The Rev. Philip Tutu hails from a continent that news reports tell us is wracked with poverty, AIDS, malaria, wars, corruption and maniacal despots. But there is another Africa, Tutu says. An Africa very different from the one Americans think they know.

Photos:

Photo by John Harte

Roselyn Mairori collects modest bridal dresses to rent to the poor women in her home country of Kenya who can’t afford to purchase them.

Photo by John Harte

Roselyn Mairori and her husband, Rev. Stephen Kiptoem Mairori, have a laugh with Sarah Mwamba and Philip Tutu Thursday at the International Christian Ministries office. The Mairoris are from Kenya, Tutu is from Ghana and Mwamba is from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Photo by John Harte

Tutu and a few of his friends are in Bakersfield this week to share the startling revelation that the dark continent isn’t so dark after all.

Tutu, a lean, affable Ghanaian — and no relation to South African cleric and activist Desmond Tutu — will join 14 of his fellow Africans at the Pioneer Village Museum Thursday for the Festival of Hope, an “interactive evening” with missionaries of International Christian Ministries, based in Bakersfield.

Local folks may go to sample traditional African dishes, such as fried plantains or stew with ugali (a cornmeal cake) and chapatti (tortilla), but those interested in the “hopeful Africa” will stay for the stories. And every one of them is a doozy.

Like the one told by Sarah Mwamba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who discovered after her marriage that her husband was a Muslim and not the Lutheran pastor he’d claimed to be.

“I was forced to convert to Islam, but I prayed to my Jesus every day,” Mwamba says.

Those prayers must have taken hold because Mwamba’s husband, Deo, converted from Islam to Christianity in 1998 and was consecrated as an Anglican Bishop in February of this year. The Mwambas now work side by side as ministry directors in the Congo.

Then there’s Roselyn Mairori of Kenya, who collects donated wedding dresses from the United States and rents them in Nairobi and Kitale to brides who cannot afford gowns of their own.

Mairori rents the gowns for about 5,000 Kenyan shillings, which she says is about $77. Brides who return the gowns in good shape get a refund of $47.

The $30 she makes off each gown covers the cost of travel to different villages, where Roselyn and her fellow missionaries hold Bible seminars for “widows, young mothers and children” and distribute mosquito nets.

Roselyn says the nets and seminars each fill a desperate need.

“Malaria is preventable and treatable, but people are dying from it,” she says. “The treated nets last five years. We take them and we go out and we teach.”

The missionaries understand their countries are grappling with a host of serious problems. They say they just want Americans to know Africa is not teetering on the edge of destruction.

“There is poverty and other problems, we don’t deny it,” Tutu says in elegant English. “But we want people to know Africa is getting safer. There’s a revival going on in our various countries. The Lord’s hand is in Africa.” Tutu, clearly not afflicted with the burden of political correctness, points out that half of all Africans claim membership to a Christian denomination, but when it comes to biblical doctrine — and tough issues like gay marriage — differences are set aside for unity’s sake.

“We are solid across the board,” Tutu says. “That’s one reason why some American Episcopalian evangelicals are coming to Africa.”

Still, Tutu and his fellow missionaries consider America “Africa’s best friend” and regularly pray that the people of the United States never lose their “true purpose and vision.”

“We pray for you, especially on July 4th,” Tutu says. “To the rest of the world, America is still a Christian nation.”