Kenyan leaders have been tight-lipped about the security forces they plan to send to gang-battled Haiti. But they are talking to God a lot.
Last month, as armed groups escalated their insurgency in Port-au-Prince and plunged Haiti deeper into a historic humanitarian crisis, the pastor advising the Kenyan government met for three days to pray in a Nairobi hotel.
In a sky-blue conference room at the Weston Hotel, three Kenyan pastors joined Haitian and American ministry leaders and Kenya’s first lady, Rachel Ruto, to plead for divine help for the beleaguered Caribbean nation. They prayed for the 2,500-person multinational police force Kenya has volunteered to lead to help Haitian law enforcement. At one point in the meeting, participants told the City, members of the group broke down in tears.
After two days of prayer, the first lady dropped by an album release party in another part of Weston, owned by President William Ruto, and announced that her office had formed a prayer committee for Haiti. “We cannot let our police go to Haiti without prayer,” Rachel Ruto told fans of Kenyan gospel group 1005 Songs and More.
Kenya agreed last October to lead a UN-sanctioned international security mission in Haiti, but the deployment has faced various delays, including legal challenges and questions over funding.
The prayer marathon was part of a larger effort by the Ruto administration to strategize “a spiritual solution for our police and the people of Haiti,” according to the first lady. The initiative, coordinated by the administration’s “faith diplomacy” office, has so far included a national prayer rally, a 40-day prayer guide for Haiti and an official fact-finding trip to the United States.
For a government so tight-lipped about its police mission, church outreach programs represent one of the most visible ways to engage the public about the administration’s plans. The Rutos, who are outspoken about their evangelical beliefs, took office in 2022 as many Christians in the country invoked divine protection during a disputed election.
Julius Subi, a pastor and spiritual adviser to the Rutos, told a crowd of about 1,000 pastors at an April 15 prayer service in downtown Nairobi, “Let us thank the Lord who gave our president a burden to think about Haiti.” “What African president ever thinks about countries outside Africa?”
Earlier this month, the same group of pastors and the first lady’s staff traveled to the United States to meet with church and business leaders, US and Haitian officials, and representatives of law enforcement and the military. According to delegation member Serge Musasilwa, they attended a Zoom meeting with Gang Coalition leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.
Musasilwa, the country director of a central Kenyan ministry called Sejera Mission, said the team wants to hear from people from all sectors of Haitian society to better understand the challenges Kenyan police face. President Ruto commissioned the team to inform law enforcement agencies and provide context to increase the chances of success of the security mission, he said. Pastors wanted to know what civil society groups and churches said were the issues; They ask about solutions; They asked about how well trained the gangs are and what motivates them.
The group will present its findings to the president this month, ahead of the president’s visit to the United States in May that will include the first state visit to the White House by an African president in 16 years. Ruto, who says his country has a moral obligation to help Haiti, stressed that the security mission is moving forward — the Biden administration has pledged to underwrite it despite delays in funding ($40 million currently held by Republicans in the US Congress).
Musasilwa is optimistic. “This is going to be a new beginning for the country,” he told CT. But he says the president is eager to avoid the mistakes that plagued previous interventions in Haiti. “If you are driven only by emotion or by desperation, the risk is very high that you will find yourself on the list of failures.”
Part of the fact-finding trip was to identify who was acting as the Haitian government. An elected official in Haiti is not currently in office; The country has named an interim council that is supposed to appoint a prime minister and prepare for final elections, but the council has yet to be sworn in.
For example, Musasilwa said, he had a six-hour meeting with Francois Guillaume, Haiti’s ambassador to Qatar, trying to understand the Haitian government structure.
“Suppose our forces are in Port-au-Prince today and they arrest a gang,” Musasilwa said. “Where will they take him? There is no justice system.”
The multinational security mission, which many observers had expected to deploy months ago, has been delayed somewhat by uncertainty over exactly who the Kenyans will be working with. Haiti’s outgoing prime minister, Ariel Henry, signed the partnership agreement with Kenya on March 1, shortly before a gang attack shut down Haiti’s main international airport and locked him out of the country.
“As much as we want our troops to come tomorrow, first of all, there is no government in Haiti, so there is no order,” said Davis Kisotu, a pastor at an independent Pentecostal church near Rutos.
Kisotu, like other Kenyan ministry leaders who have traveled with the delegation, works at the National Prayer Altar, a group in the First Lady’s office that oversees church services at the presidential residence and works with pastors across Kenya to pray for the government. While they wait for bureaucrats in New York and Washington to work out the operational details of the police mission, one of their team’s tasks is to “bring together people of prayer and God — Haitian pastors, US pastors and Kenyan pastors and prayer warriors from the nation.”
To that end, pastors from across the country gathered Monday at the Kenyatta International Convention Center, a facility located next to Kenya’s parliament and Supreme Court in downtown Nairobi. The first lady addressed an enthusiastic and supportive crowd as she waved flags and prayed for Kenya, Israel and Haiti.
Other speakers, at times overwhelmed by a tone befitting a campaign rally, prayed for peace in Haiti and praised President Ruto for his commitment to use Kenya’s power as a force for international peace. Asunt Juma, the host Tracing Mantles, a popular evangelical talk show, declared that Ruto had the favor of many world leaders because God’s favor rested upon him. “We have elected a leader who will lead the nations of the world,” he said.
The national gathering comes at a time when other international church groups are under pressure of their own for concerted prayer for Haiti. Across the United States, mission groups are regularly sending emails and texts to supporters with prayer requests. The Baptist Haiti Mission, whose leadership has consulted with the Ruto administration, seeks to draw one million prayer partners in its prayer campaign, which includes weekly livestreams.
In Kenya, the First Lady’s Office of Faith Diplomacy has so far recruited at least 200 pastors to lead their churches through 40 days of prayer for Haiti, using a prayer guide produced by the National Altar. A copy of the 132-page guide provided to CT includes sweeping prayers for healing from the trauma of slavery, liberation from the “generational servitude and power” of witchcraft, healing of the wilderness and for God to “flow. The group from their hiding places and Take out the rebels and hand them over to the police.”
“There is something about Haiti that has imprisoned men and women of God in Kenya,” Suubi, a member of the national altar who leads Highway of Holiness Ministries, told CT.
Not every Christian leader is captivated.
Many Kenyans, including mainline Christians and some missionaries, oppose their country’s involvement in Haiti. Lawmakers sued to stop it, prompting Kenya’s highest court to issue an injunction that the administration has tried to work around.
As the last two Kenyan presidents were Roman Catholic, Ruto came to power with significant support from the country’s charismatic and Pentecostal church community, many of whom see any criticism of Ruto as a spiritual attack.
Sammy Wainaina, former provost of All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi and one of Kenya’s most prominent Anglican, says Kenyan police are ill-equipped to deal with the political situation in Haiti.
“Kenya currently faces a major shortage of police forces,” Wainaina said. “Countries like the United States should address the problems they have created in Haiti.”
Enoch Opuka, a lecturer in development studies at Africa International University who taught Ruto in high school, thinks Haiti’s grasping poverty should be addressed before any other solution is worked out. Deploy large amounts of aid, cancel all Haitian debt, and facilitate negotiations between armed groups and the government, he said; Do not deploy the police.
“You don’t eliminate hunger by sending troops,” Opuka said.
Musasilwa is aware of the criticism, which is why he says the fact-finding team has focused on listening to people across Haitian society and studying the failures of previous interventions in Haiti.
Among his report’s recommendations, for example, is that Kenya help Haiti facilitate a peace and reconciliation conference to bring as many Haitians as possible into the conversation about its future — including gangs.
“We are not there to solve their problems,” Musasilwa said. “We are there to support them in the solutions that are right for them.”
He said he definitely learned something in his many conversations and in his research about what didn’t work in Haiti:
“If Kenya is to succeed in this mission, there is only one key: it cannot be perceived one way or the other as implementing US politics,” Musasilwa said. “It’s something to pray for.”
With reporting from Moses Wasamu in Nairobi.
Andy Olsen is a senior editor at City.
