Disappearing Village

This weekend Miriam hosted a meeting of area literacy teachers. In the process of gathering reports, one teacher asked if a village should be included in the list of literacy sites for 2008. If there was a class there, why shouldn't it be? The teacher replied, "Because the village no longer exists." It's not there anymore!?! What happened? A young college student died. The death was announced on the radio. In the middle of the night a group of young men, convinced that witchcraft caused the death, started burning the houses of the suspected sorcerers. When the frenzy of exorcism and mob justice ended, burnt out rubble marked the places where houses had been. The village was empty.

Young men burning houses where sorcery has been implicated in a death touched people we know twice in the last three months. Tata Nguti, a cooperating farmer in the Lusekele oil palm program, lost everything (house, furniture, clothes, cookware ...). The mob of young men accused him killing his son -- death possibly caused by a hemorrhagic fever. They either burned or uprooted part of his small plantation and torched part of the new palm nursery.

A month before that, Tata Emmanuel, the retired man who works in our house part time, had his house burnt down by Vanga youths after the death of his son. Neighbors protected him, but the flames reduced the family home to ashes and opened deep wounds in clan relations in Songo.

Why does this happen? The causes are very complex, but I might speculate on a few elements. First, people believe in sorcery. Where unusual or unexpected death is concerned, people often assume that someone caused it and begin looking for the smoking gun. The rules of evidence are fluid and suspicion can fall on even the most unlikely candidates. Second, young people neither trust state officials to administer justice nor respect the authority of the state. Mob "justice" can easily rush into the void, though everyone regrets it after the dust settles. Third, I think economic hardship has battered hopes of young people. Opportunities denied with no hope for change contribute to an almost unconscious angry resignation waiting for an excuse to explode. Explosions are inexcusable, but not incomprehensible.

What can Christians say? Christ offers freedom from the domination of all spiritual powers bent on evil. We don't have to react in a spirit of fear. Truth is important; but determining truth requires a clear head, keen eye and patience. We support order that assures security for all members of society. God intends for us to live in peace, without fear. Our civil authority should be just and worthy of our trust. Christ offers us hope, hope that our character can change, that the character of others can change. Where others seen only sickness, Christians expect healing. Where others abandon the work of building as futile, Christians see the finished product and the dignity in creating it through hard work and perseverance. Where Christ is Lord, hope abounds.

May Kingdom life capture these young men who for the moment can only react out of fear or anger or frustration or disillusionment or berserk abandonment. May the Church here find the words and witness that presents Good News in a compelling way.

Truck arrives at Lusekele

The first chapter of the ACDI truck saga ended this morning. On March 7th MIVA Suisse, a Catholic Christian mission devoted to solving transportation and communication problems for church projects around the world, approved ACDI's proposal to purchase a small transport truck. An unlikely coalition of American Baptist churches and individuals joined in the projet. emptytomb, a Champaign, IL-based foundation promoting increased commitment to God's global mission, added another $8.000 to the gifts of local congregations. And this morning, nearly eight months later, Timothée Kabila pulled up to the Lusekele depot, riding shotgun at the end the truck's maiden voyage, Kinshasa to Lusekele, carrying a load of supplies for the Vanga Evangelical Hospital.

For the past two weeks Timothée has been working feverishly to secure the final documents for the truck. Bureaucracy grinds slowly in the best of times. "Come back tomorrow" is the mantra of the licensing bureau clerk. A firm tone and persistant spirit win out in the end, but the trial tests one's patience.


So the Lusekele staff start off a new week with one tangible sign of God's accompanying presence. A new chapter, one of promise and challenge, opens. The truck is nothing more than an instrument. It's immediate purpose is three-fold: provide a reliable and reasonably priced transport for hospital and health zone supplies; give farmers a better profit margin by offering regular farm-to-processor transportation for manioc and oil palm fruit; provide ACDI Lusekele with a steady supply of agricultural raw materials for processing. The wholeness and well-being of people is the real objective though. If in four years hundreds of local families can say they are better off because of this truck we will be satisfied. It is simply a fruit of God's deep and abiding love for people.

The Vegetable Seed Lady

Planting season is a slow time for me and literacy classes in rural Congo. If they don’t stop altogether for those weeks, they usually slow down to maybe a review class per week to keep students from forgetting. In cities, people like following the academic calendar. So we throw a big International Literacy Day celebration in Kinshasa every year for publicity purposes and to encourage participants. This year we will celebrate 10 years of working together. We’ve got a refresher seminar for teachers planned for this weekend in Kinshasa and are working on the details for a teacher-training in Boma, a port city near the ocean.

In the meantime, my hands are full preparing and selling garden seeds. In the 80s Lusekele was the main garden seed source for all of Bandundu province, and, though Center attention has moved to other things, it is remembered and people still ask for seeds from Lusekele agents. Dry season is prime time for vegetable gardens, when people can’t forage for wild greens and manioc greens get scarce and tough.

One doesn’t make much money selling seed at the prices village people are willing to buy them at (4-9 cents/ package), but I see it as a service. In the past 2 months I’ve prepared and sold somewhere around 550 packages of seeds for amaranth greens, bilolo (a popular broad-leafed green in the eggplant family), chili peppers, tomato and malabar spinach. I’ve not been able to supply requests for collard seeds, cabbage, okra, eggplant and celery seeds. In the case of celery, the seed viability in our heat and humidity is too short for unrefrigerated seeds.

My most enthusiastic customers are Vanga Hospital patients and their helpers, from all over the region. I get mobbed every time I go there. As I sell, I dispense gardening advice: prepare a special seedbed for your seeds up off the ground so that wandering chickens, goats, pigs or grasshoppers don’t kill the majority of sprouts before they get strong enough, and so that you can take better care of them.

Green Revolution Possible -- with a fight

A green revolution is so tantalizingly close in Congo . . . and still so very far away. New high yielding varieties of manioc, peanuts, cowpeas and corn could easily DOUBLE food production if adopted widely. But few farmers know they exist. For government representatives and officials, "Agriculture: priority number one!" is just a catchy slogan. Money for agricultural research and extension programs is never allocated. Most farmers never see an extension agent except when they are collecting taxes. Rural people remain in the dark. A small measure of prosperity remains an elusive dream. And those on the margins still scramble for daily bread.

In the meantime, Christians are committed to making at least a small difference in the Vanga area. ACDI's 4 extension agents make over 120 farm visits per month, sharing information and arranging for people to try the new varieties. Putting new technologies in the hands of farmers is simply a matter of making the connections and sharing seeds. Accepting the rutted roads, the river crossings, the bamboo mat for a bed is the cost of giving people hope.

The payoff? Small glimmers of hope begin to shine in people's lives -- God's offer of a green revolution that should be available to all. Here are some vignettes from the ACDI Lusekele notebook:

Mama Kinzuiy Munganga is married to a man in Mboma who has two wives. She has young children. A few years ago she was living a hand-to-mouth existence. She and the second wife worked for other women, hoeing fields, doing other chores. They both had a reputation for being lazy. The women paid her in manioc and seldom paid well. Her children really didn't get enough to eat and they never had enough money to pay for school.

ACDI was working with a farmer's association in Mboma promoting two simple changes -- a new variety of high-yielding peanut and several new disease-resistant manioc. For the first time many of her neighbors were producing surpluses from their tired out fields. Mama Kinzuiy saw the results and decided to join the group. That first year she learned (maybe for the first time) about growing a crop you are proud of and that satisfies your family's needs. The new varieties wowed her with a surplus. She redoubled her effort.

The next year her husband joined the group. And then his second wife followed. Within a couple of years they were regularly producing enough for the growing family and surpluses for sale. With the example and encouragement of the group, these two women with a reputation for laziness (probably more the result of resignation to the inevitability of poor harvests) became two responsible providers for their family.

Today Mama Munganga makes sure her children have enough to eat. She sends them to school. She even dares to dream that their lives will be different from the life that she was leading them toward just a few years ago.

Tata Mukobo is small man, with a wooly gray beard and an engaging smile. He has two families. Years and years ago he married and quickly had a passle of young children. Life was poor and hard. Tata Mukobo scrabbled to feed his family. School was hit and miss for the kids. Difficulty upon difficulty finally broke up that marriage. The kids are grown, the oldest having kids of their own. They have settled into the familiar, demanding life of subsistence farming. Without education their options are limited.

After the demise of the first marriage, Tata Mukobo married a younger women. She expected to have children of her own -- and she did. A few years later Tata Mukobo and a few friends formed a farmer's association to do some cooperative farming -- knowledge, strength and security in numbers perhaps. In 2002 the association fell in with ACDI Lusekele in order to try 4 new disease-tolerant, high-yielding varieties of manioc. Armed with better planting material and regular advice on best farming practices from a Lusekele extension agent, the group surprised even themselves with a bumper manioc crop, easily 3 times what they had been producing before.

They moved on to a high-yielding variety of peanuts and much better harvest. In 2004 Tata Mukobo planted some new high-yielding oil palm trees and continued with the new peanuts and manioc. This year the palms are really beginning to produce nuts. Surpluses and new oil production mean that the family eats better and the younger kids, the second family, are going to school now. And Tata Mukobo has even recovered some ground for his first family. The youngest finally finished high school. Farming income paid for his first year of university, a new door of opportunity.

Kapita Gabi lives in Wamba. He and his wife have 6 growing kids. The oldest two are in their last year of high school and the youngest is 6. The family started growing new high-yielding manioc in 2004. In four years they have literally put a roof over their head and sent the kids to school. This year they built a new house out of adobe bricks. Bricks can be (and were) made by hand ("sweat equity"). But manioc and peanut surpluses paid for the tin sheeting for the roof. Kapita has contributed money for his youngest
brother to go to college.

Kintibidi of Longo, near Djuma, moved out of his village when disputes in the extended family starting gnawing his family's well-being. He came 40 kms to Lusekele to get manioc seed cuttings from ACDI when he heard about the new "miracle" varieties. He planted a small multiplication field and the next year supplied the whole village with cuttings. His farmer's association continued with several big multiplication fields which provided thousands of meters of new cuttings. They sold those to farmers from other areas for a big profit. And with the income he was able to secure rights to a farm of 32 acres. In rural Congo that makes him a wealthy person. He is now working on establishing a small plantation of oil palms.

Secure water supply in the village again -- after 35 years!

Lusekele was built as a farmer training school in the early 1960s. Classrooms, housing for staff and workers, complete water system, generator electricity, labs, a fully equipped farm garage, workshops. But government commitment to training farmers soon waned. Conscientious leaders scrambled to keep the center open by trading Lusekele's wealth in equipment for operating funds. Less scrupulous leaders sold the family jewels to enrich themselves. A decade later, when the Baptist Convention of Congo agreed to base its small farm resource center and extension program at Lusekele, little but the land and buildings was left.

In 1985 when I arrived here for the first time, the remains of an old belt-driven Stork piston water pump lay in the overgrown ruins of a pump house -- no motor, no roof on the shelter, no connecting pipes. Roof-fed cisterns were the only source of clean drinking water. Irrigation was a wild dream. During the dry season workers' children carried household water from a swamp-side spring over a mile away. The water isn't always clean.

Yesterday, water flowed from the Kwilu River 500 meters to a storage tank in the middle of the center for first time in 35 years. This storage tank feeds 2 small irrigation lines for dry season seed production and hose irrigation in our demonstration garden. A little further down the line, the pipe feeds a biosand water filter that will give clean drinking and cooking water for the 20 worker's households (over 100 people) that live here.
The line continues on to the the manioc soaking bins, where ACDI processes high-quality manioc chips. Another line feeds a storage tank next the palm digester, putting us one step closer to improving the oil palm extraction operation.

Timothée Kabila caught my attention this morning. "The water system is like a corn seed," he said. "With a little care it will mature. Eventually it will begin to multiply, producing seeds of other good changes here at Lusekele." We are content for the moment to celebrate water in the village. But ultimately, I expect water to bring new life and hope to ACDI and the people we serve.

One more step forward

Two years ago five friends from Oregon and Illinois visited Lusekele and help put a roof over a large water storage tank, a key feature of the planned irrigation / dringking water system for the agricultural center. We all expected to install a pump and system piping a few weeks later. Instead we embarked on a two-year odyssey. But that odyssey is almost at an end.

Last week the pump and motor were installed in the refurbished pump house. By Tuesday morning (Sept 2) the major plumbing around the pump and the first 50 feet of piping up the hill were installed. That afternoon the Orbit pump pushed the first few gallons of water through the pipe.


Wednesday we worked out kinks with the system. The team laid the first 200 meters of pipe and installed two connection boxes.

This morning the team plans to glue the remaining 280 meters of pipe. Of course there are still a few dozen items to clear before the system will be fully functional, but we should be able to try a full test sometime next week. Imagine the celebration of that first water in the tank.

Early rainy season

(Prepared August 15, posting delayed by temporary failure of internet service . . . So what else is new?)

The rain came in unexpectedly, a few drops tapping on the forest leaves as Jean Luc and I came back up from the pump house. Then as we checked a support piece for the pump, the sky grew darker and big drops started to plop on my back. A few minutes later the Lusekele kids came running back from the peanut fields, soaked to the skin but thoroughly enjoying the sheets falling from the sky, the puddles and a break from the fields. Of course any runoff from the roof means fewer trips off to the spring, so the kids were collecting the little streams in small buckets or plastic jugs.

I guess rainy season has really arrived. Already two big rains have fallen since the beginning of August. With the second big rain about 4 days ago the scramble to plant fields began. But it's so early. The season usually starts rolling along about the last week in August. There is still a risk that this is just a false start. But the third rain yesterday guarantees that there will be enough moisture to keep germinating peanuts alive and growing.


The bathroom water barrel is dark gray from the field-burning soot washed off the roof. But people aren't complaining. Water from the sky is a lot less trouble than walking to the spring over a kilometer away.

In another couple of weeks, the trek to the spring may be history. The water pump that Spokane Valley Baptist Church helped buy finally arrived last weekend. If the young boys finish breaking rock for gravel, the pumphouse floor can be poured on Monday. Then, we can start installing the pipeline to the tank that our Missionary Partnership Team and friends helped cover two summers ago. The reading in chapel this morning was from Psalm 107: "Thank the Lord, for He is good, His love for us endures forever. Let all people whom the Lord has saved praise Him." Nice reminder.

Land ! Land ! We need land !

Today is a Congolese holiday. Still, 15 minutes after chapel, John the IT tech had our replacement wireless radio ready to go back up into the tree. The climbing rope was already in place and Yulu was putting on the safety harness to climb the 60 dizzying feet to the antenna mount. Forty minutes later the antenna mast was in place and John confirmed that we had a good signal. The internet is back up and running after nearly 2 weeks down.

A holiday morning should be a good time for thinking about the details of an extension database, don't you think? The office is quiet. Interruptions can be avoided. Well, not this morning. The problem is land. Songo, the village between Lusekele and Vanga, has run out. There isn't enough land for everybody to plant fields like they want to. Perhaps inevitably, some people think that the only way to survive is to squat on the land of other people and hope to avoid eviction before the harvest.

For at least ten years families with land bordering the Lusekele concession have tested ACDI's resolve to protect its land. The ACDI staff have tried to resolve the disputes reasonably, peacefully. They have appealed to the church's legal title to the land. They have trotted out the original traditional agreements made with land chiefs. They have even had the governor defend ACDI's right to the land. Local justice can be brutal. Christian compassion often counseled patience. Police beatings and fines would fall on poor families ill-fixed to handle additional troubles. Usually the incursions last a single planting season.

But one family seems to be playing for much higher stakes. They have cleared fields on concession land three years running. Deaf to reason they have begun to clear Lusekele forest again this year. And they upped the ante by claiming that ACDI has illegally occupied half the concession (nearly 125 acres) that really belongs to the people of Songo. The riot that interrupted my database reflections this morning came from the land chiefs from a rival village on the other side of Lusekele.

"If ACDI can't put an end to the incursions by Songo people, we will," the assistant chef yelled, veins popping on his throat. Timothée narrowly averted an informal mélée between the two factions. For ten minutes abuse was hurled back and forth until people had vented a store of frustration. But it shows that producing more food from a fixed portion of land is not just an interesting problem in agronomy. Land is life for people depending almost completely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Every field has to produce more AND produce it more often. Subsistence rain-fed agriculture in our area yields 10% to 20% of what an expert North American farmer does, sometimes less. Reserve land that can be left in soil building fallow is already a forgotten luxury for the people of Songo. More efficient crop varieties can mean higher yields where nutrients are scarce. Soil building legume plants can speed up rebuilding soil nutrients. Closer attention to best farming practices can boost results too.

We need more time before subsistence farmers reach the breaking point. Songo "leaders" this morning asked, "What is ACDI going to do to satisfy our need for fields?" The real answer is let's all learn better ways to farm and nurture the land as quickly as we can. Further incursions on concession land threatens to compromise ACDI's research and extension activities. They distract extension staff from helping people focus on better farming. They undermine ACDI's efforts to generate income that supports research and extension activities. They degrade the last remnants of forest reserve in the area. And if they continue they will provoke inter-village violence.

We pray that people can stay focused, adopting proven improvements in farming and using the land God gave us much more efficiently.

They did it! (May 31st)

(May 31, Oregon Cascades) -- Friday afternoon, the last day in May, Miriam and I arrived in Welches, a hamlet deep in the forest just west of Oregon's Mt. Hood. After a week of unseasonably cool and unsettled weather (funnel clouds in Oregon!!??), the afternoon sun warmed not only the body but the spirit. Shirt-sleeve weather. At least the rehearsal would be remembered for deep blue sky, golden sunlight slanting down through the Douglasfir trees and vine maple and the smiles of people who recognize God's benificence.

Just to make things clear, Mark (our son) is marrying Elena (Ann and Bruce Borquist's daughter.) And on Friday afternoon members of our two clans are beginning to gather at Camp Arrah Wanna to share the event with them and celebrate. Grandpa and Grandmas, aunts and uncles, cousins and unnumbered offspring of the above. And friends too. From Vermont, Florida, Illinois, Texas, California and Washington -- literally from all corners of the continental US. Friday evening after the rehearsal, over 60 people share pizza, stories, a riverside marshmallow roast and amusements afterwards -- a proper start for the celebration.

Saturday morning, rising leisurely for breakfast at 9, we're greeted by a light shower dampening the asphalt parking lot. Congolese wax prints in hues of green and blue brighten the reception tables. And by 10:30 cloud breaks open and sunshine dries the damp. The arbor festooned with local flowers and tropical palm branches. At noon clan and friends swell, clad in Indian saris, Korean kimonos, Philippine barongs, Chinese prints, Indonesian kilts, biker's leathers, Washington clammers' slickers. Mark and Elena's connections to the nations so vividly displayed.

Underneath the early afternoon sun and the red-brown columns of conifers, we heard the expressions of love and commitment, advice to those embarking on marriage, and reminder of the privilege of a lifelong commitment to another. Mark and Elena exchanged vows before God and before the community of extended family and friends. And we (both family and friends) added our own vows to encourage and support them in their commitment to one another. After all, marriage IS more than the private choice of two individuals.

What an afternoon! Mark and Elena (and their siblings and cousins) serving guests. Games on the green. Pictures. Snatched conversations with family, friends and friends newly met. Sending Mark and Elena off to a new life together. Community.

They did it! We heartily approve.

Literacy classes in the Sungu church

You could be pardoned for wondering about all those literacy teacher training seminars, whether they actually result in anything. We wondered that after we did the seminar in Bulungu, a town 19-20 miles upriver from us, in 2006 (it’s on your map of Congo). The silence from Bulungu and the other villages that participated was deafening. Once I ran across a hospital patient at Vanga who said, “Oh, yes. We have reading classes at Bulungu First. They’re great.” But that was all.

Then in January I bumped into the teachers we had trained for Sungu at the hospital in Vanga. They said, “Oh yes. We started classes in Sungu and have been teaching right along. We stopped just recently because of Clotilde’s (one of the teachers) health.” But why have I never heard about your classes? I wondered. “We’ve been sending in reports all along to our district women’s president to send to you,” they said.

In March, on my way back home from Masi-Manimba, I had had to spend the night in Bulungu and got to talk to some of the women there. I told them about the new opportunities in the country for adult literacy, and their advantage to be had in being registered with the state with us, so they promised to send me the reports and money for book orders.

Then the Sungu ladies again came to the hospital, after which they came to visit me. Their major concern this time was glasses for themselves and their students. We arranged that an optometrist and I should visit them the first weekend in May, right after I got back from Sona Bata.

So, where in the world IS Sungu? Well, it’s not on my map. But it’s close to Bulungu. They claim to be the market basket of Bulungu, producing manioc, vegetables and rice for the town. There were 3 ways to get there. The way through Bulungu is short but the narrow foot trails winding up and down hills are not good for a bicycle. A shortcut across country requires a river crossing. There used to be a bridge. Now a canoe man ferries people across for a fee. The well-travelled truck road wanders the long way around, through the “county seat” of Nko. Extra miles mean extra work.

As it turned out, the optometrist was just back from another trip and too tired to go with me. (He plans to go another time on his own.) So I set off on my own by bicycle. I had mislaid my directions. Eager villagers mis-directed me a couple of times along the way. Instead of following the cross-country shortcut, I wound up in Bulungu. There they advised me to leave my bicycle with an acquaintance and ask for Sungu people in the market who were ready to go home. It’s about a 2½ hour walk from Bulungu to Sungu, down to the rice paddies, up one ridge, down, up, down and up once more to Sungu. Quite a haul to market, and a barrier to carrying very much.

We had a very good visit. The village chief is a church member, and claimed me as his guest. He even loaned me a foam mattress – probably his and his wife’s. I visited the literacy classes, held in the local primary school, and corrected the teachers’ techniques. They had forgotten some of the techniques we had taught them, so were taking way too long with their lessons. As a result, whereas the first class should have been finished with the first book and into the second, it was still just a little over halfway through the first book. I hope they will now buzz through rather quickly, as the students’ reading and writing skills are pretty well developed by now.

As always, I talked with lots of people about their agriculture, their plans for economic development of their village, health in the village, their schools and their church. The Sungu Baptist church was awaiting a new pastor. In the meantime, the old laypastor and our literacy French teacher were holding things together. But the old laypastor needed new glasses badly to do his job well. Generally he would ask the younger man to read the Bible, then either he or Kawita would preach.

The village was suffering from a reputation for a lack of good roads. They produced lots of peanuts (every house had sacks and sacks stored in it), but needed to persuade truckers to come to the village to get them. The chief was a relatively young man, hardworking, dynamic, with good ideas, determined to rule for the good of the village and be respected as a Christian. One drawback though: neither he nor his wife knew how to read and write. My visit brought respect to the literacy classes as a legitimate development activity for the good of the village, and to the teachers. The chief and his wife hadn’t been sure about these classes and had not joined, but will now.

A young man from the class, Timothée, walked me back to Bulungu to pick up my bicycle. He had had to drop out of school at 6th grade, when his father died. Not only was there was no one to pay his school fees any more, but he had to help his mother support his younger siblings. He’s extremely poor (on our way, he had no shoe on his right foot, and only a broken one on his left), but this is his chance to catch up and make something more of his life. This is one motivated guy.

Please pray for Timothée, the chief and his wife, and for our teachers, who are doing a good job in serving their village, and deserve payment and recognition. Also pray that that optometrist will get to the village, and that I will be able to help them buy their glasses.

Sona Bata literacy workshop

Kinshasa - May 11, 2008

Sona Bata is one of those old mission stations in Bas-Congo province, an hour and a half west of Kinshasa by good paved road (Hurray!). It is mostly known for medical work and its excellent nursing school. Early on, it was the base for evangelism efforts in a vast area, and they had a great spiritual awakening and turning to Christ in the early 1920s. Many among the Ntandu, Nlemvo and Ndibu peoples (all sub-tribes of the Kongo, each with their own dialect of Kikongo) came to know Christ.

But Sona Bata and its churches have been neglected over a long period of time, and ravaged by conflicts and scandal in the church. Church members and their children are turning away in droves to other churches, sects and, particularly, politico-mystical nativistic movements. With some 60 local congregations, only 5 pastors in the whole district, including the two supervising pastors, have had any pastoral training. The rest of the churches are led by glorified deacons, given the title of pastor by default.

The Sona Bata women asked the literacy team to do a literacy teacher-training seminar at Sona Bata 2 years ago. After postponing several times for various reasons, we finally pulled it off two weeks ago, through the energies of the assistant district pastor, Pastor Luzolo. We were warmly welcomed at Sona Bata.

The training went extremely well. Participants were more capable than typical participants in other workshops. People in the Sona Bata area these days may use Lingala about as much as they do Kikongo, depending on their age. But they still have a strong cultural preference for Kikongo. So the team used Kikongo, which I don’t speak. I could follow it, though, and helped in several places despite the fact that I could only speak in Lingala. (Frustrating in the seminar when I couldn't demonstrate anything! It's just the grammatical organization of the language that I need to learn, to be able to speak.)

I'm not used to having people pick up techniques so quickly. In our Bandundu workshops we build in a lot of extra time. But at Sona Bata all the participants could read and write rapidly. They were able to digest the general principles of teaching adults in two days rather than three. This gave us all kinds of extra time to assure a training we could be proud of.

Attendance was rather disappointing: we had 9 participants in Kikongo and 9 participants (5 students training to be schoolteachers audited for their requirements) in French. However, there were 7 villages represented, which is all to the good. Not quite the 60 parishes Pastor Luzolo hoped for, but perhaps all that could be realistically hoped for in view of the fact that many pastors have been recently moved and Pastor Luzolo himself has only been in Sona Bata for a year. Those people appear to be quite motivated, so we can hope for something solid to happen, particularly since they are so close to Kinshasa, and can be visited easily and can come visit Rose and Mama Yango, the Kikongo-speaking trainer.


As usual, we spent some time with the women. (I learned how to make kwanga!) They appreciated that Rose is involved with the denominational women's structure and Mama Yango is a district president, so both could deal authoritatively with their problems.

Apart from the district pastor, who is old and tired and does not want to do anything, the leadership we met in Sona Bata particularly interested us. We had very stimulating conversations. Pastor Luzolo’s a local boy (his grandfather is the chief of the area, and we also met his mother, sister, nieces and a grandmother) who went to Kinshasa for pastoral training and stayed to serve Kinshasa churches, like so many others. But he really loves the Lord, and when called, came back, responsible for evangelism in the district, though with no money to work with. Others I’ve talked to consider Pastor Luzolo a gifted evangelist. His mother is also a dynamic women's leader. He is very concerned about development, particularly agricultural development, and particularly from a Christian stewardship point of view and has gathered a cadre of like-minded Christian ag people around him. He is trying very hard to turn the church around. He has just started an in-service training school for his district pastors who are without pastoral training, and wanted my advice on what it should contain. Happily I had brought my copies of the Kikongo language Mobile School laypastor training curriculum, which he had not seen, and could give him ideas from the Kikongo Pastoral Institute. His lack of a budget to do all these things is one reason for his interest in agriculture: they want to grow and sell crops to support all these other projects. So they really wanted to talk to Ed, and did so today.

Please pray for Pastor Luzolo and his team and the Sona Bata churches, their pastors and the people we trained for adult literacy, that together God will use them to bring new life, new capacities and new solutions for this area.

She did it ! !

Underneath an enormous tent pavillion protected from a May sun with obvious ambitions to be an August sun, Claremont-McKenna College celebrated the graduation of the class of 2008. Two hundred and thirty or so different people making the rite of passage from experimenting students to practicing adults -- our Rebecca among them.

Two grandmothers, a great-aunt, two great-uncles, a brother and two proud parents, gathered from the Pacific Northwest, southern California and Africa, joined the festivities. Friday afternoon we met some of Reba's close friends and their parents. Brittany Ruiz, another accounting major and Reba's dorm mate, was there with her parents. (Reba and Brittany will be looking for an apartment together in the Pasadena area in August.)

Meeting Professor Mark Massoud, Reba's advisor on both academic and spiritual matters, again was a particular blessing. For four years we have laid Reba in the Lord's hands when our own hands were too far away to be any practical use. Dr. Massoud is just one instrument of God -- guiding and encouraging Reba, giving her a picture of a committed Christian life, and charging her to follow the Lord herself.

For years, a valiant prayer warrior we know, Doris Templeton, has included Reba and Mark on her prayer list. She prays they would know the Lord in a deep way, meet other young people with wholesome and Christ-filled lives, and grow to be the people God wants them to be. We saw the fruit of those prayers this weekend -- Christian friends and mentors, Reba's achievements marked by a diploma and prospects for the future. Thank you, Lord.

Reba starts an internship in June with the Los Angeles Urban Project, a Christian outreach to marginalized people in the Pasadena area. In August she and Brittany start house hunting. And in September Reba plunges into the real world of auditing with the Pasadena office of the McGladrey and Pullen auditing firm. Way to go, Reba!!!

Palm manual ready for printing

Successful farmers around the world have wonderfully detailed knowledge of farming and the environment that should be the envy of any agricultural scientist. But the view that every semi-subsistence farmer is a peasant agricultural expert is too romantic. Most farmers in the Vanga area would give up farming in the blink of an eye if they could find another job that would feed their family. Most farmers are good enough to survive, but very few have the necessary expert knowledge needed to excel. And not many have a grandmother or aunt or father who is a reliable repository of all the accumulated expertise of the ancestors.

Apply this to family farmers that are interested in starting a small family plantation of oil palms. Most people that harvest palm nuts these days have experience only with wild palms or the old palms of the abandoned Unilever plantations. As far as they are concerned, God planted the palms and takes care of them. Most have given little thought to the conditions that make for a top-producing oil palm tree. They are content with whatever can be collected, unaware that oil palms have so much more potential. Expert knowledge is so scarce as to be non-existent. ACDI organizes a couple of grower’s seminars every year and farmers in the oil palm program benefit from 3 or 4 extension visits a year. But the small-scale grower has no simple reference at hand to guide him or her in the day-to-day management of nursery and plantation.

To rectify that handicap, I have been working on a manual for small-scale oil palm growers. It is 90 pages of basic advice written in relatively simple French with lots of illustrations. It is adapted from an English version developed for oil palm growers in highland areas of east and central Africa. But the extension staff here at Lusekele and I have tried to apply general principles to the more specific conditions of central Congo and highlight the specific experience of small-scale growers in the Vanga area. The manual aims to help farms adopt best sustainable palm growing practices and expand their vision of how productivity of palm oil production in the Kwilu can be improved.

Why French and not Kituba? Choosing a language for extension materials always poses a dilemma. Information in French can be used all across central Africa. ACDI is part of a development partnership that includes Presbyterians in the Kasai (Tshiluba speakers) and Mennonites in southeastern Bandundu (Pende speakers.) The manual could be useful in Lingala- and Kikongo-speaking areas too. By putting it in French right now, we make it possible for people in other regions of Congo to translate and adapt the information to their own conditions. True, Kituba would be a better choice for small-scale growers in the Vanga area. Translating the information into Kituba will be the next step.

ACDI advises and supports over 100 small farmer’s groups who have planted oil palms. Each group represents 5-25 families. Since 2003 we have helped over 700 farm families get started on planting over 825 acres of plantations, most less than an acre. By applying simple growing principles, a farm family can boost annual oil yield from 500 liters per hectare to over 2000 liters per hectare – a 300% increase.

Ed Noyes

Pre-Easter women's retreat at Mupulu

Every year during Easter week women in this area hold a retreat. It is so hard to get everyone together. The only form of transportation available to most people is walking. So the district women’s leaders decided to organize retreats around clusters of local congregations and send Bible study leaders to lead them. Three of us were sent to Mupulu, about 40 kms (25 miles) away. Mupulu was the mother church for all the villages around, so it is the logical place for them to gather.

The retreat was to start Maunday Thursday and go through Saturday. So we started out from here Wednesday at 5 a.m., just when it was starting to get light. The two Maries and me. Marie Mubangu is our pastor’s wife. Marie Dekka, lives in Milundu about 2½ miles away and years ago lived here at Lusekele. We got to Milundu about 6 to pick up Marie Dekka, and headed off at a good pace.

Our breakfast was in my basket, on my head. We took a road through the next two villages, had our breakfast, and then took off cross-country on a footpath shortcut down through a series of stream valleys. (The road meanders around on the hilltops.) It was a scorcher of a day and no one had brought enough drinking water. Energy and resolve evaporated in the heat. Down in bottom of the last stream valley, we couldn’t face the steep climb on the other side. Marie’s backpack was weighing heavily on her. The basket on my head was giving me problems. Then two guys offered to lend us a hand. They took our heaviest packs up the hill for us. We got up to the village and got a good drink (again and again), rested, and recovered; 19 miles down and only 6 more to go to Mupulu. By that time it had clouded over. The rain was off in the distance. But the cloud gave just enough respite from that sun to help us the rest of the way.

Our retreat theme was not an Easter or Passion week theme, but unity in Christ. Women from many district congregations had not participated in area women’s activities for the past year. The more active women wanted to know why (besides “having to walk a long distance.”) As we taught and listened to the ladies, it was apparent that these were congregations that were having a hard time, and that our theme was relevant, timely.

• In Mupulu, the big brick church building American Baptists had helped build in the 1960s, had lost a roof in a violent storm. The exposed walls fell apart. The congregation was demoralized, meeting in a palm-frond shelter. The women couldn’t see how they could raise the money for materials to rebuild. Even if they donated their produce, it wasn’t going to buy them much.
• Mupulu Village women weren’t cooperating with Mupulu church center women. When their president wanted to come to Vanga for meetings, no one wanted make the effort to come with her, when it came down to it. Nor did they really want to donate to district-wide or church-wide women’s work.
• At Lemfu, they haven’t had a pastor for two years, and also had a building program. While they had a dynamic president, they had a lot of work to do to build up their fellowship.
• At Mukoko, the other site that participated, the church was small and weak, with a lot of neo-paganism in the village. Furthermore, the woman they had chosen to lead them wasn’t really interested. (We said, “Replace her”.)

We suggested that they continue with our theme of unity in Christ and do a series of monthly area meetings, meeting in each village church in turn in order to encourage each other. Furthermore we launched two programs of round robin fundraisers in each cluster of churches this year, to help them with their various building programs. Mupulu’s case is by no means unique. Many of those big old churches built with foreign donations were not well built and are ready to come down, if they haven’t already. In nearly all cases, the present church would be hard pressed to replace them with more than a modest adobe or mud, wattle and thatch building.

Mupulu was also the site of some of our adult literacy classes, but they hadn’t met for a couple of years. The women were anxious to re-start classes. I gave them the good news of the national campaign, with its promise of more support, heard out their problems and promised to restore the teaching books, which had been taken away from them. Nlemfu wants to start too, and can as soon as Mupulu assigns them a spare teacher or two.

When the retreat ended on Saturday, we were determined to get back that evening to spend Easter in our own churches. Marie was playing a part in their Easter play. A Lusekele agent passed through on his motorcycle and offered to take some of our baggage. We gratefully accepted. We finally tore ourselves away by 2 pm, grateful to miss walking in the heat of the day.

We returned by the road this time. Even with the full moon, we didn’t want to have to negotiate dubious overgrown paths, threading our way up and down hills and skirting fishponds in moonlight. We passed another cluster of churches in the midst of the same retreat, and greeted everyone. One shortcut we took through a private farm, then the length of a village. All the kids of the village were outside playing and talking in the moonlight. At 10:30 we were dropping Marie Dekka off at her house, and rested a bit there. We got home just before midnight, sore, but happy.

The wonderful thing is that this journey and retreat created for us sacred space for truly celebrating Easter, the way that the Holy Week rituals were designed to do in the Catholic church. I didn’t have time to do Easter eggs or special breads, my usual markers for this greatest celebration in the Christian calendar, and my companions missed out on choir and play rehearsals, but it didn’t matter. Our “pilgrimage”, our reflections on Christian unity and love, and fellowship with our fellow Christians truly prepared us to celebrate the great event of Easter and Jesus’ gift of new life, abundant life, to us.

Masi 4.0 -- The real thing

I’ve just come home from Masi-Manimba, where we gave a literacy teacher-training seminar. Masi is on the main road between Kikwit and Kinshasa, not very far from us, as the crow flies. It is a large town and large church, with 7 sub-congregations and standing room only on most Sundays. This week at their district pastors’ meeting one of the items on their agenda was spinning one of these sub-congregations off to make a daughter church, and finding it a pastor. Masi is the administrative center for 60 village and town congregations, and the head pastor, Pastor Makasi was hoping to get adult reading classes in all 60. We made a start.

We seemed to have no end of trouble pulling this seminar off. It had been put off four times, when word came from Kikongo that Pastor Makasi was stuck at Kikongo without a way to get to Masi before us, and would we mind delaying our arrival another three days?

As it happened, the publicity for the seminar was effective but minimal. People were told to get there three days early (the date we’d been planning to start our travel), and were told neither the subject nor how long it would be, only that four women were to come from each village with some money, notebooks and pens. Pastor Makasi got home in good time after all, to find the church center full of restive women. When he told them he’d put it off, they rose up in arms. Already their food money was going and would be gone by the time we started. They said he’d better get us there pronto and get that seminar started on the original date or they were going home.

After his frantic phone call, we grabbed whatever travel possibilities we could and got going. Rose, Chantal and Raymond got a taxi that was going all the way to Kikwit from Kinshasa and got there Sunday evening, the day before we had to start teaching. I wasn’t so lucky. The earliest occasion I could find from Vanga was on Sunday morning. They broke an axle on the rocky road into the town that was my first leg, so we walked in. The next car had mechanical troubles halfway there, so we went very slowly. I got to Kikwit too late to find a taxi to Masi-Manimba, so had to find a hotel. Monday, the day the training was to start, I spent the morning waiting for one of the vehicules going to Masi to get going, praying that my colleagues had arrived and started teaching in my absence. Finally at 2:30 I took the bus, and got there late afternoon, to find that, indeed they had started.

On the bus, the passenger next to me got curious and when he found out what I was going to do, he said he was a Baptist church member, Bible League member and secretary for a community center that had been trying to do literacy in the next town over. Could he come?

Much of the next morning was consumed by administrative protocol (We had to visit town hall to meet and officially inform the administrator of what we intended to do in his town, and I, as a foreigner, am required to check in with the officials wherever I go.), it rained, and a crowd of Masi church women gave us an official singing and dancing welcome parade through the town. Finally we got started.

We were holding our training in the church sanctuary (no Sunday school classrooms), the French teachers’ section in one end and ours, the real literacy section in the other. When we passed the attendance sheet around, we had 150 people, including Timothy, my fellow passenger from the bus, three other young men and a pastor of the church.

It was quickly apparent that most of the women had no business being there. Most would be students in the classes that would be formed when we were gone. We invited them to listen at their pleasure and got on with it. When we got to the hard work of writing, most of the women disappeared, leaving the real seminar participants: about 35.

International demand to increase adult literacy has had an effect in Congo. Many Congolese organizations want to include literacy in their portfolio to make themselves attractive to donors, often without understanding what it is. We had a couple of local women politicians attend for a day or two, thinking to get copies of our training syllabus and teach it widely to women’s groups. They did not know that that would not constitute literacy teaching, but merely generalities on teaching adults and the importance of literacy.



All the delegates from one village church, Mbanza-Mundadi, were illiterate. They came because their pastor and pastor’s wife had had our training course in pastoral school and wanted us to send them books to teach with. All told, 7 of the seminar participants who stayed were women who had either never gone to school, or had forgotten how to read and write. We promised there would be a part for them. It is invaluable, when model lessons are given, and when participants are practice-teaching, to have the reactions of real beginners. When we came to that part, and these women found themselves actually reading and writing through such easy lessons, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. They begged for more lessons and quickly took on the role of teacher of their future teachers, correcting the seminar participants when they didn’t follow the method. They’re going to be formidable students, but the backbones of their classes!

The training seminar was supposed to end with a bang. We had been featured on the radio, and all were invited to the church service Sunday, when the graduation ceremony was held. But the participants from other villages were anxious to begin the walk home in good time, and we were rained out. We had a heavy rain from before dawn to 1:30 in the afternoon. Church started at quarter to two, with a fourth of the seats filled. It was good anyway and we ended at 5. Not quite a whimper.

With frequent heavy rains interrupting the proceedings, and the low level of reading and writing skills of many of the women delegates, we did not end up with enough practice time to ensure everyone’s teaching competency. Out of 33 participants, we certified 15. However, we made the rest promoters, and the young men who participated are very enthusiastic and energetic, promising to visit the others and work with them until they can teach.

In French, the big problem was the trainees’ own inadequate French, typical here in the provinces, where people have so much less general exposure. It is a particular problem in that curriculum, because so much responsibility rests on the teacher to complete the lessons from the guide. In all, we now have adult literacy teachers trained or half-trained for 7 towns and villages in the Masi area, 8 if we include the pastor couple at Mbanza-Mundadi. The Masi women had sent good delegates from each of their 7 sub-congregations, to make sure that they would have classes for each part of their town. We requested them to think of their surrounding villages too, within limits of time and energy.

Certainly this training is only a start, if you consider the 60 congregations of the district and the other villages and towns in the area. But if that start is well made, with good enthusiastic classes and mutual support, it can be built upon. They have great people and the timing is good. Pastor Makasi vows that this is only the beginning and they will be calling us back to complete the job with the other villages.

Thank you for your prayers. Please continue praying for the new teachers and the classes they start. It’s not easy for them!

Miriam

Lessons from Masi Literacy Workshop -- version 3.0

The first week of December last year, I was supposed to join our team members from Kinshasa to put on a long-awaited literacy teacher training seminar for the communities around Masi-Manimba, a town on the Kinshasa-Kikwit road. Our biggest concern was the state of the road, since it is under repair and we were going to travel from different ends of it to Masi-Manimba. Arrangements were made, food for the seminar was gathering in Masi, and people were getting ready. The day we were supposed to leave, the Masi pastor called everyone and put the seminar off for two months, till the first week in February. There was no money in the denomination’s treasury, all accounts, including the literacy account, had been frozen, and we had no means of traveling.

Women around Lusekele start their peanut harvest in November, continue in January with the corn harvest, and finish up with the squash seeds around the end of January. I figured that the first of February would be an excellent time for our Masi training seminar: women would have finished their harvests and have both leisure time and food to spare.

January 31st I got to the Vanga parking at 5:30 am to meet the taxi jeep and my fellow passengers. The taxi sat there in lonely splendor: no baggage, no people, no driver. I’d rather figured on that, settled myself, had my breakfast, and started work on the paperwork I’d brought with me. The driver showed up and disappeared again. A few passengers started to gather around the roots of a tree.

At 11:30 am we took off, 14 people, not including the 3 small children on people’s laps, for Kikwit, the “Chicago” of Bandundu Province, some 135 km from us. They would drop me off at Petit-Kasai, a settlement where we emerge onto the paved road. I planned to catch a bus from Kikwit for Masi-Manimba the next morning. Rose Mayala and the rest of our training group would meet me there, starting from Kinshasa the next day.

About 2:30 pm, the taxi pulled into Petit-Kasai, dropped me off, and dallied, looking for water for the overheating radiator. A small clump of men found us: one had gotten a phone-call from the head pastor at Masi – “Tell Mama Miriam to go back home; the seminar’s cancelled.” ??? There was a pay phone nearby. I called Pastor Makasi for an explanation, but no one answered. I did call someone in Vanga to tell his brother to e-mail Ed to let him know I’d be back the next day(Lusekele is out of phone service areas).

Well now. There was a taxi due to come back to Vanga the next day, but they would be packed to the gills when they reached Kasai. I would have to catch them in Kikwit to get a ride. So I hopped back on the taxi and we went to Kikwit, arriving before sundown. A man on business from the Vanga hospital offered me a place where he was staying. We met with the other taxi owner, and he agreed to give me a place. We were to start out late afternoon for Vanga.

When we got to the large house where we’d be staying, they had a lively church service in full swing. We waited outside in the dark, talking to the wife until it was over. Then we had supper along with the pastor, baths and bed. The next morning we were awakened by the loud morning prayer service on the front porch. My fellow traveler talked business with several people and we left for the day, thanking our hosts. We walked around the corner to a main road and took a taxi to downtown.

It’s rare that I get to Kikwit, so I checked out the goods and prices in the stores, and bantered with street vendors. I called the pastor in Masi-Manimba. Why did they cancel the seminar? Well, the Masi women were in the middle of their peanut and corn harvest, and wanted to finish first. They were only putting the training off two weeks till the 18th.

The sun crawled across the sky. I met fellow travelers: either Vanga citizens buying stuff for sale in Vanga, or people going to the hospital for treatment or check-ups. We moved from shade to shade. Finally the pickup was loaded and passengers climbed on. Leaving Kikwit there was one last ritual: a shake-down by traffic cops at two roadblocks controlling traffic in and out of the city. Despite the fact that our papers were all in order, we looked like a good target, and they were determined to get something out of us. Finally they let us go. The rest of the trip was uneventful. We pulled in to Vanga a little after 9 pm and I headed for home.

So now it’s two days before we were supposed to start out for Masi again for our literacy training. Monday I got word that Pastor Makasi is stranded at Kikongo far from home, waiting for a delayed Mission Aviation Fellowship flight. Flights have been put off until Friday. “Could we put the literacy workshop off again several days?” he asked. He could get the Friday flight to Bonga Yasa and hitch a motorcycle ride to Masi-Manimba to get things going before we arrive. So I wrote my colleagues in Kinshasa and we will travel the beginning of next week, to start our seminar Wednesday, the 20th. Only two days late. Stay tuned!

My story illustrates several important points for work here:
1. The primary importance of the agricultural calendar for women. Farming in Congo is a woman’s job, and most rural women are farmers. Men will often, as our pastor friend apparently did, schedule things without taking it into account. But you do that at your peril, when you’re dealing with women. They know that their family’s welfare depends on their crops. From November to February is harvest time for the critical crops that take a family through the year, depending on the area and when they planted. In this case, I thought they ran on the same calendar as we do, so accepted the pastor’s dates, when in reality, the rainy (thus, planting) season must start later for them, so they’re still harvesting.

2. The difficulties and uncertainties of communication here. We are in flux. The old system of short-wave radio that linked church centers in rural Congo is fast disappearing. In its place is a patchwork of possibilities, though sometimes nothing at all. We have Internet access, but no telephone coverage here. At Vanga they only have pay phone service. At Kikwit, Kasai, and Masi-Manimba, they have full telephone coverage, so one can use one’s own cell phone or use a pay phone. At Kikongo, where the Masi pastor is right now, they have no phone coverage, and limited e-mail and short-wave radio service. So, when plans changed, I could call a pay phone in Vanga, and ask the guy to have his brother write Ed to let him know to expect me back soon. From Kikongo, the Masi pastor had to ask a missionary to e-mail us to warn us of the change of plans. I don’t know how he is telling the folks back home. While, from Masi, he could call my colleagues in Kinshasa, now he has to rely on me to pass the word along to them by e-mail or a Vanga pay phone. I once was incommunicado 5 weeks on a trip, two weeks later than expected, because the only means of communication – radio – didn’t work for us.

3. Difficulties of travel. For example, we have 4½ miles of poorly maintained dirt road between us and Vanga. It is 4 wheel drive (guzzling fuel), and there are very few places where we can go more than 15 mph. When roads are mostly dirt roads, and mostly in bad shape, travel becomes enormously expensive, opportunities are rare, and you mostly have to take what you can get. Safety becomes a secondary issue. The people who brought Pastor Makasi to Kikongo were willing to pay for air travel, and there’s a strip at Masi, but it is not practically possible, either for him the entire way, or us, so we look for other options.
4. Christianity in Congo, despite serious problems in the church, is alive and well. I may not be comfortable with all the customs of the Pentacostal house church where I was welcomed, but there is a great Christian fellowship to be found with many people you meet here.

Exploring GIS with the Health Zone Staff

Patrick Mangomi is a bright young doctor working in the Vanga Health Zone. The zone's chief medical officer, Dr. Musiti (left in photo, with Antoine Lumonakiese), has given him the task of pulling together a presentation on the state of health in the zone for the upcoming board meeting. About a month ago, we started discussing how geographical information systems (systems that link information to particular geographical features like health center areas) could help the zone increase its ability to analyze and report on public health issues. This is something new in Congo, limited to only the big agencies. It is an exciting new tool, but most rural health zones haven't even heard of it let alone had a chance to use it.

At ACDI we have been slowly moving toward integrating extension and research information and geographical information, in the hopes of being able to evaluate with more confidence the impact of Lusekele's extension work with farmers. Integrating statistics on health and well-being of farm families in the areas where we work is a logical next step. So I have a selfish reason for encouraging the Dr. Musiti, Dr. Mangomi and their colleagues to take and interest in mapping health information.

But the most exciting thing about this budding collaboration is seeing the creativity of Dr. Mangomi begin to bubble. In my office this morning, he popped question after question about what a good geographical database can do for the zone and more importantly for the people who live here. Right now ost of the questions have to do with mapping statistics, but he is already galloping ahead to figuring out how to organize data so that it slips easily into the system. I can't wait to see how this develops as ideas ferment and mature.

Oh, those sounds of Africa...

Yesterday “the bucket brigade”, the little boys of Lusekele, struck up an impromptu enthusiastic band on their various plastic buckets and jugs when they met at the water source across the plantation from us, and treated us all to a half-hour concert, singing at the tops of their voices, drumming, and, no doubt, someone dancing. It was so infectious that three young men passing within earshot on the road, briefly started drumming on what they were carrying.

How to attract dedicated and competent people

Lusekele lost a key staff member about 6 weeks ago. ACDI's production manager took vacation time to visit his children in Kinshasa, received an offer to head up an expanding aquaculture project near the capital, and decided it was a better opportunity. The decision to leave was complicated. Like most church projects, ACDI Lusekele trusts more in God's call and assurance than in high salary, benefits and good working conditions to attract competent and dedicated people. God called Fidèle to Lusekele eleven or twelve years ago; the call imposed sacrifices on his family. They accepted the sacrifices and served faithfully. While the work is more than just a job (it is a vocation), we can't forget that all of us here (including missionaries) depend on our job to put food on the table, send kids to school, and provide some economic security for that time when we are no longer able to work. I believe God's call to a person provides for this. This new job offers Fidèle and Pauline better opportunities; we pray that God will make them a blessing in their new place.

Losing a key person forces us to confront the question: how can a church ministry that requires highly qualified and dedicated people continue to attract new talent? The reflection often centers around benefits we can offer -- the church is usually strapped. An experienced ACDI extension specialist earns less than half of what she would earn for comparable work with a project in the city. In a world where the annual cost of a college education for one child is two-thirds of one's annual salary at ACDI, family considerations can be a powerful incentive to seek a better-paying position. You can see the dilemma for ACDI working on a shoestring budget. Offering a competitive benefit package breaks the budget all to pieces. Limited resources make it difficult to attract people with extraordinary talent. Why would a highly-qualified Congolese agronomist be willing to work in a podunk agricultural station with constantly limited resources just to help traditional semi-subsistence farmers put basic food on the table and send kids to school?

In present circumstances, only God's call will bring incredibly talented and dedicated believers to Lusekele. I think we need to pray for that. Competent people with a heart for serving the Lord and people ministry and assure drive, creativity, competence, effectiveness and stability. At ACDI we can pray that God will provide us with one or two key people who have the freedom to sacrifice in order to serve the rural poor.

But I think we can also pray for two things. First, that God will bring us a flow of dedicated young people who are relatively free to share our ministry for a time. Considering that ACDI is a ministry of the Congolese church, this probably means young Congolese believers. But it might mean young people from another country too. ACDI offers people a real chance to change the world, or at least a small region of it. Poverty and hunger are scourges that can be significantly reduced with applied effort. ACDI offers long experience, patience, diligence and persistence. Most young people will go on to other work, but perhaps a few will settle at Lusekele, called by God for a longer season.

The second thing we can pray for is wisdom about how to provide an adequate support package to experienced specialists who dedicate themselves to the Lord's work here. "Adequate" is relative, for certain; but it is more than what my colleagues earn now. ACDI has four extension specialists and needs a couple of more. Fifteen years of experience, a breadth of technical knowledge and 50-60 hours per week teaching and encouraging farmers to discover God's wisdom for farming are worth more than a $1800 per year. This would be nothing for a competent state government or even a moderately successful agribusiness to raise. But the Congolese state does not serve its people and agribusiness offers no jobs. For the time being, Christians stand in the breach alone. We need the Lord's wisdom to know how to support them. It might be building profitable agribusiness enterprises that provide extension services for subsistence farmers on the side. It might be raising more money from tithes and offerings to allow a few people to dedicate themselves to this ministry.

I don't know what the answer is. But I am certain that the Lord wants to end hunger in rural Bandundu. I am certain that Christian agronomists sharing with their neighbors about God's way of farming is a witness where no one else is offering solutions. And I am certain that the answer will be a mix of God motivating talented individuals and individual Christians mobilizing the resources to support them. Lord show us how to change this world.