When Jon, Ruth and I were in Zambia in March to help with an Alpha conference in Lusaka, we met a lady called Dianna, who lives in Chingola. As well as being a keen gardener, and helping lead a number of small churches, she is a supporter and fundraiser for FCE (Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education). We had met up with Dianna again at the conference we ran, and she was excited about the work we were doing in the rural areas with the Life project, and also felt that a visit to FCE would be beneficial to us.
FCE is based in a place called Masaiti, not far from a larger town of Luansha, and was founded by a group of South Africans, who wanted to help rural communities help themselves by connecting spiritual values with practical skills. Essentially FCE tries to disciple and equip disadvantaged and unreached communities with biblical values, knowledge and skills that will lead to community transformation. Jo and I were accompanied by Dianna, her son Ian, and a new member of her church, Joyce. We were met at the centre by Moses.
Moses showed us around the training centre, where they train Zambians and many other nationalities to be teachers, community workers, skills trainers and missionaries.
The place had a great atmosphere about it. We met Jan, one of the original South Africans to set the programme up, and he is now head of the Masaiti centre. – They also have centres in Northern Province of Zambia as well as Namibia, Malawi, Sudan and India. Jan is a very wise but humble too. He explained how they have had to learn many things about this culture, and while wanting to help the people here, they didn’t want to (and knew it would be wrong to) impose their western culture on the people. Jan explained how while it is true the western world is more developed in material terms, in Africa they are more developed in relationship terms. I felt like I knew what he was talking about here. We rush around building things in the west, often at the expense of our relationships – Simply, we don’t have time for them, because we are doing too much building of material things. Conversely the Zambian culture, and African culture in general, is much more about relationships. They need to be able to trust the people they’re working with and this can take time. The fact that the Bemba language seems to have such a myriad of ways to greet people is testimony to this. People will stop what they are doing to greet someone they know. In the west, it can often be seen as an inconvenience to bump into someone we know, as it will make us late!
Jan also talked about the issues people faced, and the enevitable subject of poverty came up. Poverty he suggested though was not a lack of things, but a lack of knowing what to do with the things you have. FCE try to encourage the local people to make use of what they have. Their community teams go out into villages and spend time with the people, listen to their problems, and try to get the people to think about potential solutions rather than providing them. They do offer some ideas, helping the villagers understand nutrition, and encouraging a balanced diet, by showing that many of the fruit and vegetables around them are good for their diet. In the same way people have been encouraged in the areas of agriculture, and shown that they can farm without using artificial fertilisers which will be expensive, and can actually wreck the soil for future agriculture. However, it can be a long process, as people can be distrustful of new ideas, and only when one person dares to use new techniques and finds they will actually work better, do other people in the village follow suit.
FCE also see education as an essential part of their work. They train teachers at their centres, while also making new schools in the bush, where none have existed before. Their approach has been just to work with the community to start a school, even if no buildings. Near the Masaiti centre, they got the villagers to construct a simple shelter using trees and grass, and started teaching under the shelter. After some time they trained many of the villagers in brick making, and building skills, and have been able to construct some classrooms with the villagers help. The benefits have been people getting skilled and paid for their work, they feel ownership of their school, and their children are benefiting greatly. We were were fortunate to visit the school, met Luke the head teacher and saw some of the classes in progress.
FCE is based in a place called Masaiti, not far from a larger town of Luansha, and was founded by a group of South Africans, who wanted to help rural communities help themselves by connecting spiritual values with practical skills. Essentially FCE tries to disciple and equip disadvantaged and unreached communities with biblical values, knowledge and skills that will lead to community transformation. Jo and I were accompanied by Dianna, her son Ian, and a new member of her church, Joyce. We were met at the centre by Moses.
Moses showed us around the training centre, where they train Zambians and many other nationalities to be teachers, community workers, skills trainers and missionaries.
The place had a great atmosphere about it. We met Jan, one of the original South Africans to set the programme up, and he is now head of the Masaiti centre. – They also have centres in Northern Province of Zambia as well as Namibia, Malawi, Sudan and India. Jan is a very wise but humble too. He explained how they have had to learn many things about this culture, and while wanting to help the people here, they didn’t want to (and knew it would be wrong to) impose their western culture on the people. Jan explained how while it is true the western world is more developed in material terms, in Africa they are more developed in relationship terms. I felt like I knew what he was talking about here. We rush around building things in the west, often at the expense of our relationships – Simply, we don’t have time for them, because we are doing too much building of material things. Conversely the Zambian culture, and African culture in general, is much more about relationships. They need to be able to trust the people they’re working with and this can take time. The fact that the Bemba language seems to have such a myriad of ways to greet people is testimony to this. People will stop what they are doing to greet someone they know. In the west, it can often be seen as an inconvenience to bump into someone we know, as it will make us late!
Jan also talked about the issues people faced, and the enevitable subject of poverty came up. Poverty he suggested though was not a lack of things, but a lack of knowing what to do with the things you have. FCE try to encourage the local people to make use of what they have. Their community teams go out into villages and spend time with the people, listen to their problems, and try to get the people to think about potential solutions rather than providing them. They do offer some ideas, helping the villagers understand nutrition, and encouraging a balanced diet, by showing that many of the fruit and vegetables around them are good for their diet. In the same way people have been encouraged in the areas of agriculture, and shown that they can farm without using artificial fertilisers which will be expensive, and can actually wreck the soil for future agriculture. However, it can be a long process, as people can be distrustful of new ideas, and only when one person dares to use new techniques and finds they will actually work better, do other people in the village follow suit.
FCE also see education as an essential part of their work. They train teachers at their centres, while also making new schools in the bush, where none have existed before. Their approach has been just to work with the community to start a school, even if no buildings. Near the Masaiti centre, they got the villagers to construct a simple shelter using trees and grass, and started teaching under the shelter. After some time they trained many of the villagers in brick making, and building skills, and have been able to construct some classrooms with the villagers help. The benefits have been people getting skilled and paid for their work, they feel ownership of their school, and their children are benefiting greatly. We were were fortunate to visit the school, met Luke the head teacher and saw some of the classes in progress.
Luke (left) with Moses our guide for the day
After this we went up to the new site which FCE are building. Using the same principles as the school, rather than just building their training centre, and accommodation for the students straight away, they have trained local workers to build the place. This has taken a lot of time, but the result is a beautiful place which the local people can be very proud of and they have learnt so many skills in the process. FCE also have a a lot of land for agriculture, where again local people learn many different skills.
Photo: One of the new accomodation buildings built by local volunteers who now have had to learn building skills from scratch.
As I have mentioned before, it is common at this time of year for the people to burn the grass in their fields as a quick method of clearing their fields ready for planting. FCE have offered money to local people if they will come with the straw, and they can then use this for building.
Photo: Moses shows the straw collected by the villagers for use in thatching the buildings
It was a really good day, and I felt that the centre had certainly changed Moses’ life, because he knew he was exactly where he was supposed to be, helping his people to improve their lives.
***
On Thursday the team headed out to Ipafu again, to meet the guys, who had invited some other leaders from their respective village communities, and Joel had a go at leading them through the discipleship material. One man called Raymonde, was originally from Congo, and spoke French rather than English, but he also spoke Bemba, which is what the study was being done in. I was able to have a small conversation with him in my limited French though!
Photo: The group tries out one of the disciplesip sessions under the shade of the trees
Yesterday morning I went to collect Casper from hospital, as he had been discharged. The doctors were amazed that in the end he didn’t need to have an operation, which they suspected would be the case. Casper put this down to the power of prayer, and had lots of the patients in his ward and the staff asking him about his faith, to which he was glad to tell them, later on in the week when he has begun to feel better. - So thank you for praying!
Next time on the blog… The rough guide to Chingola
Next time on the blog… The rough guide to Chingola
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