Living with the Isawa people: an expression of faith

KANO, Nigeria — The Isawa people live in villages across northern Nigeria, making a humble living from the land. Numbering around 600,000, they are Muslims whose veneration of Jesus has given them the Hausa name of ‘Isawa’, or ‘Jesus people.’

Kutaya – an indigenous Christian mission action group (see story) – is running a pilot project among these people, and has placed four evangelists to live and work in an Isawa village. These evangelists do not talk about the Gospel – they live it by teaching literacy and hygiene and providing fertiliser to help grow crops. The aim is to show the Isawa people the Christian way rather than preach it.

Support

The Bible Society of Nigeria (BSN), which wants to support the work of Kutaya, visited the project to assess how best to serve the needs of these evangelists.

Although largely illiterate, the Isawa use a handwritten Arabic Koran in their morning worship, and Dr Zamani Kafang, UBS Translation Consultant and BSN Translations Manager, feels that it may be possible to produce Scriptures that would be acceptable to the Isawa people.

“The BSN is developing different Scripture programs for different audiences, and that is part of the thrust of the Opportunity 21 program – to adapt to the people’s needs,” said Dr Kafang.

“Examples of these are the Old Testament stories, such as Abraham and Moses, which are to be produced on cassette and dramatised. Eventually, it may be possible to produce stories from the New Testament in this format.”

Audio Scriptures in Hausa are likely to be a key tool in introducing people such as the Isawa to the Bible. The BSN is also planning to publish New Reader and Easy Reader Portions in Hausa, which would help the evangelists to teach the Isawa to read.

Benefit

“I believe the Bible Society can be of benefit to us if it can help to provide materials fitting for the community where we are witnessing,” said Hosea Hoga, Kutaya’s Isawa Program Coordinator. “We are eager to continue to develop the relationship we have begun with the BSN. One day, in God’s timing, we know that there will be a growing church among the Isawa people, but we want it to be home-grown and in keeping with their traditional way of life – not imposed upon them and foreign to their lifestyle.

“I believe that one of the main problems in the confrontation between Christian evangelism and other faiths is that Christianity is perceived as a threat to their leadership,” he continued. “When Christianity comes from the heart it leads to a difference in lifestyle which benefits everybody.

“Maybe we need to move away from the building of churches, which symbolise one faith confronting another, and concentrate upon house churches, as people did in the time of Christ, meeting in rooms, without the need for large buildings, pulpits and furniture to announce things.

Way forward

“I believe this is the way forward for the evangelisation of northern Nigeria. People must see the way we live as Christians and how it does not seek to dominate or harm them, or change their culture.”

By working through this principle, Kutaya’s evangelists have been accepted by the Isawa people, and there were plans to have a total of seven evangelists living among them by the end of last year. But there are challenges to overcome, not least of them physical hardships.

Died

“The water in the villages is sometimes not good – last year 95 children died in one area, and more recently when we arrived in the village, we were informed that one young man’s wife had died a few days ago,” said Mr Hoga.

“It is highly likely that given the right medicine and cleaner water and food, some of these people would have lived.