conference of 1998, with Bishop Gitari presiding, and has become well-known. In 2001, my book, with Geoff Morgan, Offerings from Kenya to Anglicanism: Liturgical Texts and Contexts, Including a Kenyan Service of Holy Communion (Alcuin and Grove Books) was published. Phillip Dawson’s dissertation for his Cambridge M.Phil. in 2025 engaged with the liturgy and others in the ACK complete Prayer Book, Our Modern Services (Uzima Press, 2002), edited by Joyce Karuri.
Conclusion
Looking back, I am conscious of how much we all learned as a family and that our rootedness in the foothills of Mount Kenya proved to be fertile for life-long friendships and creativity. My first academic article was published, “Facing Mount Kenya: Reflections on The Bible and African Traditional Religion” (Anvil 4.2, 1987) and teaching in another culture inspired 12 poems, including seven on the Gospel of Luke. Thanks be to God.
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Notes: The full texts of our first nine CMS Link Letters, 1985-88, are available here.
This chapter was published originally as 'David Gitari and a Kenyan Service of Holy Communion' on Covenant on 9 Oct 2025.
Earlier chapters of Nourishing Memories may be read here.
