Andy's Zambian Adventures: The rains have come

After over 6 months without a drop of rain (2 and a half months for us) rain has fallen in Zambia. On Friday the first thunder storm and rains occurred, followed by a short shower on Saturday. I’d almost forgotten what rain was like. The onset of the rain meant lots of temporarily flooded roads, as drainage is poor or non existent here. It also meant lots of interesting new flying insects which always come with the rains, but more about them another time!

Last week Caspar wanted a few of us to join him at the hospital, as he spoke to the patients about his rapid recovery which meant that no operation was required. The doctors were all surprised, but Caspar was convinced that this was because of people praying and his faith that he would be healed. Jon also spoke to the group of patients. They were also surprised that white people had come to visit a black person in a hospital, as this just doesn’t happen, so they new there was something different about us.

On Thursday evening there was a prayer meeting at the cathedral for the rural areas, and there was a good turn out, with many who had been to the conference last month attending. At the end of the meeting, I turned into a bus driver for many of the people wanted a lift, as public transport tends to have stopped by 8pm. I ended up with 10 passengers plus Vincent’s two young children of 3 months and 3 years old – So a full car! Vincent and his family were staying with friends in Chingola, while they attended a conference being put on over 10 days in Chingola by Barry Illunga. I drove them to a part of Chingola that I’d not been to before, and first into what they call a compound. A compound is a zone where houses are built close together, and generally the poorer people in the town live. There are just mud roads, and at night as I drove through it was very difficult to see where an earth you were going. Occasionally someone would shout “lookout for the ditch” – and sure enough there was a very large ditch at the side of the road (the drainage system), and certainly you wouldn’t want to drive the car accidently down there. (Later in this blog we witness somebody doing this in Kitwe) After going in and out of a few compounds I had dropped off all but 2 of the passengers, and I was invited into Diamond’s house. Yes this man really was called Diamond. Puli – the remaining passenger (and a friend of Diamond) and I went into a small lounge area, and met Diamond’s wife and some of his kids. His wife then proceeded to move through to another room, taking the candle and leaving the room in complete darkness. We had to follow her! We then sat in another slightly larger room with armchairs around a table. Diamond said a quick prayer. I was introduced to the family, and then after a couple of minutes it was time to go again. In Zambia the greeting culture is very important, and the process of being invited into a home, even if you just want to pass on a message is very common. Even if the person you want to see in the house is not at home, other members of the household will invite you in to sit down for 5 minutes, before you go on your way again. In the same way if you want to walk anywhere, you had better allow plenty of extra time for the journey, because if you bump into someone you know, then you’ll be speaking to them for a while. Indeed a quick “hi” and then carry on walking will not suffice. There will need to be a full 5 minute conversation at least! Finally I dropped off Puli nearby, before heading home. Puli had been inspired to do some work in rural areas, and was going to leave his job at the mines to do so. I felt a little bit guilty about this, as yes, I have done the same, but somehow giving up your job, when you’re already very poor seems so much more of a sacrifice, but I guess the passage from Matthew 6 “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body what you will wear…etc” is as true for him as for me.

On Saturday the team headed out to a place next to the Kafue river near Kitwe to relax.

Photo: Ruth and Josh by the Kafue River, with Jude, Ethan and Jo in the bankground

On the way back we got delayed for a while in Kitwe, as a driver had seemingly driven his vehicle off the road and into a ditch. We noted no emergency services on the scene, and there didn’t seem to be any injuries, but there were certainly a lot of people around to help. As we drove past people were tying ropes to the car in an effort to pull it out.

Photo: Van ends up in ditch in Kitwe

All of this meant we missed the beginning of England’s match, but were able to see all the goals in the 5-1 win. The Zambian people in the hotel bar seemed to celebrate each England goal very much more enthusiastically than us, dancing round the room and cheering loudly!

Yesturday we were invited to a morning service at an Anglican church in one of the poorer parts of Chingola. The service lasted 3 hours and was in Bemba, with ad hoc translation of some things in English, including Father Patson’s enthusiastic sermon, where he danced around the pulpit, and sang at points! While this was more entertaining, the service did also include a tedious half hour of notices where they ran through the finances. As usual we also had to introduce ourselves. Afterwards Patson showed us the main project for the church which was a house for the priest to live in. The walls were almost finished, which the roof needing to be put on. He then mentioned that this house with about 6 or 7 rooms and as large as the church building in area, had taken 20 years to build so far, because the people were so poor that it was difficult to raise the money. I couldn’t help feeling that a much smaller house could have been completed years ago.

Photo: St Agnes anglican church in Chiwempala, Chingola with the blue jacketed stewards! (Maybe this should be introduced for the ABC stewards!)

On sunday afternoon, some of the team went to Ipafu to meet the village pastors and continue to discuss how they can support themselves while freeing up more time for the work they do. We talked about a concept where they grow a cash crop such as cabbages, which gives a profit to not only fund a worker to work their land, thus freeing up their time, plus providing money to go into a longer term project such as bee keeping where the profits can go into continuing the rural discipleship and practical work over a larger area, thereby passing on support to others like themselves. In this way keeping them self sufficient so to speak, rather than relying on continued supply from outsiders, which creates an uncomfortable dependency as I've mentioned before. More about the self-supporting projects later on....