The market just got 146 kms closer

Compared to many pastors in rural churches, Pastor Mubangu (at right) is well-paid. But $30 per month doesn’t stretch very far. His oldest daughter is starting university in Kikwit. School fees for her five sisters and two brothers stretch the family budget further. Pasteur Mubangu and his family depend on their fields to pay the bills.



Turning fresh manioc roots into cash for school fees is a long process. Lift the roots. Strip off the hard skin. Carry the tubers down to a pond near the stream to soak for three days. Carry them back up to the hilltop village where the tubers are dried for a week. Load the dried manioc into a big basin and carry it 5 kms to the river port or 4 kms to the bi-weekly market. And hope that the price is favorable. Then, if the family has 2-1/2 acres of healthy manioc, repeat the process 200 times (!). That means walking a total of 800 kms carrying 50 lbs on one’s head, down into the valley and up the other side – and then another 800 kms back home. It takes time and plenty of stamina to get full advantage from your field.


A few weeks ago, Pastor Mubangu tried something new. He and his wife sold fresh manioc roots directly to the chipping project at Lusekele. No soaking, no drying, no carrying basins to market on their head. And cash in hand for 4.400 lbs of manioc roots. The Lusekele truck pulled up to the trail head less than a kilometer from the field. Basket after basket of roots were hauled from the field, stripped by the roadside, and loaded into the truck – about 100 baskets in all. An operation that would have taken a month of constant hard labor (for Pastor Mubangu, for his wife and for the children) was completed in a day because an affordable means of local transport is available.



Creating that kind of opportunity was what Christians had in mind when ACDI proposed the truck project a year ago. We still have a long way to go to make this same opportunity available to the largest number of farm families possible. But that’s our vocation – helping people to see the opportunities that God places in our hands, enriching our lives and enabling us to be a blessing to those around us.