Christian Exploitation: Deya and the Miracle Babies

By Macharia Gakuru

Archbishop Gilbert Deya is based in the United Kingdom. He is fighting extradition to Kenya where he faces charges of alleged child trafficking. In the UK he runs his Christian Ministry, Gilbert Deya Ministries and a television station. Deya comes from the Luo tribe of Bondo, in Nyanza, western Kenya. He claims to be a cousin to the current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the USA President Barack Obamas father. Both men come from the same tribe as the Archbishop. This dare preacher condemns Microsoft founder Bill Gates funding and supporting vaccination program in Africa as killing people and thus reducing world population. Mr Deya is a man accused of allegedly trafficking children into the UK. Apparently, by praying for barren women, in the UK, they fell pregnant and then they would travel to Kenya to give birth to normal healthy babies, in less than the usual nine months. They would then bring their new born babies to the UK.
His spiritual powers have enabled him to exploit the poor and the vulnerable. He took advantage of their fear of the power of witchcraft and the power of generational curses, which was highly emphasized in his Christian teaching. His brand of theology is a unique combination of traditional African religions and beliefs, peppered with threats of curses but tampered with exorcisms and stirred with Christian love. It is babies arose. Mr. Deya has this unique charisma which he is fully aware of and uses to keep a hold on his flock. He identifies and exploits their weaknesses and vulnerabilities creating an illusion, a mirage of the existence of the miracle babies. The amazing story is unraveled in the pages of this book.
In propagating this illusion Mr. Deya again unleashed his weapons of intimidation and threats, both physical and alleged powers of miracles, signs, and wonders and his ability to corrupt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Feb 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469166964

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Copyright © 2012 by Macharia Gakuru.

ISBN:          Ebook                                      978-1-4691-6696-4

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Foreword

When people talk of faith be it Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, African traditional religions, Animism, Judaism, et ar. They sometimes surrender their logical reasoning to blind faith. In some religious set ups there is a tendency for the faithful to ignore the boundary between their belief in God and their worship of their religious leader that is to say the charisma of the religious leader takes over the entirety of their beliefs they personify the their leader with their belief such is the set up of the Deya ministry. He takes centre stage. Without Deya there is no Deya Ministry.

His brand of religion is a unique combination of traditional African religions and believes peppered with threats of curses but tampered with exorcism and stirred with Christianity. Its against this background and within this contest that the saga of miracle babies arose Deya is possessed of this unique charisma he recognizes his hold on his flock, he identifies and exploits their weaknesses and vulnerabilities creating an illusion, a mirage of the existence of the miracle babies and that is how he was able to exploit the facts described in the following chapters.

In propagating this illusion Deya again exploits his weapons of intimidation, and threats both physical and alleged powers of miracles, signs, and wonders and his ability to corrupt.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife Lucy Wanjiku and my daughters Elsa and Erica for their patience and understanding with me in the days that I worked with Gilbert Deya.

Chapter 1

The Deya family

It is said that the Lord works in mysterious ways. One such mystery is the parentage of the renowned evangelist, Archbishop Gilbert Juma Deya. Like Mary, the mother of God, Monica Nono, mother of the Archbishop, was apparently blessed. And all because of the circumstances of her marriage to Samuel Oyanda Deya, father of the Archbishop. Like all mysteries, it is stranger than fiction.

Archbishop Gilbert Deya believes, wrongly or rightly, that his father, Samuel Oyanda Deya, was a cursed man. According to him, so potent was the curse that it is said to have also affected those close to him. Proof, if any was needed, was there for all to see. First, Samuel himself was a pathetic alcoholic, drug addict and adulterer. Second, all his seven sisters were spinsters. And singlehood, as Archbishop Deya never tires of drumming into his flock’s ears, is a curse…only broken when people get married. But there was more to this accursedness in the Deya family line than meets the eye. Samuel was doubly accursed, thanks to the iniquities of his father, Oyanda Wenwa. For, as the Prophet Jeremiah (31:29) says, … and fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children’s teeth are set on edge. NKJV

Unfortunately, Oyanda Wenwa had eaten sour grapes. Legend has it that he was a short, squat and thickset man of unusually prodigious strength and volcanic temper. Village wags claim that when offended, Oyanda would let off steam by first hunting down and doing battle with a beast in the wild, before assaulting and strangling to death the person unfortunate enough to have double-crossed him. Terrified by his callous attitude to murder, most of his neighbours opted to live elsewhere, far from his reach, leaving Oyanda lord and master of a huge swathe of land-and a drunken, adulterous drug addict for a son.

Unlike his father Samuel, Archbishop Deya’s mother, Monica Nono, was a model of piety and grace. She was born to Joram Owili who was the first person in what became modern Kenya to receive missionaries from the Church of England. He and his family converted to Christianity and went on to diligently serve the missionaries, and follow the teachings of the Church of England. Monica was thus raised a God-fearing Christian in the Anglican Communion.

But as fate would have it, the Beauty and the Beast were destined to meet. And it came to pass in the strangest of ways. For all his faults, Samuel knew his place in society-and his heart was set upon marrying Milchah Owili, Monica’s elder sister. Not that she was ugly and unwanted, but at a time when and in a place where a nubile girl fails to get married at a tender age, then any suitor who seeks her hand stands a chance of securing a wife.

Armed with twenty-four cows, a princely bride-price by any stretch of the imagination at the time, Samuel set off for Joram Owili’s home to ask for Milchah’s hand in marriage. Faced with this bride-price, pragmatism got the better of Joram Owili, proving that at a time when and in a place where wealth was measured in terms of cattle, even an adulterous drunk and drug addict with a herd of cattle could marry well and marry very well, indeed!

Unsurprisingly, poor Milchah had not yet laid eyes on her wealthy groom-to-be for, in those early days, fathers married off their daughters as they saw fit. Their word was law. But when the fateful day arrived, Milchah took one look-yes, just one single look-at Samuel and did a very modern thing: she chose to risk disgracing her father rather than marry a man she could not bring herself to love. For having lost his upper incisors to a drunken fall, and his lower incisors to a cultural rite-of-passage, Samuel was too ugly a man, not to mention a future husband, to behold.

Rather than forfeit the exorbitant bride-price, the ever pragmatic Joram Owili quickly impressed upon his dutiful younger daughter, Monica, the importance of maintaining family honour in the face of the disgrace Milchah’s rejection of Samuel Oyanda was bound to bring to the family. Considering the blessings that obedience to a father’s wishes would bring, looks, he impressed upon Monica, were of secondary importance.

It was that the dutiful Monica Nono took Samuel Oyanda’s hand in marriage. Like all heart-warming fairy tales, she was blessed with fifteen children, the eleventh being Gilbert Juma Deya. As for Milchah, she went on to marry a younger and more handsome man of her own choice. With her marriage went her father’s curses, for her husband turned out to be a sorcerer and their offspring suffered incurable maladies of all sorts. So much for the mystery!

Birth and early life

Archbishop Gilbert Juma Deya was born on the morning of Sunday, 2nd February 1952, to Samuel Oyanda Deya and Monica Nono Deya in Juja village, Kiambu district in central Kenya, the land of the Kikuyu. His father worked in the sisal plantations in Juja. However, Deya’s ancestral home remains in Sakwa, in the rural recesses of Bondo district. The young Gilbert spent his childhood in Got Abiero village, Bondo district, in Kisumu, western Kenya. The family moved from Juja to their rural home while Deya was still a young boy. He is of the Luo tribe the same as USA President Barack Obama’s father, the great Tom Mboya who was killed during Jomo Kenyatta’s reign, and the famous family of late Jaramogi Odinga Oginga and now his son Raila Odinga the Kenyan Prime Minister, people who have rocked the Kenya political scene.

As it is customary among the Luo community, the child was named after the circumstances of his birth; in this case, Juma means Sunday, the day of the week on which he was born.

One Sunday morning, in 1952, Nono Monica Deya, a devout Christian, went to church as usual. Being a leader in the Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK) at Juja, in Kiambu district, her advanced stage of pregnancy did not keep her from the usual church attendance.

As the service progressed she went into labour and brought forth a son who she called ‘Juma’, meaning Sunday in Swahili, a language widely spoken in east, central and many parts of southern Africa. As the service continued, it is said that a prophecy came concerning Juma: he would one day be God’s prophet. He was later dedicated in the Anglican Church and became known as Gilbert Juma.

Juma Deya attended baptism classes in the local Anglican Church mission. As it was the norm at the time, all children to be baptised had to choose Christian names. His parents duly chose the name John, which the young Juma rehearsed every waking day for the baptism ceremony.

Then on the day of his christening, all the other children were duly baptised with their chosen names. However, when it came to Juma’s turn at the baptismal fount, the cheeky boy replied to the vicar’s request for a name with a question of his own.

He asked the vicar: What is your name, sir? Rather being taken aback by this level of impudence, the vicar replied, curtly: Gilbert.

At this point, young Juma unhesitatingly declared that his name was also Gilbert. And this is how a childhood prank led to Juma Deya being called ‘Gilbert’ instead of John.

The Deyas were a poor family living in a single grass-thatched hut that served as kitchen, lounge, bedroom and pen for the few domestic animals the family owned. In these crowded circumstances, young Gilbert Juma Deya and his siblings grew up, suffering every now and then from communicable diseases like chicken-pox, which they contracted from their livestock.

Often, like many heads of poverty-stricken families in such desperate circumstances, Samuel Oyanda Deya became an alcoholic. He would spend his time attending funerals where free food and drink was plentiful. But worse was to come. Samuel took his vices to the extreme, becoming a drug addict and womaniser as well. He particularly liked consorting with widowed women, taking advantage of the communal belief that sleeping with a widowed woman would exorcise the ghost of her dead husband, thus allowing the widow to re-marry. In the circumstances, Samuel became mentally, physically and emotionally abusive to his wife and children. And so, young Gilbert Juma Deya grew up experiencing not only poverty but also, worse, witnessing domestic violence and the attendant emotional distress.

This explains why life in the Samuel Oyanda Deya’s household could not be described as a bed of roses. Although Samuel Oyanda was the best in the village at thatching roofs, he used his craft more as a means for securing his daily fix of the potent local alcoholic brew, changaa (potent illicit locally brewed alcohol), than earning money for his fast-growing brood. Poor Monica, though married to the best roof-thatcher in the village, had to endure the pain and distress of a leaking roof over her own family’s heads. She also shouldered the crushing burden of keeping the household fed from the sale of firewood.

Rising every morning at the crack of dawn, Monica would head for the forests, chop up a load of firewood and carry it to the market for sale. On a good day, she would earn just enough to buy the day’s groceries. This way, young Gilbert and his siblings would have enough to eat. On a bad day, young Gilbert and his siblings would have to make do with the local staple, millet porridge.

To survive in these circumstances, young Gilbert Deya learned the skills that would serve him well in later life. To secure a decent meal, he would make friends with children whose parents could afford food. He would hang around his village-mates’ homes in the hope that their parents would take pity on him and ask him to join their children at mealtimes.

He explains: It did not matter how badly these friends would treat me, I would maintain their friendship, if only to enable me to enjoy a decent meal. If he failed to secure a decent meal in this way, young Deya would resort to scavenging for discarded fish landings along the shores of Lake Victoria. He would then take these fish home to his struggling mother to dry and sell in the market. This was one way young Gilbert learned to contribute to his family’s daily survival. But it was not the only way, and certainly not the most effective way either. To supplement this, he would resort to begging.

At the tender age of ten so it was that Deya became a beggar. He prowled the dusty streets of Got Abiero like a hungry fox waiting to pounce on a wayward chicken. He was quick enough to learn the tricks of the trade. He would follow well-dressed people down the streets, persistently begging for a few pennies until, out of exasperation, they threw him some coins. If he saw a group of people walking together, he would embarrass them into tossing some coins in his way. This way, young Deya helped his mother Monica feed their fast-growing family. To this day, Deya proudly proclaims that he was the best and most accomplished beggar in Got Abiero.

Whenever poor Monica challenged her husband to change his ways, she would receive a vicious thrashing that would leave her within inches of losing her life. At such times, she would seek refuge at her parents’ home. Her father, Joram Owili, would let her stay for only a few days before convincing her to go back to her husband. He would tell her that her children would one day wipe her tears away. He would console her: Your children will be blessed one fine day and you will forget all your suffering.

Deya vividly remembers these unpleasant and unplanned visits as a young child, to his maternal grandparents’ home.

Life was unbearably hard, so hard, in fact that the children in the Deya household grew up anaemic and malnourished. Deya, in particular, suffered from urinary schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection he contracted while wading, swimming and bathing in water infested with bilharzia. The parasites infected his bladder, leading him to pass blood in his urine. His younger brother, Patrick, was mentally ill with severe psychosis and schizophrenia.

Samuel Oyanda Deya refused to send his son to school. To force her husband to pay Deya’s fees, Monica appealed to the local chief who promptly sold some of Samuel’s cows. With the money raised, Gilbert Juma Deya was enrolled in Nyagunda Primary School, at the age of 13. His elementary school days were typical of rural schools in the late 1950s. Nyagunda Primary School was a long way from home, and young Deya had to rise as early as 5.00am for the three-hour long trudge to school. For his packed lunch, he occasionally had a banana, but more often took along nyoyo, a mixture of boiled beans and maize, a rural Kenyan cuisine.

Worse things awaited him at school. Deya barely lasted a month in school. When a bully beat him up, Deya stubbornly refused to return to Nyagunda Primary School. As his father Samuel had no plans of educating him in the first place, his elder sister took him into her home in Tinderet located in the Nandi Hills of Rift Valley province in Kenya.

While living with his sister, the young Deya learned the meaning of the old ad age: spare the rod and spoil the child. Old habits die hard and in Nandi Hills, young Deya returned to begging. Sent on an errand to buy cigarettes for his brother-in-law, he could not bring himself to resist the urge to beg. On failing to secure any alms, he resorted to an art that Archbishop Deya claims ran through his family’s blood: thieving. On his first foray into the art, he got away with stealing a shilling, which he used to buy some sweets. When his sister heard the news, she thrashed him so severely that Deya promised her he would never steal again. The beating changed his life and made so profound an impression on him that, to this day, Archbishop Deya firmly believes that when you spare the rod, well, you definitely spoil the child.

The beating he received at his sister’s hands also marked another turning point in Deya’s life: his sister and her husband decided he had become such a disgrace that he could no longer live with them. So they packed him off to live with his maternal grandmother in Sakwa. As she was living alone at the time, Deya was expressly instructed to be of utmost help to his grandmother. In return his uncle, Malaki Owili, would pay his school fees. This arrangement changed young Gilbert Deya’s life. Able to eat well, he stopped begging. Seeing Gilbert had reformed, his kind uncle enrolled him in Nduru Kadero Primary School.

In those days Nduru Kadero Primary School had few classrooms. Young Deya and his classmates took their lessons in the shade of a large tree in the school compound. The children were not privileged enough to have pens, pencils, textbooks and exercise books. They would smooth out a patch of the sandy ground and write with a stick. Their teacher would then go round supervising their work on the ground. For their mathematics lessons, the children were taught to count using stones and sticks.

While under his grandmother’s care, Deya acquired many new and useful skills. He helped his grandmother grind millet and corn, learned how to hawk goods at the local market and began earning an honest shilling by digging pit latrines. What’s more, he learned how to burn charcoal. Fast growing into a responsible young man, Gilbert Juma Deya completed his primary education at Nduru Kadero Primary School and went on to join Kambare High School, from where he graduated in 1970 with a Kenya Secondary Education Certificate ( KSEC ). So as far as educational qualification is concerned this is what Deya has achieved. It would be interesting though to find out whether he has any official documents though!

Thanks to his mother’s religious beliefs, Gilbert Juma Deya accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour at the impressionable age of fifteen. His personal salvation-his Road to Damascus, as those who are deeply religious would say-occurred in 1967. Hearing of a crusade nearby, Monica took Gilbert along.

At this crusade, the word of God was preached so powerfully that it touched many who were present, particularly the young and impressionable Gilbert Juma Deya.

On hearing the preacher say that Jesus could heal and set people free, Deya found himself screaming at the top of his voice, saying: I want that Jesus! I want that Jesus! To his own shock and amazement, the power of the Word struck him down and he lay on the ground prostrate.

During the time that he was lying on the ground, God was healing his body. He later said that he saw his body travel to another world where he became the shepherd to a flock of people.

When his soul returned to his body, he awoke and found himself speaking in a strange language. This scared the people around him and they began running away in confusion as they had thought him to be dead.

At this moment, his father turned up at the scene, only to find his son lying lifeless on the ground! Assuming that the preacher had somehow murdered his son, Samuel went berserk. He attacked and viciously beat up the preacher, disrupting the crusade and scattering the faithful helter-skelter. He then turned on his wife, beat her up too and broke her hand for having brought about young Deya’s death. The enraged Samuel then carried the still prostrate Gilbert home.

At home, the now born-again Deya regained consciousness and began speaking in tongues. Having no idea what was happening, Samuel hurriedly took Deya to the local witchdoctor. At the witchdoctor’s house, more drama erupted. On seeing Gilbert Deya, the witchdoctor