Today has been a day for tidying up and packing bags as we're off to Mwinilunga tomorrow. Before we hit the road I thought I'd spend a little while writing about last week.
We spent last week camping in Kangomba, a village 20km south of Kabwe. We were there to help the Central Impact Team run our "Living the Light" training course, a two day course exploring how and why we can run community based Chrisitan discipleship groups in our villages. It is these small groups that are making amazing changes in communities across rural Zambia.
This year Frank and I have decided to travel by public transport rather than hiring a car...the main reason for our choice is that it's much cheaper and keeps our costs down but it also means that we are being given a real insight into the lives of the Impact Team members.
So after we had spent a few hours, well 6 hours, in Kabwe waiting for all the team members to turn up and shopping the for the food for the training course our "luxury coach" finally arrived. A friend of one of the team members had promised to give us all a lift to Kangomba for just the cost of the fuel. He was delayed though as his van had a tombstone in it that he had been supposed to drop off. He had managed to borrow an old minibus off a friend.to take us in instead but he had to empty out the bags of maize that were in it. As the seats had been removed to convert the minibus to a van he left a few bags of maize in to act as seats. If I'm honest I was a little phased by the transport particularly as the back door of the minibus didn't latch. I had visions of bags and people falling out as soon as we hit a bump. But it was this van or nothing as there was only an hour of daylight left. So we all piled in well away from the back door and off we went. As we travelled we got to talking about how the Impact Team members normally travel. Public transport here isn't straight forward. Intercity coaches are fairly reliable for main roads but as soon as you get off the beaten track your options are limited. Some of the places the guys and girls travel too mean they have to hitch a lift with whatever vehicle they can, sometimes on the back of a truck and sometimes on top of the wagyon carrying the local brew beer....the one truck you can guarentee will make it to rural villages when no other car can. To have a vehicle to ourselves and taking us exactly where we wanted to go was indeed a "luxury coach" despite the shortcomings! It really is important that we pray constantly for all the Impact Team members as they travel many miles to reach far away villages.
Before you worry about our travels tomorrow let me say that Jon is dropping us as the bus station where we are meeting Bernard. We will travel the majority of the way on an intercity coach and are being met by a taxi driver at the other end. It should be a fairly straight forward journey....just long. We will leave Mkushi at 6am and hopefully arrive in Mwinilunga at Dorothy's village by 10 or 11pm.
Anyway, where was I? We had made it safely to Kangomba. In some ways I wasn't quite sure what our role was going to be. Previously when I've helped run training sessions we've helped with the organisation and preparation then we've needed to do a lot of the teaching. This time though the Central Impact Team had done all the planning and preparation. Being a team with some experienced members and some new members they were able to carry out much of the teaching and help each other when they were struggling. To someone like me who is happiest when I'm busy doing something it was challenging not to see a clear role for myself as the experienced team members clearly took the lead. However as I stepped back to look at what was going on I was immensely encouraged to see that this training session would have been going on whether Frank and I were there or not. That means that a group of Zambians have learnt the skills and have been equipped by Dignity to do it themselves rather than relying on "outsiders" and their skills. In a country where mainly people simply wait for outside help to arrive this is an amazing step forward and a huge sign that people are growing and being used by God.
For Frank and I our role became one of helping out with a few of the teaching sessions and spending teieme getting to know the team members better and encouraging them in the parts they are struggling with. We had some great conversations and were given a real insight into the ups and downs of life in Zambia and as an Impact Team member. I'm not going to write it all here, but in due course I will put together some stories ane pictures so you too can get a glimpse into life here.
The training went off fairly smoothly. We got off to a slow start as a couple of funerals taking place close by meant some people were late to arrive but once there were 15 people we got going. There was lots of discussions, plenty of questions and hopefully some decent answers given, lots of enshima (corn flour and water), kapenta (little dried fish - yuk!), chicken and cabbage, quite a few hours sitting in the smokey insaka (kitchen hut) and what seemed like a choir of roosters crowing in the mornings! Forward planning wasn't really a feature of the last day as we ran out of food for ourselves for the evening meal (biscuits, crisps and hard boiled eggs from the local shop it was) and had to walk back to the tar in the morning (thankfully only a few kilometers) as nobody had thought about how we'd get home again! As it happened we scored a lift and didn't have to walk that far in the end....
Anyway... we finished the time together with a planning and prayer session. In groups of 3 or 4 people representing the villages they had travelled from people noted down who they would talk to about and invite along to the discipleship group they hope to start. No doubt some people will go home and not do anything more about it - that's the way life goes. But hopefully 2 or 3 new discipleship groups will begin giving up to 60 people a chance to learn and grow in friendship and faith together. As they walk closer with Jesus, the potential hope and change that these people can bring to their villages is so much greater than Frank and I could achieve in the short time that we are here. Please do pray that as people return to their villages and start to pray together and meet as Life! Groups they will be encouraged and strong foundations will be laid in their communities.
And that's all for now. We're off to do it all again in a different area this week. We will be working with a newer Impact Team so our role will probably be a bit more hands on...but we will find out when we get there!
