In Kenya, Chinese arrivals are targeted by Jehovah’s Witnesses speaking Chinese

Earlier this year, An, a young Chinese professional living in Nairobi, heard a knock at the door. She was expec­ting no one. She had moved in a couple of months earlier, and none of her friends would visit unannounced. She had been warned about the Kenyan capital’s high crime rate, but, curious, she peered through the peephole and beheld, with relief and confusion, two smiling women – one East Asian, one white.

The visitors introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses, telling her in Mandarin that they had heard there was a new Chinese person in the building. An remembers reacting with suspicion, asking how they came to know that, since hers was not a building or neighbour­hood where many Chinese people lived. The Asian Witness laughed politely and apologised for the intrusion, brushing off the question somewhat awkwardly by saying they just happened to “know things”.

Amused at being targeted by Chinese-speaking, non-Chinese evangelists in East Africa, An invited them in. The Asian Witness spoke Mandarin well enough that only small tics in cadence hinted she was actually from Japan. The other, a British student, said she was in the city on summer break, but would continue learning Mandarin and return to Nairobi to preach to the city’s Chinese diaspora.

The group’s strict hierarchies and social restrictions do nothing to dispel the presumption of cultishness, nor does the mission essential to the faith: save as many souls as possible before the final battle between good and evil, saved and unsaved, come Armageddon.