So, time is flying by! The rest of the gang here will be heading home or on with their travels in just over three weeks time and it’ll be all change! I can’t believe how quickly time is going by. But it is, and that’s normally a good sign in my reckoning - means that I’m having fun!
The last couple of weeks seem to have disappeared. I have that strange thing going on where I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done each day, but I know we’ve not really stopped. We’ve had our heads down trying to get the discipleship groups up and running and have been spending time with the five pastors, just listening to their thoughts and concerns and encouraging them.
We’ve been working through the possible ways to free up the pastors time to enable them to spend more time working with the church. I think a solution is within reach but it has taken a lot of cross-cultural understanding and careful thought and discussion to get there! In a nutshell, it involves growing a cash crop that will pay for an employee to work in their fields, growing both the cash crop and their normal crops. There is some capital required to get this up and running and we have been working hard to establish this in a healthy way - neither a straight handout or a loan seems helpful; a handout holding no sense of responsibility or accountability, a loan bringing extra stress to those having to pay it back and borrowing money having bad connotations here. In the end, we are looking to provide the capital and ask those benefiting to pay the first years profits into a central fund that will in turn establish a long term project that can raise money to support their ministry. This means that the five pastors are accountable to each other and know we are not giving out a loan for our own gain in the long term! It still needs some fine tuning, but at the moment everyone seems happy with the principles...time will tell how well it all comes together!!
Other than that, we’ve met again with some people who came to the September conference and just got to know them a bit more. We are trying to encourage people to look outside the town and consider helping their “neighbours” in the rural areas around Chingola. Some of the people we have met with already have a real heart for this and we want to take the opportunity to build links between them and the people we have met out in the villages.
In a couple of weeks time we’re running a four day conference out in Sekela, a rural village, but close to the tarmac (that is, the main road from Chingola to Solwezi). We’re inviting those we’ve met in the rural areas along with those from the towns and are going to spend some time looking at how some small scale things can be started in villages.
I’ve been given the task of organising the conference which may turn me into some sort of crazy hyper-organising lunatic, or I may just try to do it more African style and be relaxed about the whole thing... I was thinking about the food and realised that back home I could probably do it pretty easily, but here, I have no idea what-so-ever! I know I need lots of mealie meal to make enshima, but that’s about it. Thankfully though, Joel, one of the pastors, is helping me understand the different cultures and what I need to sort out! He pointed out today that we would have to bring live chickens as there will be no way of keeping them refrigerated. That’s totally correct of course...but ewww! I as going to offer to help cook the food (thought I’d learn a lot!!) but I’m not sure I could stomach killing and plucking a chicken. If a chicken is prepared for you it’s important to get to the pot early on...if you’re one of the last to get your food, you may end up with the feet or the neck - gross!! I have gone without chicken a couple of times rather than eat those parts!
Amidst all the work we’ve also found time to have a bit of fun and relax. The Witts & I went to Nsobe Game Park last weekend. It’s only a small game park, but there was lots of cheeky monkeys, antelopes and some giraffes. We paddled around the lake in a kayak type thing and melted in the roasting sun then I sat and read a book for hours. Perfect!
For those of you who have been reading my blog, you’ll know about the school at Kapeshi. We’ve set up a just giving page to help raise the money need to start them off with a bag of seed and fertiliser... you can find it here www.justgiving.com/kapeshi The initial costs will only be about £200 but it has the potential to multiply and support the school in the long term. Ruth’s spent some time putting together a long term plan to help the staff at the school see how some work now and forward planning could improve the schools financial situation. We are going back to the school early next week to catch up with them and see how they’re getting along with clearing the land needed.
Oh, something that I’ve not mentioned is the rain! The rainy season is beginning... Last Thursday we had a spectacular thunder storm and it rained from about 4 in the afternoon till the middle of the night. Now I know that raining for hours back home is common place, but it hasn’t rained here for months and it was proper storm rain, not just the annoying drizzle we get for hours at home. It made me want to run outside and get drenched, but I resisted the urge apart from a mad dash to shut the windows (which you can only close from outside because of the mosquito screens on the inside!) It’s not raining every day, but the weather feels much stuffier now and this morning felt almost english with an overcast sky, although the sun is breaking through now!
For those of you from St Margarets, I’ve been in touch with Simon from the Falconer Home and will be heading there mid-November...I’m just trying to work out the travel arrangements, which can take some doing here.
And Mum...because I have to take my doxycyline with food, I’m finally eating breakfast every day!
One last puzzling thing to leave you with…we always see bush fires that have been started by people clearing their fields. It amazes me that these don’t spread from field to field as the land is so dry and parched, but they don’t. I’m told this is because people leave a gap between fields and plant a certain type of tree in places, but why why why don’t sparks get blown onto other fields and set them alight too?
