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.