Faith comes by hearing

Wednesday, November 10^th

Photo taken through bedroom window

It’s early morning, and I am writing this in the bedroom of a guest house in the village of Ikuwo, in the Vwanji language area. As I look out of the window, the morning light makes the red brick houses glow and the mountains look so inviting – my legs long to climb them! While that’s not possible right now, I have at least enjoyed a couple of lovely walks along the red dirt paths and roads since I arrived yesterday. Less than a stone’s throw from my room, a lady is wielding a hoe and planting potatoes in the freshly turned earth, in faith that the expected rains will come soon, and I can hear the sound of hens clucking and the occasional twittering of birds. I am here to do a three day workshop to train Sunday school teachers, at the request of the Lutheran church.

Project Land Cruiser parked in front of some shops, the 
guest house is right behind them.

I met my former colleague, Casto Nyambo, just before we needed to turn off the main road and onto a dirt road. He had come by motorbike from his home on the other side of the Vwanji area (there are mountains and steep valleys between his home and Ikuwo). He left his motorbike at a café run by people he knows and joined me in our project Land Cruiser for the rest of the journey. After a while the road deteriorated, with some very rough and steep patches – I spent most of the time in first or second gear and was glad to arrive safely at our destination about an hour and a quarter after leaving the tarmac.

So you may be wondering why I was travelling with a ‘former’ colleague. If you have been able to keep up with my newsletters, you’ll have read in the last one that we had to retrench all of our literacy/Scripture engagement workers who worked in areas where they now have a New Testament in their language. He was one of them. But thank God, he still has a heart to reach his people with the Word of God in the Vwanji language, so when he has time he continues to distribute Vwanji books, show the Jesus Film and facilitate the spread of the audio Scriptures, and he also helped with the arrangements of the workshop and willingly gave his time to accompany me.

As I have walked around the village and spoken to people and listened to children at play, I have realised that the Vwanji language is not being used much by the younger generation. During the workshop I hear the participants switching backwards and forwards between Vwanji and Swahili, depending on who they are talking to and what they are talking about. At least one of the pastors isn’t Vwanji, and this is a common reason for finding that Vwanji is not being used much in churches, because the church leaders are not Vwanji speakers. In some ways I find all this discouraging and  start to question whether Bible translation is really worth it.

But then yesterday evening, I listened to Casto tell me story after story of how the audio Scriptures in Vwanji have changed people’s lives. While it is true that people are not so interested in reading the Vwanji Scriptures (it just doesn’t feel natural to them to read Vwanji, as Swahili is the language they learned to read in at school), many people love to listen to them, especially the elderly. I wish I had been able to record all he said, but here are some of the things I remember (I may have mixed up one or two accounts, but the sum total is still true)…

There was an old man who listened to the audio Bible and said how the words he had heard hurt, they pierced his heart. After listening he wanted to be baptised. His family were overjoyed. There was another who can’t get to church because he is old but a youngster in his family got a memory card for him so he could have the audio Scriptures on his phone or radio. And there are others who, after listening, started attending their local church. There was also a lady who had a MegaVoice player (a solar powered audio player – we have distributed 40 of these across the region), but her husband wanted one too, because he couldn’t get hold of it when he wanted to listen as it was always in use! His wife listens to the MegaVoice players with groups of other women.

And I love this one: One day Casto was getting his motorbike fixed. While the mechanic was at work, Casto got out his MegaVoice player and the people hanging around there listened to the Vwanji Scriptures. They listened and listened until eventually he said that he had to go. He gave one of them a lift somewhere and he continued to listen and talk with Casto as they went. He wanted the MegaVoice player so he could carry on listening! That wasn’t possible, as we try to distribute them among people who we know and trust, but Casto told him who had a MegaVoice player near where he lived and then phoned that person and told them to expect an elderly gentleman to visit them and that they should lend him the player. He did visit and I think the outcome was that he started going to church.

Truly faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17)! As well as relating the impact of the audio Scriptures, Casto also shared how he is invited to speak at funerals, because people know he will use the Vwanji language and Scriptures, and he has shown the Vwanji Jesus Film at these funerals as well as in many churches. In fact, this evening he will show the Jesus Film in the open-sided market hall, using a special projection pack provided by the Jesus Film Project.

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Learning to use skits to teach

It is now Wednesday night and all is quiet. Tomorrow is the last day of the workshop. Today was hard work – the teachers really struggled to understand how to teach and apply Bible stories. Many teachers are used to just telling the Bible story and maybe giving a one-liner teaching point, but not really explaining what the story means and how it can be applied. After giving them lots of examples and time to prepare, some were given the chance to stand and teach. One just spoke without engaging us at all (despite my continual emphasis on engaging the children), another went off the topic and another basically read straight from the curriculum booklet with little real understanding. I will try again tomorrow to help them understand a little better about how to explain the meaning of the story, but when good teaching hasn’t been modelled in church or even in schools, it’s hard for them to get a handle on how to go about doing it themselves.

Thursday, November 11^th

It’s 9pm, I arrived home a couple of hours ago. The drive took longer coming back and was pretty tiring – I worked out that my average speed on the dirt road section (which took about 1.5 hours) was 12.5mph! I have returned with a sack of maize and a sack of potatoes – as always, I am so touched by people’s generosity.

With more explanation and examples, the Sunday school teachers did a better job of teaching today, so I hope that the workshop will have helped them engage children with God’s Word more effectively. It’s great that the Lutheran church there has recognised the importance of teaching their children and that even the pastors joined the workshop!

Children play together on their way home from school

A little aside… On Wednesday we invited the children from the local school to come for a Sunday school lesson, so that the Sunday school teachers could see a real example of how I teach. Before they entered the church, they lined up their hoes along the side of a building. Yes, their hoes! They have to take their own tools to school for working on the school farm. What would children in England think if they had to start tilling the soil so that they have food to eat at school?! But these are valuable lessons to learn in these farming communities.

*Note: ‘Faith Comes By Hearing’ is also the name of an organisation who’s main focus is making audio Scriptures available in all the languages that have New Testaments. We have sometimes partnered with them to record the audio Scriptures in our project.

Another trip to the Kisi and Manda language areas

The long journey to the Kisi language area always requires an early start, so once again I was at the bus station for about 5.30am for a day on the bus. This was my second trip to visit the Kisi people, so I had some idea of what to expect, but this time I was travelling alone and meeting my colleagues on arrival at the lake. All went smoothly, although there was a last minute change in plans about the time that I should leave the town of Ludewa, where I had slept overnight, as apparently the lake had become quite rough so the earlier I left and caught the boat the better because the lake can be calmer early in the morning. So not long after 6am I was driven down the steep road to the lakeside at Lupingu and at 8am the small motor boat arrived, with one of my colleagues (Claudia) in, to take us to the village of Makonde. Any roughness had passed, the lake was calm (and remained so all day) and it was a beautiful boat ride – this boat was smaller and faster than the one I’d ridden in last time, and the wind in my face felt good and the scenery was beautiful in the early morning light.

We attended the Anglican church service – it’s high church, so there was a lot of sung liturgy and ritual. The best aspect of the service is that there are multiple readings of Scripture, but as those readings aren’t necessarily the ones preached on, I don’t know how much people really take in. The worst part was the choir singing because they played a backing track to give them a rhythm for their dance steps and singing, but they didn’t sing in tune with it! They were in tune with each other, but they clashed horribly with the backing track. I also struggled to stay awake – it was very hot and the travel sickness tablet I had taken for the boat ride also made me drowsy!

Afterwards we popped into the pastor’s home to greet him and his wife, especially as we would be holding the seminar in his church the next day. With wonderful Tanzanian hospitality they quickly put food on the table, which they had obviously prepared the day before or first thing this morning and kept in hotpots as it was lukewarm, and I got my first taste of fresh dagaa served with plantain. I have eaten dagaa (tiny fish that you eat whole) many times, but I’ve never had them fresh, they’ve always been bought dried or fried. But apparently it is now dagaa season and the fish are plentiful and I found that simply boiled in salt water they are really tasty. All day I felt hot and tired, until we went for a swim in the lake in the evening. Oh it was wonderful, the cool water on my body, so refreshing, and the lake was calm and the evening sky soft.

The seminar the following day was with about fifteen church leaders from several different denominations, though mostly Catholic and Anglican as these are the predominant denominations in the area. Despite the heat (though thankfully there was a bit of breeze and a little cloud cover) and the fact that some of them had endured walking down steep hills and a boat ride (probably in a dugout canoe) to get there, they engaged well. We did a little Bible overview exercise while we waited for everyone to arrive, and then moved on to talking about what keeps people from reading God’s Word and applying it in their daily lives. One of these barriers to Scripture engagement is language issues, so we then focused on this, talking about what our project is doing, spending some time practising reading Kisi books and discussing how to use Kisi more in church ministry. It was encouraging to hear a report from one person in the group who had attended the workshop I helped teach in July – he shared how he has since used the book of Jonah in church when preaching (this was the book we used for all our Bible studies during the workshop as it is currently the only Bible book printed in Kisi), reading first from the Swahili Scriptures and then from the Kisi Scriptures. Others also testified to how other Kisi books that they have bought in the past get shared around, and how the audio devices with Kisi Scripture on (Ruth, Jonah and the Easter story) are also in popular demand.

Passing a passenger boat on our way to Lupingu

The evening boat ride back to Lupingu was a very different experience to Sunday’s ride! The lake was far from calm and I held tightly to the side of the boat. Sometimes it was just a matter of getting a good spray, but other times riding up a wave and then dropping down into the dip behind it, sometimes with quite a slap of boat against water, was alarming and the odd squeal escaped my lips! I wouldn’t say I was frightened exactly, as I can swim well enough (though swimming in a long dress wouldn’t be easy), but I was certainly uneasy and worried about my luggage staying dry. Even the crew and my colleagues acknowledged that it was pretty bad in places and were worried for one passenger who couldn’t swim (we were seven in the boat altogether). The ride took longer than before because of the waves and I was soaked through (firstly from getting into the boat, as they couldn’t get very close to shore due to the waves, and then from the spray). We arrived after sunset, but before it had got really dark, and surprisingly my rucksacks had remained dry, except for one pocket where my soap bag was. We alighted with our luggage, including a somewhat traumatised hen that I had been given as a gift by my colleague’s father. This hen, together with some dagaa and fruit, had been brought out to our boat by someone in a dugout canoe as we went past their village!

Second seminar – same subject matter just a different place. The seminar itself was held at the Catholic church, which turned out to be a lovely old building set on a rise, built at the initiative of missionaries. Well, it is old for here, having been built in 1932. I wonder what the people who lived here thought of this missionary building a big church, probably at a point when very few people knew about Jesus. I wish I could be a fly on the walls of those who lived at that time and hear what they said about this missionary. I hear he was also the one to first get a road built from Ludewa down to the lake, paying people for their work by giving them clothes as they didn’t use money in those days. I hear he also tried to pipe water to the villages, but that didn’t go so well, as people didn’t see the point of piped water when they had a lake on their doorstep! Instead, the pipes were stolen and used for smoking!

Lunch was much the same as the day before – rice, greens (with too much salt
for my taste) and dagaa, though this time there was also beef, which was an interesting combination with the fish! I chuckled over some string found in my fish; I think it was part of a fishing net and part of a fish was still trapped between its strands. I was thankful for a cloudy day and a good breeze which, together with the tiled roof, meant the seminar room didn’t get too hot. (Corrugated iron roofs, which are the norm for most buildings, make rooms super hot when the sun beats down.) Even so I was glad to drive up from the lake back to the cooler air of Ludewa and feel my energy levels returning.

On the bus

After a ride on a rickety bus, the aisle filled with sacks of produce and with crates of beer tucked under seats, I arrived in Luilo and joined my Manda colleagues, Erasto and Faraja, at the church where they were just finishing up a three-day workshop. They had started early that morning in order to finish early, as the Catholic church (the main denomination in the area) were having a special celebration and there would be traditional dancing in the afternoon in which some of the workshop participants were involved. I introduced myself as a Scripture engagement specialist and teacher, and was encouraged by the response of one of the older participants who essentially said that I had done a good job of teaching my colleagues because they had taught the workshop very well. Feedback like that gives me a thrill, as over many years I have felt that God’s direction for my life is to “go and teach” and my heart’s desire has been to train people such that they can teach others. So when I see the fruit of that, I rejoice and thank God for the gift he has given me and pray that I may continue to use it to build his kingdom.

The traditional dancing was a fun experience. I managed to find a spot to sit on the sand where I had a good view and where, when the big drum was being beaten, I could feel it vibrating through my body. Some dances were only done by women, while the men played the drums, while other dances were done by men. I couldn’t make out many of the words being sung, but I was told that these dances are used at celebrations and the words are usually in praise of whatever that celebration is about. There was a fascinating blend of old and new props for the dances, with cows’ tails being swung around and gourd-horns blown in one dance while torches were swung around and whistles blown in another!

Seminar participant's home

The village doesn’t have a respectable guest house, so I was staying in the room of someone’s home – like Airbnb! I was very thankful I had my collapsible solar lantern with me, as there was a power cut all day and all night. Although my computer had run out of battery, I was able to recharge my phone using my power bank and read by the light of my lantern. The next morning I enjoyed a short walk in the cool air, and passed the home of one of the workshop participants who recognised me and called out greetings. I noticed how many houses were mud huts with grass roofs, indicating a lower economic level than many other places I visit where most houses have corrugated iron roofing. I also nosed around the Catholic mission compound to see if I could see when it had been built – it had a similar air to the one in Lupingu and I found out that it had indeed been built by the same group of missionaries just a few years after the one at Lupingu.

So, a third seminar, same subject matter. The participants were the same people who had been in the workshop and included pastors and leaders of different church groups (such as women’s groups) from different denominations. They participated well and they had made good progress during the workshop in learning to read their language as several of them were able to stand in front of the group and read a few verses of Manda Scripture almost fluently, even though they would have only seen the Manda Scriptures for the first time at the workshop. I hope we can continue to develop good relationships with the local churches in these areas and partner together as the work moves forward.

We sat by the road as we waited for the bus to come that would take us back to Ludewa. We had to stop for some repair work on the outskirts of Ludewa, but arrived safely as it got dark. The guest houses were all full, because the next day would be market day so stall holders had arrived early, but we managed to find two basic but clean rooms. Next morning we were up before dawn to once again head to the bus stand and make the thirteen hour bus trip back to Mbeya. The trip had been tiring, with a different bed every night, lots of travel and hot weather all contributing to the tiredness, but I had really enjoyed the opportunities to teach and serve alongside my colleagues and to experience new places and meet new people. I pray that God may establish the work of our hands and that some people will have become more passionate about God’s Word as a result of what we sought to share.

Travel log: A trip to the Kisi and Manda language areas

Day 1 (Monday)

It was still dark outside as I forced myself out of my cosy bed just after 5am. My rucksack was packed and ready to go – it will feel considerably lighter by the time I return from my trip as half the weight is made up of granola bars I made for two weeks’ worth of breakfasts, plus the carrots and oranges I included to supplement my diet while away; and there’s the solar-powered audio players that we’ll be distributing at the workshops. Today is the first day of what will be a nearly-two-week trip to the Kisi and Manda language areas.

My colleagues (Claudia and Stanslaus) and I boarded the small bus. We left at 5.50am, and as we left the city behind us the sky started to turn red as the sun rose. I sat next to Claudia, one of my colleagues. She’d only just come back from doing the same bus ride a couple of days ago, as her father had suddenly been arrested for reasons that seem unfounded and appear to be caused by jealousy of certain family members and mixed in with witchcraft, and she’d gone with a lawyer to seek his release. Sadly family conflicts and witchcraft are not uncommon issues here.

We arrived in Njombe by 11.30am, which is a big regional town, and the end of a consistent tarmac road. I was glad for the chance to stretch my legs before getting back on for the next leg, which went quicker than any of us expected – the bus driver didn’t hang about! Last time I went that way, the road was being worked on but was still a dirt road, but this time significant sections had been turned into a cement surface. It’s a massive job, as the road winds up and down mountains, with sharp bends and sections of mountain blasted away to allow the road to pass. The dust gets up your nose and in your eyes, so it will be wonderful when the road is completed and vehicles no longer kick up clouds of dust. 

We arrived in Ludewa at 4pm. My first time here. It’s a small town, but the main supply centre for a large area. I enjoyed a walk around the outskirts, along bright red dirt roads between houses and wide tarmac roads in the town centre, with views to the surrounding hills. A football match was taking place on a central football field and the air turned chill as I headed back to the guesthouse in the golden evening light. The guesthouse is clean and pleasant, except for the loud music coming from somewhere nearby, and costs a mere 10,000 Tanzanian shillings (just over £3) a night. We went to a local café for dinner, where we had rice (which had a hint of cardamom in it, which was a delicious surprise), with roasted beef (don’t think of a joint of beef sliced, rather think of chunks of meat that have probably been deep fried) and greens, peas in a sauce and a banana. The food is more expensive here than in Mbeya (but even so, it only cost about £1).

Back at the guesthouse I asked for some hot water to have a wash, which was promptly brought to my room in a bucket. Then I curled up in bed and settled down to checking my emails and writing my journal.

Day 2 (Tuesday)

By 8am we had arrived at the immigration office to make them aware that I (as a non-Tanzanian) was working in the area for a few days, so that we wouldn’t have any problems during our travels. As we arrived, the guard was sticking up posters requesting that anyone who entered should wear a face mask and wash their hands. We did neither, but then neither did the officials we had come to see, who eventually turned up about 45 minutes later. They were friendly and polite, taking our details and requesting a copy of the relevant pages of my passport. But they didn’t have a photocopier, so my colleague quickly walked back to town to find a stationery shop to get this done!

Back at the guesthouse the car that would take us over the mountain road to the

lake was waiting for us – a small 4WD. On our way out, we got a container filled with fuel for the boat that we’d be renting. The road twisted and turned, up and down the hills, with some stunning glimpses of mountains and Lake Nyasa. Less than two hours later we arrived at Lupingu, where the boat and its crew were waiting for us. We clambered aboard (after some hasty application of suntan lotion when we saw the boat had no covering to create some shade) and headed off, put-putting our way parallel with the shore, stopping at a couple of villages to drop off letters we’d been asked to deliver. When I say ‘stopping’ we didn’t moor the boat at a pier, but instead called out to whoever was around to come and get the letters. The first time it was some school children – after ascertaining that they knew the person the letters were intended for, one of them waded out and took the letters and headed off with them. The second time a fisherman passing by in his boat (a kind of dugout canoe, rowed with a single paddle) was collared for the task. A unique postal system! It’s pretty difficult to get news to the villages in any other way than by boat, as mobile phone coverage is limited and the mountain paths are steep and can mostly only be traversed by foot (though motorbikes can get to some places).

The lake was fairly calm, but I’d taken travel sickness pills just to be on the safe side, and the boat ride was shorter than I’d expected, being only about an hour and a half. If we’d been on a public boat, it would have taken a lot longer, as it would have stopped at each village for passengers. The crew consisted of four young men (though one may have just been getting a lift), one of whom steered, another sporadically bailed water out and another was ready to throw the anchor out as needed. When we arrived we gingerly stepped out of the boat onto the rocky ground and waded to the shore.

We headed to the guest house, where I was shown to a small, simple room. We left our bags and headed to another place for lunch. Food is much more expensive here than Mbeya, because of the high transportation costs. We were served ugali, fish (kambare), greens and avocado, which was all very tasty.  The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the village, visiting the homes of various key people and sitting and chatting with them for a while. I found this draining, as most of the time I couldn’t follow the conversation (either because they were speaking in Kisi or because I didn’t have enough of the context to understand what they were discussing) so I just sat, feeling drowsy. Points of interest included visiting the Anglican church where we would hold the workshop, visiting the diwani (local councillor) and watching him mend his nets and visiting and eating oranges (which are green) freshly picked off a tree that I was sitting under. It was sad to see the fairly large group of people drinking locally brewed beer in the late afternoon – unfortunately this is a real problem in many places I have been to, though it was more public here. After our wanderings, I went off on my own down to the beach to enjoy watching the big red ball of sun sink below the horizon. Now I’m back in my room, having crunched away on some carrots and peanut butter and homemade oatcakes for tea, and a banana. The house has solar power, so my room is lit, albeit a little dimly, but there’s no sockets for charging devices. I’m very thankful for a power bank I have for when I travel that will charge my phone at least twice.

Day 3 (Wednesday)

I often think of village life as quiet and peaceful. But it only takes one night in a village to remind me that this is not the case. I was woken early by roosters crowing (it’s a myth that they don’t crow until dawn) and hens clucking and not long after people getting up before sunrise to get going with the day’s activities. I didn’t feel very rested. Yesterday, the pastor of the Anglican church (where we would hold the workshop) had expressed that he wasn’t happy that I would sleep in a guest house, instead they wanted me to have the guest room at their home. I was touched by their kindness and as I write this I am in that room, comforted by the sound of the family in the living room.

I was surprised to see how promptly many of the workshop participants turned up, which was testimony to what the translators had told me about how keen people were. Breakfast had been prepared for them at a nearby guest house. The workshop participants obviously liked their language and wanted to learn how to read, which was the main focus of today. A good number could already read remarkably well. Lunch was rice or ugali, greens and fish. Interestingly, they had prepared two different kinds of fish, as the main kind can’t be eaten by Seventh Day Adventists (who follow Old Testament food laws), and we had a number of them in the workshop. My two colleagues did most of the teaching.

In the early evening, Claudia came down to the lakeshore with me, to a spot where it’s appropriate for woman to bathe in the water, and I enjoyed a swim (though it was a little tricky swimming in trousers as it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to strip down to a swimming costume), though Claudia didn’t join me! The lake is truly beautiful in the evening sun and the sunsets are stunning, and I enjoyed a little walk around, ending up at the lake just as the sun was once again a red ball sinking in the sky. I’m starting to get a sense for how to find my way along the myriad of little stony paths that weave between houses and trees on the hillside.

After I’d finished eating in my room, the pastor’s wife invited me to come and eat with them. I politely refused, but did go and join them to watch the news (their house is well set up with solar), though I find the news hard to understand as the Swahili is more complicated than I am used to and it is quite fast. Mind you, we spent less time watching the news and more time just chatting, which was lovely. I headed to bed early, knowing I would be woken early by some noise or other!

Day 4 (Thursday)

Sure enough, at 6am some kind of church bell was rung (I don’t think they have an actual bell, but there was definitely the sound of metal striking metal), and I was already half-awake before that, probably disturbed once again by the sound of hens and the family stirring. Then there was the school drum being beaten not much later to call children to school.

At the workshop I was pleased to see how my colleagues led the Bible study groups and generally worked together well as a team. Today was my day to do most of the teaching – I am always aware that I am only able to scratch the surface when it comes to how we seek to understand Scripture. For example, how does one explain in just a few minutes the difference between the Old and New Testaments, when you realise that most of them have no idea what the difference is? The best that any participant could suggest is that the Old Testament is when God spoke through the prophets and the New Testament is about Jesus. And then how do you explain how knowing whether the book of the Bible you are reading is in the Old or New Testament impacts how you read and interpret it? The reality is, I end up just giving them some pointers, but probably not leaving them with much of any value. I’d need several weeks to teach these matters in depth. What I do hope is that our time together shows just how much more there is to learn about God’s Word and to motivate them to become regular readers and listeners of His Word and people who take the time to meditate on it.

It was hot in the morning, so I struggled to stay focused as I taught and the participants struggled to stay awake! Lunch was rice, beans and fish. As I can’t eat beans, they’d prepared me some sauce – unfortunately they didn’t realise that I also can’t have onions, so I left most of the sauce, which was too salty for me anyhow, and tried to avoid getting fish bones stuck in my throat as today’s fish had very fine bones. Thankfully the afternoon was cooler, with more cloud cover and a good breeze.

After doing a few bits and bobs, I headed down to the lake again for a swim, finding Claudia by the football field; she sat on the rocks while I enjoyed a good splash. And today was a real splash as the wind had picked up and the water was choppy, it felt more like the sea than a lake, with proper rollers coming in. Mind you, the lake is so big that is really like a small sea, with the hills of Malawi on the far side of the lake only faintly visible. The wind had brought in the lake flies, so when I was chatting with my host family later I could see these little things everywhere - they were somewhat irritating. Apparently, during the rainy season, when they come in clouds, people catch them and make food from them! You’d have to catch thousands of the things to make anything worth eating as they are tiny.

While down by the lake I could see cassava lying out to dry. Cassava is the main crop here, as the soil is very clay-like and not good for many crops as well as the fact that the Kisi villages are on the slopes of the mountains that fall into the lake, making farming difficult. Many people eat ugali made from fermented cassava. It seems like they soak the cassava for  a day or two (depending on how warm it is), before pounding it to flour and cooking. (Ugali is made from cooking the flour with water until it thickens and forms a solid lump that you can mould with your hands.) I haven’t tasted cassava ugali, but I’m told that for people who aren’t used to it, it can be hard to tolerate.

Day 5 (Friday)

Today we encountered a problem with providing water for the workshop participants – there were only half a dozen or so bottles left in the little village shops! We already had budget problems as water costs 1.5 times as much here as it does in Mbeya, so this extra problem was particularly frustrating. I am learning just how hard life can be here in the Kisi area where transport options are so limited – this affects not only the availability and price of food, but also affects access to health services. Claudia told me about how her grandmother died in childbirth because she couldn’t be transported quickly enough to a clinic with facilities for operating. In days gone by a sick person would be transported by dugout canoe, taking hours to get to a village with road access from where they could begin the hairy drive up the hill to a town with a hospital. At least these days there are petrol powered boats that can do the journey more quickly, but they are expensive to run.

Lunch was rice or ugali with what I think was beef, or at least, bits of material that came from a cow! It was tender and full of flavour, but I’d rather not think about what ‘bits’ they were! Nothing fresh to accompany it, no vegetables or fruit of any description. It’s the fresh things that are hardest to come by here. There’s a few orange trees around, and I can see a papaya tree from my window. There’s lots of mango trees, but the mango season is quite short. Some people have created small gardens for growing greens, surrounded by netting to protect them from the many chickens roaming around.

It rained! We weren’t expecting that. It’s very unusual to get rain in the middle of dry season, but the lake seems to have its own unpredictable climate. Tomorrow the plan is for me to leave as early as possible by boat, because the lake is usually at its calmest first thing in the morning.

I decided to try going up the hill a bit, so a child showed me the start of the path and up I climbed – going up was hard but coming down was worse, because the dry soil, filled with lots of little stones, was so slippy and the path was steep. I didn’t go far at all, but it was enough to get a birds-eye view of Makonde, which was fun. I was sweating and my legs were trembling by the time I got back down and a dip in the lake felt like a wonderful idea. The pastor’s wife decided to come down with me and she sat on the rocks, somewhat surprised that I wasn’t afraid of the waves. A little later Claudia came too, to check on her laundry that she had done earlier in the lake and left on the rocks to dry, and another lady, and it was lovely to just sit by the lake as the sun went down chatting with these ladies. The sunset was beautiful, with the gold of the skies reflecting on the choppy waters so that each wave had a golden edge and the mountains looking soft and faintly pink in the background.

Day 6 (Saturday)

The one day when I could have slept in as there was no church bell or school drum was the one morning I needed to be up early! I left the house before the rest of the family had really stirred and headed down to the lake. We were supposed to leave at 7am but the young guys who would be manning the boat were nowhere to be seen. The lake was choppy, despite being early morning, and I took another travel sickness pill to be on the safe side and tried not to get anxious about the trip ahead and whether my luggage would stay dry. Some men were butchering a pig they had just killed – I wasn’t expecting to see a pig’s head sitting on a beach first thing in the morning! About half an hour later we were

ready to go and with help I scrambled aboard the boat between waves. It was a very different experience from our outward journey (when the lake had been calm), with the boat going up and down in a somewhat alarming fashion. Thankfully it calmed down further into the ride and there was the same car and driver waiting for me on the beach that had brought us there a few days before.

Back up the winding mountain road and suddenly my phone got a signal and in poured several days’ worth of messages! Arriving in Ludewa, my Manda colleagues were waiting for me. I made a quick trip to the market to restock on carrots, bananas, satsumas and a cucumber, before settling down for the four hour bus ride to Nsungu in the Manda language area. Not the most comfortable of rides (with small seats and sacks of something under our feet), but I was drowsy so I dozed for some of it and listened to an audio book for the rest of it and somehow got off at the other end without a bad back or too desperate for the toilet. And wow, what a contrast to the Kisi area. Instead of a rocky beach and steep hills, there is a big sandy beach and the surrounding area is pretty flat. It really feels like being at the seaside. We’re staying in a guesthouse right by the beach and it has electricity. The water isn’t working so they brought us buckets of lake water to use; I was startled by a white frog in the bathroom!

I’d heard there were crocodiles here and that I wouldn’t be able to swim, but on asking a lady at the guest house I learned that as long as you go during the day time it is safe enough; it’s from dusk to dawn that it’s dangerous. As the waves were pretty big today, I decided to leave it until tomorrow to test the waters. Went with my colleagues to visit the pastor of the Anglican church where we will hold the workshop, which is on a little hill about a five minute walk from the guest house. Everywhere we went my colleagues were greeting relatives and friends and pointing things out to me, including a tamarind tree and the big baobab trees.

Day 7 (Sunday)

The lake had calmed down so I went for a swim – it was wonderful! I went to the morning service at the Anglican church. Anglican churches in this region are all high church – there was a lot of liturgy and sitting and standing and kneeling and me not knowing what I was supposed to do but just copying the person next to me. To be honest, I understood very little of what went on in the service, as the liturgy was hard to follow and the preacher spoke super-fast, but I did appreciate the various Scripture readings and I had a chance to share briefly about our work. After the service I was invited to the pastor’s home for chai, and enjoyed a pleasant chat with him and his wife. His wife had prepared some boiled eggs and a thermos of tea. I left with the last two eggs wrapped in an envelope with a pinch of salt for me to enjoy later. I decided to head straight from there to a café to get lunch, just some ugali and greens as I’d already had a good lot of protein with the eggs.

After lunch I had some quiet time in my room, reading the Bible, praying, resting and listening to some Bible teaching I’d downloaded before the trip. After all that sitting I was ready to stretch my legs, so for the first time in a week I got out for a good walk along a dirt road, enjoying the scenery and the small villages I passed through. A special treat was coming across a small group of people doing traditional dancing, with two drummers in the middle, singing songs about Tanzania – one man with them recognised me from church and said he would be at the seminar tomorrow, so that made me feel safe and gave me the courage to ask if I could take photos. I think they enjoyed performing for me!

Day 8 (Monday)

Day one of the workshop. It felt quite different working with Erasto and Faraja, compared to working with Claudia and Stanslaus last week. C and S are both openly enthusiastic and used their language most of the time and were very open with me and fun to work with, referring various decisions to me and doing a good team-job of teaching. E and F are a bit more serious, with E taking the lead (as the older man and also a pastor) and coming across confidently but I often needed to prompt him about ways to teach. On the whole I think the first day went well with people doing a really good job of reading the Manda language, even though some of them weren’t Manda! A couple of the pastors particularly enjoyed the first thing I had done while people were still turning up, which was to give them pictures of key biblical events, get them to put them in order, and then I told the whole story of the Bible briefly, tying all the events together and showing how they were fulfilled in Christ.

Guess what I had for lunch? Yes, fish! I feel like my hands have smelt of fish for most of the time I’ve been here! You need to do some serious hand washing with soap to get rid of the smell!

After the workshop, I was taken to see a Manda class in action. A local pastor, even though he’s not Manda, was concerned to see the Manda language not being valued by the community or used by children, and so he recruited a couple of ladies to start Manda classes for the children, starting with his own children. He related how it was hard work at first, people thought he had a hidden agenda or mocked the idea as they don’t see the value of their language, but over time the number of children grew, drawn by the games, drums and dancing, and parents (at least some) have become more accepting. Around thirty children did a long dance to the beat of a big drum, their steps following the commands (in Manda) of different children and then some children said all the parts of the body in Manda and others counted to twenty in Manda. Tomorrow the pastor wants to take me to another village, some distance away, to see another class.

I had just enough time left to go for a short sunset walk and enjoy yet another glorious sky. Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the works thy hands hath made!

Day 9 (Tuesday)

Perfect morning for swimming, so I did, in the calm lake under a blue sky. The workshop seemed to go well, though as it was a much warmer day than yesterday people were sleepy. At the end of the day we chose five people to prepare to lead a Bible study tomorrow, so we’ll see how they do.

The pastor who started the Manda class wanted to take me to visit another class in a village a few miles away (one of the teachers is in our workshop), so one of the Manda teachers from Nsungu (the village we are holding the workshop in) and I climbed on the back of one motorbike and the pastor on another and off we went. I laughed to myself over the surprised faces of people we passed when they saw a white person on the back of a motorbike! When we arrived a group of young children were gathered (the older ones having been given the work of cutting reeds by their school teacher, so they couldn’t come) and they showed us things they had learnt. The teacher said how hard it had been at first, with people saying unkind words about it and taking their children away. It’s still hard, but more accepted now than it was.

We came back by foot, a walk of over five miles! As we went they pointed out landmarks, explained which areas are flooded during the rainy season, told me where the crocodiles are, shared some old traditions that are being lost (including respect for elders such that in days gone by they would be given fish for free and children were expected to greet them and carry whatever the elder was carrying, and if they didn’t they would be punished) and related how the lake has receded over the years and how the cutting of trees is causing erosion by the rivers. As we walked the sunset and sky was magnificent, with trees of all kinds silhouetted against the various shades of red and orange, and by the end we were walking by light of the moon with our moon shadows keeping step.

Back at the pastor’s home he briefly showed me a small project of his – he is breeding rabbits and guinea pigs for food! This is the first time I have seen guinea pigs in Tanzania, but he said that breeding them is common practice amongst the Pangwa people (a people group that neighbours the Manda area, but is up in the mountains, and he himself is Pangwa).

Day 10 (Wednesday)

I am writing this by the light of the bathroom light! A weird quirk of the room I’m in is that if my colleague in the next-door room and I both have our lights on at the same time they flash in a horrible headache-inducing kind of way. I can hear a mosquito’s high pitched buzz, but I can’t see it – there’s quite a lot of mozzies around, but the bed has a decent mosquito net so I haven’t been bothered by them at night. It probably doesn’t help that none of the windows shut properly and I can see the sky through gaps between the window frame and the wall.

Last day of the workshop. I think it went as well as can be expected. The questions is always whether they will put it into practice. I am particularly conscious of the fact that the Manda only have one book in their language so far – Jonah; they don’t even have any short story books, so people will soon get tired of reading and re-reading the same book. Also here in Nsungu children are not using the Manda language, so there may be less motivation for what we are doing, though I think in other areas their language is used more. The participants certainly seemed to have appreciated the workshop and saw the benefit of studying God’s Word through questions that help people to think about and apply it to their daily lives.

One dear older lady (she is the one in a light orange dress in the picture) gave me a bag of peanuts, saying that although my mother is in England, wherever I go there is a mother. I was so touched by her kindness. She had shelled the peanuts for me as she thought I would find it hard, and it’s true, I’ve done it before but if you’re not used to it, it’s slow work and after a while you thumbs feel sore!

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the pigs – they’re all over the place, grunting away, left to roam around to find food during the day. And the chickens likewise. And then there’s the odd goat here and there or cow.

Tomorrow it will be an early start and a long journey – I need to be heading out about 5am and Erasto is willing to get up at the same hour to accompany me to the bus stand, even though he is staying on for a while longer with Faraja to test the gospel of Luke with various Manda speakers.

Day 11 (Thursday)

I was up about 4.30am after a restless night. The bus was sitting in the layby and a lady sat next to it waiting. No other sign of life in the darkness. A couple more people arrived and then there was the faint glow of a phone inside the bus. The conductor had slept inside the bus and was finally stirring. We set of about 5.30am. This bus would take me all the way to Makambako, stopping for a while (20-30 minutes) in Ludewa and Njombe and arriving in Makambako shortly after 2.30pm. In Njombe I was able to stretch my legs by a quick walk to the toilets and then to the food stands to buy a bag of chips for lunch.

The last leg of the journey from Makambako to Mbeya was not less comfortable. I had to change in Makambako, and the conductor helped me get onto a bus heading for Mbeya. I appreciated his kindness and his concern that I would be overcharged if I let the hawkers at the bus door find me a bus – he took my bag and made took my money to pay for a ticket. Later I discovered that he may not have been as altruistic as he appeared, as when I was finally given my bus ticket it said 4000/- rather than the 5000/- that I had given him!

It was one of those small buses where they use every inch of space, so down the central aisle were fold-down seats for extra passengers. The bus was full, so it was a squeeze. The ride from Makambako to Mbeya should be no more than 3.5 hours, but it took us 4.5 hours due to stopping several times for passengers to get off and on; my back ached, my feet were swollen, the bus was warm and I was dehydrated (I generally don’t drink much on journeys because you never know if and when you will get a toilet stop), but eventually we arrived on the outskirts of Mbeya. I thought the bus would go all the way to the main bus stand in town, but when it arrived at the big out-of-town bus stand most people alighted and the driver decided not to carry on, so those of us who were left were put on another small bus, which also decided not to go to the main bus stand! However, I was able to get off at a bus stop not far from home, and at 7.15pm Lizzie (one of my housemates) was waiting there to pick me up (just a five minute drive from home). It felt strange to be speaking English again after eleven days of no English conversation and not seeing another white face!

Back home

It’s Friday and I’ve taken the day off work. I feel slightly disconnected – it feels unreal to be back in my home after being in such a different environment for over ten days. I slept long and well but still feel tired.

I hadn’t been desperate to return to Mbeya. I had enjoyed my trip. God had been wonderfully faithful as always – I had felt well taken care of, my stomach hadn’t been much of a problem, I’d been able to get some exercise and had got on fine with my colleagues. The workshops seemed to go well, though we wait to see what fruit they may bear. I’d enjoyed some beautiful and varied scenery as well as swimming in the lake and learning about Kisi and Manda life. All in all it was a good trip and I look forward to more adventures and thank God that He is always there enabling me to do things I think I can’t do.

Food, fog, films and Philippians - another trip to Umalila

Potatoes. When I think of the Malila people and where they live, I think of potatoes! However, on this trip, I didn’t eat a single potato as it turns out that harvesting begins in mid-June*. Instead, many of the patchwork fields were the lush green of potato plants nearly ready for harvest, contrasting sharply with the brown, dry stalks of maize left after harvesting the maize cobs. I learned that these will be dug back into the soil, serving to enrich it ready for the next crop. While I may not have eaten potatoes, I did eat plenty of cabbage! This seemed to be their staple vegetable, and is usually cooked (fried, I think) with a little tomato; I rather like the sweet edge cabbage takes on cooked like this. I also ate plenty of rice – while people normally eat ugali at home (made from maize flour), guests are usually served rice, so at each place we went to teach we were served a mountain (of epic proportions) of rice. I inevitably had to return at least half the amount of rice they had put on my plate, and that still left me with a good sized helping! My favourite meal of the week was Friday evening, where I was served ugali, greens, fried egg (very yellow), avocado and bananas.

It was a delight to travel around the Malila area, as the rolling hills are beautiful. We visited four villages over four days, and at each place received the same warm welcome. At least, the people gave us a warm welcome, the weather did not. On my first day I was worried I would drive straight past the place I was supposed to be meeting up with my colleague, because I was driving through fog! Thankfully I spotted him, waiting by his motorbike, and after he’d gulped down a mug of tea and some mandazi (deep-fried things, faintly resembling donuts) at a tiny roadside shop, I followed him in the office Land Cruiser to the first village we would be teaching in. I was very glad of the coat I had managed to find at a second-hand clothes market a couple of weeks earlier!

Here, and at every place thereafter, we started late. I expected to start late; people had been told we would start at 9am and I expected to start around 10am, but that proved optimistic! I don’t think we ever started before 11am, and we always started with just a handful of people with the numbers gradually growing in the first couple of hours, often ending up with around twenty. At our final location we also had ten or so children joining us as it was a Saturday – although the teaching was not aimed at children they sat quietly and attentively throughout. We had hoped for larger numbers, as letters had gone out to several churches in each village, but most of the people who came were from the host-church, with a few exceptions. Each group felt quite different – the first one was the hardest. They were obviously not used to participatory learning, so asking questions was about as successful as trying to get blood from a stone, and some participants kept their eyes down so it was very hard to read their faces and get a sense of whether they were engaged or not. My goal was to help them discover the joy of digging into God’s Word, as we spent time in Ephesians (in the first two villages) and Philippians (in the second two villages). Although I taught in Swahili, my colleague, Mwangwale, translated certain key points and all Scripture readings were done using the Malila Scriptures, wherever possible getting the participants to do the readings as we wanted to help them learn to read their language. The Malila people use their language a lot, of all the language groups that we work with it’s perhaps the one where I see the greatest need for them to have Scriptures in their language, and praise God they now have the New Testament and Genesis. It was great to see their language thriving, though it was very frustrating for me as at mealtimes they would slip into using Malila and I would be left stranded with no idea of what they were talking about.

At the second village, Iyunga-Mapinduzi, they were much more ready to interact and a number of the group were already quite good readers as Mwangwale has had quite a lot of input there already. It was a privilege to study the Scriptures with them, and I was glad that in a couple of the villages we were joined by one or two pastors from other churches. I really hope and pray that they will take on board some of the studying-and-teaching-the-Bible tips I tried to throw out and will have seen the blessing that comes through digging deeper into God’s Word. My prayer throughout was that God would use me to help make them more passionate about meditating on God’s Word, that they might become like trees planted by streams of water (Psalm 1). While I wasn’t able to get much feedback, the snippets I did get were encouraging, showing that they thought the teaching was good and that more teaching of this nature is needed in the church. Over lunch one day, the pastors were saying how churches tend to teach denominational doctrine rather than rooting themselves in the study of Scripture. How I long to see churches here being rooted in God’s Word.

In the evenings we showed the Jesus Film. The first time we were able to show it inside the church, but in the second village the electricity wires hadn’t reached as far as the church yet, so we showed it outside at a different spot, against the whitish wall of a building. It was cold and as time went by a light mist descended, but I was lucky enough to be able to sit inside the house we were using for our power supply, and they even brought me a small coal stove to keep me warm and some ugali and cabbage! Thankfully at the third village we were back inside, while the fourth village had no electricity so we didn’t even try to show it (though as the church had a generator, with which they played painfully loud and distorted gospel music before the seminar began to let people know that something was happening, we could probably have shown it there too). At each place we had an avid audience, of both children and adults. As reading isn’t really a part of the culture here, film can be particularly powerful. We also made sure that one or two people in each seminar received a MegaVoice player – a solar-powered audio device loaded with the audio New Testament in Malila, so that they could enable groups to listen to God’s Word.

We were late home each day (I was staying at Mwangwale’s), after a bumpy ride along the dirt roads in the dark. The first night, Mwangwale’s motorbike ran out of fuel half-way! There were a few houses, all shut up as it was late at night, but he somehow managed to find someone with some fuel to buy, even though it was little more than a hamlet. We usually ate dinner after 10pm (it’s quite normal here to eat dinner late, around 9pm), arriving home to find the food on the coffee table, in hot pots (thermos pots for food), ready for us to eat. Despite the late nights (and the children were usually still up and about while we were eating dinner too), the family were up around dawn each morning. On waking, I went out for a short walk each day, enjoying the beauty of the flowers, the patchwork fields and the tops of the hills looking cosy under a light blanket of cloud and the lower slopes catching the early morning sun. On my return, a bowl of warm water would await me so I could wash, and a flask of hot sweet tea would be on the coffee table. I discovered that mixing my oats, peanut butter and raisins with the tea made a surprisingly nice porridge (helped by the fact that their tea isn’t strong, so it’s more like hot sweet water).

I was overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity – in one place we were given a sack of maize and in another a bag of cabbages and greens fresh from their garden and a chicken. Mwangwale’s wife gave me a bag of beans, and someone else from their church furnished me with an even bigger sack of maize. In case you were wondering what I did with the chicken, I left it with Mwangwale! This month is not an easy one for people there, as they haven’t started to harvest the potatoes and beans, which are their main source of income, so we were only able to sell a few Scripture portions in each place that we went to, but they are so generous with what they do have that it puts me to shame. (Although they have already harvested their maize, this crop is mostly for their own family needs, as almost everyone grows maize so there isn’t much of a market for selling it.)

With Mwangwale and his family

On Saturday night, Mwangwale told me that I would be teaching at his church on Sunday morning! I shouldn’t have been surprised, as it’s not uncommon for guests to be asked to share, but I thought I’d said that I would ‘just’ attend – obviously I hadn’t or I hadn’t communicated it clearly enough! So Sunday morning saw me asking God to help me identify what I could take from the Philippians seminar to become a short time of teaching in the morning service. I was also asking for my voice to hold out, as after four days of being miraculously strong (after a two-week long issue of a sore throat and weak voice), I had spent Saturday night waking up coughing. Praise God, He helped on both counts, and I enjoyed encouraging the congregation to imitate Christ and talking about what that looks like. There were lots of things about my time at Mwangwale’s church to make me smile – the church had been decorated with beautiful deep pink bougainvillea, some of the choirs (including the children) sang songs in Malila and after the service they sold off three eggs that had been put in the offering (to turn the gift into cash for the church), and the eggs were given to me!

After lunch (yes, more rice and chicken) and waiting for someone to bring the gift of maize, I finally headed home, back along the dirt road with the car jumping around on the small stones such that I was mostly going only 20-30 miles per hour, but slow was fine with me as I enjoyed the beautiful landscape that I was driving through. It was with relief, however, that I finally joined the tarmac road back into Mbeya. The whole journey took just one and a half hours (it’s one of the closest language areas to get to).

I know that these teaching opportunities are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to helping people grow in a knowledge of God and His Word, and it feels like a very small drop at that. However, God’s Word is powerful, and I pray that though the drop may be small it may yet make a ripple, and help people to understand God’s amazing grace and what it looks like to live a cross-shaped life, imitating Christ. Teaching these things also challenges me – am I also able to say, with Paul, that to live is Christ and to die is gain? Will I also persevere, even when it feels hard and unfruitful, because I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?

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*To make conversation, I plagued my colleague with questions about potato farming, and learned a lot. I now know that you start harvesting potatoes about 3 months after planting and that about a month after harvesting you may have potatoes that are ready for re-planting. A single potato may produce quite a lot of new potatoes, it all depends on the number of eyes it has – E.g. if it has a dozen eyes you will get a dozen potatoes out of it. A potato should be planted about a finger’s depth below the soil (about 3 inches) and I think he said about a foot between each potato, and 2 feet between rows. If you want big potatoes, you will need to use fertiliser (and I confess I like big ones). So now I’m all set to plant my own! Maybe I’ll try a couple and see if I get results!