One July morning in 1997 Kenyans woke up to a dire warning about imminent brimstone and hellfire.
The messenger was Jehovah Wanyonyi, the enigmatic leader of the Lost Israelites of Kenya sect.
Wanyonyi told Kenyans that he was God and that was going to wipe this sinful generation from the face of the Earth and bring forth another one.
He already had 3000 followers who were the chosen few to inherit the kingdom of God after he had won the great battle with the devil.
The charismatic preacher reserved the worst punishment for Europeans. "White people," he declared, "are the descendants of Esau, whom I cursed in the book of Genesis. I will destroy their dominion along with other heathen in the fullness of time."
Playing god
When neighbours burned his house to forestall the predicted catastrophe, Wanyonyi simply built another and continued to play God. Surprisingly, the enigmatic preacher continued to attract an expending and fanatical following by the day.
Welcome to the world of religion and the strange things people do in God's name. Here, the weird and the ridiculous are considered modest forms of expression.
If it cannot be done any other way, try religion. This maxim proved fruitful for women cult members of Naivasha who had fallen prey to strange carnal desires in June 2005. The women, who belonged to a nameless religious sect, lured teenage boys into their hideout in the Flyover area for lessons on sex education. They would later detain the boys for 'practical lessons' during the night when they would engage in nightlong sexual orgies.
Welcome to the world of religion where the weird and ridiculous are considered modest forms of expression When parents raised the alarm about the new doctrine, villagers found some of the boys hiding under the beds of the said religious women. The boys, some as young as 14, narrated how a woman would sleep with four boys at a go. At night four boys would have sex with one woman, and then swap so that all the boys went round. Not surprisingly, the boys didn't want to leave and had to be beaten by scandalised parents to do so.
While the women were enjoying the fruits of their religion in Naivasha, another sect down the road was busy preparing for the end of the world.
In 2006, a man called Eliazer Kamotho, the leader of the House of Yahweh, came into the limelight when he announced that the world had failed to obey the 613 laws of Yahweh. Because of this, God was going to punish the world by destroying the whole planet.
Armed with reams of paper that he claimed provided evidence for his claims, Kamotho said that the apocalypse would start in seven countries in a nuclear war and then spread all over the world exterminating all life.
The earmarked countries were the United States, China, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, India and Pakistan.
Endtimes
To be precise, Kamotho said that the world would end on September 12, 2006. Their global leader, a man called Yisrayl Hawkins who resides in the USA, called upon the sect members to dig bunkers under their houses to shield themselves from the coming apocalypse. Many of them obeyed and many homes in Kinangop, parts of the Rift Valley and Nyandarua were fitted with bunkers where families hid food supplies.
The sect members followed his word to the letter and migrated underground, where some even equipped themselves with gas masks to counter the expected radiation as they awaited the 'Lord'.
When the appointed date arrived the world did not end, the leader came out of his pit explaining that a date given by the Lord can be extended by to up to seven years.
But it was Master James Mburu Kamau, a schoolboy from Maragwa, who outdid many of his predecessors with his religious zeal. The 19-year-old was a form four student at Gathungururu Secondary School in 2004 when he suddenly stopped going to school and claimed that the Holy Spirit had instructed him to cohabit and serve a 71-year-old woman in the neighbourhood.
Both were adherents of the Arata a Roho Mutheru (friends of the Holy Ghost) sect.
The village was treated to a bizarre scene that continued even after the then local DC, Mrs Lydia Muriuki, intervened.
Strange couple
The octogenarian, Nyanginda Gicharu, reportedly claimed that the local women were just jealous of her because she had acquired "a fresh guy to keep me company all night while their old men sleep and fart all night". This outburst did not amuse the villagers, who evicted her from the village. Hundreds of villagers spat and shouted obscenities as the woman was forced to relocate to her ancestral home in Gatanga. Her young man dutifully followed her.
While some forms of religious zeal are deeply rooted in carnal fantasy, other believers see evil in everything under the sky. In November 2006, the Nakuru DC was reported as having got into trouble with a local sect called Githomo (education).
The sect members accused the DC of curtailing their freedom of expression when he commented unfavourably about them at a public baraza.
The DC had said the sect was "retarding development in the area", a charge the members saw as an infringement on their rights.
According to Githomo sect, members are not allowed to own electronic gadgets, including mobile phones. They are evil incarnate, and so are newspapers. These are to be avoided at all costs. According to them, title deeds and share certificates are equally sinful.
In the same month in Nyahururu, another DC was having problems with a zealous outfit called Jerusalem Seventh Day Church. The members were offended when the DC told them to take their children to school. When one of them was arrested, he gave the magistrate's court at Nyahururu an earful. Josephat Munyiri informed the magistrate that taking his three children to school was tantamount to sending them to hell.
He would not budge even when the magistrate promised forgiveness if he agreed to take the children to school.
Path to wealth
The more ambitious use revivalist sects and cults to pave their way to riches. In June 2005, the pastor of Pentecostal Holiness Church was sentenced to two years in jail by the Kericho Senior Resident Magistrate's court. The man of God was in the habit of conning women out of their money by appealing for money to purchase plots of land. He was following in the footsteps of many others who have leapt from grinding poverty into fabulous riches in a few years by advising believers to 'plant' their monies with them.
And in June 2005, an Australian cult representative named Roland Gianstefani was jailed for six months for abducting a 7-year-old called Joshua Muhoho. He explained that his sect, Jesus Christians, was a nomadic religious group that calls for its members to forsake jobs, bosses, family and friends. The literature of the sect says that it is an offshoot of Children of God, a US outfit also called the Family, which entices followers with the promise of sex.
The strange religious bug has not spared even the learned and the rich. A Kenyan lawyer often reports at High Court with a sackcloth wrapped around his suit. He has announced that the world will end on July 18, 2010. According to him, we have only two years remaining to live and then the world will end.
