The Barnabas Venture

I have posted a challenge to African seminaries and their financial partners at Palabre.  It concerns a number of the most significant challenges for African faculty to teach in Africa:  inadequate compensation, health care, their children’s education, insufficient professional development, crumbling infrastructure and insecurity in the country of their seminaries, and inadequate provision for retirement.  These reflections arises out of many hours of talking with African professors and my visits to Africa to various campuses.

CITAF or The Council of theological institutions in french-speaking Africa (Conseil des Institutions Théologiques d’Afrique Francophone) has passed on its latest news to me.  Its general director, Dr. Abel Ndjerareou provides information about the new direction, which includes himself, and Dr. Daniel Kambou (as the adjunct coordinateur).  The Barnabas Venture helped to subsidize the meeting of CITAF last summer, and you can see me seated at the meeting next to Dr. Abel Ndjerareou and his wife Priscille on one side, and Rene Daidanso next to me on the other.

Among other news, CITAF has decided to moveits headquarters from Bangui, as originally planned, to Abidjan.  I support this decision.  Communication and travel to and from Bangui has become very difficult in the last few years, at it is in the middle of one of the worst war zones in Africa; land routes are extremely unsafe.  Kurt Berends of the Theological Book Network told me a shipment of books going to Bangui was delayed because the two of the shipper’s employees were murdered by bandits.    Electrical power in Bangui is also a problem, since the last I heard the Bouali dam is down to a single Turbine of the original four.  Communication with FATEB is now dependent on cyber cafes, as their satellite internet has mysteriously stopped.

Abidjan has also experienced war recently.  But it starts out the most modern city in French-speaking Africa.

For those who read French, here is Abel’s letter (for those who don’t “bon courage” or click on the translation by google.

Lettre d’Abel concernant CITAF

English translation

Moussa Bongoyok is in California now with Priscille and their three children.  He is on furlough from Bangui Evangelical School of Theology where he serves as academic dean and Priscille teaches in the Women’s School. Priscille has been suffering after she received surgery in Cameroon.  The doctors in Cameroon recommended that she try to get medical attention in Europe or America.  So they have taken a six-month leave of absence from BEST.  A friend has paid their airfare, and thanks be to God, they were also able to obtain a visa to return to the USA–Moussa studied at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The Barnabas Venture has decided to help the Bongoyoks, but can only help in a small portion of their needs at this point.  We have received the permission from the board of the Canadian Centre for World Mission to give direct benevolent aid to the Bongoyoks.

If you read this message, please pray for the Bongoyoks.

Peter Dunn

Elisee Ouoba and I have started a new blog called Palabre.  The word “palabre” is a French-African word which means roughly “conversation”; a palabre in Africa usually takes place under a designated tree in any given village, and it will often concern serious community issues; it is like an informal town hall but one that takes place everyday.

We have invited several distinguished writers to partake in the discussion and we hope it will contribute to fruitful action on the ground in Africa.  Since the gospel touches every aspect of humanity, including both the spiritual and the physical, the conversation is intentionally open to such controversial subjects as politics and economics, as well as anything else that you would expect of theologians.  It was decided that we could not host Palabre on the Barnabas Venture website; as an associate member of CCWM we exist for charitable purposes, and so we will be intentionally apolitical on this website.

At Palabre too, you will see the fruit of many years of research.  Already we have posted five academic theses (3 masters, 2 DEA)  in French by our authors; these are documents written in Africa by Africans; plus I’ve added some of my own academic papers.  Everyday, we will try to add something new, a video on Africa, news from the continent, or an academic article.

There are also links to some very rich resources in theology, both in French and English, some of which specializes in Africa.

We invite you to come and join us in the shade of the palabre tree.  As a non-author, you have the ability to join us too in the commentary section under each article.  Thank you, Peter W. Dunn

palabre.wordpress.com

Thanks for joining us at our new website.  I’ve decided to take down the old website because it was too difficult to add or to change content.  Now we are hosted by wordpress.com and at the end of February, this blog will become the new home for barnabasventure.com.  It is now possible with Google Apps to get a domain name e-mail too (e.g., pwdunn@barnabasventure.com).  Not only will this be much cheaper ($15 US per annum instead of per month), but the new format will allow us more traffic, more webspace (3 gig), and a user-friendly interface making it much easier too to keep everyone up to date on our various scholars and alumni, as I will ask them to upload their news and prayer requests.  Each scholar will be partially responsible for their own content to make sure that we are all apprised of their happenings. Finally, this format is also interactive, allowing our visitors to comment.  Thanks for visiting our website.

Signing off for now, the Director.