Seventeen people including four women and a child, have been sleeping outside the Mwalimu Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam for the past four days hoping to fly abroad including Iran, without passports or air tickets.
Astounded airport officials and other travellers watched in disbelief as the group complete with luggage and believed to be from a shadowy religious sect, prayed for a miracle to fly to “other countries where God wants us to go and preach”.
“We have no passports or air tickets but just our bibles. God sent us here to go and spread his word and we are waiting to go as he wishes. We will fly to different destinations,” one of them told The Citizen in an interview. According to the group their bibles would also serve as visas to every country they planned preach.
Yesterday, as word of the sect members spread around the city, astonished residents turned up to catch a glimpse of them and others held conversation in attempts to explain their bizarre proclamations.
Mr Kibunde Masige, who said he was from Mwanza, explained that they had been instructed by Jesus Christ to camp at the international airport where they will find an aeroplane to take them to different countries to preach.
“We are appealing to the Government and all the people concerned with transport here to let us use their planes because the Lord has instructed us to go out to spread the gospel. We are not selling drugs, they must trust us,” said Mr Masige.
“We don’t have any limit of travelling its only God who arranges where we go and the time table is not known, but until the whole world is informed,” added Mr Masige.
He said some none believers had accused them of attempting to smuggle illicit drugs abroad, adding that they were saddened that authorities were harassing their followers in Musoma and Kyela. “Tanzanians will learn the hard way and when it will be too late.”
Branding themselves “remnants of the Seventh Day Adventists,” they met at the airport after each one of them was shown the way there through prayer. They were sleeping out in the cold and eating from well wishers. Their followers, they claimed, also sent them money.
They said they were from Mara, Mwanza, Shinyanga and Mbeya regions and wanted to go and preach in foreign countries “because the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ was downing.”
A security officer at the airport, Mr Julius Muungwana, said the group had camped inside the airport building for two days before they ejected from the compound after they drew attention and became a nuisance to travellers.
But during the interview one Mr Limbe said: “As you see we are very simple, but the Lord has decided to choose us to preach his word.”
According to the group, every individual used his own resources to travel from his home to Dar es Salaam.
The group have 17 people, four being women, 12 men and a boy David who finished Standard Seven last year at Bunda Primary School.
