Off to Umanda to teach through Luke's gospel

I was very ready for a break from the office, so despite having to travel alone using buses I’d not used before, I was looking forward to visiting the Manda language area (known in Swahili as ‘Umanda’, which is much less clumsy than saying ‘the Manda language area’, so from now on I’ll use the Swahili term) to teach a couple of workshops about the book of Luke. This gospel has recently been published in the Manda language, in both print and audio forms, and the Jesus film (based on Luke) has also been translated in Manda, so the goal of the workshops was to equip churches to use these resources, by studying some key themes in Luke and discussing how Luke can continue to be used in their homes, churches and community.

The journey

(I got a bit carried away writing about my journey, so you might want to skip some of this!)

Waiting at Mbeya bus station

My colleagues, the Manda translators (Erasto and Faraja), who I would be meeting in Umanda, had advised me on which buses to catch and what times they should be departing, so I felt I had a good enough idea of what to expect that I didn’t need to worry. They had made the same journey a day or so before me, in order to meet with the Manda CBO (Community Based Organisation) to discuss issues like the distribution of Manda materials. So, as advised, I made sure I was at the bus stand by 7am, ready to catch the Super Feo bus that would be coming from near the Zambian border and heading towards Njombe, where I would change buses to continue to the small town of Ludewa. Well, 7am was a bit optimistic – the bus came about 8.15am, and by 8.30pm we were on the road. I almost didn’t get a seat! I was told I didn’t need to get a ticket in advance, but to just get one on the bus. The advice was correct, but I think I got the last available seat, right at the back. It took me back to my childhood, when the back of the bus was considered the best place to sit, and the more bumps you went over the better as you bounced off your seat. Now in my forties, I faced the bumpy ride with a little less joyous anticipation, but the seat proved fairly comfy and the road was tarmac, not dirt, so it wasn’t too bad at all.

Lunch at the Njombe
bus station

I’d been advised that I would arrive in time to catch the 2pm Ibu bus to Ludewa. Well, if this 2pm bus had existed, I’d have been on time for it. As it was, I found out the Ibu bus hadn’t arrived yet and wouldn’t leave until 4pm. At least this meant I was able to buy my ticket, take my time over lunch (ugali, greens and a plain omelette from the bus stand’s fast-food place), buy some fruit, stretch my legs and do some work while I waited. I would have liked to have gone for a longer walk, as I knew that by the time the bus arrived in Ludewa it would already be dark so no chance for a walk there, but lugging a heavy rucksack around plus my laptop bag wasn’t conducive to a brisk walk. And it was a good job I didn’t go, because the bus was early! (What’s going on – something in Tanzania actually happened before the scheduled time rather than an hour or so later?!! I’m still reeling from the shock.) 

This was a smaller bus and became increasingly crowded as the journey progressed and we kept taking on more passengers, even though it was standing room only. I love the way buses here double-up as delivery vehicles. Every now and then we would stop for just a few seconds to drop off a sack of something or pass an envelope, or even a loaf of bread, through the window to someone waiting at the roadside to receive it. And at bus stops there was nearly always some exchange going on – either something to pick up and take, or something to be dropped off. The road is being worked on, they are gradually surfacing it, but it’s a big job as it includes some steep mountain sections with hairpin bends. Worryingly, sections that had been finished were already suffering from debris on the road as a result of landslides – something needs to be done to shore up the steep road sides that have been dug into the hillside.

It was indeed dark but the time we arrived in Ludewa (7.45pm). On alighting at the bus stand (a dirt patch surrounded by little shops and a couple of ticket offices) I was able to buy a ticket for the next morning for the final leg of the journey from Ludewa to the village of Nsungu, which is situated on the shores of Lake Nyasa (aka Lake Malawi). This done, I headed to a guest house I have stayed in before, just a five minute walk from the bus stand, hoping that they would have a free room. They did, though only a twin room (which, confusingly, they call a ‘double’ room), which meant it was more expensive, an extortionate 15,000 Tanzanian shillings rather than just 10,000 (that’s about £5.20 rather than £3.50)! I had packed some food for tea, so I didn’t have to go out again to find something to eat. First part of the journey successfully completed.

The next morning (Thursday), I was up before dawn to catch the 6am bus. I was honoured to be given the front seat, next to the driver. Approaching and leaving the town of Ludewa, you get to enjoy some tarmac, but it’s not long before you are back on a dirt road. Once again I was amazed at how many people they seemed to be squeezing onto the bus – at one point this included over ten children on their way to school. I have no idea how they all fitted in, as I couldn’t see anything behind me because of the pile of luggage that lay between me and the rest of the passengers. We arrived in Nsungu about 8.30am, and it was lovely to find Faraja waiting for me at the roadside. We walked together to the guest house, which is close to the lakeside, where I quickly settled in before heading off to the Catholic church where we would be holding the workshop.

The blue line is my route to Umanda, while the red line is the first part of my return route, until I rejoined the original route at Njombe. The reason for taking the longer route home was due to bus availability and better roads.

Workshop #1

Erasto teaches how
to read Manda

I was pleasantly surprised to find a good number of the participants had already turned up. Often with workshops my colleagues and I are the first to arrive and things kick off pretty late, but I was impressed to find that things went more or less to time (roughly speaking, meaning we started less than an hour after the time we had said we would start, which in my experience, is quite an achievement). Many of the participants had attended a workshop I had facilitated two years previously, in which we helped them learn to read Manda and to prepare and lead simple Bible studies. It was so lovely to see familiar faces and they warmly welcomed me back. This also meant that many of them already had a good grasp of how to read Manda, so my colleagues didn’t need very long to review some of the differences between the Manda and Swahili alphabets and writing systems in order to help people transition from reading Swahili (which they will have learnt to do in school) to reading Manda. In case you are interested, one difference is the addition of two extra vowels, written ɨ and ʉ. I can’t try and describe these two sounds, as I am not very good at pronouncing them! Basically, ɨ is somewhere between the way you pronounce i and e in Swahili, and ʉ is somewhere between u and o.

My turn to teach

The participants were nearly all from local Catholic and Anglican churches, which are the two main denominations in the area, and there was a fairly even mix of men and women, with a good representation of church leaders, so this was all very encouraging. I quickly realised we had a huge range of ability in the group, from the very well-read leader of the Catholic church that was hosting us, who always had helpful contributions to make to discussions, to the somewhat off-track ideas of another church leader, to some very quiet ladies who barely spoke so it was difficult to ascertain what their level of knowledge was. I hoped the better-educated wouldn’t find the workshop too simple, the less-educated wouldn’t find it too hard, and that somehow everyone would go away feeling that the three days they had spent with us was worthwhile.

Some teaching posters

So what did we cover in the workshop? I began with a short quiz about Luke, to cover a few basics, and anyone who answered correctly got a free poster with a Manda verse on it from Luke’s gospel. (These are just simple A4 posters that we print on coloured card and sell for less than 5p!) Then my colleagues guided people in practising to read their language, so that they’d be prepared to read the Manda translation of Luke in the rest of the workshop. After this we looked at key questions we should ask ourselves when reading Scripture (when, where, who and why) and then answered those questions together for Luke. After also briefly looking at the structure of Luke, we started to dig deeper by examining four key themes in Luke: Jesus cares for the poor and oppressed, Jesus cares for people of all nations, the kingdom of God (the upside-down kingdom) and prayer. We looked at these through a mix of Bible study, small group discussions and up-front teaching. We finished our study of Luke with a Bible study on the last few verses of the final chapter, before moving into thinking about application. We discussed what aspects of Luke particularly spoke to us, and how the book and audio of Luke can be used in their homes, their churches and their community. We finished up with a chance to be creative – some composed a song based on Luke 12:34 while the rest chose a verse from Luke and wrote it out on coloured card to share with someone else. I was amazed at how quickly the music group came up with a great little tune for their song; it was a lovely way to round things off.

At the end we asked them what they had learnt. There were some encouraging responses, including (these are very brief summaries of what they said, not word-for-word quotes): “The kingdom of God that Jesus announced – now I understand what this is about”, “I’ve been touched by the importance of caring for the poor.”, “I’ve enjoyed learning the Manda language.”, “I now have a true picture of who Jesus is.”, “By studying the themes in the book of Luke, it helps see the book as a whole, it pulls this very long book together.”, “Luke shows how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament.”, “You taught very clearly.”, “You didn’t stray into discussing a particular perspective or denominational position, but kept us on the key themes of the workshop from the Word of God.”

The weather, interesting facts and gifts

It was warm! The church we held the workshop in wasn’t too stifling, but it wasn’t exactly cool either – it was cooler to sit outside in the shade of a tree, which we did during our chai and lunch breaks. It was wonderfully refreshing to go swimming in the evenings, as the sun set over the lake and the hills of Malawi became silhouetted against the changing colours of the sky. (Apparently it’s a 4-5 hour boat ride to cross the lake to Malawi.)

By the lake

It was a rather warm walk to and from the church each day, which must have been about a mile from the guest house, but it provided a nice opportunity to chat with my colleagues. I found out that Erasto was one of the first students at the local secondary school, when it opened in 1990. At that time there were very few secondary schools around, and very few students from primary school passed their exams and entered the next level, but he was one of two from his year at school to make it. As the school was new, they were still establishing things and building. He said that one of the punishments you could be given as a student was to walk to the lake, 3-4km away, to fill buckets with water to water the newly planted coconut tree plantation belonging to the school.

I also heard that the area is somewhat known for ushirikina (which the dictionary translates as ‘superstition’ but I think has strong connotations of witchcraft), especially when it comes to people dying in the water. Maybe this is because some of the deaths seem unexplainable, so people look to supernatural reasons for the deaths. Sadly this can lead to accusations and blame against innocent people (i.e. blaming them for causing the deaths through the use of witchcraft).

On the last day of the workshop I was very touched by one older lady who brought me a gift of peanuts (which are farmed in the area) and another who gave me some cloth. The latter gift was rather awkward in that it was some cloth that she had been wearing! I had said to her how nice it was and she said she had two pieces of the same fabric, so she would give me one. Despite my protestations and the fact that she clearly understood I hadn’t paid the complement in order to be given the fabric, she still wanted to give it to me, so embarrassed and yet also warmed by her kindness, I accepted the gift with a smile, saying I would remember her every time I wore it. At the second workshop I received two more bags of peanuts, which I passed onto Erasto and Faraja, and a bag of sweet potatoes!

Church

On Sunday morning I went to the Catholic church where we had held the workshop. It was my first time to attend a Catholic service and I was pleasantly surprised. In contrast to the very loud and lively church I normally attend, it was refreshingly calm and quiet. The words of the liturgy were good and the sermon was engaging. The only problem I had was that I couldn’t participate properly, as I didn’t know the words of the liturgy and no-one had books with it in, they just knew it by heart; also kneeling to pray on the hard wooden benches was somewhat painful! At the end of the service I was fascinated by a little addition from the padre: first he talked about the importance of keeping careful accounts at home so that you can assess your living costs and work out how to use your money wisely (this came about after the church’s income and expenditure had been read out for everyone to hear), and secondly he talked about the importance of drinking plenty of clean water as they enter into the dry season. I thought it was great that he did this, a very holistic approach to ministry!

Sunday lunch

Delicious fried fish with ugali

I thought I’d easily be able to find somewhere to get lunch in the village, but the first place I tried (where our workshop food had come from) wasn’t producing food that day. I stopped to enquire at a little shop, and they very kindly got me a chair to sit on in the shade while they phoned around their various contacts to see where I could get food. They found someone close by who could rustle up some ugali and fish for me, so that is what I eventually ate, in a tiny café just a few doors down from the shop. I think the owner of the café was at a funeral, so that’s why there wasn’t any fresh food available there already, though there were left-overs from the previous day. (I’m glad they cooked me something fresh – I think eating day-old rice that hasn’t been kept in a fridge, in such a warm place as this, would just be asking for food poisoning.)

Next stop Lituhi, workshop #2

Lituhi Catholic church

Monday morning we caught the bus to Lituhi for the next workshop. I wondered what had happened to Erasto, as he wasn’t around at the time I’d been told to head to the bus stop. It turned out that he’d gone off to visit his cashew nut farm! A year and a half ago he planted five acres of cashew nut trees, so he wanted to check up on their progress; they should start to bear fruit three years after planting. So he was already on the bus that we were to catch, and we continued on together to Lituhi. It was our first time to hold a workshop there, and we were discouraged to find less than half the people we’d hoped would attend; once again they were all from Catholic and Anglican churches. We met in a meeting room at the Catholic church. The church was impressive, built around 100 years ago, on a big plot of land with lots of other parochial buildings. Built on a hill, it caught the breeze, which was a relief as I was finding the weather too warm. After the first day of the workshop was over, we went to visit the pastor of one of the other church denominations to see if we could encourage him to attend. He said he’d got the dates mixed up, and that he would be there the next day. He wasn’t, but he did send a couple of young men from his church the next day. Only one of them came back for the last day, but while the overall response from that church was disheartening, God was obviously at work in that particular young man’s life. Later someone else in the workshop passed by that church and saw that the young man was in full flow teaching Luke’s gospel, working through the Bible passages we had discussed in groups and using the same questions to get people talking! Praise God! This is such an encouraging answer to all our prayers for the workshops to bear fruit.

Studying passages from Luke together (the young man is the one
who immediately started teaching what he learnt, in his own church)

That first night in Lituhi it was hard not to wish I was back in Nsungu. The guesthouse room was small and very warm with lots of mosquitos and with loud music coming from somewhere, and the tiny en-suite bathroom was just a toilet (long-drop) and a bucket of water. No chance of a swim in the lake, as Lituhi is over an hour’s walk away from the lakeshore, though there are some beautiful views out to the lake. In fact, I found that first evening and night so hard (the loud music and heat kept me from focusing on anything, though remarkably I did manage to get a reasonable night’s sleep), that the next day I asked to move to a room on the other side of the guest house, away from the music, and was given a much bigger, quieter room.

Reading a story in Manda. (The man on the left is
the one who invited us to his home for dinner.)

On our last evening there, one of the workshop participants, who seemed to somehow be related to both of my colleagues, invited us for dinner. He was a lovely older man, full of smiles and with a strong voice – you could tell he used to be a teacher! I was really touched by his hospitality – in my experience it’s very rare to be invited to someone’s home for an evening meal, and it was a lovely evening of chatting under the incredible display of stars before going indoors to eat, while our hosts waited outside. There was a choice of three carbohydrates! Ugali made from fermented cassava (which was what Erasto chose to eat), ugali made from maize (which was what I chose) and rice (which is what Faraja chose), served with chicken (they’d kindly cooked me some without onions) and then a remarkably nice papaya for afters (in my personal opinion, papaya can taste and smell disgusting, but this was a good one). I still don’t quite understand the custom I often encounter of leaving your guests alone to eat – I asked my colleagues about it, and it seems to be something to do with wanting your guests to eat freely, without inhibition.

Heading home

Thursday morning I was up by 5.30am, after a restless night, in order to catch the 6am bus. Erasto kindly got up and walked with me to the bus stand to make sure everything would be okay. He and Faraja were staying behind to do more work – community testing the first part of Genesis (this involves checking their translation with people in the community to see if it communicates clearly and accurately in the Manda language). Four hours later, after a fairly bumpy ride and feeling sorry for the lady next to me experiencing travel sickness, we arrived in the town of Songea, where I bought a ticket for my next bus and went for a short walk to stretch my legs while I waited for it to arrive. Thankfully, the next leg of the journey was all on tarmac and we arrived in the town of Njombe about 5pm. Someone took me to a ticket office to get a ticket for the next day’s final bus ride back to Mbeya and then I found myself something to eat from a market area, made up of a long line of wooden shacks, just outside the bus stand (a chip omelette – one of my favourite Tanzanian fast-food dishes, and fruit) before walking five minutes down the road to a guest house I had been recommended. I smiled at the contrast between my room here and the rooms I’d had in in Umanda – here there was a thick blanket (which I definitely needed) compared to just sheets in Umanda (which I barely needed), the provision of warm water for having a wash (definitely welcome in the cool weather here) compared to the relief of having a wash in cool water in the warmth of Umanda, and wonderfully there was no need for a mosquito net. It’s amazing how much the climate can change within just a few hours of travelling in Tanzania, due to altitude or proximity to a large lake or the sea.

Friday morning was another horribly early start, with another five hours to endure on a bus with loud music videos that I tried not to look at, as the dancing is somewhat sensual and entirely inappropriate for the mix of ages on a bus. (It’s common to show videos on longer bus journeys – sometimes you are fortunate and get gospel choir videos, but often they are secular music videos or soap opera style dramas.) By 11am I was back in Mbeya and walking the half mile or so home from where the last bus dropped me off. Home sweet home, with so many reasons to be thankful to God for all he had done for me and through me on the trip. Thank you God.