Building the house of God, different ways

By Ted Malanda

By all accounts, media personality Caroline Mutoko is a controversial figure. She has very weird interests, too, when you think about it.

When school girls from poor families miss school for weeks because they can’t afford sanitary towels, Mutoko kicks up a big fuss on her radio programme, raises a load of dough and turns up with cartons of the stuff.

When women who gave birth six months ago spend their time swatting flies away in government hospitals because they are detained over maternity bills, Mutoko kicks up one hell of a riot. In fact, she fulminates like an enraged bull till Kenyans are shamed into parting with a few coins to clear those maternity bills and send those women home.

And when Kenyans start dying of hunger in some remote fringes of the land, she creates so much heat that in weeks, she has trucks laden with foodstuffs headed into the bush.

But wait a minute? Why does she go to all this trouble when an easy solution is staring her in the face? She could start a church, become a televangelist, you know. It’s easy as pie. What’s more, she is extremely eloquent compared to the chaps I watch on TV every Sunday. And going by what the self-styled TV prophets, seers, pastors and reverends say in manner of preaching, if she took her morning breakfast show straight to a miracle healing church, she could get hundreds of brethren ‘saved’ pap.

All she would need is a noisy, dancing choir. And after a riotous intro where the brethren are bathed in beads of sweat, she would mount the podium and say, ‘Amen! Those of you who brought their tithe, stand up and raise it to the Lord (to shame the idiots who came empty handed). Now bring it forward so that the lord (me) can bless it. Hallelujah!

‘Brothers and sisters, I hope you have written your names, phone numbers and email addresses on the envelopes so that we can contact you and pray for you (wicked laughter). There is no bigger blessing than giving to the Lord (me) and building His house (I need a Jacuzzi badly…). Just yesterday, a brother brought the log book to the house of the lord. This morning, a sister brought Sh1 million to do the Lord’s work. Somebody say Amen!’

The long and short of it is that she would have the money to engage in her weird interests, like feeding the poor, helping out with schools fees and whatnot. Still, whichever way you look at it, Mutoko's congregation is made up of drunkards and fornicators whose tithe she uses to feed the poor.

TV church congregations, on the other hand, fork out millions but you would never catch their Dr Prophet paying maternity bills for stranded mothers at Pumwani Hospital. Somebody say Amen!