Photo: Base camp!
Power corrupts
After sitting together to have breakfast the mornings were spent chatting, meeting people in the villages, and each day we made a visit to a different place - a clinic, a school, a grinding mill for maize and also a coffee plantation. The coffee plantation was suffering a lot because while the coffee beans were bought by companies for quite a lot of money, the middlemen in the co-operative were not passing this money back to the farmers and had also not paid the electricity bills. A pump is needed to pump water around the plantation to keep the crops watered. Without this the crops were dying. However the farmers were powerless to do anything, and as often seems to be the case here, the powerful prosper and the weak suffer. All the time and effort spent tending to the crops earlier in the year, would seem to have been wasted for the farmers, who numbered 30 in all, because some of the co-operative members were taking the money for themselves. Here it seems that many just seem to accept their lot in life, feeling they are powerless to challenge authority. Power as so often is the case, seems to breed corruption.
Creepy Crawlies
Mark and I were managing to keep the tent bug free, until that is last Wednesday morning when I woke up to find a poisonous spider in my tent. I’m not afraid of spiders, so wasn’t too bothered, except that this one did look a bit mean – mainly the big body and hairy legs! Anyway I came out of the tent and asked one of the pastors camping with us to identify the spider. He said ‘what it’s still alive – why didn’t you kill it? – Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever killed a spider, probably because they don’t bother me, so I don’t bother them! Anyway Daniel or Pastor Ponde as he’s usually known, killed it instantly with a shoe, and said “Hmm, very bad, that’s probably the most poisonous one we have”. Great I thought. He continued “It wont usually kill someone, as it depends how their body reacts, but people do die from it’s venom.” I started a small investigation to the amusement of the Zambians about how it might have got in. Tent security was I thought, very tight indeed. – Zips always done up at the top, always check porch area for unwanted visitors prior to entry, enter quickly and zip tent up immediately. Mark swore that he had followed this code of conduct for tent entry. There was of course another possibility – Had the spider entered attached to somebody entering the tent? Hmm I decided not to think to much more about this, after all as Joel, one of the pastors pointed out, well clearly God is looking after you, and keeping the spider from attacking. Nothing more was discussed, that is until later that evening while we sat around a fire, before going to bed. Ruth was talking about her fear of spiders and getting a little worried about the night ahead. Vincent another one of the pastors camping with us said “Spiders I don’t mind, but I have a real fear of the spitting cobra”. The spitting cobra can spit venom from distance straight into the human eye, and blind you. It rarely misses apparently. The good thing he said was that he’d only seen 2 this year. Hmm. I’d quite like not to see one ever, never mind this year. Anyway we quickly stopped speaking about this, as Vincent reminded us that a Zambian saying that if you talk long enough about something or someone, it will appear!
After sitting together to have breakfast the mornings were spent chatting, meeting people in the villages, and each day we made a visit to a different place - a clinic, a school, a grinding mill for maize and also a coffee plantation. The coffee plantation was suffering a lot because while the coffee beans were bought by companies for quite a lot of money, the middlemen in the co-operative were not passing this money back to the farmers and had also not paid the electricity bills. A pump is needed to pump water around the plantation to keep the crops watered. Without this the crops were dying. However the farmers were powerless to do anything, and as often seems to be the case here, the powerful prosper and the weak suffer. All the time and effort spent tending to the crops earlier in the year, would seem to have been wasted for the farmers, who numbered 30 in all, because some of the co-operative members were taking the money for themselves. Here it seems that many just seem to accept their lot in life, feeling they are powerless to challenge authority. Power as so often is the case, seems to breed corruption.
Creepy Crawlies
Mark and I were managing to keep the tent bug free, until that is last Wednesday morning when I woke up to find a poisonous spider in my tent. I’m not afraid of spiders, so wasn’t too bothered, except that this one did look a bit mean – mainly the big body and hairy legs! Anyway I came out of the tent and asked one of the pastors camping with us to identify the spider. He said ‘what it’s still alive – why didn’t you kill it? – Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever killed a spider, probably because they don’t bother me, so I don’t bother them! Anyway Daniel or Pastor Ponde as he’s usually known, killed it instantly with a shoe, and said “Hmm, very bad, that’s probably the most poisonous one we have”. Great I thought. He continued “It wont usually kill someone, as it depends how their body reacts, but people do die from it’s venom.” I started a small investigation to the amusement of the Zambians about how it might have got in. Tent security was I thought, very tight indeed. – Zips always done up at the top, always check porch area for unwanted visitors prior to entry, enter quickly and zip tent up immediately. Mark swore that he had followed this code of conduct for tent entry. There was of course another possibility – Had the spider entered attached to somebody entering the tent? Hmm I decided not to think to much more about this, after all as Joel, one of the pastors pointed out, well clearly God is looking after you, and keeping the spider from attacking. Nothing more was discussed, that is until later that evening while we sat around a fire, before going to bed. Ruth was talking about her fear of spiders and getting a little worried about the night ahead. Vincent another one of the pastors camping with us said “Spiders I don’t mind, but I have a real fear of the spitting cobra”. The spitting cobra can spit venom from distance straight into the human eye, and blind you. It rarely misses apparently. The good thing he said was that he’d only seen 2 this year. Hmm. I’d quite like not to see one ever, never mind this year. Anyway we quickly stopped speaking about this, as Vincent reminded us that a Zambian saying that if you talk long enough about something or someone, it will appear!
Photo: Spider
Afternoon sessions
In the afternoon we’d drive out to a different village each day. The villages normally had names beginning with K, and often quite difficult to pronounce. For interest I think we went to Kalatashi, Kamiter, Killilu, and then the final day on Friday was spent were our camp was in Ipafu village. We aimed to get to each village for 2pm, usually arrived around 2.30pm and then waited for people to turn up to the sessions which were advertised as starting at 2pm, but usually got under way by around 3.30pm when it was felt enough people had turned up! The villages were different in their levels of poverty, with some having schools and clinics, while others had neither, and children who had never been to school. Some had ground that was a bit more fertile for growing crops while in other villages growing crops was a real struggle.
The ministry time in the different villages went really well, with people turning up in large numbers and responding well. The afternoon sessions were on the subject of prayer, which Mark and Jon led. I gave a testimony of prayer in my life in the middle of this teaching, while also spending some time helping Ruth with the many kids. – They don’t really do much with the kids over there. In some churches the kids just sit in with the rest of the congregation. In another church, which had 30 adult members and 70 children, the pastor taught the 30 adults in the main church building while one woman taught all 70 children which bearing in mind that apart from the large number, that they were aged 3-14 years old, is quite some effort. Ruth spoke to the children for a few minutes with translation into Bemba from one of the pastors, and then we played as number of kids games as well as football. On Thursday Ruth and Jon had to go back to Chingola for some meetings so I had to entertain the children. When I’ve been in Hungary we’ve done lots of games using parachutes such as cat and mouse, and also games with balls, but without these helpful accessories, I was struggling to think of the next game to play, when I thought back to playing Bulldog at school. (Running from one side of the playground to the other trying not to get tagged by those in the middle in case you weren’t sure of the game). However trying to explain this to my translator was difficult, until I renamed it Crocodiles and Wildebeest, and explained that the wildebeest had to get from one side of the river to the other, and those being the crocodiles had to catch them. This game was then played for at least half an hour, with the kids loving it! It also means you can just stand and watch, which in the heat of the afternoon, isn’t a bad thing at all.
Photo: Session
Photo: Kids
Discussing the issues
As many of you know my heart is very much for the social action side, and especially that people can be empowered to live improved lives, where they can reach their full potential and are not reliant on aid or handouts from others or westerners etc, but that they receive some help so they can be empowered. I suppose the concept of showing someone how to fish, and letting them get on with it, rather than just providing them the fish, and creating this dependence. So it was great each afternoon to spend some time speaking to groups of people finding out about the issues and struggles they face living in their villages. There are many issues. Agriculture is a big one, and not having fertiliser to make the soil good, means people can be limited to one crop cassava, which is usually able to grow in most soils without fertiliser, but even this was not growing well in some places. While most villages in this area are able to access clean drinking water through wells, and bore holes, even if they have to walk quite a long way sometimes, there is a problem of a lack of water for irrigation, and also issues such as I mentioned with the coffee plantation, where people are suffering because of the selfishness and corruption of others. Another common problem talked about was that of transport, as although a few people have bikes many have to walk a long way to tend to crops or sell at the markets which are usually in towns, often quite some distance away or near to the main roads, which depending on the village can often be as far as 10 miles away. This was interesting to me of course, as transport has been my area of work for a while now.
Discussing the issues
As many of you know my heart is very much for the social action side, and especially that people can be empowered to live improved lives, where they can reach their full potential and are not reliant on aid or handouts from others or westerners etc, but that they receive some help so they can be empowered. I suppose the concept of showing someone how to fish, and letting them get on with it, rather than just providing them the fish, and creating this dependence. So it was great each afternoon to spend some time speaking to groups of people finding out about the issues and struggles they face living in their villages. There are many issues. Agriculture is a big one, and not having fertiliser to make the soil good, means people can be limited to one crop cassava, which is usually able to grow in most soils without fertiliser, but even this was not growing well in some places. While most villages in this area are able to access clean drinking water through wells, and bore holes, even if they have to walk quite a long way sometimes, there is a problem of a lack of water for irrigation, and also issues such as I mentioned with the coffee plantation, where people are suffering because of the selfishness and corruption of others. Another common problem talked about was that of transport, as although a few people have bikes many have to walk a long way to tend to crops or sell at the markets which are usually in towns, often quite some distance away or near to the main roads, which depending on the village can often be as far as 10 miles away. This was interesting to me of course, as transport has been my area of work for a while now.
Photo: Issues
The film and the food
In the evenings, the Jesus film was shown, showing the life of Jesus in case you’re not aware of this classic 1970’s film, which does have some rather amusing beards in it! The film was projected onto a large screen, on a different village football pitch each day. The film is shown across 4 reels of film, so while the next reel is being loaded, one of the pastors we’re working with would speak to the crowd of people which numbered between 200 and 500 people each time. After the film usually around a couple of hundred people made commitments. While the film was going on the team cooked a meal out of the back of one of the vehicles. This was usually pasta and something, while the Zambians had their enshima (This is the ground up maize into a paste type food which is eaten across Africa – and usually called something different in each country, I think it’s posho in Uganda. Anyway as some of you will know who have been to Africa, it tastes of very little, but is quite filling). While it has been extremely hot in the day, the temperature at night gets very cold indeed, and so the crowd have had to get wrapped up warm. Plenty of wooly hats - slightly strange sight for Africa! In one of the villages, people just set fire to the forest to keep warm. At one point the fire seemed completely out of control, and in Britain, fire engines would be on their way, but here people seemed perfectly happy with the situation! The villagers burn much of the ground at this time of year, in order to get the ground ready for planting crops.
Photo: Film
Today we had out into the bush again, for another 4 days doing much the same as last week, so again please pray for safety and no poisonous spiders snakes etc.....
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