Let’s talk about Babu.  Undoubtedly, most of this will be hearsay because my internet is currently too slow to do any hard, fast research.  However, I’m sure if you’re intrigued, there are a plethora of articles for you to admire on the great wide interweb.

My understanding is Babu (which means “grandpa” in Swahili, a title of respect rather than his actual name) passed most of his life as a rural Lutheran pastor in the backwaters of Loliondo, a notoriously underdeveloped district in northern Tanzania.  He ministered away until a ripe old age and then retired to his mud hut to live out the remainder of his days perched on his stoop, commenting on the weather.  And then he had a dream.  The contents of the dream are vague, but the essence is that God appeared and said, “Hey, Babu.  You awake?”  Babu admitted he was.  “Well, I’ve got this recipe for a medicine that cures everything and I want you to have it.”  And so now Babu knew how to mix up a cure-all.  Having little else to occupy his time, be began to do just that.

And then word got out.

I’m sure the visits started as a trickle.  But soon everyone and his dog knew about Babu and his magical elixir and the pilgrimages started in earnest.  Buses to Loliondo were packed.  Bus drivers, perhaps not buying Babu’s hype or at least deciding to cash in on their own version of divine intervention, began to charge obscene fees to sojourn north (one article said 70,000 shillings (about $55) one way, though I’ve heard as much as 200,000 shillings).  Families, desperate to partake in Babu’s miracle or bring their loved ones to him, liquidated savings accounts, sold off cows and goats, and climbed on tin-can buses with bald tires packed like clown cars and bumped off to salvation.  Soon, they met with traffic jams that stretched 12 km, buses and cars and requisitioned safari vehicles lined up like idle soldiers, all pointed to Loliondo like it was a modern Mecca.  Files of people hobbled to Babu’s doorstep, shelling out the 500 shillings (about 35 cents) for a little cup of magic (apparently 200 of which goes to the Lutheran church, while the remainder is pocketed by Babu and his helpers).

The region is entirely overwhelmed.  Government officials sit in their offices twisting their fingers and fretting because suddenly dropping tens of thousands of people in a small rural community invariably spells disaster.  A lack of sanitary infrastructure – a few community drop toilets do not a system make – combined with an explosion in the demand for food and firewood (many enterprising souls have also capitalized on selling marginal cuisine for lethal prices) means Loliondo is hurting and it’s hurting bad (did anyone say cholera?).  In response, the government shut down the roads leading to Babu’s haunt, terrified of a health apocalypse.  And yet people are still dying.  “Cured” diabetics go off their insulin, fall into comas, and die on their return journey (or on their way there).  Critically ill patients are scooped from their beds, IVs ripped out by well-meaning brothers and uncles, and then transported to Babu, invariably slipping painfully away en route.  HIV-positive men and women celebrate being free from disease with a night on the town.  Concerned Babu might be poisoning the nation, someone smuggled out a dose (it won’t work outside Babu’s home, he warns) and analyzed it, ultimately terming it fit for human consumption “in the amount taken”.  Whatever that means.

Recently, the government acquiesced to pleas for the right to visit Babu and installed some sort of bus system that has returned the flow to Loliondo to a barely-contained trickle (prices are still obscene).  Camps have been set up in Arusha and around to accommodate the pilgrims and their families as they not-so-patiently wait their turn for a crack at the cure.  Meanwhile, Babu announces the desire to spread his potion beyond Tanzania, into all parts of Africa, and then on to Asia and Europe and, heck, even the U.S. of A.  Jealous copycats have also cropped up, one in Mbeya in the south, one in Moshi just outside Arusha.  But people just laugh and laugh at these men because they are not Babu.  Never has the proverb about the early bird catching the worm been more spot on.  And Babu has caught one mother of a worm.