17. Panono panono

And so we arrived… apparently 8 weeks ago. In some respects it feels like forever, and in others, so many others, we are still babies learning how to walk in a new environment.

We arrived in early September to live on a farm while our main place was being renovated…we have just now moved in and frankly our new house is far more than we could ever have hoped for, great for us, for visitors and ideal for hosting our embryonic social enterprise about which you will read more later... we just need to get rid of a few…existing residents first.

Our Director (David) was sick when we arrived. It is customary here for your host to come and visit you first before you may go to see them, indeed others would have viewed David as very rude if we had gone to his house before he had first visited us. This is to do with the hospitality culture in Zambia and would have implied to anyone who found out that we weren’t being adequately welcomed, and would have shamed David (the first of many cultural differences we have learned). Hospitality is a seen as a serious issue in Zambia. So with David ill and unable to travel to see us, we had a few days of settling in, meeting people, registering with clinics, sorting visa paperwork and so forth. We spent time generally working out which way was up  – it was actually really nice and we soon began to feel comfortable. When we finally met up with David and his wife Lydia it was lovely and natural, a great start.

Walking through Ndola you are unlikely to see another white person unless you go to the new and fairly posh out of town shopping area (where you can get amazing ice-cream for a special treat). I [Claire] was asked whether this was intimidating – the answer is an emphatic no. With the kids we get stared at, especially as Reuben tends to walk rather than being carried, and we will be told off by a passer-by if one of the children has a runny nose, and naturally we get touted for business on the street more than the average black guy (you are white and therefore automatically wealthy), but that is as far as it goes. People seem to be genuinely friendly, warm and welcoming, especially if you greet them in the local language. There’s not much to ‘do’ here, and the town centre is run down, but there is real investment going on and even rumours of a cinema opening in the next couple of years.

We have heard that Zambians are among friendliest people on Earth, and our experience certainly supports that. Last week we were in the next large town North of Ndola without a map and trying to find a shop which was mentioned on a web page that was ten years without update. After wandering round in circles for a while we asked someone if they knew where it was, and not only did they know, they left what they were doing and walked with us to find it – about a kilometre away. Now you could suggest that was one random friendly person who fancied a walk with a couple of white folk on a Tuesday morning, but then it happened again while looking for a second hidden shop – after asking someone where to find it they left their own shop to take us over there. So, ok, that’s two people out of a population of 14 million, but from our small and statistically insignificant sample I say we agree that Zambians are friendly.

Aside from the friendliness of people we meet, what strikes us most is the utter beauty of the trees. Yes, everyone knows Claire is an environmentalist and therefore constitutionally required to find trees pleasant and heart-warming, but they really do have to be seen to be appreciated - while the ground is often dry and dusty, the vibrancy in the colour of the Jacaranda and Flame trees is spectacular. The simple beauty of these trees never fails to lift our spirits… I hope that is always the case and I am so thankful for it.
 

Whilst we were in the very early stages of settling in Jason received a call you don’t want to have to take:  8 members of David’s wife’s family, including 4 brothers and a sister, had been killed in a tragic car accident. 12 people were killed in all and the accident was national (and international) news.  A state funeral for all 12 people was held at the Ndola stadium; about a thousand people attended the funeral, including many dignitaries – it was a very sad occasion. The grief felt by David and Lydia is very big and very real and it will take the family a long, long time to come to terms with. We hope we can be a real support in this process.

So with David being understandably out-of-action, we have been filling our time with other things while waiting for the J-Life work to be envisioned and clarified. Claire was asked by one of the ladies on the farm if she would go and speak at her ladies group – which she readily accepted and totally loved. It was such an honour to be invited into their home, a very small tin roofed house where the ladies met to chat, pray and sing. Many of them didn’t speak good English, but one lady translated and they had a great time. Here is a photo of some of the ladies outside the house.

All through our time with J-Life we have both been committed to exploring the idea of setting up a small number of micro enterprises to providing sustainable employment at above average wages and good working conditions. This has many positives…we provide employment opportunities for local people and we raise much needed funds for J-Life Zambia. Claire’s emergent enjoyment of sewing, cultivated whilst in South Africa, seemed the perfect way to start… but getting things up and running with one sewing machine in time for the Christmas market was going to prove tricky. Our neighbour dropped into conversation that her friend in Uganda made Christmas cards, at which point a huge light went on in Claire’s head and she went immediately (literally) to action. She cut up the African chitenge sling we bought to carry Reuben (in the vain hope that people would stop stopping us in the street to complain about him being made to walk) and played with banana leaf from the farm. We talked to lots of people and asked Claire’s new bible study friends to be our focus group and help whittle down our prototypes to a final selection. We were encouraged by the response, Jason got to work on the website, and we agreed with David our desired name ‘Jireh Crafts’ which links back to one of the Biblical names given for God – Jehovah Jireh – God the Provider.

We now employ two ladies who are doing well. We are hoping to diversify in the New Year and work on the sewing idea (helped as one of our ladies is a trained dress maker) and we are currently looking at ideas to keep them employed whilst we are in the UK for 5 weeks over Christmas. But for now, whilst there are still lots of questions to be answered, we think this could work and we are giving it our best shot. As this blog goes to press we have had orders for almost 1,200 cards and have made just over 1,000. We want to make this business sustainable so we can keep our ladies employed and earning so here is the blatant and unashamed plug…if you haven’t yet bought your Christmas cards and want something a little different that could make a little difference, check out our Jireh Crafts website at www.jireh-crafts.org. We love the designs and hope that you like them too. If you do, then please fill in an order form.

So back to our house. It’s an old colonial building which you would immediately recognise from any film set in 1940s Africa. The area of Ndola in which we live is Kansenshi, which is fairly affluent and has a higher-than-average proportion of mzungus (as those of us with a genetic melanin deficiency are called around these parts). It’s a nice place – the roads are in very poor repair, and every house is gated, but it is friendly and pretty and quiet. We have friends who live round the corner, and the garden is massive – easily big enough for the vegetable patch, chicken run, and banana tree that we are planning, and the bike track , sand pit, and reptile arena that Daniel and Reuben want. It’s going to take a lot of work, but one of the things about living here is that there’s a social expectation that you employ at least a gardener, and given the wage for a gardener is pitifully small, it’s not a tough choice. We hope to give someone slightly higher than average wages for lower than average hours in an attempt to be honourable without creating division.

(Incidentally the word Mzungu comes from the Swahili word mzunguzungu, which means “a terribly dizzy person” because, evidently, that’s what the first white folk looked like when they stumbled blindly into Kenya wafting at the flies with silk handkerchiefs and asking the peaceable natives for directions to the nearest mint julep.)

On the first day we moved in, Reuben and Daniel were playing and we heard Reuben saying “There’s mice, there’s mice!”, which we put down to part of their game not thinking that a) he could have been telling the truth and, b) his limited vocabulary might conceivably lump mice and rats into the same furry bracket. It was only when one of the things ran across the lounge during Grey’s Anatomy, causing Claire to squeal and Jason to have to pretend to be manly, that we realised we should pay more attention to our two-year-old. Four days and a whole bowl of rat poison later, and we think the situation is settling down. Shame, really, as Daniel was on board with a plan to get a snake to keep them under control. A few more days and Claire would have cracked.

On the subject of reptiles, we do have some other house guests that are way cooler than the rats: we have a big colony of gheckos living in the walls. We often see them climbing around inside chasing flies, making them attractive and useful pets. And the kids love them. Here’s a picture of a baby one making friends.

Apart from that, we’ve been doing some J-Life promotion with pastors with a view to pulling an Ndola-based group of trainees together in the new year, and Jason is going to DRC in a few days to help with some training in Kinshasa. And we’re trying hard to learn Bemba so that we can communicate more effectively with people in the rural areas.

So things are settling down for us here in Zambia. The house is great and big enough to hold training events and socials, and the community is awesome. Just in the two months we’ve been here, we’ve made friends we’ll stay in contact with for life, we’ve got friends we share child care with, we’ve got friends we share curry with. The only thing we’re waiting on is for the J-Life work to really kick into gear, which will hopefully take off when we come back to Zambia after Christmas.

Things are moving along. Not as fast as we’d like, but getting there, as they say in Bemba, panono panono. Little by little.

16. Elephants On The Road

You’ll recall from the last blog that we had said our goodbyes in South Africa and were about to embark on the journey north to Zambia. For those of a nervous disposition, or those pressed for time and wishing to jump to the conclusion, let me tell you right now that we arrived safely, and in good spirits.

We’d planned our route very carefully, looking at distances, researching border crossings, checking out the online forums for advice (because if it's on the internet it's bound to be true), and we ended up confident that the journey was do-able in a fairly relaxed manner giving us plenty of time to enjoy the view. We even built in large margins for error, so we knew we had more than enough time to get to each of our waypoints while it was light. It’s 2100km, and apparently you can do this journey in 2 days; we planned to do it in 4. 

We decided to go up through Botswana (rather than Zimbabwe), because, although it’s a couple of hundred kilometers further, it does have the twin benefits that the border crossings are apparently easier, and you’re less likely to be kidnapped for ransom by armed despots.

Our days were planned to go like this:

Day 1, 1002km: set off midnight, arrive Martin’s Drift border post 06:30, be through the border by 08:30, be at our campsite in an elephant sanctuary in Nata, Botswana, by 13:30. It gets dark about 18:00, so that’s a nice 4h30m margin in case of delays.

Day 2, 314km: get up early to see the elephants, leave around 11:00, arrive Kazungula Ferry around 13:30, be through the border by 14:30, be at our campsite at Victoria Falls by 16:00.

Day 3, 477km: get up early and see the falls, leave around 11am to arrive at a guest house in Lusaka by 17:00.

Day 4, 319km: have leisurely breakfast, leave at 09:00 after the first rush of traffic in Lusaka, stop at the missionary-run Fig Tree Cafe for lunch around 12 noon, arrive Ndola around 15:00.

Now, before anyone shrieks “Naive fools! This isn't Europe you know!”, we’d talked to quite a few people and looked at a few travel forums, and this itinerary was eminently sensible.

So, day 1, we arrive at the South Africa / Botswana border as planned at 06:30... and joined the back of a queue at least a kilometer long. Turns out this was the day that 200 cars were returning to Botswana from an annual gathering of some international church. Gosh. So a border crossing which was supposed to take a maximum of 2 hours actually took us 6.

We’d hoped to be through the border by 8:30, but in the end we got into Botswana at 12:30 with a 6-hour drive ahead of us to the campsite. By this point our usually patient and compliant kids were showing clear signs that they had just about had enough.

The main road up Botswana isn’t all that great. It’s full of potholes, there are frequent herds of cattle blissfully chewing cud while they wait for you to crash into them, and there is the ever-present risk that elephants will just wander in front of you as you drive.

The other big problem is that speed limits are frequently not sign-posted. You just have to know that the approach and departure of a town is 80kmh, and the bit in between is 60kmh. And for ‘town’ read ‘two or more  huts’. So it wasn’t entirely surprising when, as evening approached, a police officer stepped into the road and waved us in. We [Ed... Jason is being generous here... I was driving] [JCS...You're right, I was being generous, you despicable criminal] were doing 80kmh, but unfortunately this was in a 60 limit. There was no way we could have known.

Before we were stopped, the satnav was saying we’d be at the campsite at 18:00 - just about ok to get there and get the tent up before it got too dark. After we finished with the police it was looking more like 18:45 so we decided to bail out and find a closer campsite. Claire had the inspiration to look at Points Of Interest in the satnav, and found a campsite close by that turned out to be excellent. Not so many elephants, but a lovely spot with a nice restaurant and we decided we deserved a nice meal after a tough day.

Day 2 dawned and we thought we’d pop in to the elephant sanctuary we were supposed to stay at the night before, so after paying the speeding fine at the local police station (and they were somewhat surprised that we had bothered), we set off. The website said that the road was unsuitable for road cars, and that a 4x4 was required. Well we have a 4x4 so we thought we would be ok. Turns out we weren’t. About 1km down the road we got totally beached in soft sand with a full car and a heavy trailer. Claire and I spent half an hour digging the trailer out and turning it round by hand, and, with the weight off the back of the car, I then managed to get the car out, smoking the clutch in the process. It’s quite unnerving to be in the middle of nowhere with no support driving a car which is spewing smoke from the engine compartment.

But, here’s the thing, had we not had that speeding fine the night before we’d have pressed on to this campsite and got stuck on the road in the dark with no other options. It’s not often in this world that you are ever thankful for a speeding ticket.

The good news is that we got the car out of the dune, turned round, and managed to drag the trailer out and back to the main road. The next hour was a bit fraught as we had to get confidence back that the car was ok and not going to break down - a dead clutch on the M1 in the UK is inconvenient - the same on the R1 in Botswana is a disaster. But it was fine, and we got to the Kazungula ferry across the Zambezi in good time at about 14:00. 

On the approach to the ferry we finally saw what we had been hoping to see - a herd of elephants crossing the road. It was a great end to the Botswana leg of the trip.

As you approach the river, people come up touting for whatever business they can get; changing money, looking after your car, selling you insurance. We eventually managed to fend them off enough to enjoy the trip over the river. 

Crossing the Zambezi was quite a moment for us - one of the iconic things to do at some point in your life, only slightly marred by explaining, again, to that guy that, yes, we're white, but that in no way means that we are rich. Eventually we gave him the equivalent of £1 and he promised to sit on our trailer and not steal anything.

Customs and immigration were a breeze, the car was stamped through with no issues, and within half an hour of leaving the ferry we were on our way to Livingstone. Moreover, we were in Zambia. Still two days away from our destination, but nonetheless in Zambia. 

It’s an odd thing, but as soon as we were on Zambian soil, our stress levels went down - I guess something to do with knowing people in the country; having a number to call if anything went wrong. It’s daft, really, because it would be somewhat inconvenient for anyone to travel 14 hours down from Ndola to help us out, in just the same way it would be if your mate called you at home in Manchester/Houston and asked you to kindly pop over and pick him up from Munich/Mexico City (delete as culturally appropriate). Still, it was comforting to know we knew people.

The Maramba River Lodge campsite was great, and within 4km of Victoria Falls. Bounded by a river, at dinner that night we saw a hippo and a crocodile just over the balcony, and apparently an elephant walked through the camp in the night. Quite a cool place. In the morning of day 3 we packed up and went out early to see the falls. 

Considering Vic Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, the area is pretty low key. There’s a fairly subtle entrance on the Zambian side which takes you into a carpark/curio market. It’s $20 per person to go into the falls and $5 to park your car, which we thought was quite a lot. Randomly we got talking to one of the security guys and came round to the fact that we were missionaries and coming to live in Zambia and he went and chatted to the entrance people on our behalf and got us in half price. In Zambia, it really is all about relationships. Next time we go, though, we’ll be Zambian residents and then it’s only $7 each. If you get chance to go, please visit Ephraim in shop 46 - he was disappointed that we couldn’t afford to buy anything so we said we’d send some rich westerners his way.

At this time of year it’s dry season and the flow over the falls is as low as it gets. It’s still impressive, but not nearly as impressive as it will be in March. Consequently there were few people around and we could wander in peace. Our friendly security guard showed us round for a while and took us out onto the rocks (strictly forbidden for the unaccompanied), and then left us to it. We had a pleasant hour leaning on railings admiring the geology and watching the insane throw themselves down the rapids attached to bits of polystyrene.

Here and there are information boards with some of the history of the falls. They are bizarrely inconsistent - one board tells us that ‘previous generations would have seen the water falling into gorge number 2, rather than the present gorge’. The water has been falling into its present gorge for at least 200,000 years, which would mean that the sign writer counts Homo Erectus as a ‘previous generation’, now I love good prose as much as the next man but that's stretching it a bit even for me. Another board talks about the start of the Jurassic era 200 years ago (that would be 200 million years ago), and still another board describes ‘stone age visitors’ to the falls 2000 years ago, which surprised me because the orthodox interpretation of history sees the stone age ending about 6000BC when some enterprising chap discovered how to smelt copper. It was interesting to me to discover that the Roman empire was, at least according to the historians of the Victoria Waterfalls Trust, a stone age civilisation. Here's a picture of Reuben, shaking his head with incredulity at the folly.

But dodgy history aside, it was awesome, and we’re looking forward to going back there in rainy season to see the falls in all their watery splendour.

We’d been told that the journey from Livingstone to Lusaka, the capital city, was between five and six hours, and since we had booked into a missionary guest house for the night we were fairly relaxed about setting off, so we were on the road about noon. 

Zambia has lots (and I mean lots) of police check points, and the convention is that you approach them slowly with your main and hazard lights on, roll down your window, take off your sunglasses, and greet the officer loudly and cheerfully. We’d done this at every check so far and been waved through with pleasant words. 

Just on the outskirts of Livingstone, however, was a checkpoint that I didn’t see in time, approached too fast, and ended up with the police woman putting her hand out to show me to stop. After that she was looking for any reason to haul us in, and she objected to the way our bikes were being carried on the roof. She waved us in to the police compound and told us they were impounding our car - obviously a nervous moment. 

As we drove in there was another police guy driving out and we stopped alongside him to ask where we had to go. It turns out he was the chief inspector of the division and shook his head when we explained what had happened, that we were new in Zambia, and were not tourists. I got the feeling that this particular police woman was known for doing this. He told us to follow him out and he talked to the guys at the check point after which we were waved through with a cheery “go well” and “God bless your journey”. Again, as I said above, Zambia is all about relationships. Everything happens in a manner dependent on the way you deal with people - in fact, since arriving in Ndola we’ve been ensuring we stop longer than we need to at our local police check point to get to know the guys there; you never know when a friendly police inspector might come in useful.

The rest of the journey to Lusaka was fairly uneventful until we got to about 40km from town and discovered the road had been removed. Literally. There was a guy with a flag waving you off the side of the tarmac, and beyond him there was just sand. Not only that, but the ‘diversion’ was completely un-signed, and basically through the bush. At this point is was 5pm and starting to get dark, and there was hardly anyone else on the ‘road’. But when the only road between the 4th and 1st largest towns in Zambia is missing, there’s little option but to do what a man with a flag tells you. So in approaching darkness, and on one of the worst ‘roads’ I have ever seen, we slowly carried on. At one point the track dove off into a carpark full of trucks and crowds of drunk guys before before emerging again, and then later it went through a quarry - the road actually wound down into the pit of the quarry before climbing up again past a whole village on fire and back to the trail.

I can’t describe how stressful it was - we were both tense, the kids were fractious, and of course the satnav was having a hissy-fit because we were so far from any known road that even David Livingstone would have scratched his head and wondered if he wasn't just a little bit off piste.  After about two hours of this we found ourselves behind a truck, which we guessed, most likely, was going through to Lusaka so we just stayed behind it and went wherever it went - if we hadn’t had that I don’t know what we’d have done because in the dark it was impossible to know which way to go. It took us 4 hours to do 40km, making our easy 5-hour journey into a deeply stressful 9 hours. It’s incredible that the government can just remove the main (and only) road between two major cities without any other provision. 

At least we had the number of the guest house and kept in contact with them, so it was that when we arrived at 9pm they were waiting for us with a hot meal and cheery company. It was a nice end to a tough day.

The next day, our last on the road, was fine. We got up late, had a leisurely breakfast, and left just after nine. After negotiating the Lusaka traffic we were on our way. We stopped off for lunch at a very cool diner called The Fig Tree Cafe, run by missionaries and famous in Zambia, and then arrived in Ndola about 4 in the afternoon. We collected the keys to our temporary house in the middle of a banana farm and let out a sigh of relief for a safe arrival.

The journey had been eventful but now, looking back, it was great and we always arrived safely. We’ve got some good stories to tell, and we had an adventure. Sitting at my desk writing this and looking out at the farm, well, it’s a pretty nice place to be. We have a lot of adjusting to do, not least to really define what we’re here to do, but we think we will be just fine.

So starts the next stage of our African adventure.

15. The End Of The Beginning

When you're a kid, time ticks by so slowly. An hour in the car is torture, a school day stretches to some distant invisible horizon, the summer six-week holiday feels like a year, and Christmas is always an eternity away. As we go into the last days of our time in South Africa, I wish I was a kid again so the days wouldn’t scream by so quickly.

Our time here has been amazing, we've been part of an incredible community and formed lifelong friendships. We've accepted and been accepted. We've been part of a great church, marked down only because of the instant coffee (I ask myself, what would Jesus drink? And I think it’s clear he drinks Espresso).

When we first came here, we were planning on heading to Zambia about the end of June. Round about May we decided to have an extra month and extend our stay until the end of July. Then we realised a bunch of people were visiting from our church at the start of August, so we said we'd stay until end of the first week of August. When you love living somewhere, it's all too easy to push your leaving date ever further into the future. And then Claire's sister announced her wedding date in mid August, and it would have been foolish for us to go to Zambia only for Claire to fly back a week later leaving me in an unknown country with two small boys and no support network. So we extended our visas until the end of August. 

Then, just this week, Reuben was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. He’s on the mend, but we’ve been advised to stay another two weeks [Ed. - the blog was started a couple of weeks ago - Reuben is back to being his cheeky self].

But despite these extensions, our leaving date is approaching fast, and, you know, we're ready to go. We're excited about the next part of our challenge. Excited about getting stuck in. Excited about the next part of the call God has given us. One of the J-Life guys here described it like this "For you guys leaving here is bitter-sweet, bitter saying goodbye to your friends, but sweet going where you're called to be. For those of us who have to let you go, it's just bitter." That says it all, really. We, and the community we have become part of, have changed, grown. I like to think that God has been planting, and now he wants to start harvesting. We’ll grieve the leaving, but:

"Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have life forever, real and eternal" (John 12:24-25 Message translation).

We’d love to be the grain of wheat, hopefully being part of something awesome growing in Zambia.

The last month has been an interesting time. We even had a cool minor miracle, which I’ll tell you about now.

My folks were here for a couple of weeks, and one day we were in the car on our way into Johannesburg. Driving up a hill on the motorway the car lost power and the engine light came on. We pulled over to the side, and saw that the car was blowing copious amounts of steam out of the exhaust. Now anyone who knows anything about cars will be thinking “Uh huh. Head gasket. Definitely head gasket...”

So we called our friend and he towed us back into town, and we left the car at a garage. The mechanic said “Head gasket. Only thing it can be. We’ll test it and give you an estimate for the repair.”

Now the last time anyone I know had a head gasket repair done in the UK it was £1200, so we were pretty concerned. So at staff prayers the next morning we just asked everyone to pray that it would be less than R10,000 (about £700).

As the day ticked by we were getting increasingly worried. And then the next day went by without word from the garage. When it comes to cars, no news is bad news in my considerable experience (I once owned a Morris Minor, so I know whereof I speak when it comes to money-sucking rust-buckets). On day three the garage phoned and asked me if I would go in to have a chat. The zeros were mounting up.

When I got to the garage the mechanic took me aside and asked me to describe what had happened again, which I did. “Well, it just can’t be anything but head gasket...but...we can’t find a single thing wrong with your car. Nothing. We’ve run every test we can think of, we’ve driven the car for two days, we’ve checked everything. There is nothing wrong with this car...sorry to ask you this...but are you sure you saw what you saw?”

So that was that. We paid £130 for the testing and a full service and drove the car away. Since then we’ve done 7000km and it’s not missed a beat. I’m really not the kind of guy to ascribe any and all unusual happenings to God-did-it (or, as Richard Dawkins says, smuggling in magic whenever it suits you), but I’m inclined to let Him have this one.

Staying on the theme of God sorting stuff out, a few weeks ago, after months of trying to arrange houses and the like in Zambia from afar, we decided to take the hit and I flew up to Ndola for a few days. Some friends of ours up there had given us a lead on a house and I wanted to check it out for myself, amongst other things.

My intention was that I would stay with the J-Life Zambia director, but he wasn’t available for me to stay with him for the first two days of the week that worked best for us. I decided to contact the aforementioned friends who, well, they are definitely friends, but I wouldn’t think we’d invested enough in our relationship yet to leave me comfortable rocking up for four days and leaving tide marks in their shower. They live at a bible college and are building a school for orphaned kids, and we know them because her mum goes to our church in the UK. Anyway, of course they said I was welcome to stay with them, because they’re that kind of people.

I went to look at the house, which is a couple of doors down from friends of our friends which is how we came to hear about it. The house is great, or, it will be when the landlord finishes renovating it. Turns out that the landlord is a deacon at the church we had been planning to go to. Anyway, the house might be just right, but won’t be finished until at least mid October which left us with nearly two months with nowhere to live. That night I was talking to our friends about it and they said “oh, there’s a guest house here on our site - why don’t you stay here until your place is ready?”. 

So that was that. I went to look at the guest house and it’s great. It is in the middle of a banana farm, and right next door to a couple with kids the same age as ours. It gives us a fantastic soft-start to life in Zambia while we get to know people, and how things work there. Also, we were keen to build on links with the bible college, and living there for a couple of months is a sure-fire way to kick that off. Also, despite our extreme desire not to, we’ve been told we must have a dog, and the couple next door have a pregnant doberman so we’ve reserved a puppy [ed. ug].

On to the next coincidence - having seen the area where the house is, and the route to Daniel’s school, and the distance to the J-Life training centre, we came to the realisation that we need a second car. We’d really hoped to get away without it and cycle the kids to school, but it’s just not possible - the road is just too dangerous for us to consider it. So, again, I was talking to our friends about this and they said “oh, some missionary friends of ours are going home for a year and want to sell their car. They’re asking half what it’s worth just to get rid of it quickly...”. I went to see the car and it’s perfect, a 7-seater estate in great condition. And they really were asking half the market value for it.

Having agreed on the car, we were talking and I met their 5-year-old daughter, and it turns out she’s going to be in Daniel’s class at school. Now, I didn’t know this because it came out with Claire while I was away, but Daniel has been really anxious about going to a new school. So when I came home and told him that I had met Emma and she was going to look after him in class it was if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. It was only after that that Claire said he’d confided in her about his anxiety.

So we’ve got a set of things that have fallen into place because of those unexpected days staying with our friends at the bible college - somewhere to live while our house is being made ready, an easier start to our life in Zambia through living in an established community, a puppy from a known dog which is good with kids, a half price car, a school mate for Daniel, and the chance to kick-start links with an organisation we were already keen to partner with. Oh, and one more thing, the bible college runs a saw mill which can make bunk beds for the kids at a very good price.

Christians often have this idea the God goes before us. I don’t believe that - I think that God is already there and we go to join him. For me, being Christian isn’t an insurance policy to make life easy, far from it, but looking back over things we often see what looks very much like a plan being followed.

Back to the present: Friday (30th August) was an interesting day. Winter in South Africa is a very dry time, and fires are a problem for farms. Over the last few days the wind has been building up, and yesterday it was blowing at probably 20 miles an hour. A massive fire started a few farms over - in fact one of the guys we know saw it start, from a smoldering log left over from a previous burn. 

As he drove past, the fire raced out in a V-shape, jumped the road in front of his car (a distance of about 8 metres), and raced through the adjacent farm. By the time he’d driven the 10 or so kilometers back to our farm to warn people, the fire was already over the fence line and every man available was rushed out to try and fight it.

Until you’ve seen a burning grass in a 20mph wind, you just can’t grasp how scary and destructive a wild fire can be. I was with 8 farm men fighting one flank of the fire (bearing in mind that it was burning as a continuous line probably 10km long) and we pretty much had our section under control using water spray and beaters, when the wind changed and the fire billowed back towards us. Fire in a strong wind, moves faster than you can run. People have told me that before and I didn’t believe it, but it does. The only advantage you’ve got when it does that is that you’re marginally smarter than the fire. Now I’ve been told that Johnny Wilkinson can run the 100m on a rugby field in 11 seconds. Yesterday I saw a 50-year-old 130kilo black man in wellington boots in a maize field smash that record. Stick that in your Ruck and Try it, Wilko.

The good news is that we got the fire out. Took about ten hours of constant work and we were up and down rocky hills all day chasing the burn line back and forth. As it turned out we were lucky - the neighbouring game farm lost all their land and lots of animals to the fire, and only managed to save their lodges by driving round them with a fire truck spraying the ground with water until the fire past. Their two leopards were rescued with minor burns - their herd of hartebeest wasn’t so lucky.

At one point we completely lost control of the fire after the wind billowed and the flames jumped back behind us to race up the next mountain. With no way we could catch it, the men were all rushed in tractors round the base of the mountain with the intention to deliberately burn the whole of the next valley to give the fire nowhere to run. When we arrived round there (about 10km drive) we found that somehow the “puller” (a petrol fire lance) had been forgotten and we had no way to start a controlled burn. Some of us sat by while one guy went back to fetch the puller.

In our group was an old guy with a crutch, which the others called Mkulu - a term of respect for an older man. Mkulu set off to amble up the mountain from the our side to see for himself how the fire was progressing. About half way up a young guy followed him, and then about twenty minutes later I went to call them back down so we could start our controlled burn. 

When I got to the ridge and looked over, all I could see was fire raging out of control. The line must have been 300 metres long and racing through long grass - I thought that it would be utterly impossible to control it, even if we could have got the fire trucks up there (which we couldn’t). I found the young guy stood up top and asked him where Mkulu was. He just shook his head and pointed down into the smoke and said “Napa” - That side, over there. Now I had focus I could see Mkulu at the edge of the fire line beating at the flames with a branch - just a small old man with a grey beard against a huge wild fire. I still thought it was pointless, but I went down to join him thinking at least I could support him.

When I went down the young guy followed me, and we broke branches off a tree to go and help Mkulu. Between the three of us, and against my pessimistic predictions, we killed about 100m of fire. By that point three other guys came and the six of us killed the whole line before it reached the ridge. I’m not being prosaic here, but I genuinely couldn’t believe it. If it weren’t for this guy who refused to be beaten we would have just given up and burned out the next valley in desperation. But because of his quiet inspiration we just tried anyway and beat a fire I thought couldn’t be beaten. It was a real lesson. And that guy never said anything, just quietly ambled down the mountain through the char to join the men at the bottom who were in the process of killing the opposing flank of the fire. 

For me, he was the hero of the day, if it wasn’t for him we’d still have been burning a fire break at 3am. As it was, we were all safely back in bed by 10. All because one old man didn’t know when to stop.

So we come to our last day in this part of our journey. We just had a staff braii with all our friends. My buddy Matthew and I went and shot a couple of pigeons which we cooked on the fire next to the sausage and steak, and we sat around in groups eating meat and pasta and drinking Stony Ginger Beer: about 30 of us having a good South African time to end this South African leg. People said lovely things about us, which has made it all the harder to leave this amazing community. I’m welling up now just thinking about it. We’re leaving some great, great friends, but, as someone said tonight, it’s not goodbye, it’s just farewell until we meet again, which will hopefully be at the annual summit in February.

Our kids will miss people here a lot. In particular Daniel, who really doesn’t form relationships easily, has developed a real bond with a couple of our friends, so much so that when Claire couldn’t get past yesterday’s fire to pick him up from school, our friend David went over from town to collect him and take him to Wimpy for dinner and Daniel took it all in his stride without freaking out. Anyone who knows Daniel will know that that is very special.

That’s the essence of community - everyone supporting everyone else because you’re all striving for the same goals. You can’t get to pick your kid up from school? No matter, someone else can. You had a bad day and need some company? Knock on any one of five doors and you’ll find it. Your car breaks down and you need a tow? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Your youngest child gets rushed to hospital and you need an overnight sitter for the other? No problem, bring him round, we’ll do pizza, someone else will take care of your washing, someone else will bring you what you need for hospital and someone else will come and say hi. Community rocks.

So we love it here. Really love it. We wish we weren’t leaving, but we are looking forward to working with the J-Life team in Zambia. 

See you on the other side.

14. Earning Our Keep

April and May have been our busiest months yet. It’s great to be really earning our keep and we love being busy, it seems to have flown by in a blur.

So what have we been up to? The boys are doing well – Reuben continues to be the outgoing, outspoken one, shouting ‘Good Morning’ as he enters his class each day and his latest phrase is ‘daddy, what ARE you doing?’. Daniel is learning all about the continents and the planets at school, and even more importantly can now make a cup of tea – next step is tea in bed for mummy and daddy – oh to dream.

 Jason has been involved in loads of stuff. At his desk he has been creating logos for each of the J-Life representative countries. He has also been out and about presenting the J-Life vision to pastors and church network leaders, working on the silo conversion (yes my friends it’s still going on) and remodelling the office here with Tina who is one of the other fabulous staff members. This involved 2 days of removing 20 years of varnish from  the floor with small orbital sanders, painting walls, remodelling desks, and setting up the IT network. All of this stuff is well within his comfort zone.
 

But what is way out of his comfort zone is managing a group of 14 year olds to do 2 days of service at a local pre-primary school. A group of kids from a school in Johannesburg came to the farm for 3 days, during which they had to live on $1 per day and undertake a service project in a local township. The aim is to get them see beyond their privileged four walls and get them serving in the community and have fun at the same time.

Jason and I were responsible for one of the service projects: renovating a garden at a local pre-primary school, taking the children of the school out for a ‘hike’, and doing a baking activity. The school was set up to provide quality education to orphans living on site and also welcomes fee paying children (the fee payers effectively pay for the staff) - it’s the school Daniel and Reuben go to and it’s massively diverse culturally. As an aside I don’t think there can be any education quite like it and I’m excited about how wide their horizons are being broadened.Today Daniel and Reuben were singing the SA national anthem which is in lots of different languages…of course they could have been singing complete gibberish, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.

 

Anyway back to the plot…working at a school is one thing for Jason, but being responsible for 15 teenagers whilst doing it was quite another. He pretty much broke out in a sweat every time we talked about it on the run up and admitted that he would rather give a presentation to a national board of directors than deal with a group of children. I’ll point out the obvious irony before anyone else does – yes we are working full time for an organisation focussed on youth!

The ‘hike’ was something else – the risk assessments in the UK would NEVER have allowed it to go ahead, but we didn’t lose or injure any children and lots of fun was had. In our group of teenagers there were a couple of ‘too cool for school’ type kids. It was really special seeing them engage with the toddlers – one particular guy called Dylan is apparently a real character at school, but with the littlies he was amazing – incredibly fun and interactive with them. The next week the children were all asking where he was (he’s the guy on the right with the child on his shoulders)!

As well as the projects there was chance for the students to open up to things going on in their lives, to ask questions about life and faith and just be real. It was such a privilege to be able to pray with some of the guys and be a general listening ear – it seems that 14 year olds in South Africa are no different to those in the UK, and boy am I glad I’m not 14 again.

After the event J admitted that it wasn’t nearly so difficult as he thought and would almost go so far as to say that he ‘enjoyed’ it – proof ladies and gentlemen that miracles do happen.

So what else has been happening? I have been working hard in the office revamping the core material and generating some new material for second generation training – a really enjoy that sort of work although pretty dull writing about it so I’ll not bore you with the details of my reformatting exercise.

We’ve also been involved in the annual strategic goal setting meetings for the international team. Despite the long meetings it was really good to be part of it, and to have real input into this process – it will also help as we move on. I also have work arising from this that will keep me going for a while yet – well into our time in Zambia.

Speaking of which… it’s only 2 months to go and we are beginning to get a little nervous. It’s not really the fact of moving to Zambia – it’s the thought of leaving here, where the community is real and we have developed hopefully lasting friendships.  For readers who are of a praying persuasion it would be great if you could put a word in for continued peace… and a suitable place to stay! On our move to Zambia it now looks like we will be making the move in mid-late August – will keep you posted but we will get there eventually.

Jason’s parents are currently here to see us for a couple of weeks – more about their visit and our exploits with them in the next blog post.

 

13. Jesus Called: He Wants His Church Back

A pastor I know here in South Africa set up a meeting with another church leader in our area. He wanted to talk to him about sharing resources between their two churches so that they could have a greater impact in the community.

As our friend sat down to start the meeting, the other pastor said, "Tell me, when you baptise people what do you say?". Taken aback, he said, "umm, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen...".


"I thought so.", said the other guy, "You see, that's a big problem and why I don't think we'll be able to work together. You can't baptise in the name of anyone but Jesus."

I have my own theology of baptism, of course, but that's not the point. And I don't know who is right, and that's not the point either. The point is that a potentially powerful community initiative stalled because of a difference of theology. Sometimes we fail so bad even Jesus facepalms.



The thing is, as a Church we've been doing this for 2000 years. Right back at the start of it all, 50 years after Jesus's death, Peter and the early believers held a council in Jerusalem (cunningly called the Council Of Jerusalem, if you're enthusiastic and want to google it) to decide whether Christians were bound by Mosaic Law or not (it was decided that some things could be dropped which is why, dear male Christian reader, you most likely avoided a certain operation when you were 8 days old).

Now I am being facetious there: that was a huge socio-political issue at the time and it was an important decision to get right. Of similar importance was Martin Luther's opinion that people were forgiven through, and only through, the grace of God which set him in opposition to the Catholic Church, in which he was a priest, and eventually got him excommunicated. Out of that grew the Protestant Reformation which held, amongst other things, that people could have a direct relationship with God through Jesus Christ with no need of an intermediary.

Luther never intended to start a new religion, but he wanted to Catholic Church to re-examine some of its theology.

Similarly John Wesley didn't want to start Methodism: it only became called that after his death. Wesley simply held that ordinary people were capable of teaching and ministering, and therefore should be given the authority and opportunity to do so. He started a movement within the Anglican Church doing just that, and it became one of the most influential movements the denomination has ever seen, getting involved with all the driving social and political issues of the day such as the abolition of slavery. It also got him into trouble with the Anglican establishment, who held that ministers should be formally trained in theology before they could work for the church.

Time and time again we see disagreements on theological points blow up into disunity, disagreement, and division.

Now don't get me wrong: I absolutely believe in the truth contained in the bible. I just as absolutely believe that I don't fully know what it is, that my ideas and opinions are at best a shadow of the truth, and that I am likely very wrong on a number of issues. I think scriptures need to be interpreted and that different interpretations are possible. I certainly don't believe my interpretation is fundamentally correct: when I stand in front of Christ I really want to hear him say "Well done, my good and faithful servant" but I am pretty sure what I'm going to hear is "Well...you tried hard. You'd better come in, there're a few things I need to talk to you about...".

Christianity is not about assent to a set of rules or propositions. It is not, as Lewis Carroll so deftly wrote and Richard Dawkins so appositely paraphrased, belief in six impossible things before breakfast. It is about belief in a couple of improbable, yet nonetheless true, things and a willingness to sacrifice your own way of life to serve a loving God and improve the lives of the people around you.

People who know me might be surprised to hear this, but I really don't mind if you believe the universe was created 6000 years ago or 13.7 billion years ago. I don't mind if you believe in the validity of infant baptism or the requirement for adult baptism. I don't mind if you think spiritual gifts are alive now or if they ceased at Pentecost. I don't mind a lot of differences in theology.

But what I really, really, do mind is when people make any those things a reason for division. It's the No True Scotsman philosophy: every Scotsman who says he's a true Scotsman will always be trumped by some other Scotsman who claims to be even more truly Scots. We fall into the N.T.S. fallacy because we tend to believe that we, and we alone, truly understand God. At our best we hold the gracious view that other people are entitled to their interpretation. At worst we excommunicate them. No, scratch that. At worst we burn them at the stake.

In that respect Christianity is its own worst enemy: our scriptures are open to interpretation, and so we interpret. Combine that with our tendency towards thinking we're right, and you have this whole splintered church. At least in Judaism the 613 devolved commandments were well defined.

But, here's the thing: Jesus didn't come to start a religion. He came to start a movement, and they are two very different things. Jesus was a faithful Jew until the day of his death. His first followers were all faithful Jews. They never wanted to split off and form an opposition religion. Christ himself said that he came to fulfil the law: that he had come to take the whole of Mosaic law and distill it into one exemplar life that others could follow more easily, and more successfully, than they could hope to fulfil 613 commandments. He called the law beautiful, but also accused the Church of using it as a rod to beat people with.

When a Pharisee (a member of the Jewish religious lawyer caste) asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, he said that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He followed by saying that we must love people likewise. This was in complete agreement with Mosaic Law, indeed the Pharisee agreed that the whole of Mosaic law flowed out of these two commandments.

Here we had an incredible point in history, when the whole of the religious law was funnelled down into the example set by one man, Jesus, a man whose example was easy to follow. Jesus promised for the first time in the story of religion that man could have direct access to God, through the Holy Spirit, in order to change to world. Then he told his disciples to drop what they were doing and go and actually change the world.

2000 years later a third of the world is recorded as being Christian, so the strategy is working. But alongside this grass-roots disciple-making movement there sprang up structures and systems and laws. And with the laws came law-breaking. And with the law-breaking came schisms. So from that glorious point when the whole of Mosaic Law became a singularity in Jesus, it has since been expanding back outwards into just another rule set.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul (a former Pharisee and torturer of Christians) says this:


"God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us." (Romans 8:3, 4 Message Translation)

Christianity was never meant to be a religion. It was meant to be a movement. A movement which would see ordinary people brought into relationship with the only man who is historically, incontrovertibly, known to have died and got over it. A movement meant to release people from the darkness of not knowing God into the light of His continued presence. A movement whose founding purpose was to go out into communities and share that awesome gift with other people.


Jonathan Swift, the political satirist and writer of Gulliver's Travels, said that we have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love. How right he was back then in the 1700s, and how right he still is now.


I once got into an argument with another Christian. I was excited by the approaching baptism of our first child and I told him so. He said "Oh, you're not really baptising him though, because you can't baptise infants. Baptism is just for believers. If you read your bible more you'll see that.". I have to say I wasn't altogether loving in my response, and so I fell into the exact trap he did of failing to be gracious.


You see the point of Christianity is not to be right: it is to be loving. Of course we need to tell people the truth as we see it, but we must do it with grace. Even Christ, the only man who we can be absolutely sure wasn't wrong when it came to theology, because, well, he's the very Theos that we -ology about, only spoke the truth with grace.


When confronted by a prostitute about to be executed by a crowd of people with rocks, Jesus didn't tell them she was innocent: no, he took a different route. He told the people that they could throw their rock, as the law allowed them to do, but only if they were themselves innocent of every sin proscribed by the law. One by one the people walked away until only Jesus and the woman were left. At that point he tells her that he doesn't condemn her, but that she has to take this opportunity to change her life. It is thought that that woman could have been Mary Magdalene, who became one of Jesus's disciples and was with him until his death.


Love is the key to Christianity. Love is the centre of Christianity. Love is everything in Christianity. Love God. Love people.


I don't want anyone to think I don't love the Church: I do. I truly love the Church. I truly love my kids: doesn't stop me from wanting to slap them occasionally. I believe the Christian church, as a community of believers, has been, and can continue to be, the most powerful force this world has ever seen. I believe the Church can affect social change on the biggest scale, be just where there is no justice, bring equality where there is division, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, bring hope to the hopeless. We can do all that and more, but we have to stop pushing other Christians away with our Big Stick Of Doctrine.


Saint Augustine wrote of doctrine, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in everything charity".

That's why I say that Jesus wants his Church back. He wants it back where it started: as a movement of people dedicated to fanatically loving others and sharing with them the incredible news that God loves them and that they can share their lives with Him.


The most important point is that Christ is God incarnate, and the most important things He said were these: Love God. Love people. Go and make disciples.


The rest we can discuss.


"So let's agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. Help others with encouraging words; don't drag them down by finding fault. You're certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served or not served at supper to wreck God's work among you, are you? I said it before and I'll say it again: All food is good, but it can turn bad if you use it to trip others up and send them sprawling. When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus." (Romans 14:19-21 Message Translation)

12. Bottle Rockets and Cactus Jam

They say that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. As I stood in our kitchen wearing welding gloves and peeling cactus fruit to make jam, I found myself wondering just which side of that line I was on. There's probably a reason you don't see much cactus jam in the shops. Personally I think this is because the world just isn't ready for it. Remember that Einstein's theories were initially rejected for being just too far out and wacky, and look where HE ended up. Yes, dear reader, one day you'll be in Spar buying your newspaper and jar of Stonier's Cactus Conserve, and you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Or maybe not. Sometimes it's good to do things simply because no one else is doing them, because they are far out, because they're cool, and because it's the school holidays, you've had the kids full time for three days, four hours, and seven minutes and you have completely run out of ideas.

The boys had almost three weeks off, and not only did we survive, we actually managed to have a good time as well. Claire, naturally, because she's SuperMum, spent weeks on the Internet looking at craft ideas for kids (Ed: No SuperMum here AT ALL, just an acute awareness that I would go mad without some form of entertainment that didn't involve iPad or DVDs). So during those two weeks we made hovercrafts out of old CDs, super strength bubble mixture, birthday cards for all and sundry, hand-and-foot print pictures, balloon whizzers, bottle rockets, a mini Mike Wachowski (Monsters Inc.), and we started a tree house.

The eponymous bottle rockets were the best. You take a 1L plastic drinks bottle, drill a hole in the lid to accept a valve cut off an old inner tube, then decorate it with fins, nose cone, whatever you think will make it fly further. Daniel gave his a superman cape, mine had spiral fins to make it spin and a long nose cone for stability. The other kids we had round did their own variations. To make them fly you fill the bottle a third full of water, put on the lid (now at the base), and attach a foot pump. At about 30psi the rocket shoots off leaving the valve in the foot pump. We were getting over 30 metres high with ours and we had competitions for furthest, highest, most attractive, and best crash. Just about the best fun you can have with 300ml of water in my opinion. http://tinyurl.com/dylumcc



We've been getting to know some of the other parents from school and we managed a couple of playdates over the holidays. Daniel has one particular friend, Ari, who has just come to South Africa from Greece with his parents who have re-immigrated due to the economic crisis in Europe. He and Daniel get on well despite the language barrier. His parents are pretty cool too - they run the local petrol station...we are still waiting for a discount. Another of the parents is a pastor of a local Afrikaans church and we had a good day at their place in town, which, amongst other things, has a super fast (for Africa) uncapped internet connection. That's not the main reason for developing a relationship but it sure is handy - especially when the iPad wants to do 65 major updates.

I really loved having the kids around - taking them swimming, building the tree house, having fun - and I'm missing them now they are back at school. They were ready to go back though, Daniel wanted to see his friends, and the house was starting to feel small. It was good to have some quality family time and to be reminded that we are here as a family, by design not by default: it's not Claire and I with the kids in tow, it's Family Stonier and we each have our place of value. None of us could do it without the others. God knew what he was on about when he got us here.




The last two weeks also saw us becoming fully fledged staff members. Our three months of training finished and we graduated to the team full time. Our pay went up by 300% (300% of zero is zero), and we can now use the binding machine. Exciting times. Our roles are rapidly falling into place now we have some space. My concern was that I would just be the maintenance guy because I know how to rewire a kettle, restart the borehole, and build a wardrobe, but that hasn't happened. I'm doing those things (I enjoy doing them, for one thing), but we're being given strategic ministry things to do as well: I'm working with one of the guys on recruiting people for the training, and Claire and I are revamping and helping to run an upcoming 6-week program which aims to mix short term mission training and practice with some training in the core J-Life leadership material...it's aimed at young adults from overseas and South Africa. Claire is working on some of the J-Life training documentation to harmonise style and format, and is developing some additional material. In between all this I am continuing with the build I have mentioned before.

It's quiet here on site with only the staff around, but it's also nice to be masters of our own clock: we can eat as a family early enough to get the kids to bed on time - the extra sleep is helping with their mood, and we can do our work pretty much to our own schedule which is nice.



I'm having a concerted push to get the building work finished this month, so myself and another guy, Meshek, are working together from around half eight in the morning until five at night. Meshek is great at rendering and knocking holes in walls, and is teaching me builder's Zulu. It's coming along nicely (the build, not the Zulu).









Being English, I am part of a culture that knows how to pack a lot into a small space, so we used the wasted area above the stairs to add some built-in wardrobes. It's worked well as you can see in the pictures.




So we're settling in here, which is both good and bad: we love the community, and feel very affirmed in our place here...but of course here is temporary and we will soon be moving to Zambia. I'm looking forward to a new challenge there, but leaving the community in South Africa will be tough. More and more as we integrate into J-Life, we find that its theology and understanding of Christianity matches our own: beautifully simple, inclusive, relational and, well, not that religious. What that means exactly will be the subject of the next blog.

For now here's a picture of a sunrise last week that I took from just behind our house.