How to plough the shamba

I’ve just returned from a week away in the highlands – not the bonny hills of Scotland but the equally breath-taking hills of the southern highlands of Tanzania, which includes the Kinga and Vwanji language areas where we were staying. The journey to the Kinga language area took us through some beautiful scenery, including Kitulo National Park – a plateau over 2600m above sea level, home to great numbers of wild flowers. If only we could have seen it all! A good part of the journey was in thick fog. This, coupled with a pretty rough dirt road and not knowing exactly where we going meant that it took us five hours to reach the Lutheran Centre where we were to stay, arriving in the dark. The next morning revealed that we were located in a beautiful place surrounded by mountains and with woodland that could easily be mistaken for the forests of the UK’s own highlands.

We were there to hold a seminar on how to lead and prepare Bible studies. This method of studying God’s Word is a new concept in the majority of churches here, but as the participants came to understand how it works, they saw its benefits and what a useful tool it could be. However, they found it very challenging to write suitable questions and to identify the main teaching point of a passage. There is a huge need for church leaders to receive more teaching in the Bible, as their own Bible knowledge is often poor due to a lack of theological education and availability of Bible resources. It has been said that Tanzania is over-evangelised and under-taught, and this is a reality that I have seen over and over again.

After two days in Tandala (the village where we were staying) we moved onto the Vwanji language area, still in the hills, to hold two more seminars – one for Sunday school teachers and another one on Bible studies. As we waited for all the participants to arrive (there is no such thing as starting on time) we got into conversation about the shambas all around us. Almost every family has a shamba – a plot of land for growing food (somewhat bigger than an allotment but much smaller than farms in England). The Vwanji language area has fertile soil and plentiful rainfall and as the climate is cool they are able to grow similar crops to what we grow in the UK – right now seems to be cabbage season, and there were also numerous potato patches to be seen, maize crops and sunflowers. They were amazed that we usually just use a spade and fork in digging our allotments, while they work the earth with a hoe. (They were equally surprised to hear that I have never held a hoe in my life and wouldn’t know what to do with it.)

After getting back from this trip (which was challenging, fun, interesting and saddening, but I’ll spare you all the details), I have been reflecting on the work that we are doing and how we can develop it. I feel like we are trying to plough a very large shamba. The shamba are the churches here and the ploughing is the call we have in Scripture Use to help people engage with God’s Word, to handle it correctly and in so doing to grow in a knowledge of God and see lives being changed. So far, I feel like we have only ploughed a tiny corner of the shamba; we need to reach further and dig deeper. The question is, how? Should we use the hoe or the spade – what tool is most appropriate for the soil here? One thing is clear, teaching is desperately needed at all levels. I’ve been reading through Hebrews and this section (6:1-3) struck me as being as relevant here in Tanzania as it was to the Hebrews: “Therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God….And God permitting, we will do so.”

May God show us the way to plough the shamba here, and give us the tools to do so.

From the mundane to the divine and the ridiculous to the sublime

You just never know what a day will hold. This week in the office hasn’t exactly ranked as one of the most interesting, as I’ve spent most of it dealing with rather mundane matters – administrative preparation for a workshop and drafting a budget for the next fiscal year. One day, I was doing just that, when two of my colleagues returned to the office from having been out helping a relative who had been wrongly imprisoned. They brought the relative with them, and explained that as they left the prison they had been able to share the gospel with him, using his release from captivity to freedom as an illustration of what Christ has done for us. Nothing like making the most of every opportunity. After talking to the man some more, he wanted to become a follower of Jesus, so there and then, in the office, my colleague led him in a prayer and we all prayed over him. From budgets to salvation, from the mundane to the divine!

Yesterday I left work under an ominous looking sky. Sure enough, the thunder rumbled and halfway home I had to take shelter under a tree where I continued to get wet, despite my huge umbrella. When the tropical downpour eased to torrential rain, I ventured out as otherwise I may have been stuck there a very long time! I nervously crossed the bridge over the river only to be confronted by a waterfall instead of the steps that I normally climb. There was no way I could get up there, so I had to turn round and take a longer route. My trainers were fill of dirty water and my skirt clung to my legs. I have never been happier to get home and change! Unfortunately, I found my bed had a big wet patch on it and some books in the lounge were also damp. The leaks on my roof obviously hadn’t been fixed as promised! The rain you get here really is ridiculous, and right now, there’s plenty of it!! In the evening I had some friends round to eat pancakes and watch ‘Anne of Green Gables’ – perhaps that can’t quite be called ‘sublime’ but it was certainly fun.

I wonder what will happen next week?!

Impressions from a trip to the Ndali language area

Banana trees, mountains, red soil, rice and beans, ‘Mwagona’, rough roads, sacrifice and hardship. These were the impressions left on my mind by a trip to Isoko last week, a village in the Ndali language area (a five hour drive from Mbeya). Although it is just a village, it is a hive of activity as the district hospital is located there, powered by hydro electricity. The purpose of my visit was to train Sunday School teachers (assisted by two colleagues from Mbeya). Twenty attended the workshop, some having travelled some distance from neighbouring villages, who then stayed overnight in Isoko for the duration of the workshop. Our Literacy / Scripture Use Coordinator for the Ndali language area, has a bike ride of 11km over rough roads to get to Isoko, which he does every day that he needs to be in the language office. This is just one example of the hardships to be faced living in a such a remote area. As I talked to him further I learned more of his life and how he came to be a pastor – it was amazing to see how God has led him since his childhood, and I found it personally very challenging to hear of the sacrifices he made in the process. His parents couldn’t afford to put him through secondary school so, encouraged by the church where he was already taking leadership responsibilities while still in his early teens, he headed to Bible college. Although he got some help with the funds he needed for this, he also wove baskets well into the night in order to sell them to help pay his fees. This makes me think, how much do we value the education that we have received? How much would I be willing to sacrifice to gain further education to help me in my job?

The workshop itself went well, with the participants actively engaging in what we taught, but as usual they really struggled to find the main teaching point of a Bible passage and to think how to teach that to children. Once again, I found myself asking God, “What can we do? How can we help people to grow in a knowledge of God’s Word? How can these teachers teach children the Bible effectively, if they themselves do not know your Word and don’t receive good teaching in the church?” Some of the teachers didn’t even have a Bible, yet alone any other resources! (We took books to sell, including Bibles, as they have no other way of accessing these resources other than to take the bus-converted-from-a-lorry public transport to nearby towns over four hours away). Despite this, I hope and pray that they will all have learned a few new skills that will help them in their role as Sunday school teachers, and if nothing more, they will have been encouraged that what they are doing is important and will have gained a new vision for their work.

Isoko itself is a beautiful place, and our Coordinator there took us for walks to show us more of the area – hence my impressions of mountains, red soil and banana trees! I loved the community village feel – the Coordinator seemed to know everyone and had a word to say to just about everyone we met! (‘Mwagona’ is the first greeting you make in the Ndali language).

And finally you might be wondering what the ‘rice and beans’ is about. For six out of the seven meals that we ate on the trip, we had rice and beans! I confess to taking my own little supply of food for breakfast – snack bars, bananas and Ribena! While I would choose beans over greasy meat stew any day, by the sixth time I had definitely lost my appetite for them!