Outcome Harvesting and teaching in Umalila

Goal of trip: To listen to testimonies from members of the Malila community about how our work and the availability of the New Testament in the Malila language has impacted individuals, churches and the community. These testimonies will then be crafted into ‘Outcome Statements’ that we can learn from by looking for patterns in what has been happening. This whole research process is called ‘Outcome Harvesting’. A second goal: to teach a Bible seminar on the book of Galatians.

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With the sun shining, Frank, one of my department colleagues, and I set off for the Malila language area. The weather looked more promising than the day before, when constant rain left me anxious about the journey. The road was good most of the way, but the last section had been affected by the rain and was very slippery, with the clay-like mud creating an experience something like that of driving on snow.

Just arrived at Iyunga Mapinduzi 

We arrived at the church in Iyunga-Mapinduzi on the dot at ten o'clock. Our colleague, Majaliwa, was waiting for us, but no one else, just a few cows. No surprise. If we say 10am, I expect to start an hour later. We finally kicked off proceedings at 11.20am. As hoped, we had a small group of people from the village who have been impacted by our project in one way or another, such as through attending workshops. We began with a Bible study on John 15. Although I led the study and I don't speak Malila, we still used the Malila Scriptures and participants were free to respond to questions in Swahili or Malila (and my colleagues interpreted anything I couldn't understand).

After this we began to listen to their stories of how they or others have been impacted by our work. There were lots of encouraging testimonies of people understanding the Malila Scriptures better than the Swahili ones, leading to greater engagement with what they hear or read in church. I've often commented that of all the language groups we work with, Malila strikes me as the one where the local language is used the most. This is evident in how children still use it, how adults use it among themselves even when I'm there and they know I can't follow what they’re saying, how a number of women don't seem to understand well when Swahili is used etc. My colleagues and I madly scribbled away, recording what they said. (When we got back to my colleague's house later we compared notes and wrote 'Outcome statements' from what we had heard, which we'll analyse later in the process.)

Majaliwa's home (the white house) - you can see our
project Landcruiser parked outside

We had a very late lunch at the only place in the village where you could get food, and the only food on offer was a plate of chips. But very nice, hot, fresh chips they were! Thankfully the road had dried out somewhat since our arrival, so I was spared more heart attacks from the car sliding around as we headed to my colleague's home, where we were to stay for the week.

On Wednesday we headed to another village, Shinzingo. We arrived late but the participants arrived even later! The road was pretty rough in places, and as we sat talking together in the meeting, the rain began. I battled anxiety over how we would get home - it wouldn't take much rain to turn the road into an adventure I'd rather not have

This time, I asked Majaliwa to lead the Bible study, which meant he was able to lead it in Malila - it was great to see everyone present sharing their thoughts, which I think they felt more comfortable doing in Malila than they would have done in Swahili, especially the ladies. Our project has done very little in Shinzingo, so there were less stories to hear and a strong desire for someone to come and do a workshop and bring Malila books to sell once they've had a chance to put aside money to buy them. We had books with us, but they had very little money to buy anything this time. I felt bad that they had waited so long to see the New Testament in their language and get hold of other books, so I felt compelled to buy each one a small book (costing less than 20p each), either some of Paul's letters or the story of creation and the fall. They were gratefully received, and plans are afoot to hold a workshop there in May.

Frank heads off to the pastor's home for lunch.
You can just about see the church in the
background (in the middle, behind the tree).

We were kindly invited to the pastor's home for lunch. As usual, this was rice and chicken, the classic meal of choice when you have guests. I was happy to spot some sweet little bananas for sale on the way back to the car - something fresh to enjoy.

Friday we went to the main village in the Malila area (significant enough to be considered a 'town' here), where we met in the Salvation Army church. The meeting felt like hard work, so it was a relief to finish up and get food at a local café. Back in Jojo, Majaliwa had a meeting to go to, so I did a bit of work and then went for a walk, a lovely three mile loop. It was slightly annoying to have school children following me for some time; I know they just think it's fun to keep up with the white person, but I find it hard always sticking out and being noticed. In the last mile the heavens opened, and my little umbrella was little help! Reminiscent of Jane's visit to Netherfield in Pride & Prejudice, my long dress was soaked from the bottom up, but thankfully I didn't become ill as a result!

Friday morning the sun came out and I was able to hang my still very damp dress out to dry, but the rain began again before my shoes had dried out! In the morning, after breakfast (a plate of boiled potatoes, as it's a potato growing region), we processed what we heard in the previous day's meeting. We waited for the rain to ease enough to head into the village centre to get lunch (rice and goat meat and liver with a bit of tomato) before heading to the nearby village of Santilya to begin a seminar on Galatians. En route we encountered a blockage – a tree had been cut down, falling across the road (intentionally), so we had to wait until a way through had been cleared. Despite arriving late, we were still early compared to everyone else – the seminar was supposed to start at 3pm but didn't kick off until about 4.30pm. The overcast sky made it dark in the church, where the only extra light was a couple of low voltage bulbs, making reading Bibles (and my teaching notes) a bit of a challenge. As I taught the rain got heavier, so I had to raise my voice to fight against the sound of the rain on the corrugated iron roof. Certainly not my easiest teaching experience. Despite everything we covered some important ground and Majaliwa told me that one of the pastors, who is the overseer for churches of his denomination in the area, said that all their pastors should have been there!

Back at the pastor's house, food was waiting, ugali and chicken. For once the meat was relatively tender (my jaw usually gets a good workout on the meat here). I always feel very blessed by people's hospitality, but I also look forward to getting home and having more fruit and vegetables, which can be somewhat scarce in the average meal provided for guests.

[An aside: my crazy colleagues got up in the night to watch a football match, Tanzania versus Morocco, which started at 1am!]

View on one of my morning walks - you can see
Mbeya Peak in the distance

On Saturday I awoke to yet more rain, so no chance of going for my usual morning walk. I battled anxiety over how the rain would impact the day's seminar, trying to trust God's purposes but finding it very hard. Of course, I shouldn't have worried. By the time the seminar got started the rain had more or less stopped. While we waited for more people to turn up, I opened it up for questions that might have arisen from the previous day's teaching. Questions included who is Barnabas, why did the Israelites wander in the desert for 40 years (this was somewhat off topic!) and is it wrong to follow the laws in the Old Testament.

Eventually we got going and people seemed to be engaged. It was a bit stressful for me when Majaliwa disappeared at a point when I needed him to do some interpreting into Malila. Also I felt my anxiety levels rising when it began to rain again, but they gave me a microphone so I could still be heard when it got really heavy, and it didn't last long. At the end, when I asked what they had liked from the book of Galatians, it was clear that they had grasped some of the keys points. I finished by 6pm, but somehow the closing words of Majaliwa, the pastor and others took nearly another hour! Giving the right people an opportunity to say a final word (whether that be to say thank you to the host and teacher or to re-emphasise something that was taught or add an additional thought) is very important here, so finishing can take a long time.

By the time we had eaten dinner at the pastor’s house, we didn’t get back to Majaliwa’s until 9.30pm. I found the long day tiring – even though I was only actively teaching for a part of it and the rest of the time just sitting around, the ‘sitting around’ can be surprisingly exhausting when people around you are talking in a different language and conversation is hard to engage with but you feel a need to sit politely and look like you are listening and you are doing your best to behave in a culturally appropriate manner but not sure that you are always achieving it!

View on my Sunday morning walk

Sunday morning we said grateful goodbyes to Majaliwa and his wife, and were given a sack of Malila potatoes to take away with us. Our final job was to attend the morning service at the church in Santilya where we’d had the seminar. I had given Frank the opportunity to preach, so that he could use a mix of Swahili and Malila (as he himself is Malila) as well as give me one less thing to prepare for. However, they still wanted to ‘hear my voice’ so I made an impromptu addition at the end, continuing the theme in Galatians. The music during the service was so loud that, despite the fact they turned it down a bit for my sake, I got to a point where I just couldn’t stand it anymore and went and stood outside until the procession of choirs had finished singing. I don’t know how the rest of the congregation can apparently enjoy the deafening volume and vibrations emanating from the big speakers, as they sing and dance with gusto. There are some cultural things that I’m not sure I will ever feel at home with. The loud praying, sometimes in a special rough kind of voice that many preachers like to adopt, I also find uncomfortable to listen to and hard to understand why they do it. These things, along with stuff sometimes being said that comes across to me as a questionable application of Scripture, is what can make going to church here feel like something I do out of duty rather than desire.

These creative kids were making brum
brum noises as they ran along, pretending
that the yellow jerrycan was a car

Together with other visitors to the church, we were invited to have lunch in the pastor’s home before leaving. The lady sitting next to me couldn’t comprehend the small (in her eyes) portion of rice I took, which was less than half what everyone else had on their plates! It was plenty for me after all the potatoes I had eaten for breakfast. We left at 2.30pm – everyone who had been at the pastor’s home came out to wave us off, I felt like royalty! The sky looked ominous, but thankfully it didn’t rain very hard. In one area, wisps of cloud floated eerily up from the surface of the road, as if the road was smoking, and all around was thick fog, which made for slow going, but we eventually arrived safely back at the office an hour and half later.

It wasn’t the most enjoyable trip I’ve ever had, as you may have picked up, but I can still look back and be thankful for God’s faithfulness: despite my anxiety over the weather it never caused any serious problems, my colleagues and I worked well together, we gathered what seems like a reasonable amount of data and the Bible seminar seemed well appreciated with a request to come back and teach some more. I pray that God may use our, what often feel like, feeble efforts for good, to bear fruit that will last.