‘These young people can start from this point and ask “how can I make change?” George Fox had a vision, Jeremiah had it too’, explained Bainito Khayongo at the Africa triennial of the Young Quaker Christian Association in Western Province in Kenya last month.

The event was run on the theme ‘The way man sees is not the way that God sees’ (1 Samuel 16:7) and involved Quakers from Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, the Netherlands, Rwanda, Uganda, the UK and the US. ‘Join us so that we can move forward to build up the church in Africa and across the world so that we are one church’, added Bainito, addressing the gathering. The conference drew almost eighty delegates, though many other were prevented from various Kenyan Yearly Meetings and Tanzania due to the difficult financial climate.

Keynote speakers included Deborah Saunders of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Friends World Committee for Consultation African executive secretary Moses Musonga, Oliver Kisaka of East Africa Yearly Meeting North and Barasa Nyukuri of Torch Africa.

‘I was really pleased that I came’, said Phori of Lesotho Allowed Meeting. ‘I got to renew my relationship with God and my understanding of Christianity through divine perception.’
Lillian Maleya, treasurer of YQCA, told the assembled delegates that: ‘the youth are the leaders of tomorrow but the youth are also the leaders of today’. The association discerned to hold a leadership workshop in Tanzania in 2011.

Jez attended the Young Quakers Christian Association Africa Triennial as a representative of Europe and Middle East Young Friends and afterwards travelled among Kenyan Friends.
Further material from Jez’s journey will appear in The Friend in due course.