The Trees Were the Rain
We cut down the trees to plant maize, then pray for rain. Knowing full well the trees were the rain.
I was raised Catholic. We said the rosary every night, sometimes staying up late to finish it. The rosary was my bedtime story.
It gave me real things. Discipline. Kindness. A way to treat people that I still carry.
It also gave me a broken order of operations.
I had it as: believe → act on the belief → expect the result. I prayed before exams hoping I would remember what I had read. My teachers encouraged it.
Nobody told me it runs the other way. Act → then believe. Read hard, understand well, then pray, then pass. Faith as the thing that keeps you trying — not the thing that does the trying for you.
The more I travelled, the clearer it got. Other people's belief had room in it for questions. Ours didn't. We were taught to receive, not to ask — obedience was the virtue, doubt was the failure. And you can't switch that off at the church door.
A mind trained not to question God doesn't suddenly start questioning a politician, a boss, or a bad idea.
I am not anti-church. Religion has held communities together as nothing else has.
But our research at Africa Global Forum found something I didn't expect. We looked at Latino, Filipino, Asian and Black diaspora communities — different continents, different churches, different centuries of history.
Same complaint, everywhere: the institution doesn't do what it tells you to do.
Which brings me back to the trees.
The order of operations I got wrong as a child is the same one the institution gets wrong now. Ask for the rain, skip the planting. My generation abroad has stopped accepting it — and they're taking their belonging to WhatsApp groups, gyms, chamas and professional networks instead.
Those replacements are real. We form a WhatsApp group, the money lands in days. Then it goes quiet, then it's archived, then it is gone. The church was there before I was born and it will be there after me. I can criticise what it asked of me and still miss what it held for me. That's the part we haven't replaced.
This is my experience, not a verdict on anyone else's. Our faith looks different in every home. I am only telling you what changed in mine.
What happened to your faith when you moved abroad? Stronger, quieter, or gone before you noticed?