22. Mr. Stonier is my father.

People have started calling me Mr. Stonier. I don’t like it.

Mr. Stonier is my dad. “Mr. Stonier” is a hereditary title that can only be passed on after the current holder has passed on. Which is some time in the distant future, all things being well. Plus it sounds old. I’m too young to be Mister anything: I’m only, what, thirty…umm…seven? I think. Ok, maybe I am old. When you start having to work out your own age you are by definition old, but still. Mr. Stonier.

You see: completely different.

This is a new thing to me. Where I come from, people are generally on first-name terms. I was even on first-name terms with a previous Managing Director. Though, actually, he called me James for nearly 5 years, because I didn’t correct him the first time and then kind of lost the opportunity to do so without looking like a dork. But you get the point. In British culture we’re more familiar. Respectful, but still familiar.

So I've never been called Mr. Stonier before, and the epithet feels a bit like a hat that’s two sizes too big. But, nonetheless, people have started calling me it, and that’s because somebody, possibly after a momentary lapse of reason, has seen fit to make me the boss of something.

The hat is part of the package.

We said in the last blog that we had some news to share. That was quite a while ago, and we’re only just sharing now because for the past three months we have been almost unbelievably busy. For those who care and follow our blog, I’m sorry that it’s taken this long to write.

Round about August a couple we know announced that they were leaving the ministry that they had set up 13 years before, Mechanics For Africa, and asked us if we would take it on. We said no: we were heading back to the UK in less than a year, why would we want to do that? But the seed had been sown.

Essential mechanics tool

Jump back a few years to Johannesburg airport, after a short-term stint with J-Life. I made the mistake then of joking to my friend that I could go work for J-Life for three years. Unfortunately, God overheard and took it to be a verbal contract. Earlier this year we made the same mistake, when we said we would be willing to consider staying in Zambia, but it would have to be for something big. Will I never learn to keep my fool mouth shut?

I said it needed to be something big. This is that big something.

Mechanics For Africa is a training college for underprivileged young men and women, teaching a diploma in Motor Vehicle Engineering. We have 70 students over two years, a 2 acre site, 13 staff, and a commercial workshop. In 13 years, the college has trained over 200 people, and from what we know, most have gone on to disperse all over Zambia into good jobs.

Halfway through a ground-up rebuild

We mainly teach Mechanics, but what sets us apart from other technical colleges is that we also teach ‘life skills’ – communication, conflict resolution, interview skills, CV writing; we teach computing and first aid, and bring in experts to teach nutrition and sexual health. Being a Christian college (although people of all faiths and none are welcome) we also do bible studies and small group work. 

If that wasn't enough, over the 2 years we give the guys a grounding in agriculture too. It’s a busy timetable.

And we have a good reputation in Zambia: I heard a story which went something like this – a major trucking company down south in Lusaka wanted some mechanics, so the boss asked around and found that the best mechanics came from the Copper Belt. So he travelled up here and asked around the trucking companies and found the best mechanics came from Ndola. So he came to Ndola and asked around the trucking companies, and found that the best mechanics came from Mechanics For Africa…

Now I’m sure the size of that metaphorical fish has grown with the re-telling, but it seems that we do produce really good mechanics here. In the second year our students go on industrial placements for six weeks at various big companies in the area (mines, hauliers, that kind of thing), and a good chunk are retained full time as a result.

So we started to get a bit excited about the idea of running the place. The previous leadership couple did an amazing job, building a top-tier college from nothing, and so we were inheriting a great legacy. Running it would put us back into the world of business, it would give us something that we could really get our teeth into, and it would tax all our skills to make it work even better. Plus, and here’s the spiritual bit, we began to believe it might just be where God wants us – the timing and skills fit, and our feeling about the place seemed spot on.

We love J-Life, let that be understood. But as the main J-Life training centre gets ever closer to completion the main phase of the J-Life work was beginning to tail off and we weren’t filling our time. It did give Claire time to focus more on Jireh Crafts, but even with that we’d started to feel like we weren’t making the most of the commitment people had made by supporting us to come here. Mechanics came at the right time for it to be a plausible option. When we started negotiations with the trustees of Mechanics we said that the first “non-negotiable” was that we had to remain involved with J-Life Zambia, and we are, though in an advisory role at the moment while we are working some things out with immigration. We’re running the discipleship training using the J-Life material under Mechanics, so as far as J-Life is concerned nothing much has changed. And, as our J-Life director pointed out “You were going home next June. This way we get to keep you in Africa.”

So it was a bit of a head-trip for us. To switch our mind set from “going home in 10 months”, to “staying at least another 2 years”, was the most difficult part. But our families have been incredibly supportive.

So at the beginning of September, after being interviewed by the UK trustees, we were handed the keys to a technical training college. Claire is the business manager and I am the Principal. When I find out what that means, I’ll be sure to let you know.

The past few months have, therefore, been a roller-coaster for us. The position with Mechanics comes with a house on the site, so we had to move home, but since that move put us 50 metres away from some of our closest friends here we’re quite happy about it. 

Our boys get to roam freely about the site, and Emmanuel the college administrator lives here with his young kids, plus our friends’ boys as well, so ours get home from school and then we don’t see them for two hours as they play.

There's probably a child in that tree.

And apart from the site there’s the work. Having come from the world of business, we did kind of miss the pressure of the workplace.  Day-to-day I am involved in the running of our workshop and I deal with the academic side of things. Claire handles all our finances, and HR issues. Together we work with the trustees on setting the strategic direction for the college.

Head lecturer, Mr. Lungu.

Our staff are awesome. It’s been a massive upheaval for them – there has never been a change of leadership in 13 years so it’s taken some adjustment. They have been incredibly welcoming. As we adapt to running a business in Zambia there’s so much we don’t know, but there are 13 people who work here and at least one of them will always have some helpful advice for us.

Just a few weeks ago we held a ‘vision day’ where we pulled all the staff together and got them to work in focus groups to define the principles and vision of the organisation. Afterwards Desmond, our gardener, took us to one side and thanked us for the opportunity to contribute. He said in all his years of work nobody had ever asked his opinion on the running of something. He's one of the stars actually.

The kind of thinking whereby all staff are invested in the success of the business appears to be counter-cultural here in Zambia. But being counter-cultural is something of a defining characteristic of Christianity, so we are embracing it wholeheartedly.

Jesus turned culture on its head: he scandalised people by talking to prostitutes and, gasp, women. He put children in pride of place at his gatherings. He invested in uneducated fishermen, and stooges of the Roman Empire. He said “whichever of you wants to become great must become a servant, whichever of you wants to be first must be last”. I never want to hear our staff say “I’m just…the cook…the guard”. Desmond is not just the gardener: he is a servant of the living God, working for the Kingdom.

There’s often this tacit assumption that missionaries exist to take Christ someplace foreign…but that’s such a dumb way of thinking. Christ has always been here. We’ve just come to join in with what he’s already doing.

So, am I Mr. Stonier? I suppose I must be.

The 2nd years after their final exam.