Ed and Miriam Noyes

Helping lay pastors to become more effective leaders

2012-01-21T20:08:00.004+01:00

posted by Miriam Noyes

Our pastor at Lusekele, Pastor Manunga, is the guy on the right. Our lay pastor, André Kizima, is the guy on the left. They’ve both just come back from training seminars -- Pastor Manunga as a workshop leader and Mr. Kizima as trainee.

The Baptist Church of Congo has a two-tier pastoral system. There’s the man (or woman) with formal training who provides overall spiritual direction and has primary administrative responsibilities in the local church – the pastor. Then there’s the lay pastor who leads the inquirers’ classes, disciples new believers and often organizes daily prayers. Many local congregations do not have a trained pastor. In rural areas a circuit riding pastor often is responsible for congregations in several villages. It is not unusual for a circuit riding pastor to touch base with a local congregation only for communion, baptizing new Christians and whatever campaigns the denomination has decreed.

You can understand why, for many rural congregations, the lay pastor is the real pastor. He or she leads daily prayers, leads the Sunday service, and organizes Sunday school. The lay pastor leads the congregation and effectively shepherds believers through the events in their lives. It is astonishing that the denomination doesn’t officially recognize lay pastors. Instead he or she is called a “catechist”, following the name of the teaching program for their inquirers’ classes.

Catechists may just be a local school teacher or Bible Study League leader, pressed into service. In 1989 or 1990 a 4-5 week intensive training became available for them. It covers all the bases: a spiritual life manual, an overview of a lay pastor’s work, an overview of the Bible, directions on how to teach the catechism as an overview of the basic knowledge a Christian needs to follow Jesus, what the Bible says to typical problems in African villagers’ lives, worship, preaching practice, church history, with an emphasis on the history of this church in Congo, the organization of the Baptist Church of Congo, and suggestions of appropriate ministries for a local congregation. This course is divided into 5 modules and provides the basics for lay pastors who lack training for the job. It’s been in use now for over 20 years.

In October 2010, Pastor Rubin Ngalubenge, the denomination’s evangelism coordinator, convened a group of pastors in the Vanga area. He pleaded for a thorough revision of the training materials, aiming to improve their relevance to current challenges of the church. The pastors agreed with the need and suggested many changes and additions.

But the group was too spread out to meet regularly for revising the course. Instead, the work fell on a committee of 5: Brother Thomas, the Swiss-German Reformed pastor working in Vanga, myself and the 3 local pastors designated by the Vanga church district as trainers for the program. Our pastor, Pastor Manunga, is one of them.

I did first drafts of revisions in the course of typing the material into my computer. (The last file was on floppy disk, long since lost.) The editing committee discussed and reworked those drafts. Finally, in 2010 and 2011, we tested the first three modules in training workshops at 9 different sites.

The first printing of module 3 is done and the booklet was used in training last week.

The third module, covering doctrine and Biblical ethics, has been the hardest so far. First it was obvious that we needed to redo how lay pastors teach. Most catechists teach inquirers the catechism by rote. Correctly repeating the phrases of the catechism is often taken to be sufficient evidence that a person has made an informed commitment to Christ. Many candidates never do present a personal testimony to the baptism committee. Catechists need to teach in a way that leads the inquirer or new believer to understand what they believe about God, about Jesus, and about living in the Kingdom and why they believe it.

Second, some subjects needed to be added. For example, Congolese in general are very concerned about the role of spirits, God’s protection from malevolent spirits, the role of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts. Surprisingly, none of these are covered in the catechism. Many people aspire to be prophets, but often think of this only in terms of identifying spiritual threats. They neglect the more important functions of building the body, giving God’s direction, and challenging evil with good. With gaps like this how is this church to lay a good foundation for its people? We needed to expand counsel for following Jesus in daily life, going well beyond simply encouraging believers to be obedient members of the church.

Third, some questions were approached only from a Western point of view. For example, responding to the question of physically handicapped people in our families is much more than caring for their needs, finding meaningful roles and preserving their dignity. Congolese want to know why people are born with deformities or limitations and are they “real people.” Another example is how we understand and respond to mental illness. Congolese often attribute it to dabbling in the occult and having things go terribly wrong. Christians need to consider the full range of spiritual, psychological and physical causes of mental illness. The Bible is capable of speaking and should be allowed to speak to believers wherever they are in understanding. We made an effort to find that Biblical interface.

For two months I was working on questions like these. In mid-November the editing committee approved the third module, it was printed, and the trainers gave it its first road-test. Unfortunately our pastor wasn’t able to hold his training seminar then. The pastor of the hosting church was sick in the hospital and they put it off in that site. But last week the pastors trained the second group of catechists in teaching inquirers’ classes and what the Bible says about the problems that trouble their church members.

While we were in church last Sunday morning, Pastor Manunga arrived back home from his seminar. The third module has a lot of material to go through. He and his charges worked hard all week. The catechists were particularly enthusiastic; the seminar covered the core of their work. The local circuit-riding pastor wistfully asked for a copy of the module, wishing that the pastors themselves had more opportunities to improve their practical skills.

André Kizima is the lay pastor of the Lusekele Baptist church.

Our catechist, André Kizima was in a different group. Even though a lot of his fellow catechists didn’t come, those that did agreed that the material was really good. André recognized that their method of teaching in the past had failed its purpose and said he was looking forward to teaching the new way. He waxed enthusiastic particularly about the helpfulness of the lessons on common problems people face. I suggested that when he crosses paths with the catechists that had not come, he invite them to come talk with him about the new material and what he got out of it.

Bible Reading League to field volunteer literacy teachers

2012-01-11T15:48:00.006+01:00

A young man in the Bible Reading League reads a passage of the Bible. The League is a dynamic movement of people dedicated to studying God's word and applying it in daily life.

"The Bible Reading League is all about reading the Bible," Brother Lula was telling a small group gathered in the district pastor's living room at Mbanza Dibundu. "But what happens in our Bible study meetings? All too often one or two people read the study passages and the rest just listen. They may not even have a Bible with them. Why? Because they can't read well enough to keep up. We want to change that."

It was a national holiday and the League chapters from all over Luniungu county gathered for Bible study and planning. Miriam joined them because Brother Lula, the League president for the five counties surrounding Vanga, thought that the League could be doing much more to help non-reading members to learn to read for themselves.

The meeting started late and attendance was down because of the funeral of a well-known school teacher in the area. After Brother Lula finished the devotion he asked Miriam to share. "The Bible talks a lot about light and letting light into our lives. The light is equated with God's rule and all the goodness that comes with it. A blind person is surrounded by light but he is unable to see it and take advantage of it. God has all kinds of blessings he wants to share with us. But if we don't know about the blessings we can't experience them."

Miriam shares the vision for local churches helping neighbors to read and write.

She went on. "A person who can't read is like a blind person. He is cut off from a vast pool of blessings that God wants to share, because he doesn't realize that it exists. God's written word shares the message of eternal life, how to live with God now and to eternity. Written words also share the rich experience of thousands of lives that God can use to enrich our lives."

"If I can help someone to read, I help that person to unlock the treasure house that God prepared for them. I can open up the windows of a dark room and let God's light shine in and chase away the darkness. You could do that for members of your local groups or for your neighbors. You can help the blind to see the blessings that God has already prepared for them."

League members planned a literacy workshop for Easter vacation.

For 45 more minutes, Miriam and the gathered League members discussed how the CBCO Women's Literacy initiative could train League members to teach adults how to read or to improve their reading skills. They settled on Easter vacation as the best time for a training. (Many League members are school teachers and can't get away for a week-long workshop except during vacations.) Local chapters will provide food for the participants. The CBCO parish at Mbanza Dibundu will figure out a way to house everybody. And the Literacy initiative will provide the trainers and training materials.

Thousands of people in the Vanga area get along without reading and it would be ridiculous to say that reading is essential to life. But illiteracy is like living in one small room of a large mansion. Reading is the key that opens the doors to all the other rooms. Imagine the blessing you would experience helping someone explore the mansion -- and pray for these League members who will attend the literacy workshop in late March or early April.

CAMPAIGN FEVER!

2011-11-03T19:19:00.005+01:00

posted by Ed
UDPS supporters help launch the election campaign period on October 28 in Kinshasa. General elections for president and parliamentary representatives will be held on November 28. (photo AFP)

Late Thursday afternoon I was repairing the back road (long since turned into a dirt trail) that runs down to the Kwilu River canoe crossing, when the sound of a laboring two-stroke engine echoed from the forest down by the beach. I stood at the side of the trail, shirt soaked with sweat, boots covered with dirt, waiting to see what was coming. A couple of minutes later a motorcycle chugged up the hill in a blue cloud of 2T oil smoke. It labored under the weight of two young men and their loaded backpack. Campaign stickers for a woman running for parliament covered every possible surface on the motorcycle (except the headlight.)

As the driver tried to negotiate the soft dirt of the newly regraded road, the engine died. The driver smiled at me and kicked the starter a couple of times. The engine sputtered and died. Finally, the passenger dismounted and the driver restarted the motor and pulled up out of the soft dirt. The campaign worker got back on and they took off, leaving only a weaving tire track in the deepening shadows of approaching evening. The campaign passed but the road still needed repairing. I went back to work.

Campaign fever is upon us. The official campaign period for president and parliamentary candidates opened on October 28. Candidates and their supporters are criss-crossing the territory passing out campaign goodies and holding occasional rallies. Promises, promises, promises. But the second exercise in electoral democracy will have a more discriminating voter. Many people think about the facile promises of the incumbents and say, "Yes, but what did you DO to make our lives better?" Now people will gladly accept the campaign t-shirt or cap, but they want someone who will work for better schools, passable roads, improved jobs, and less interfering petty officials.

But how does one know who is the right candidate in a milieu without newspapers, with almost no universal access to news or even advertisements. Three hundred and eighty-five candidates are jostling for six seats for Bulungu territory in the national parliament. Literally hundreds have visions only of a fat salary and a house in Kinshasa. But who are the six best, the six who can and will work for real change in the prospects of their constituents.

In morning prayers the staff and workers of ACDI have been praying for discernment, the wisdom to distinguish between the good, the less good and the gawdawful. They have been praying for the election officials: that they hold on to integrity amidst all the pressures and temptations. For the election preparations -- that everything may be accomplished in time. For God to quench the flames of hate that some candidates are trying to fan into an inferno of success. For peace. For a group of people and a single leader capable of rebuilding a functioning government that creates the conditions that encourage the creativity and productivity of its people.

For many young partisans the campaign is an adventure or a party. Riding around on a motorcycle, handing out flyers, crossing rivers in a dugout canoe. The real challenge, however, is cultivating the imagination -- having the conviction that fixing things is possible and knowing how to pull people together to cobble the fixes together. Eventually successful candidates have get off their motorcycles and start working on roads. God grant us the wisdom to know which candidates can do that -- and who want to.

Another palm puzzle

2011-10-03T22:18:00.010+02:00

The ACDI oil palm plantations (totaling about 12 hectares or about 30 acres) serve three purposes in the extension program. First, they are a somewhat more controlled production trial of the ASD Costa Rica varieties that we have promoted in the central Kwilu River region. Second, they provide a living laboratory and practice plantation for teaching practical plantation management to cooperating farmers. Third, they generate some income for the extension program, though not yet as much as we would like. So when a block of palms begins to show signs of distress our anxiety levels go up.

Last week I described a more generalized problem in the 8-year-old planting of Ghana x Deli palms.

In the same block the technicians have run across another problem, apparently affecting four palms. A fifth palm was removed last year, exhibiting similar symptoms. The following pictures and descriptions show what we found in dissecting the palms.

Photo 1 - partial cross-section of the trunk about 60cm below the growing point. A cylinder-shaped portion of the trunk, about 5-6cm in diameter, appears to have rotted, turning a light brown. The brownish section runs parallel to the trunk axis a bit off center. The fibers remain intact, but the supporting matrix seems to have been digested. There is no disagreeable smell associated with the brownish fibers.

Photo 2 - peeling off the leave sheaths and bases we find an undeveloped flower rotting. It is not clear where this is related to the central stem rot or not. Stripping off the tissue under the flower bud we find no indication that the rot from inside extends to the bud tissue here.

Photo 3 - a full section of stem through the base of the growing point, shows that the rot ceases before reaching the growing point.

Photo 4 - a close up of the fibers at the upper limit of the rotten area. Two red nematode-like larva can be seen just to the left of center and in the lower right hand quadrant. The palm with similar symptoms last year was heavily infested with these creatures feeding on the fermenting stem tissue.

Photo 5 - 90cm below the growing point, the rotted area seems to be larger.

Photo 6 - cutting off a corner of the base of the palm bole, we find a small circle of partially digested tissue oozing copiously, as if all the fluid in the rotted section of the trunk runs out through this drain. The rest of the bole tissue looks healthy, normal.

Photo 7 - slicing out a vertical section of the trunk, we find that the small soft circle near the base of the bole is connected to the rotting center of the trunk. The coarse, fibrous tissue has completely lost the whitish matrix that normally holds it together.

Photo 8 - this final closeup shows the broom-straw like fiber mass. There is a near brownish transition zone between the central rotted tissue and the whitish-yellowish healthy tissue.

There are no obvious signs of mycelium in the dissociated fiber of the rotted portions of the trunk.

My theory is that a careful dissection would uncover insect bore holes somewhere in the central trunk behind the incompletely trimmed frond bases, giving access to an organism able to digest the sugar-rich portions of the stem tissue. But my experience is limited. We could use some help diagnosing this.

e-mail: renoyes@gmail.com or our visiting soils specialist, Patricia Lazicki, patricia.lazicki@gmail.com

Puzzled over oil palm distress at Lusekele - suggestions?

2011-10-01T16:00:00.002+02:00

posted by Ed

(Ed’s note: If your interests extend to the arcane details of small-holder oil palm growing, READ ON. If not, you may want to just skip this blog entry and wait for the next one.)

Drought stress? Potassium deficiency? Fusarium wilt of mature palms? Something else?

For over ten years ACDI Lusekele, the Baptist agriculture extension program, has been promoting high-yielding hybrid oil palms to renew small-holder palm plantations along the central Kwilu River. Over a thousand small farmers have benefited from the program. Altogether, between 850 and 1,000 acres of small, family-operated plantations have been established or renewed, generating enough extra income to cover simple health care, basic school fees for children and perhaps make simple household improvements, like a roof that doesn’t leak.

But a troubling development has hit the inaugural plantation at the Lusekele ag center itself. Last year, about 1.5 acres of the 2003 planting began to show signs of drought stress. The telltale signs of potassium deficiency (orange blotches progressing to leaflets dying and drying out) were widespread and sometimes quite marked. Older fronds dried out, leaving the plantation with an unusual open sunny aspect rather than its normal shade. Sometimes palm ribs would break midway along their length, even when still green.

Two years ago the palm canopy was closing nicely, creating almost continuous shade in the this portion of the plantation.

2008-2009 was a lean rainfall year with only 1233 mm of rain from July 1 to June 30. July 2009 to June 20010 had nearly 1600mm of rain, only to give way to an erratic 2010-2011 year ending with less than 25mm in May. From May 24 to August 26 only 4.6mm fell, all before June 15th, making this the hardest dry season in years.

In October 2010 we responded with a split dose of 178 kg / ha of muriate of potassium, followed by improved ring weeding and regular cutting of Chromolaena odorata competitors. No immediate change occurred in the vigor of the palms.

Broken and dessicated older palm branches. This is one of the worst affected palms.

This year, as the severe dry season continued week after week, stress symptoms began to spread across the rest of the 2003 planting and into the 2004 planting adjoining it. In searching through the literature we have on hand and on the internet, drought stress seems to be the primary candidate. Apparently potassium deficiency can exacerbate the stress by contributing to limited root uptake. Fusarium wilt seems to produce symptoms similar to drought stress and none of our varieties are specifically bred for resistance. Ganoderma could be implicated, but no palms display the characteristic skirt of drooping fronds.

The newly-affected areas of the plantation this year seem to coincide with the area over which we significantly improved weeding practices. Is it possible that clearing off heavy weeds (cutting not digging up) could create problems for superficial palm roots – something similar to removing shade from nursery seedlings? As you can see we are grasping a bit, trying to understand what is happening.

If you have any comments or suggestions about what this might be, how we might narrow down or confirm a diagnosis, and what we might do about it, please feel free to contact me ( renoyes@gmail.com ) or Patricia Lazicki, our visiting soil scientist, (patricia.lazicki@gmail.com )

Carbon dioxide, increasing food security and improving family livelihoods

2011-09-06T15:02:00.004+02:00

posted by Ed

We planted the acacia plantation in 2002 as a way to restore soil fertility. But on the poorer savanna-covered plateaus of our region tree planting not only improves the soil but contributes in the fight against global warming.

What in the world does carbon dioxide have to do with improving livelihoods and increasing food security? And what does any of this have to do with the Kingdom of God? If you live in an American suburb, get your food prepackaged in a supermarket, and make your living working in an office, the relationships may not be so obvious. But those of us living close to the world of slash and burn shifting cultivation see what happens when farmers are pushed by population pressure or by the drive to increase their income. Hard use eliminates the forest and impoverishes the soil. Constant burning and decomposition of vegetation release enormous quantities of greenhouse gases that are not reabsorbed in the normal cycle of production.(1) The Lord God put human beings in the creation to “cultivate” and to “guard”. In my part of the world many farmers have failed in this fundamental charge. Persistent and profound poverty is often the result.

Imagination is a gift of God. Knowing the will of God, I can imagine a different world where God’s will is more perfectly realized. If my heart is changed and my mind renewed, I can imagine an approach to farming that restores the land and sustains the people who depend on it. The best imagination informs life-giving changes on the ground. Restoring the land leads to more productive crops and healthier, more prosperous lives.

For three weeks in late July and early August, a group of us got together to imagine how we might change the world in a small, but significant way. The group included extension agents, university instructors, development workers and one jack-of-all-trades agricultural missionary. Our goal was to come up with a practical plan for 125 farmers to abandon slash and burn agriculture and adopt a sustainable mix of woodlots and cropping on fire-degraded savanna lands. The plan would reduce destruction and degradation of gallery forests and increase household income by 50 to 100%. And it would increase the farming system’s ability to absorb and hold on to an additional 135,000 tons of CO2 by reshaping the long-term use of 3700 acres of land.

9-year-ol trees in the ACDI acacia plantation have created a thick layer of litter on the forest floor.

A commitment to caring for the earth is one of the keys. If I plant leguminous trees with my field crops on annually burned savanna I can set into motion a whole raft of beneficial effects. By moving from gallery forest to fire degraded savanna, I give my forest land a chance to recover. When I protect my field crops (and trees) I stop fire from burning up all that organic matter every year. Humus increases in the soil and litter accumulates on the surface. My trees grow, absorbing carbon dioxide and using it to construct trunks, branches and leaves. Dead branches and leaves add to the litter layer and increase soil organic matter. A hectare of mature artificial forest has more than 90 tons of biomass, the equivalent of over 183 tons of CO2. If I wait patiently for seven years my land will begin to give me rich crops, firewood, charcoal, honey and thousands of dollars a year rather than the hundreds my family makes do with by slashing and burning the forest.

Moving from imagination to life-giving and God-honoring change usually requires figuring out ways to remove inconvenient obstacles. Our biggest obstacle is paying the costs of investing and waiting patiently. The transition from slash and burn to sustainable agroforestry will take seven years before the new system can begin to deliver its full promise. How does a struggling farm family make investments in the land and live during that time? Farm credit would be the logical answer – if it existed here.

The Lusekele study group has set it sights on another kind of financing – carbon credits. In effect we trade on our ability to provide long-term storage of carbon in our permanent succession of woodlots. The service fee helps to pay for tree nurseries, planting labor and more efficient tools for the transition to sustainable agroforestry. But clients will queue up to buy the service only if we can show precisely how much carbon our system has absorbed and demonstrate our ability to ensure that the carbon will be locked up for the duration of the agreement.

In a long-term agroforestry project 71% of the land is growing or mature woodlot. Standing trees, accumulated litter and soil humus all hold on to the carbon that would otherwise be contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Clearly we have a lot to learn. I continue to imagine. In that vision, the science instructors at the local teacher’s college become expert technicians in measuring biomass and carbon content. Students hone all kinds of skills as they collect data, analyze samples, and map results. Farmers themselves learn ways to manage soil fertility better, preserve valuable forest reserves for future generations and still improve their standard of living. I imagine a world in which the way we farm, the way we think about the land and our place on it, and the priorities we pursue all recognize the Lord God who put us here.
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(1) Land use changes, such as clearing forest to plant food crops, account for 15 to 20% of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Training shepherds for children

2011-08-31T11:11:00.006+02:00

posted by Miriam

Tonton is lucky. He has a Sunday school to go to at Lusekele. Every week before church he gets to sing, and play and listen to Bible stories with 15 to 20 other kids. Although he sings in the little boys’ church choir, Sunday school is probably the first place he heard the stories of God’s love for him and the way people walk with God. It might be the most important chance he has to see beyond “church” to a real relationship with Jesus Christ.

With a national average of seven kids per family, anywhere you go in Congo there are a lot more kids and teenagers than adults. That goes for church too. In any congregation you would care to name, unless they have Sunday school before church and send the kids home afterwards, a large part of the congregation will be kids and teenagers.

Curiously, though, it’s the rare rural church that has any program for their kids, let alone their teenagers. Most churches ignore their kids, fully two-thirds of the population and the people who could be tomorrow’s church. They enjoy youth and kids’ choirs, but neglect loving discipleship of young people. That is why launching a viable Sunday school movement here in rural areas is so important. When I was asked to help with the second annual Sunday school teacher training seminar, I eagerly accepted the invitation.

Joseph Musa shared his experience with 20 participants in the workshop.

Effective Sunday school teachers teach from their own encounter with Christ and walk with God. If not, they are the blind leading the blind. So I was asked to give the challenge every morning to the participants to examine their Christian life, and see whether or not they were really following Jesus.

In a group-oriented society, many church members get baptized into the church as a rite of passage. They join “the club”. Others, in this animistic society, join to make God happy. If God is happy enough, he will help their projects succeed, assure that family members stay healthy and prosper their lives. It is works-religion measured by material results.

Being a mom and participating in the Sunday school workshop had its own special challenges.

But the real question is: Is God at the center of my life? Am I really “born again”? What does it mean? Am I living in the fullness of what Jesus offers to his followers, or am I settling for a minimum of justification before God? How can I live in Christ, in power? Do I know that I have a choice to walk “according to the flesh” or “according to the Spirit” every day? These are excellent questions for anyone who claims to be a Christian.

A rousing game of chickens and hawks wakes up any drowsy participants,

Whether you were a chicken or a hawk, everyone had a good time.

The training material had a fondness for abstract theology and complicated diagrams that often had little connection with the African Christian’s village experience. My job was not only to translate the words from French into Kituba, but to translate the ideas by examples that participants could relate to in their lives.

I was pleased to see that this year there was much less insistence on French as the medium of training and of Sunday school. It is appropriate for some groups of people, but the vast majority of rural Christians, and certainly the majority of rural children, only function well in local language. They can handle a song or two in French, but that’s about it.

The range of people participating was inspiring. Students, moms, school teachers, nurses, young and old.

Future teachers learned the importance of loving the children you work with, of walking through lesson material with them and not losing sight of making the Gospel clear. They learned how to develop a lesson from a Bible story, how to bring a child to Christ, and how to use songs, games, Bible verse memorization, etc. to reinforce lessons.

Twenty people participated in the training. Some participants who missed part of last year’s training repeated. And some people from new villages joined them. Lusekele’s Sunday school is conducted by young people who finish their schooling and leave, so we needed a new group of teachers and had 3 participants.

There is an urgent need for more people like this young man: people who can be a friend and a shepherd to children.

While I was happy to see a few people from additional churches, I was sad to see how few local congregations responded to the invitation to send people to become Sunday school teachers. A local women’s president told me later: “We intended to participate. I don’t know what happened that we never sent anyone.” Today my house worker said, “They came with the announcement to our church. I don’t know why the pastor didn’t do anything…” Other church events that week could have distracted churches and their pastors just when they should have been getting someone to send. The challenge is to move beyond distractions and bring the focus back to the children who continue to be abandoned in so many congregations.

Pray for this movement: that God would bring to all his churches in this area a real, compelling concern for their children and youths’ spiritual state and for the opportunities to pass on life’s real Good News.

Rapid reconaissance finished

2011-07-03T18:27:00.002+02:00

What do soils in the five sectors of Bulungu territory look like? And how do the differences affect recommendations for soil-building legumes and agroforestry projects? Those questions have preoccupied part of the ACDI team for nearly 5 weeks now. They were the questions that drew two teams of extension agents off on rapid reconnaissance trips covering well 1000 kilometers and collecting over 350 observations.

Maybe what we learned is not all that surprising. Soil profiles tend to be deep and usually free from hard impermeable layers. Color varies from very light, dusky browns on the sandy soils of the plateaus to vivid hues of yellow and red in the valley soils. Texture ranges from almost pure sand (again on the plateaus of Kilunda, Luniungu and Mikwi sectors) to slick, slightly expansive clays, particularly near the Kwilu River. But most soils are basically sandy with a modest measure of clay. Sandy soils support grass savanna and brushy or woodland savanna. Loamy and clay soils support brush and forest - with land cover very heavily influenced by the history of agricultural use. (Finding an intact primary forest or even old secondary forest in the territory is very difficult these days.)

People here are tied to the forest. They clear and cultivate land that has been lying fallow for several years, grown back to dense, scrubby brush with occasional tall trees. They depend on this natural cycle of regeneration to renew soil fertility.

The mineral soil itself is poor to dismal. Highly weathered, acid, exerting a weak hold on nutrients. Fertility depends almost entirely on the vigor of the vegetation; the mineral nutrients that sustain growth are all locked up in the vegetation, roots, and soil organic matter. Like a plant nutrient mine. Exploited every 4 or 5 years.

Mines reach a point where extraction costs surpass the production value. Forest treated in the same way, with no effort to restore nutrients, works the same way. It is not sustainable. That's where many farmers in Bulungu find themselves now. Sustainability requires replacing the nutrients one extracts. Fertilizers cost money that people don't have. The resource-poor farmer turns to plants that collect nitrogen from the atmosphere or essential nutrients slowly released in the deep soil. Rotted leaves, roots, trunks and other organic matter provide good nutrient storage.

Our observations over the last five weeks show that soils generally have good physical structure and a balance between good drainage and reasonably good water-holding capacity. The key to success is managing fallow vegetation and organic matter. The challenge is to produce more with considerably less -- land and length of fallow period.

We now have a clearer idea of where we can try leguminous cover crops and crop rotations that include woodlots. And increasingly the international aid projects in Bandundu are open to underwriting experiments in sustainable agriculture.

A closer look at the earth beneath our feet

2011-06-06T10:36:00.005+02:00

A heavily eroded road makes a deep cut through the soil in hill country near the Nko River. Philippe and Philo take notes on soil characteristics.

If a traditional farmer practicing variations on shifting cultivation wants to increase surpluses, she can choose from a wide number of strategies. At Lusekele we have focused on new varieties that use limited resources more efficiently or minimize losses from pests and diseases. These usually give an immediate boost to yields without major changes in the basic way that people farm.

But in areas with growing population and limited land resources, the increasing intensity of agriculture uses up limited soil nutrients more quickly. Traditional bush fallow sometimes cannot accumulate nutrients (particularly nitrogen) quickly enough to sustain the demands of more frequent cultivation of a particular piece of land. As a result, even the most efficient varieties of basic food crops are susceptible to declining yields.

Women from the agricultural high school near Nzala watch Philippe enlarge a sample hole.

One strategy is to use nitrogen-fixing cover crops to capture atmospheric nitrogen and fix it in a form that becomes available to food crops in the rotation. Managing cover crops is still a new science in Congo. Even a basic question like, Where can we plant Mucuna pruriens (Velvetbean) for acceptable results? does not have a precise answer.

The extension team at Lusekele is starting to whittle away at the questions. With encouragement from the Catholic charity CARITAS and the European union, Philippe Kikobo and Philo Bidimbu are leading a rapid reconnaissance of soil and vegetation complexes to identify those conditions where leguminous cover crops are likely to prosper.

Most soils in the central Kwilu region are sandy. But occasionally one runs across soils with enough clay to be slick and very sticky when wet.

The rapid reconnaissance started with a 2-day shakedown survey to make sure that we all know what basic observations we want to make: soil texture, color, depth, distinctive layers (if any) in the soil profile and the characteristic land cover type. If all goes well, we hope to sample more that 300 sites over the next two weeks.

While this is no substitute for a serious soil survey, this reconnaissance WILL give area extension agents their first chance to begin to see the variation of soil and vegetation conditions in the region.

Philippe explains the soil reconnaissance to ag teachers at the Baptist high school of Ngulanko.

It also gave the team a chance to encourage the principal and teachers of the agricultural high school at Ngulanko. Often high school teachers despair because they lack the most basic facilities and equipment -- forget about a lab or soil sieves. The team showed those teachers how students themselves could begin to deepen the understanding of their physical environment with nothing more than a shovel and basic skills in mapping. And of course that basic observation begins to raise questions about how the environment came to be like it is, how soil helps define land cover, and how to adapt agriculture to particular environments.

Knowing more about God's creation is always better than knowing less. Often in our impatience to wrest a better life from the earth, we blunder ahead in ignorance, understanding little about how we can work in closer harmony with God's plan. Here we have a chance to deepen our knowledge and modify our farming approaches to minimize our impact while increasing the benefits we draw from creation.

It ends with a walk in the moonlight

2011-04-30T19:40:00.003+02:00

Presidents of the Zaba area Baptist women's associations gather at the end of the pre-Easter retreat to talk about the retreat themes and plan women's activities for the coming months.

Every year the women of the Vanga church district hold a spiritual life retreat during the Easter school break. It’s a tradition. But these days it’s impossible to get all the women together in one place for it, so they send speakers out in different directions to local gatherings of women. We had the retreat last weekend, and 4 of us went to Zaba. I’ve been through Zaba on the way somewhere else a long time ago, but this was my first visit and the first time on foot.

The week before three of us had gathered to plan. We went through the texts and teaching together, and decided who should do what. Then we talked about the trip. Had anyone done it? On foot, I mean. Mama Eugenie said she had gone there a couple of years ago for a funeral; that they’d started out at noon and gotten there, with a break along the way, at 3 p.m. If we did the same thing, we’d get there mid-afternoon: plenty of time to rest, get acquainted and talk about the arrangements for the retreat. It would depend on how fast we walked, and she looked dubiously at me. I assured her that I was a good walker and we agreed to go along with her proposal.

Thursday came and Mama Veronique and I started out for Mama Eugenie and Mama Love’s village. We duly picked them up and took off. It was very hot and soon Mama Veronique, then the other two were dragging. I was the only one with a parasol or a hat. No one else had brought any water. I shared around some oranges. About 2 p.m I got suspicious. We didn’t seem anywhere close yet to our destination. “When could we expect to arrive?” I asked Ma Eugenie.

“Oh, 5, 8, midnight; what does it matter? Whenever we get there, we get there.”

We did get there around 5 p.m. and were welcomed by the pastor’s family and some women, but it became apparent that there were some problems in the congregation and in the community. There was a local self-proclaimed prophetess who was deliberately splitting the church, and the women’s leadership and the pastor had some hard things to say about each other. Very few women were coming to women’s meetings, whereas before these stresses they had numbered one or two hundred. We were cautioned not to expect too many. But we were given full rein. We were even given the Sunday service to wind up our retreat teaching in. It’s not every pastor that will do that, especially on Palm Sunday.

Our retreat theme, building on the women’s theme for the year that “this is the year of the Lord’s favor, for the salvation of all”, was that there is no one too weak, young, old, or somehow insignificant to share the Good News and be Good News to those around, in God’s providence. We would encourage them with the story of the lepers in 2 Kings 7 with the good news of the disappearance of the besieging Syrian army and abundant food that they’d left behind, David and Goliath, the boy who provided the loaves and fishes that Jesus multiplied, and the promises that God’s glory would be made perfect in our weakness, and that He would give wisdom and guidance to all those that feel inadequate and ask for it.

The first day rain was threatening and several villages didn’t turn out. There were only 50 participants. In fact a heavy rain with strong winds started as soon as we entered the church, and went on for an hour. With the tin roof, nothing could be heard, so we contented ourselves with singing till the rain stopped. Then we started the program.

Women bathe these kind of events in prayer. The local Bible-study league members lent a hand with the music and prayed too. We talked with the folks there to get a sense of what was happening, pondered it and prayed for them all in our off time.

Nearly every place is taken on the second day. And no rain pounding on the tin roof either.

The second day participation doubled. In rural areas something like this becomes a community event. Since it was vacation time about 40 little kids, a number of adolescents and several men joined us.

Sunday morning the church was full to overflowing. Even the notorious prophetess was there. Maybe the draw was the novelty of having a white missionary in their church. Whatever it was, many women who might not have come otherwise celebrated Palm Sunday, enjoyed each other, heard the messages we felt God wanted to say to them, and came for prayer afterwards.

Counseling and prayer for people’s problems are important parts of every retreat. Wherever you are in the world, people often leave their relationships to deteriorate, the problems to accumulate in their lives. To hear my comrades, “delivering” people from malign spiritual forces is the best part of leadership in a retreat. We had urged leaders and participants to deal with their failures in relationships before Easter, starting that very day. While the assistant pastor mostly took charge of prayers for general problems like student exams and illness, we speakers also prayed with individuals. Women came with problems like a family member haunting them in dreams, a high school daughter pregnant …again, and their anger, or a daughter’s problem pregnancy that the prophetess had predicted would end in death.

We were, in a sense, emissaries of the district leadership, given responsibility to help the fellowships we found to resolve their problems, and to bring a report to the district leadership. So we met with the women’s leadership for all the villages that had come to the retreat together with the pastors to start the resolution of what had been dividing and discouraging them.

The walk back home would end in the moonlight. Here are Miriam's companions in ministry (from R to L): Eugenie Bitolo, women's president from Bilili Mandondo; Veronique Manunga, pastor's wife from Lusekele; and Pongo Love [what a great name], a high school teacher from Bilili Mandondo.
Then we could leave. A girl going to visit relatives would accompany us. By this time it was 3:30 in the afternoon and we knew we wouldn’t get home by dark. But no matter. We had a full moon to walk under in the cool of the evening. It would be good walking. God had acted at Zaba, and we were content.

Miriam.

You didn't know?

2011-04-23T09:42:00.004+02:00

Pastor Manunga shares a message at a riverside baptismal service. Many isolated pastors don't have the connections to the rest of the body of Christ as he does.

After our Good Friday morning prayers this morning, people were talking about the church in a nearby village. Last Sunday church members were split up for services in surrounding villages and had no Palm Sunday commemoration. The pastor had made no announcements about Easter services for this Sunday. But he did announce a fundraiser service. His church members were puzzled. "Maybe the pastor didn't know," I suggested tentatively.

Didn't know? Just imagine your pastor forgetting Easter, or not knowing when it was and passing it by! But think about it. Where is a pastor in the rural heart of Africa to get such information as the date for Easter? Theoretically from his district pastor. But what if the district pastor doesn’t know either?

This year Brother Thomas, a short-term German missionary-pastor living in Vanga, and I have been revising a 20-year-old training curriculum for lay pastors. As we were working on the “worship” module, this question of the important faith events came up. Twenty years ago church leaders in Kinshasa circulated the church calendar each year. They don’t do this anymore. An isolated rural pastor, with no television, no radio, no local paper to help him keep track, may not know when Christians around the world are celebrating the central event of our faith. So now a table of Easter dates for the next 30 years is part of the new curriculum. That rural African pastor and his congregation can stay connected to the rest of the body of Christ.

Cherish your connectedness. As this Easter dawns think about that wave of voices rising from the international dateline, across Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and North America and out across the Pacific Ocean again.

CHRIST IS RISEN!
HE IS RISEN INDEED!

The Easter "tomb" set up on the platform in the Lusekele sanctuary. It will be open and empty tomorrow morning.

Miriam

p.s.: I’ve sent a discrete note to the pastor from the next village wishing him and his congregation a good Easter celebration this Sunday, and an inquiry to his women’s choirs as to whether their Easter songs are ready.

Nourishing the soil and producing sustainable yields

2011-03-30T16:20:00.006+02:00

The Mucuna vines climb up the corn stalks and engulf the field three months after the corn harvest. In dry season the Mucuna dies back. When the rains start we plant corn seed directly in the mulch.

The corn was finally harvested from the small experimental field in the ACDI demonstration garden in January. Antoine set the husked ears in the sun for another week. Then the research guys shelled the corn, cleaned the seed and weighed it: 69 kilograms of gleaming white kernels filled two large basins.

No Iowa corn master would be impressed. Even an indifferent Iowa farmer produces 3 times as much per unit of land as we did in this small experiment. Still the 69kg translates into 1,586 kg/ha. And that is on a plot of weathered, sandy soil, using no fertilizers, in the sixth year of continuous corn cultivation on the same plot. To put the yield in perspective: a Congolese woman planting corn on a newly opened forest field would be delighted to produce 700 to 1,000 kg per hectare. And even she would never consider planting a second crop of corn on the same land until several years later.

How do we do it? The secret is the nitrogen-fixing capacity of the leguminous cover crop that follows the corn each year. Mucuna pruriens is a vigorous bean plant that buries the field in 3 feet of lush vegetation during the second rainy season. The leaves, vines and roots store up nitrogen. When the rains start again we plant the next corn crop. The nitrogen locked up in the decomposing organic matter is released, nourishing the young corn plant and favoring rapid growth. When the corn is maturing the next Mucuna cover crop is already developing. We harvest the corn and the cycle continues.

Agronomists have estimated that the Mucuna cover crop provides the equivalent of 17 to 35 bags of mixed chemical fertilizer for each 2.5 acres of land. That's about $1800 worth of fertilizer at current Kinshasa prices.

The yield in the experimental field was down a bit this year. But still the average over the last five years has been 1,733 kg/ha, about twice the yield in a traditional Congolese corn field - despite continuous cropping. This looks like one productive alternative to traditional slash and burn agriculture. Corn-Mucuna is one way to increase productivity and income and reduce the human footprint on increasingly scarce prime** agricultural land. That's the kind of stewardship ACDI is trying to encourage.

** "prime" agricultural land in much of Bandundu is misleading. These are old soils. They are highly weathered, stripped of most of their basic nutrients and chemically altered, impairing their capacity to hold on to nutrients. Most agriculture here depends on fertility locked up in the organic matter that accumulates during extended natural bush fallow intervals between cropping cycles.

Nearly 20 years, a work of love

2011-03-09T20:02:00.005+01:00

Twenty years ago Timothée Kabila was a school principal. His deep faith and interest in how the church can contribute to the economic and social development of a country like Congo led him to a position on the board of the Lusekele Agricultural Development Center. He joined the staff here as administrator in September 1991.

Two weeks after he arrived, Congo experienced the first buck of political upheaval in the form of riots in Kinshasa. That upheaval cleaved Lusekele’s US- and Canada-based funding and interrupted one mission partnership for a year, the other permanently. Suddenly he was learning how to support extension work without significant outside financing. Financial crisis fostered conflict. Lusekele barely survived. You can imagine how he felt. Why had God led him to this place at that time?

Those first two years were not the only time when he has asked that question. Lusekele has known other financial crises. Timothée became the director of Lusekele. He has tenaciously fought encroachments on the land set aside as a base for regional extension work. He has patiently fended off predatory government officials looking for a part of any action, even before it wiggles. And he stoically tries to ignore the envious church people who can’t imagine that a “large and distinguished agricultural project” like Lusekele doesn’t net Timothée a handsome personal profit every year. He puts up with the guff so that six dedicated extension agents can work regularly with poor farmers and have a place to come home to at the end of every week.

It’s not just Timothée who has made sacrifices. He and his wife Marthe have long balanced vocation and the practical demands of raising a family of 6 surviving kids – not without difficulty. They have always had to supplement the meager Lusekele salary. When it came time to put everyone high school and college, Marthe decided that one of them had to look after their independent family business full-time. She runs the pharmacy and store 100 miles from Lusekele on the main Kikwit-Kinshasa highway. They are apart much of the time, but the sacrifice frees Timothée to continue his ministry here.

Timothée and the others that work here have chosen a vocation. They rarely receive a word of praise, encouragement or thanks. Still, the litany of the positive changes Lusekele has to semi-subsistence farmers is impressive. It has worked with over 580 local groups of farmers in over 400 villages. Innovations have covered poultry and animal raising, gardening, field crops, fruit trees and plantation crops over the years. Current improved varieties of manioc, peanuts and cowpeas promise to double agricultural production and expand opportunities for rural households as their use spreads. This is the fruit of a relative handful of Christian believers who have dedicated their lives to the Lord and to making the lives of neighbors who are even poorer than they are better.

Timothée has often said that ACDI’s work has prospered in a modest way only because God has protected and sustained it. This is my appeal to you to pray for Timothée and Marthe particularly.

Thank the Lord for their sacrifice and the fruit they have borne
Pray that the Lord will give them the tangible encouragement in their work and ministry.
Ask the Lord for a vision of where Lusekele should go from here
Pray that competent and enthusiastic young people will bring their energy to Lusekele
Pray that Timothée will have the wisdom to seek out capabilities that Lusekele doesn’t yet have.

A working farm wagon

2011-03-08T20:36:00.003+01:00

The crew from the oil palm processing operation load jugs of fresh palm oil on the new tractor wagon.

The wagon that Emmanuel Souza and I built a few weeks ago went on its maiden voyage last Friday. Filled with a load of palm oil jugs, the wagon followed the tractor down the hill from the garage to the Lusekele store. Internal roads at Lusekele have deteriorated over the years. So except for the flat expanse of the soccer field, the route included a steep descent and a couple of rough spots.

Kester Mukebwanga hitches up the wagon for its maiden voyage.

The goal is to reduce costs and shift workers to tasks that have a direct effect on improving production and profits. Producing palm oil profitably from its own small plantation is a key part of the strategy that ACDI has for sustaining its agriculture extension work. Transporting a single chunk of firewood can take a worker close to 30 minutes, time much better spent keeping the plantation clean and harvesting ripe fruit bunches.

Kester unloads the last jug of oil.

This week they are going to run the wagon through its paces: collecting palm fruit bunches, hauling sand from the stream near us, collecting dead wood that fuels the palm fruit boiler. Then comes the next lesson: how to organize the work to full advantage wagon capacity and time.

A start in Moliambo

2011-02-18T22:13:00.003+01:00

The new district pastor at Moliambo, Mozart Mulama (his true given name), introduces the first day of a district-wide retreat featuring reflections on the church and life-giving change in our villages.

Pastor Mulama is the new district pastor in Moliambo. In fact he is so “new” that the old district pastor’s family is still living in the pastor’s house and he himself hasn’t yet moved to Moliambo. But he has spent this week working at Moliambo – gathering pastors, deacons and deaconesses together for three days of training and starting a four-day retreat for members of the 14 CBCO churches in the district.

Yesterday was the first day of the retreat. More than 500 adults packed into the long, narrow cement-block building with a tin roof, the Moliambo center church. This was a remarkable show of enthusiasm from people who (from all reports) have been discouraged by church leaders and the difficulties of life. Someone asked Pastor Mulama, “How did you get so many people to actually respond to an invitation?” It’s a mystery even to him. But it is clear that many people hunger for renewal in their churches.

But we even saw signs of unexpected and encouraging openness as we drove into Moliambo yesterday morning. The last four or five kilometers the road winds down through red-clay hills to the church center. We found villagers out in force, fixing the road, and hardly anyone asked for a handout. This is unusual. Only a few days before the road had been in very poor shape. But by 7:30 that morning every place where heavy rains had gouged deep gullies out of the road holes had been filled. The road was mostly leveled and mudholes filled in. We learned later that Pastor Mulama had met with village chiefs, partly to tell them about the retreat, partly to urge them to improve the infrastructure that is their link to the outside world.

Three of us from the Lusekele team responded to Pastor Mulama’s invitation: Philo Bidimbu, whom a few of you may have met; Philippe Kikobo, ACDI’s lead extension agent; and me. Philo spent an hour talking about how deacons and other lay leaders can be effective leaders of life-giving change in their congregations and villages. Philippe gave a similar message to a group of intercessors.

I talked to the gathered group about how working hard is often not enough. Farming “smart” as responsible stewards of God’s land is part of the deal. I illustrated this with examples of how disease-resistant cassava can unlock opportunities that the average poor farm family doesn’t even dare to hope for right now.*

What all three of us want people to understand is that God has already prepared a blessing for us and even for our non-Christian neighbors. This is a blessing that would guarantee basic food security for the average family. This is a blessing that would make it possible for every child to get a primary education and most to get a secondary education if they are motivated. This is a blessing that would make primary health care accessible to most families. Our churches can be the channel of this blessing. And I hope that the resulting changes in our congregations would give us an opportunity talk about God’s love, his concrete provision in our lives, and his purpose for us and for the world.

Pray for Pastor Mulama, the pastors of those 14 local congregations in the Moliambo district, and the lay people that came together for reflection this week. Pray that this is a week not just for enthusiastic worship and encouraging Christian talk. Pray that leaders will capture a vision and turn it into concrete, life-transforming action and powerful witness to the many non-Christians who live beside them.

*I have said this before. Mosaic-resistant, high-yielding varieties can double or triple cassava yields in central Bandundu province. A typical family could move from having a surplus of about 14 sacs (about $130 worth) each year to having from 45 to 80 sacks of surplus (worth $400 to $720 a year). Yet there are still literally hundreds of villages in our working area who know practically nothing about the blessing that God is offering farm families.

Building a simple tractor wagon

2011-02-05T11:24:00.005+01:00

How do you build a simple tractor wagon from boards and an old LandRover rear axle? Emmanual Souza is helping me answer that.

“I don’t really care about the money. I just want Lusekele to make some headway.” Emmanuel Souza and I were looking down at the rear axle from an old cannibalized LandRover. “Pretty soon you will have palm fruit bunches coming out of your ears and you will need a way to transport them. I’m glad to help.”

Those are rare words in a world dominated by project-induced dependence where many people are looking for the next patron to get themselves through the year. He was casting a vote for a renewed rural economy based on shared knowledge and local innovation. And the thing that struck me most was that it was done in the spirit of Paul’s admonition to the Philippians: “Look out for one another’s interests, not just for your own.”

Last year Emmanuel was sick for months with some ill-defined digestive track problem. His energy dissipated. He hardly got out of bed. Almost everyone thought he would die. But he didn’t. He says that God healed him. Over the last couple of months he has gained strength and regained some of his long-term interest in adapting simple technology to the local people’s needs and opportunities. He is a gifted mechanic and millwright. Joining me in a do-it-yourself tractor wagon project was a way to keep a hand in life.

The rear wheel assembly of the LandRover will make a perfect axle for a simple wagon able to carry ½ to ¾ tons. ACDI’s immediate concern is to quickly move palm fruit from its own plantations to the small oil extraction installation here, save money, and free workers for better plantation maintenance.

However, more fundamental concerns drive me. First, make the plantation and oil extraction operation profitable. That’s kind of a strange concern for a missionary. But the long term ability of the Baptist church’s extension program to help members and their neighbors depends on stronger local income. A profitable business provides the surplus that makes it possible for a few believers to serve others and proclaim God’s good news.

Second, innovation, combining the best of our own experience with the creative inspiration that comes from God, is part of our mandate to join God in the continuing creation of this world. Building a suitable wagon out of local materials and discarded hardware is a local solution to a local need. It demonstrates in a very small way that God has NOT destined us to live within the limitations of our current poverty.

Third, small successes help Lusekele Christians to maintain hope and a measure of enthusiasm. I want people to have enough confidence in God and in themselves that they are willing to take well-considered risks that have a good chance of creating new opportunities. An old proverb says, “Nothing succeeds like success.” My colleagues in the business and technical side of the Lusekele ministry need a few good successes.

Emmanuel tests out an idea as we cobble together a tractor wagon for transporting palm fruits and other produce.

We finished half the small wagon bed yesterday and played around with ideas for mounting the axle. Kester, the Lusekele mechanic, is scrounging around Vanga for parts we lack. In a couple more weeks we should have another very small piece of the Lusekele sustainable ministry puzzle in place. Emmanuel’s willingness to serve others with his experience and enthusiasm encouraged me. It echoes Jesus’ orientation to life : “He was humble and walked the path of obedience . . .” – for others, for all of us.

Mama Luti learns to read and lead

2011-01-24T08:15:00.002+01:00

Luti Makunu Mayumbu (right) of Kikosi village, and her Bible, with other members of their League group

People come to our literacy classes for a variety of reasons. For Luti, it was her ardent desire to enter God’s Word in the Bible for herself. We had our first literacy training in the Vanga area in 2001. One of the participants, president of the Kikosi village Baptist women, who was also a primary school teacher, immediately started classes and Luti joined.

Luti’s father was a skilled mason who worked in construction in a variety of places. On of these places was Lusekele, where we live and work. In those days people weren’t sure that girls should be in school. What could a school teach a girl what she needed to know when she grew up to be a woman?

Luti started primary school, but when she was in third grade her mom got sick and needed help. Her older sisters and brothers weren’t available to take care of her mom and see that food got on the table, but she was. She dropped out of school. When her mother died, she continued to be her father’s housekeeper and farmer. School became a dream of her childhood past.

In time she married, children came, and in time she started sending them off to school. Maybe that’s what reawakened her regrets at her aborted school career, and the door to knowledge that had only just cracked open for her. She faithfully participated week after week in church and women’s meetings. She watched the speakers bring story after story and teaching after teaching from the Bible. She longed to be able to go to that well herself and sometimes she would hold someone’s Bible. But the treasures and mysteries remained locked inside.

Finally the Kikosi women's president started a literacy class for them. Here was her chance! It was hard work. Other women dropped out, but she was going to get what she wanted at last. Little by little she learned, until she finished the class. The last part of the class even consisted of Bible stories. She read them, and read from the teacher’s Bible, and anyone else’s that she could take a peek at. She started using the stories in teaching herself, and joined the Bible study league in Kikosi.

At this point I heard from her teacher about her one graduate, but didn’t meet her. In my subsequent visits to Kikosi, Luti was too shy to approach me to talk about it. Finally 2 months ago, a League retreat took place at Lusekele, and she was there. We were in the same small group. She pulled me aside and said, “I was in the literacy classes at Kikosi. I learned to read and write. Now I am the leader of the League Bible study group in Kikosi (learning all these marvelous things from God’s Word myself and with his people). Thank you!” She even had a Bible in hand.

Thank you to the literacy workshop trainers. Thank you to Rose Mayala the literacy coordinator. Thank you to all those friends who have shared a special gift over the last ten years. God has brought us together to change the world just a little for women like Luti. Because of this movement of God's Spirit, another dedicated Christian is able to exercise her gifts in leading the church.

Miriam

God doesn't abandon us in our poverty

2011-01-21T16:00:00.002+01:00

Brother Matondo's name means "Gratitude". Here he leads a Bible Reading League retreat session on how League members can transform their villages.

The Ligue's* 3-day New Year's retreat started off with very challenging questions. How do Ligue members become a truly transformational force in local villages? Do they share Good News? Do they make village life healthier, safer, more satisfying, more productive? Do they care for the land and the other creatures that depend on it?

The scope of these questions turned out to be too large. Retreat organizers decided to look at transformation through the lens of one specific issue: how Ligue members relate to former Ligue members who have dropped out, who are losing their faith, or have lost it. Too often people stop coming to Bible studies, drop off the fellowship map without a trace, and no Ligue member bothers to talk with them again.

This led us to think about how Jesus handled discouraged people with wavering faith. In Luke 24, we find Cleopas and his companion crushed by Jesus' arrest and crucifixion. Their dreams had vanished. In this disappointment, Jesus sought them out. He listened to their deeepest concerns. And then he explained from the Scriptures how God's purpose was being worked out in the chaotic events in Jerusalem, even though that purpose was different from what they had expected. In a matter of a few hours, the wavering disciples understood God's plan in a new way and recognized Jesus alive, tangible evidence of the plan. Their faith revitalized, they immediately returned to Jerusalem to testify.

What are the "deepest concerns" of Ligue members who drop out, even repudiate their faith in Christ? Obviously there is no single answer. But a surprisingly common concern that young Christians have is: "Why does poverty have such a stranglehold on rural Congolese, even those who follow Christ? Why have so many dollars been poured into development activities here for so many years, with such meager results? We pray; does God not hear us? Does he only hear and help foreigners? Has he only chosen them and abandoned us?" By listening to and addressing this preoccupation, we might be able to point the way back to God and his purpose.

This is where Pastor Mulama Mozart and I had a chance to share reflections on poverty, development, and literacy. We often think of the evil, brokenness and waste around us as something that simply happens to us, caused by others. What we often don't see is that we ourselves contribute to it. We are responsible both by what we do and by our inaction. We need to be changed in order to restore the world.

Pastor Mulama pulled no punches. "God," he said, "has given Congo so many resources that he might well resent Congolese Christians constantly badgering him in prayer and song to do something about their situation." Other Congolese have described the poverty in Bandundu as “poverty from lack of initiative.” Pastor Mulama pressed the point.

"We cannot go on blaming others," he said. "We can't depend on handouts from the church, the mosque, the government, the United Nations, the Americans, the Europeans, or the Chinese. SOPEKA is not for us." SOPEKA is a popular acronym here for the dependent mentality that is going nowhere fast. It comes from three phrases. SOmbela ngai - “buy for me”. PEsila ngai – “gimme”. KAbila ngai – “share with me”. SOPEKA says "Take care of me, it's not my fault."

But we don't understand how our values and decision often entangle us and mire us in poverty. When we neglect the infrastructure and means of production we already have (roads, buildings, water sources, or machines, for example), poverty is inevitable. When we encourage ignorance, isolation and conformity, we close ourselves off from the knowledge and tools that can help us to escape poverty. When we tolerate corruption and oppression, they siphon off important parts of our production and discourage initiative. Our rivalries and conflicts create insecurity which consumes resources and discourages people from building for the future. And of course laziness, alcohol and drugs weaken both resolve and strength to change. We have choices to make.

Pastor Mulama offered this advice:
1. discover, define and accept responsibility for what we’re doing wrong or failing to do that is right (giving 2 Kings 7:9 as an example)
2. seek the change within ourselves that is necessary (Rom. 12:2)
3. define the plan that is needed in order to change what we can in our exterior situation
4. work the plan

I started by suggesting what true “development goals” are. It is a “shalom” of health and well-being. Development becomes possible when we allow God to step in and straighten out our relationships: with him and the spiritual world, with the physical world around us, with others and society. We care for God's creation and become productive stewards of our particular corner of the world. This responsible production allows to take good care of our families and share generously and graciously with others. We nurture and extend community life. In healthy community, God adds to our knowledge, intelligence and personal gifts from the stores of other people. We reflect God's image more clearly and we regain the purpose He had for us from the beginning.

I told participants how literacy lets us hear God's Word in his scriptures. Our hearing the word is an important part of His transforming work in us. But being able to read also opens a door to the accumulated knowledge and experience of hundreds of generations of people from all around the world. The knowledge and experience available from the Lusekele agricultural development center are part of God's enabling gifts. High-yielding, disease resistant varieties of cassava - a mainstay of the diet. High-yielding varieties of protein-rich peanuts and cowpeas. High-yielding varieties of oil palms. Much improved crop-management techniques. New vegetables for combating malnutrition. Improved processing techniques. Mastered and incorporated into everyday life, this is the kind of knowledge that can transform traditional agriculture and reduce poverty and protect the long-term health of our environment.

I spent the rest of my time describing a technique for doubling or tripling corn yields while reducing the work and the land needed, and saving precious forest.** The idea comes from Central America. Corn is associated with a soil-restoring legume called velvetbean. A farm family can cultivate corn every year on the same plot and actually improve yields over time, all the while improving their farmland.

In the scriptures God constantly reminds us that he has made provisions for our lives. These allow us to live sufficiently, to care for those close to us, to be gracious to others, and to care for his creation on which we depend for life. But He also calls us to be full partners in this endeavor of living abundantly (even if simply.) The Holy Spirit illuminates God's word, making it living direction for us personally and for our world. Meditation on God's word aids the process of apprehending and understanding. A willing spirit that asks God to change us first opens the door. And obedience to God's direction leads to action that actually touches the world around us.

It was refreshing to see God's people wrestling with the word, trying to figure out how to share Good News for their neighbors.

Miriam

* The Ligue is the Ligue pour la Lecture de la Bible (the Bible Reading League.) It is the Francophone equivalent of Scripture Union. Chapters encourage people to encounter God through Bible reading, regular study together and prayer.

** See Roland Bunch, Two Ears of Corn, World Neighbors

The Word of God Transforms the World

2011-01-17T09:58:00.002+01:00

150 Bible Study League members jammed into a large conference room at the Vanga nursing school for a 3-day New Year's retreat.

“Shalom, shalom!” The greetings filled the packed room.

Over 150 Christian adults and young people gathered in Vanga over the New Year's holidays for a 3-day retreat organized by the Ligue Pour la Lecture de la Bible (Scripture Union). The theme of the retreat was “The Word of God Transforms.” The Bible study passage was the story of Cleopas and the other disciple (Luke 24). For three years they heard Jesus and watched him act, full of expectations of the coming Messiah. And now they were on the road to Emmaus, discouraged, going back to their old life. Jesus hadn't liberated them from the Romans and hadn't established the ideal Davidic kingdom. Events of the past three days pointed to failure. In the desire to see Jesus' message in terms of their own expectations, they had missed the hope and power of Good News. So complete was their disappointment that they didn’t even recognize Jesus as he walked and talked with them. They weren’t transformed . . . until they heard God's word again and finally recognized Jesus alive in action: in his way of blessing the food.

The central questions the retreat wrestled with were: "Why are so few of us really transformed? And why active Christians have so little impact on our communities, our environment and our life situations?"

One conclusion participants came to is that we often assume that our decision to follow Christ and exposure to God’s Word will automatically transform us. But what we observe is that hearing God's word must be accompanied by obedience, the will to be shaped by the will of God. Transformation is not the automatic result of being inducted into the Christian fellowship.

A second conclusion we came to was that God's will is not always obvious to us. For example, most cultures including historical biblical cultures once accepted slavery, and traditional Bandundu culture assumes that the exploitation of God's creation is an unlimited right, even when it leads to destruction of the ecosystems on which we depend for life. Learning the mind and heart of God in all things requires effort: prayer, meditation, and serious reflection by the community of faith. It also requires the Holy Spirit’s direction. Transformation happens as a result of inspired meditation and obedient action.

The retreat challenged participants to take stock of the changes their lives make in the villages where they live. Do Leaguers in general contribute to the transformation of the world? Or are they simply happy with League activities, with a pietism that satisfies the soul and intellect? Do they share good news with their neighbors? Do they make village life healthier, safer, more satisfying, more productive? Do they care for the land and the other creatures that depend on it?

These are excellent questions for all of us to think about . . . and act on.

Miriam

Bible Study League at Lusekele

2011-01-14T19:59:00.002+01:00

Carine is the shining smile in the middle. Kakesa is the young man in blue at the left. Cheryl is the black wig on the right. Three of the teenagers that meet regularly for Bible Study League meetings at Lusekele.

Back in October, I ran into a guy who said, “Mama Noyes! I’ve been wanting to talk to you about collaborating for literacy." It turned out he was the new president of the Vanga area Ligue*.

He went on to explain. "Our purpose is to get people reading and studying the Bible together. But many of our members don’t in fact read. They just come to hear the Word, as they do in church. As a result, too many of our chapter leaders fall into the habit of just preaching at meetings instead of leading their members in Bible studies. We want to change that. Would you be willing to train Ligue leaders to teach their members to read and write, so that they can really study the Bible?”

Would I?!! This is what we’ve been thinking about and wishing would happen the past 10 years. We have yet to have our meeting, but we’re going to work on it. There’s no rush, since this is the off-season for work with women, who are the majority of illiterates in Congo.

In the meantime, during this off season, I’m concentrating on our own Ligue group. The kids are mostly teenagers. They consider themselves too old for Sunday school (which is pretty much limited to 3-10 year olds) but still know woefully little about what is in the Bible. Some of them are our recently baptized, interested in learning more about God and this life of faith that they have chosen. None of them read well – one might not read at all. Reading the Bible out loud in two versions of French plus Kituba, our local trade language, and discussing what they have read helps them to get familiar with the Bible and understand what God wants of us. It also improves their general reading fluency and comprehension in both languages, for better success at school and beyond.

In the fall we were reading the stories of Rebecca and Isaac’s marriage and the story of Ruth and Naomi. And then we moved on to a general discipleship program of study, with memorization of helpful verses. In years past I’ve offered a prize of a notebook for anyone who will memorize the books of the Bible in order and recite them.

Coordinating with school presents us with a challenge. Ligue meetings are usually in the afternoons. In a time of double sessions, some of Lusekele’s kids attend morning sessions and other afternoon sessions. Should we split our Ligue meetings into separate morning and afternoon meetings to accommodate all the kids? Or should we meet on Saturday afternoons or Sundays? The only day we can catch up with the whole group all together to discuss the matter and decide on alternative meeting hours/days is next Sunday.

Miriam Noyes

* The Ligue’s full name is the Bible Reading League (Ligue pour la Lecture de la Bible in French), known as Scripture Union in English-speaking countries. It is the most effective discipling group in Congo today, is a wide-spread grass-roots organization, and has kept hundreds, maybe thousands of isolated villagers reading over the years.

Agricultural promotion an opportunity to see God at work

2010-11-12T09:21:00.003+01:00

ACDI Lusekele extension specialists, Philippe Kikobo and Philomene Bidimbu, explain the details of cassava mosaic virus to the principal of the CBCO high school at Kumbi. The agricultural section of the high school is trying out four disease-resistant varieties.

Philippe and Georges Mulwa talk with the wife of the Kumbi village chief. Her field was dotted with manioc plants riddled with mosaic disease.

In your world, where is God right now? Does He care about the things that press on you this morning? Is He interested in how you are going to pay for groceries or replace the broken printer or repair that car that you depend on to get to work? Is he interested in the son you lost recently after a short lifetime of struggle, in the grief and guilt that washes over you? Does He have a stake in the big project you are working on? Does He give a whit about the disagreements in your local fellowship that sow suspicion and hurt? Can He heal the discouraged spirits? Does He want to?

As Christians who try the best we can to walk in the steps of Jesus, we believe that Infinite God, Creator of the Universe, loves each one of us like an only daughter or only son. Reading “God loved the world so much . . .”, our hearts change the infinite into the intimate, yielding “God loved insignificant me so much, that he gave his only Son . . .” We believe that God knows, that God cares and that God acts to nourish and to save each one us.

If anything, people in Congo take questions about how the unseen, spiritual world relates to the material world more seriously that most of us Americans. For most people here, the relationships and interplay of powers in the spiritual world determine our health, well-being and success (or failure) in taking advantage of opportunities we encounter. Many assume that God is far away, at best disinterested, at worst capricious and malevolent, leaving human beings in a complicated and dangerous maelstrom of competing spiritual powers.

One question that pushes Christian believers everywhere is how can we help people to see God who reveals Himself as loving Father? How is God present in the day to day lives of rural Congolese? Since our work at Lusekele focuses on agricultural innovations and the lives of people here revolve around agriculture, perhaps it is only natural to see God’s activity in agricultural clothing. Where poverty grinds away at people’s hopes and serious plant disease gnaws at distressingly meager agricultural surpluses, God has brought to everyone’s attention manioc varieties that are disease-resistant and high-yielding. We believe that our loving Father has seen our neighbors in need and holds out this promise to them – a promise that could easily double their income and erase almost completely the incidence of malnutrition.

Philippe demonstrates how to create a small bench terrace around a newly planted oil palm.

Philippe Kikobo spends 15 days each month riding a dirt bike over tough eroded roads, visiting farmers in isolated villages and sharing good news about what God is doing right now. After a hard day walking to distant fields or once again picking the motorcycle up after a fall, the only bed is a woven mat over a crude stick bed-frame. Meals are often spare and bathing water scarce. Last week Miriam and I had a chance to go along for the ride. It gave us a new appreciation for the physical challenges ACDI’s extension specialists face month after month after month. During October, Philippe worked with 33 different farmer’s groups.

His job is to create a culturally safe environment in which skeptical farmers can test out these new manioc, peanut or oil palm varieties that God has made and compare them with the best traditional varieties. The message is, “See for yourself what God has done. See what a difference it can make in your family, in your village, in your church.” For many people the results are a revelation. They never dreamed that an ordinary field could produce so much more. And every cooperating group is left with a bit more evidence that God is near, conscious of their daily needs, actively making provision for them.

Philippe and a cooperating farmer share a joke after visiting a peanut demonstration field near Kikwanga 1.

Brennan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel tells the story of a woman who attended a retreat he organized. She longed for a concrete certainty that God had touched her with His closeness and love. Unfortunately there is no formula for achieving this grace; if there was it wouldn’t be grace. Together they simply asked the Lord for his loving presence. The following day, the woman took a walk on the beach near the retreat house. Some distance up the beach a teen-aged boy and a woman were walking toward her. As they drew closer, the woman broke away and approached Brennan Manning’s friend. Without hesitation she embraced her, kissed her on the cheek, said “I love you” and continued her walk down the beach. That totally unexpected action by a total stranger mediated the message of God’s love in a powerful new way to this seeking woman.

A successful demonstration field of a highly-productive cassava variety is just as ambiguous (or potentially just as clear) as a random act of tenderness by a stranger on a lonely beach. To the eyes of people yearning to know who God really is and where He is right now, it might just be the sign that reveals how deep is the love of God and how close He is. Philippe and the 4 other ACDI extension specialists can’t manufacture the experience for people. But like all Christians, we can try to create a place where people glimpse divine love and grace and might go on to truly encounter God, who is infinite and intimate at the same time.

The last visit of the day - beside the manioc multiplication field these two women had a small plot of traditional Bambarra groundnuts.

Lusekele young people baptized in the Kwilu

2010-09-20T20:35:00.005+02:00

When the half-mile-wide Kwilu River is your baptismal font, one is forced to reassess the definitions of poverty. In many things the rural people of Congo are incredibly rich. An oversized bath-tub tucked in behind the pulpit of your local church stacks up as a pretty modest setting compared to the powerful mass of water flowing by the canoe port where seven young people are being baptized.

Following Christ will be the endeavor of a lifetime. But it starts with a simple decision. We join ourselves with Jesus, trusting that through him God draws us back into renewing fellowship. Baptism is the opportunity for new believers to make a public declaration about that decision. At the same time the church recognizes publicly that new believers are now part of the fellowship.

The Kwilu River baptism takes place right down at the canoe port at Lusekele. What better place for public declarations? Two canoes discharged passengers crossing from Mosia while the Lusekele congregation sang and danced in celebration.

Paul Makolokoto (above)was one of the young people being baptized. (An interesting coincidence that he is the the nephew of our American Baptist missionary colleague, Kihomi Mabudiga.) He is a serious young man, active in the Scripture Union bible study group and enthusiastic Sunday school teacher for children. Paul doesn't have a clear idea yet of who he is going to be in the world. But he does know that God is the point of reference that orients true life. That's where true character is ultimately found.

Paul Makolokoto with his parents and grandmother, getting ready to host the progressive dinner.

After the 9:30 am baptism, we all danced back up to the church at Lusekele. Two choirs joined the four permanent choirs at Lusekele. After church, the families hosted a progressive feast for the young people. Even after six stops they were ready for more. And the dancing and sing was still going.

Baptism did nothing to wash away stains in my life. It certainly didn't mark a transition to perfection -- just ask my wife. But it did give me a chance to tell people that I had decided to join up with Jesus. In that relationship is found the promise of life: throbbing, pulsing, uncontrollable, joyous life filled with goodness. It is a special Sunday morning when we all can dance again in celebration of the start of real new life for another group of young believers.

Conversations in the shade

2010-08-22T12:57:00.003+02:00

I hadn’t planned to be at Vanga a second time this week. I had already spent half a day trying to track down batteries and a barrel of gasoline. There were things to do at Lusekele. But the Minister of Social Affairs and an entourage of government dignitaries announced that they would descend on Vanga and Timothee thought ACDI Lusekele should be represented. The government wanted a public memorial service for the people who perished in a riverboat accident. Many of the victims were people in villages where we have worked for years; some were undoubtedly people from our CBCO churches.

You may have heard about the accident. The overloaded boat ferrying goods and traders from the Kwilu River to Kinshasa encountered rough water on the Congo River. Riding low in the water, it was swamped and capsized, dumping more than 200 passengers into the river. Many couldn’t swim; at least 138 perished.

The waiting crowd is in a festival mood. Political banners fly next to the Congo flag. As time passes, the sun rises higher in the sky and conversations blossom in the shade.

Death is never easy to deal with. Death due to poorly regulated and over taxed transport systems (both road and river) is tragic. The Minister of Social Affairs communicated the concern of the Prime Minister himself. Good instincts brought the government to Vanga. To be sure, political instincts. But also the instincts that God put in us to care for innocent lives lost, people with limited options just trying to make a living, for justice, for commitment to justice and to righting wrongs. The expression of condolences is certainly a worthy reaction of the country’s leaders. It was a recognition that so much more might be done to prevent reckless practices and pointless loss of life.

The subtext of the day, however, is what happened while local dignitaries, traditional chiefs, pastors, school directors, sports clubs, political party adherents, anxious police, and curious kids all waited for the delegation. The plane was scheduled to arrive at 9am. It didn’t land until 3pm. What do 350 waiting people do to fill the dead time? Find some shade and talk. Conversations blossomed with immigration agents, village chiefs, teachers, pastors, storekeepers, government officials.

Miriam talks with the two chefs de groupement as we all wait for the Minister of Social Affairs and government delegation.

Many people still have little idea of what the church is doing, and what God has done already to provide stable food supplies and better income for rural people in our region. Miriam told people about chaya, a perennial leafy vegetable that can be grown in a living fence. I talked with a political party member about coherent plans for shaping the country and choosing disciplined parliamentary representatives. We both talked with traditional chiefs about caring for the land and the improved production that new manioc varieties could give their people. I shared ACDI’s experience with soil-sustaining legumes and continuous corn production with the chief of Songo, a village that has run out of land. Conversations ranged to the importance of reading and education for family well being and the role of Christians in the government. More seeds planted in the shade while waiting for delayed government leaders to make their gesture.

I’m glad we were able to be there. It was important to recognize the terrible loss of victims, their families, and the country. Christians understand that God mourns the pointless waste and wants people in power to bring life-giving change to Congo. But waiting in the shade turned out to be the unexpected work of that day -- with people we would never have encountered at the office at Lusekele.

-- Ed

A cause for celebrating

2010-08-18T19:41:00.003+02:00

Sunday around 5:30 in the afternoon whooping and hollering broke out on the road in front of the house. I wondered, “Are the kids playing a soccer match and we hadn’t heard about it?” Then I met up with Aimee, our neighbor’s daughter, her hair disheveled and powdered white, and I knew. They had just heard the news about who had passed the state exam for high school diplomas. Aimee was one of the finalists and had passed!
As dusk settles over Lusekele, whoops and hollers break the afternoon stillness. Aimee Kikobo carries the marks of wild flour splashing in celebration of her passing the state high school exams.

In Congo, when there is a major occasion for celebration in the lives of kids and young adults, anyone and everyone gets to throw or rub flour into the hair of the graduate. Mothers, anyone in the lucky family is fair game too. We were in Kin for the wild city-wide celebration of graduation.
Everyone gets into the celebration, a joyous abandonment. Kids certainly. But as you can see, even the Lusekele moms join in the fun. (When was the last time your mom did something like this?)

Graduation from high school is certainly an occasion to celebrate. You can hardly blame people. The exams are taken in June. Then the wait begins. Sometimes it takes as long as January or February for all the results to come out. In the meantime the students are in limbo. Do they need to retake their senior year? Can they make arrangements to go on to university? Can they go anywhere, do anything? And some families wonder, did we do everything we could to ensure success?

Over the years corruption (or the suspicion of corruption) has plagued the school exams and the granting of high school diplomas in Congo. At times the results may have little to do with a student’s knowledge or skill. Parents complain widely that demands from examiners have significantly raised the cost of senior years. Students who insist on being judged on their own merits can find that their tests are tossed aside unread. Just this year the rumors circulated that many schools in Kinshasa had paid the examining board to pass all Kinshasa students regardless of their test results. Whether this is true or not, the shadow of corruption taints the entire process. It throws into doubt the accomplishments of hundreds of thousands of intelligent and motivated young people who have worked hard in high school.

Some glimmer of good news has emerged. They say that test results are being reexamined more rigorously in Kinshasa. Every effort to re-establish the integrity of the process is welcome.

I didn’t rub manioc flour into Aimee’s hair Sunday, but we certainly celebrate with her and the other high school seniors who have passed this important hurdle. They will continue to face formidable hurdles. But for the moment celebration is a sweet, sweet thing.

-- Miriam --

How would YOU teach Sunday School if . . .?

2010-08-18T19:12:00.004+02:00

How would you teach Sunday school if there were no Bible bookstore in town, no printing house preparing Sunday school lessons, no pre-packaged teaching materials, no pictures to show, no paper and no crayons, scissors, craft supplies or paints to offer? No juice and cookies or crackers, no toys or playground equipment, maybe not even a Bible of your own to use, and no money to even dream about those things? Well, now I can tell you.

Last week I attended a Sunday school teacher training seminar led by some local folk – “Leaguers”. The Bible Study League (Scripture Union in English-speaking countries) has been the most active organization for the promotion of Bible reading, serious discipleship and developing Christian leadership among young Congolese Christians since it first started in Congo in the mid-70s. Not surprising that it is a natural source for volunteer Sunday school teachers.

All the trainers and participants were avid Leaguers -- some high-school girls from Vanga and Lusekele, and some teenage boys from Bilili and Lusekele, with a sprinkling of older folk from other places. All in all we were about 20 taking a training that had been developed in France for Africa.

With at least 7 schools, Vanga, the historic mission station and burgeoning town just down the road is a magnet for students from all around the region. Naturally, more than a few want to settle there when they get done with their studies. So if any place needs special programs for kids of all ages, it is Vanga.

The training was a formula-approach to teaching Bible truths. You might think this too rigid to allow the Holy Spirit to direct the process. But when you’re quite young or a villager far from any advice, the formulas help to keep the essentials in mind as you design your Sunday school program. That is a good thing. The trainers were enthusiastic and the program good.

The Lusekele volunteer teachers who participated are raring to go. This week they will work on honing their skills together with our more experienced teacher before starting teaching.

So, how do you teach Sunday school without all the aids that we Americans think necessary? Well, you sing some choruses together. of course. The songs tell of God’s searching love, our sin, forgiveness and renewal. They tell of new life inspired by the Spirit. (I swear, Congolese kids know all the choruses by heart.) You pray with the children. There’s always Bible verse memorization.

Sauve and Paul teach the kids a hide and seek game, while Veronique, the pastor's daughter watches how it is done.

There are many games that don’t require much equipment: Simon Says, for example. Or Net the Fish. They taught us a number of these.

Then you have the Bible story. Everyone loves a story, especially kids, particularly when they’re told with lots of dramatics. Acting stories out is an option that doesn’t necessarily require many props, if any. We were taught never to read the Bible stories to the children. Rather you boil them down to the essentials, identifying the opportunities they offer to tell the kids more about God, sin, Jesus and following him. You weave the stories around these themes and teach from there. (This program is big on bringing kids to a personal commitment to Jesus.) And, of course, a big dose of love and individual attention is essential, no matter what side of the world you’re on.

My participation caused some strain in our household, as we’re just back and have had quite a lot of house-cleaning, maintenance and repair work to do, besides the usual unpacking and ordering one’s stuff, not to mention garden-clearing and rebuilding of outbuildings, to prepare for this next four years of service here. Every couple of days we were moving everything to a different room as we painted, and I had to be home to help as much as possible, so wasn’t with the seminar fulltime. Frankly, I was glad not to be a full participant. I have never been a fan of being woken at 4:30 for simultaneous group prayers at the top of one’s voice, even when it is alternated with singing.

But this seminar is one of the signs that God gives us of the Spirit’s movement in the church, the signs of life. These young people have a heart for sharing life in Jesus with children and other young people. I wanted to encourage their commitment and budding vision. Maybe you will want to remember them too as you pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send more workers and to give them the tools they need to be effective.

All systems up and running (almost)

2010-08-02T20:47:00.005+02:00

Living with a foot in two worlds makes its own special demands, especially when one of the worlds is a fully wired, 24/7 rush hour and the other is an off-the-grid, DIY (do-it-yourself), self-reliant world where the nearest hardware store is 300 miles away. Miriam and I returned to the Baptist Agricultural Center at Lusekele three weeks ago. Imagine what nomads have to go through, packing up the household every few days and moving to a new place. That's what we have been doing as we move from room to room cleaning, repairing, painting and unpacking.

The termites have been separated from the game cabinet and other less important things. The grime is washed away. Four rooms sport a new coat of paint, and only four more to go. The office has power.

Day after tomorrow the solar panels should be back on the roof producing clean and quiet energy for the Lusekele internet connection and our house – no more generator banging away out in the garage. Next week we should be able to say, "All systems up and running."

One of the real joys of having a foot in two worlds is experiencing firsthand the fruits of Congolese hospitality. Realizing that we would have a hard time right at the beginning unpacking the household, our Congolese co-workers gave us another sign of God’s caring presence. Timothee Kabila fed me for the first three days, allowing me to get the kitchen basics set up for Miriam’s arrival on day 4. Lusekele kids have pitched in to carry household water, earning a bit for school expenses or spending money. And Brother Kurt arranged for our yard to be cleaned up a little before our arrival.

Remember that in Bandundu people are right in the middle of dry season. It’s a time for preparing new fields for peanuts, corn, cassava and mantete (seed squash). In fact, as I write this afternoon, the Lusekele people have just set fire to the collective fields to burn the debris and release the nutrient-rich ash for the new crops. One big challenge people face is finding good peanut seed. Erratic rains last year caused a near-failure of the peanut crop, leaving seed supplies for this year seriously depleted.

Dry season is also time for church retreats – a time for spiritual renewal and learning. The Milundu retreat begins on Friday and runs through the weekend. We’re praying that God will touch people in a special way as they take out a few days before the intense time of planting begins toward the end of the month.

One big opportunity for agricultural development should open up late this year. The US government has committed over $30 million to improve agricultural productivity, strengthen local producers’ groups and increase the efficiencies of agricultural processing and marketing over the next five years. The project focuses on Bandundu and Bas-Congo provinces, the regions where the Baptist church has the strongest presence. We are praying that the investments will establish an effective agricultural extension program similar to what we have done at Lusekele over the last nine years and then work with common farmers to make further efficiency gains by working together. You can pray along with us that local church agriculture programs, like our own and the Mennonite program in Kikwit, will play a key role in making sure that investments are made where they will do the greatest good for common people.

While setting up house has consumed most of our time, opportunities for ministry have come our way. Miriam has met with the area literacy supervisors to brainstorm how the program might continue and expand. Mama Mbaba, one of the supervisors, turned up again today for a Sunday school seminar which Miriam attended as well. They spent another hour thinking about how to improve monitoring of local literacy classes. I have participated in two oil palm growers’ meetings organized by ACDI Lusekele. Many of the cooperating growers have no real living relationship with Christ – a significant drag on building healthy, more productive and sustainable rural communities.

Next week focus shifts from preparing a working base to deciding just how Miriam and I are to be involved in the Baptist church’s witness over the next few months. Pray for us and the staff at Lusekele as we begin to review what has been done in the past year and think about what priorities God seems to be setting for the work this coming year. Pray too for the Baptist Convention of Congo (CBCo) as more than a dozen candidates are campaigning for the post of General Secretary. The association of Baptist churches badly needs a person of deep personal faith, a clear vision rooted in God’s leading, demonstrated administrative ability, and unshakable integrity. We can’t dictate to the Spirit of God, but we certainly can pray that the Spirit will sweep through the elective assembly to bring a renewing change to the Church.

Opening doors for daughters of soldiers

2010-05-11T01:11:00.005+02:00

Raymond Mafuta, literacy teacher surrounded by the daughters of soldiers who are learning to read. The Lemba-Matete Baptist Church runs 6 literacy classes all the time.

These young women dominate the literacy classes at the big Lemba-Matete Congo Baptist church in Kinshasa. They are daughters of military families. We all know what the military is like: they move a lot. And when military orders come to go, you go that day, no matter if it is in the middle of a semester. The children’s schooling is the last concern of the commanders.

The other fact of military life in Congo is that ordinary soldiers don’t have much of a salary, and are often paid months late. So their children either have a very interrupted education, an unfinished education, or, none at all, especially the girls of the family. If a family doesn’t have enough money to send all their children to school, girls are the first to get left out.

So these young women didn’t get an education, or much of one, when they were children. But now they are grown, and most of them make a little money buying wholesale and selling retail in a market or in front of their houses – enough to pay their own tuition in an adult education course. They are determined to push open the doors of opportunity with their own hands and the Lemba-Matete Baptist Church is right there beside them.

They are learning all that they can, so that they can participate fully in life, and go further than their parents. Some are learning trades. And their teachers are determined to teach them about true life, that life Jesus spoke of in John 10:10: I have come that they might have life, life in all its fullness.

A timely opportunity to join Congo ministry

2010-04-08T07:27:00.005+02:00

This message is not intended for churches in our missionary partnership network. But if you are an individual asking how God might use you more fully, read on.

Most of you already know that a simple yearning to see Gods work accomplished in the world doesn’t automatically translate into concrete transformational action that changes people’s lives on the ground. Yearning must be matched by committed mobilizing of resources – the right people, the right material resources, and often the money that can bring both to the opportunity we have in mind. It’s no different for our ministries in Congo.

We want to thank all of you who have given the funds that make our ministry possible: helping Congolese Christians to end hunger in rural Bandundu, to spread literacy (and the access it gives to opportunity), to encourage evangelism among the Twa, and to encourage lay pastor training. As of the end of February you have brought us within $700 per month of the minimum support level needed for us to return to Congo.*

As we close in on this goal, we are delighted to share a timely opportunity with those of you who have a burden for these opportunities in Congo but haven’t yet made a commitment of resources. International Ministries has just announced the creation of a $200,000 fund that will match 50% of new individual pledges to missionary support of a dollar a day for one year.

Here’s how it works:

* the pledge must be from an individual who has not previously pledged to regularly support a particular missionary

* it must be at least $30 per month for 12 months; this will be matched at $15/month for one year, adding $180 to your pledge.

* although monthly payments are much preferred, quarterly, semi-annual or annual pledges will be honored for matching.

* an individual may make a qualifying pledge to more than one missionary and receive a match for each.

* the pledge must be made on-line at the International Ministries website www.internationalministries.org/drives/360_matching_fund between April 19 and May 31, 2010. Make sure to include the underscores for spaces in the last part.

* matching funds will be available on a first-come, first-served basis until the fund is exhausted or May 31, whichever comes first.

So if the Lord has been nudging you to step out on faith to support our ministry in Congo, or the ministry of another IM missionary around the world, this may be just the opportunity that you have been waiting for. Just 16 people giving a dollar a day is all it takes to bring us to an open door back to Congo. For you it might be the chance to turn your yearnings about God’s mission in the world into concrete transformation in a real place among real people. Come make a difference with us.

*Ed and Miriam have reached 87% of their basic support goal (covering salary, medical insurance and retirement fund), just $700 / month short of the minimum needed to return to Congo. Of course airfare, document expenses, house repairs and mission office support, just to mention a few expenses, must be covered as well. These costs amount to an additional $3,000 / month that must be covered by World Mission Offering and other IM income..

God shapes a leader

2010-03-01T19:23:00.001+01:00

The man we see in the foreground is no compelling charismatic figure. In fact, the job he had for a number of years in the lakeside Bantu town of Inongo was a humble one: the caretaker of the house of a local man living in the capital. Traditionally the Twa live in small nomadic bands in the forest. There are no chiefs and court traditions like many Bantu peoples have. But he knows the town of Inongo well, and has become a respected leader of the Twa pygmy community in this area.

Despite his age and position in his community, or perhaps because of it, this man has joined the literacy classes, committed to learn to read and write, AND learn French. Why?

He HAS been impressed with our team’s arguments of the necessity of reading and writing. A leader has to know what official documents say and how their Bantu neighbors might use those documents to gain an advantage. But what really gives him determination to learn to read and write is his personal experience.
When he acted as caretaker for that house in the middle of town, he lived on the property, caring for the buildings and the yard. Nobody objected. There came a time when the owner of the house did not return. He had died. But before he died, he deeded the house to the man who cared for it so faithfully. The document was sent to the caretaker in Inongo. When it arrived, the caretaker, not knowing how to read, thought the letter was for the owner and put it aside. So it was that the death announcement and disposition of the house remained unknown.

Eventually, after several years, the news of the death trickled home and the extended family claimed the house and moved in. When they did, they found the document, read it and were outraged. The neighbors were outraged too when they heard. No way was that house going to go to this pygmy. No way was the neighborhood going to accept a Twa as their landed neighbor on an equal footing. He wasn’t going to stay there a minute longer. They chased him off into the forest at the edge of town.

But he stayed. He built himself a house there, just sufficiently off town territory to satisfy them. When other Twa came to Inongo looking for a different life, they joined him. That’s how their community, Lwatekaka, grew. With his years of experience in the town, he was their natural leader, able to advise them as to where to go and the best way to do things.

He’s the head of the Twa Christian community too. While he was caretaker, drawn by the lively music and drums in churches, he hovered around the edges, taking in what they said about God, and accepted Jesus as his savior and lord. A pastor grudgingly baptized him and a few others. It’s no surprise that, in their ignorance, their practice of their faith leaves a lot to be desired, but they have a strong desire to know better this God who says he loves and died for them. Other Twa in their community are interested too.

Maybe he doesn’t know it, but the literacy classes will make him a much better leader for his people, both outside and inside the church. Besides learning how to read and write, and understand the legal things that affect them, besides learning perhaps to use the language of prestige and education, French, when it counts, besides learning how to gain the respect of their neighbors for his community, besides learning how to buy and sell wisely, to craft new things, to build better houses, to get more of what they want, and to teach these things to the others, in learning to read the Bible he will have the source for learning how to truly walk with Jesus as a Twa, how to please God, and how to really lead his fellow Twa in this new path of good news.

Oil palm grower's manual just off the press

2010-02-10T08:22:00.004+01:00

Grower's manual in simple French designed to help Congolese small-scale producers develop sustainable, productive family plantations.

Since 2002 ACDI Lusekele, the Baptist Convention of Congo's agricultural extension program in the central Kwilu River area, has aggressively promoted high-yielding oil palm varieties to replace worn-out family plantations or diversify traditional shifting cultivation. A family cultivating as little as eight-tenths of an acre could boost family annual income by $200, enough to cover most (if not all) health and education expenses for a typical family. A small-scale plantation can also improve stewardship of the family's land by encouraging permanent coverage of the soil, use of nitrogen-fixing legumes and maximum recycling of nutrients used by the palms. Over 1100 farm families now participate in the program.

Improving family income and ensuring good stewardship of the land both depend on growing oil palms wisely using the accumulated experience of generations of growers and researchers. But what happens when the generation of pro-active peasant palm growers, the bearers of that accumulated wisdom, disappear without teaching the next generation? A whole new generation must scramble to gather together that body of knowledge that makes growing successful. ACDI Lusekele has tried to help farmers get up to speed in two ways: convene an annual oil palm workshop for representatives of all our cooperating associations and make sure that an extension specialist visits every association 4 - 6 times per year to debrief and troubleshoot problems in nurseries or plantations.

Now we have another tool in the arsenal: a simple oil palm grower's manual. Based on ASD / FAO's Smallholder Oil Palm Manual (published on-line and only in English in 2004), the manual has been adapted to the particular needs of small-scale Congolese growers with very limited cash resources. The adaptation is translated into French. It includes extensive diagrams, pictures (most in color) and informative tables to illustrate the key practices for managing a successful smallholding.

ACDI Lusekele has been using a home printed rough draft for a year now. The new commercial printing is done by Lulu Press, Inc. The result is attractive and reasonably durable, an important factor when book storage conditions are not always good. This will be the kind of resource that helps our small growers one more step toward independence and responsible stewardship of what God has given them.

Copies of the manual can be purchased directly from Lulu Press (click here) at $23.99. (A download copy is available for $3.99.) If your church, Sunday school class or small group would like to help make this manual available to small-scale Congolese palm growers through a revolving publishing fund, your tax-deductible donation can be made to:

International Ministries ABCUSA
Mission Finance
Box 851
Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851
donation code: Specifics Project "BIM-CG-002011 - Palm Project - Niles"

Kimobo Denny -- striving for God's good gifts

2010-02-05T03:38:00.009+01:00

Kimobo Denny, in the center, with her daughter and son-in-law.

The mud and thatch houses of Kimbata sprawl for nearly a mile along a dirt road a bit south of Djuma. A dense forest of huge trees once surrounded the village, but that was long ago. Now one is more likely to see brushland, scrubby forest regrowth that follows two years of traditional cropping. On the poorest soils only grass will grow. Farming conditions have become more difficult as each new generation adds its numbers to the village.

In 2002, crop disease was laying its imprint on top of the normal hardships of semi-subsistence farming. Cassava mosaic virus sabotages the plant’s mechanism for trapping sunlight and turning it into food energy. Cassava yields weakened. And suddenly many families who were scraping by before found themselves wondering if they would have anything to eat during the lean months before the next harvest. When our agricultural extension team organized a farmer’s forum that year, people put the cassava disease problem as their number one priority.

Have you ever recognized a problem, had God present you with a way to new life through it, but finally held back because you were afraid to risk change? After that first forum in 2002, most families in Kimbata were in that boat. What would the ancestors think if the current generation abandoned those cassava varieties that had served them well for decades or even generations? Wondering about the answer was a scary thing for most people. A few women bought disease resistant cassava cuttings from other (less hesitant) villages, but most did not. Until Kimobo Denny stepped out on faith that God had something good for them in these new varieties.

Kimobo is not a very likely looking champion of technological innovation. She is modest, with a shy smile. But she was the one who invited the ACDI extension team to Kimbata to help the church women establish a demonstration / multiplication field of new disease-resistant cassava. The women would try it together, just to see if the claims were true. No one would be demonized for breaking faith with tradition and no one would have to risk it all to try the new varieties. They would share the risk.

I’ve said it many times: these new cassava varieties are God’s provision in people’s time of need. Over seven years we have seen them produce 3 to 4 times what traditional varieties do. A few farmers have harvested 5 to 7 times what most Bandundu farmers take from their fields. Kimobo Denny and the women of the Baptist church in Kimbata found that they could trust God for His provision.

ACDI extension specialist, Philippe Kikobo, speaking to Kimbata church members and their neighbors in 2008.

In 2010, there are still some people in Kimbata who fear the wrath of traditional spirits more than they fear the food shortages created by virus-riddled cassava. But a large number of families in Kimbata have discovered that God gives good gifts, that He is our help in time of need, that He can be trusted to protect us when we walk with Him. Kimobo Denny has been sharing this good news and her manioc cuttings with people in surrounding villages. The fruit of her faith and courage is seen not only in Kimbata, but in Mukilu Lubasu, Kitaba, Mulari and Kilongo. Hundreds of families are no longer pressed against a wall by hunger because of this Christian woman who knew that God had something good for her neighbors. The ACDI Lusekele team was just able to give encouragement and guidance at the proper time.

Another family in the middle of their disease-free manioc field.

Sacking up the peanut surplus in early 2008. Manioc successes gave people the confidence to try new peanut varieties too.

Cell phones and literacy in Congo

2010-01-13T07:14:00.004+01:00

Just a couple of days ago I asked Rose Mayala, my main colleague in adult literacy in Congo, if she had any news of the Twa literacy classes established in the area of Inongo, in the Mai-Ndombe Lake region of northern Bandundu province. “Of course”, she said. “I hear from them every other week by cell phone. Classes are going well.” This is an area where it would be difficult to send or to receive written reports. There’s no formal mail service. Getting there is a major undertaking. But they can talk by phone. Rose and I can talk by phone – me in the US Skype-ing Rose on her cell phone in Kinshasa.

One of the fascinating phenomena of Africa is the proliferation of cell phones and how that is changing African life and work. Because of the cost of classic landline phone technology, and its high maintenance demands, telephones were always rare, and often out of service. So rare that now mobile phone companies can almost invent their industry from scratch in Africa. The result is a simpler, cheaper, and more customer-friendly service than you will find anywhere in the United States.

Even very poor Africans are taking it up with enthusiasm. Everyone wants to give you his phone number, even if it isn’t his but a neighbor’s. Some of my acquaintances call all the time, whether or not they have anything to say, or whether or not they have any phone units.

A Congolese can buy a phone for 25$. After signing up with his service and buying an initial phone card, he can keep in touch with his friends even without units of credit, by beeping the friends he wants to contact, and receiving their calls for free. Even with little income, he may feel that he can buy units now and then, when it’s possible to buy cards with as little as one or two dollar’s worth of units.

A phone owner’s major concerns, besides finding and purchasing cards, are keeping his phone’s batteries charged, where electricity is often down, or the whole community is dependent on one or two persons’ solar panels or car batteries, and the vagaries of cell phone coverage in rural areas. It is common to find people standing in the middle of a road, a field, or even up in a tree, with a phone to their ear, trying to find a “sweet spot” where they can communicate, in an area at the edge of coverage.

While Congo still has wide swaths of territory without cell tower coverage, they are getting fewer all the time, and it has revolutionized our literacy work. We have two major needs in communication:

First, making the arrangements and making sure local partners have gotten everything taken care of, for a promised literacy teacher training seminar to start work in an area. Afterwards, keeping in touch with the teachers of classes to encourage them, help them deal with any problems that come up, and getting reports.

One of our biggest problems with rural classes, when we don’t have the funds to visit regularly, is to know if something is happening or not, and what is happening. Teachers often don’t write reports, no matter how we plead with them in training. It’s difficult to find a reliable way to send reports even if they’re written, in a country without a viable postal system. Learning if a teacher training has resulted in classes in that area can be pure happenstance. But cell phones are multiplying, and they make all the difference.

Sure is good to know about those classes -- and only about 5 cents per minute.

A trader's loss plants seeds of Kilunda Sangi renewal

2009-12-09T21:12:00.008+01:00

Léon Mavula is a Christian businessman who wears the shorts and baseball cap of a farmer, not a suit. Twenty years ago everything seemed to be going his way until hyperinflation wiped out his working capital. He lost his trucks, most of his store stocks, his wealth. Still hyperinflation couldn't rob him of two important things -- his faith in the Lord and his entrepreneurial spirit. He settled near his home village, Kilunda Sangi, to rebuild his livelihood and has ended up helping his neighbors transform their village.

Léon was not a farmer. But as he talked with other members of the local church he began to understand their struggle to produce enough food. Farmers were reluctant to run the risk of planting large fields. They preferred smaller subsistence plots. Fear of failure contributed to inadequate food supplies in many years. Kilunda Sangi often topped the statistics for malnutrition.

Problems with cassava mosaic disease in recent years only made the situation worse. Léon thought, "Surely God must have a solution for us."

And God did have a solution, in the form of 5 new high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of cassava promoted by the Baptist extension program at Lusekele. To bring that solution to Kulunda Sangi, Léon formed the MAG group and invited all the church women and their neighbors to join.

Together they planted a large multiplication field and experimented with planting on raised beds, a technique used in Lower Congo that conserves organic matter and soil nutrients. They also worked together with the whole village to control cattle and goats that were constantly browsing in fields close to the village.

The first year's experiment was a huge success -- a cassava harvest much larger than people expected and seed cuttings enough to get most families started planting the new varieties. Each year a new success has fueled enthusiasm. Now in its fourth year, the MAG group has shared the new varieties with everyone in the village. The impact is beginning to show.

People have enough to eat and a bit of surplus to sell. Many of the MAG members are making investments in fish-farming . Others have planted over 7 acres of oil palm. They are multiplying high-yielding peanut seed to share with the village. The Kilunda Sangi congregation has set its sights on putting a permanent roof on the church building.

Léon himself is a committed tither. With part of his modest means he supports the regional Christian radio station, an important source of inspiration and Bible teaching. He continues to help his neighbors find ways to farm more productively.

It is a privilege to work with believers like Léon and the MAG group. God has built solutions into His creation and moves us (me, our Congolese colleagues, and supporting believers in the US) to share these blessings so that ordinary village farmers can feed their families and hope for a less precarious future. Maybe God is moving YOU to join us as you consider the Lord's call to mission in this coming year. May the Light of the World light your life, reveal your path and through you shine into the world around you.

When a roof means there's enough to eat

2009-11-17T23:14:00.001+01:00

Lubidi is a Baptist church center on the other side of the Kwilu River from Lusekele. In the 1960s, evangelists planted churches among the Yanzi and Mbala people there and the gospel gained a foothold. Villagers and church members alike depend on farming for their livelihood. The vitality of the farming system depends on healthy cassava.

In 2003 the cassava was sick. Cassava mosaic virus has spread all across central Africa. Where there should have been robust plants with luxuriant, dark green leaves, the Lubidi farmers saw only weakened cassava with yellow blotched leaves and small tubers. Hunger started to gnaw at the village.

Unsure what to do, a couple of church members came to the ag center at Lusekele to find out about new cassava varieties. They returned to Lubidi with several bundles of seed cuttings to plant a test field.

In the next three months it was evident that a change was taking place. The new varieties grew fast and healthy, tall islands of green in seas of yellowed traditional varieties. When the harvest time came around, people were astonished to see 6 or 7 large tubers on a single plant.

From that first church multiplication field, members took cuttings and planted larger church field as well as trial plots in their own fields. The 2005 and 2006 harvests confirmed that the new cassava produced 2 or 3 times as much and the rush was on to replace the traditional varieties.

In 2006, Pasteur Kikumbula and his wife joined the congregation, bringing the next generation of disease-resistant cassava from the ag center. It took no coaxing for church members and their neighbors to plant the new varieties.

What difference has this made to the church and the village? In 2008 the congregation raised a permanent tin roof over the site of the new church building. (The roof goes up first to protect the adobe bricks from the rain.) Income from the church cassava fields paid for the first sheets of corrugated roofing. More importantly, each member household paid for another half sheet of roofing. For the first time in nealy 40 years the congregation gathered in worship under a permanent roof instead of palm fronds or grass thatch.

The new permanent roof is remarkable in itself. But perhaps more important is the fact that for the first time people have enough surplus to have a sense of security -- the security needed to purchase roofing. That means there is enough to eat, enough for school fees and enough for the occasional visit to the local health nurse. For the first time in years there is enough breathing space in the frantic struggle to survive that people can celebrate the abundance that God gives.

New cassava varieties are God's provision for Lubidi Christians, for their neighbors and eventually for hundreds of thousands of other subsistence farmers in Congo. But it takes pairs of willing hands and feet to bring the blessing to those in need. That's what ACDI Lusekele is all about because it's part of what following Jesus is all about.

Life recovered, life with a future

2009-10-15T18:44:00.005+02:00

Nellie Piti Boko is a fine Christian woman, the salt of the earth, the kind of person who’s a faithful member of the church women’s group, the women’s choir, a participant in the Bible league, always ready to help those who need it, and a good sister to her siblings.

But Nellie’s led a hard life. Her husband disappeared into the diamond fields of Angola, leaving her pregnant with her 4th child. When the baby was born, her sister helped her for a week, then left her on her own. Village subsistence life is a never-ending round of work that starts with getting water and sweeping the yard and pounding manioc into flour at dawn. Exhausted, she slipped into depression and spent days huddled over a fire staring at nothing. The family had little to eat – mostly what the older two children could manage. Friends helped with some food from time to time, but it wasn’t enough. She and the baby went to skin and bones. Her hair turned yellow and sparse with protein deficiency. She had no more milk for the baby.

Fortunately, she went into the feeding center at the hospital at Vanga, got nutritional counseling, and slowly their health returned. The next youngest child was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Fortunately, tuberculosis treatment is heavily subsidized at the Vanga hospital. She got more nutritional counseling. The boy recovered.

During this time, two other important things happened in their life. The chief of their area opened a subsidized school for the poor: for orphans and for children with only one parent, like Nellie’s. He also organized a literacy class for adults. Now Nellie had gone to school as a child, but, like many village girls, didn’t think it was relevant to the real business of life: of being a wife, raising children and farming for their living. So she left as soon as she could and gradually forgot what she had learned, including how to read and write. But by this time in her life she had learned how much that handicapped her and her family. She enrolled in that literacy class and re-learned.

At that point I hired Nellie as a fulltime housekeeper and she started receiving a salary. It was enough to make all the difference for her family. They became healthy and were able to attend school uninterruptedly. Nellie paid for her older brother to go to college, to move him and his family out of poverty.

Just as important as the salary were the things Nellie learned about farming and nutrition in our house. She learned about the disease stunting her manioc crop and got excited about the great new disease-resistant, high-yielding varieties of manioc the Lusekele Agricultural center was offering farmers. The first time she picked manioc leaves from these varieties to cook for us she picked a huge armful. She admitted she got carried away …it was hard to leave such wonderful stuff. As soon as she could, she planted these varieties in her own fields and became an early promoter in her village. The new varieties tripled and quadrupled the yield in her fields, giving her a good surplus to sell.

She learned to avoid a bad habit the women in her village had adopted in planting, and is now teaching them what to do. She bought the new high-yielding variety of peanuts Lusekele offered, to plant, and has plans to plant Lusekele’s high-yielding cowpeas next year. She learned about moringa trees and how to use their leaves to augment the protein in her meals, about growing and using unfamiliar vegetables, about the high-yielding oil palms Lusekele is promoting, how the oil should be processed, about reforestation, land restoration, and much more in our house. Now she is advising her extended family on wise use of the farm her uncle left them.

However, in the village it doesn’t pay to look too prosperous. Just the fact of having a job is enough to incite the sabotaging jealousy of those around her in the village. She cannot grow a vegetable garden next to her house to feed her children without her neighbors picking everything she grows. "She’s better off than we are. Let her buy what she needs," is the attitude. When trouble befalls her, no one helps her. To the contrary. Her siblings appropriate the things she buys for her work and for her children. Because she’s now the better-off one in the family.

This year that we are on U.S. assignment Nellie is out of work again. She again has the time to attend church women’s meetings and Bible League meetings, to go to market, and to freely work her fields herself. She again becomes a normal citizen of her family and the village, entitled to the mutual aid that is traditional in village life. That’s the upside of it. But she’s apprehensive. The salary gave her and her family a good safety net. However, I encouraged her that this time she is equipped with new strategies for her family: a lot of new knowledge to help her life in many spheres, new high-yielding varieties of her crops, and even some candy recipes to make and sell for additional cash. Used well, it should make all the difference.

Literacy : quest for dignity among the Batwa

2009-10-09T18:49:00.008+02:00

Many of you remember the report of Rosa Mayala and a small literacy team's trip to Inongo, in northern Bandundu Province, last year. The Twa people that live in central DR Congo invited the literacy team to assess needs and opportunities for a literacy program among the Twa. That they found a high rate of illiteracy was not a surprise. The Twa people live a seasonal life oscillating between traditional forays deep into the equatorial forest and settled life alongside Bantu peoples in towns at the edge of the forest. Reading is not necessarily a priority survival skill for hunting and gathering in the forest.

What did surprise the team was the depth of feeling when people began to tell their stories. Many of the Bantu people do not consider the Twa to be human. They are enslaved by long traditions of oppression. The Bantu often say that if a Twa pygmy eats from a plate, the plate is unclean and can't be used again. Local church people will not baptize Twa pygmies in the same pool with Bantu people because the water becomes unclean. The Twa are discriminated against, exploited and marginalized in both the settlements where they live part of the year and in the churches where they want to worship.

At the end of the 2008 trip, Twa representatives asked the literacy team for two things: teach our people to read so that we can understand our changing world and preserve our dignity as a people; and help to plant a church among us where we are welcome as brothers and sisters in Christ. Rose promised that the Baptist Convention's literacy team would be back.

Honoring that promise has burdened the literacy team for a year. Travel is expensive and not everyone considers the Twa important enough to support a work among them. We have finally overcome the hurdles. Two days ago, October 7, Miriam talked with Jacques Mayala, Rose's husband. Rose and the team had just arrived in Inongo. This week they are finally preparing for the long promised teachers' workshop.

Pray that the literacy workshop will be a life-giving opportunity for community of believers among the Twa. For many of their friends, learning to read can give them the first opportunity to hear the Gospel without the distorting filters of those with an interest in keeping them ignorant. God says you are created in His image; you are inestimably precious in His sight. He buys you out of slavery at great cost to Himself and destines you for a life of dignity and honor. May the Kingdom grow among the Twa, giving new life to those who embrace it.

For a better sense of the life of central African pygmy people, consider Mauro Luis Devin Campagnoli's Baka Pygmies site: http://www.pygmies.info/. While distinct from the Batwa of northern Bandundu, Campagnoli's observations of the Baka give in beautiful detail a flavor of their life.

We can't let a Green Revolution leave Africa Behind

2009-09-12T23:17:00.010+02:00

Why has the green revolution bypassed Africa? A recent article on the global food crisis in National Geographic said that cassava production in central Africa was down 3%. Average cassava yields in many parts of Congo are stuck around 7 tons per hectare. A devastating viral disease often cuts that average even shorter. These depressing facts might lead you to conclude that techniques that boosted yields in Asia and India just don’t work in Africa.

You would be wrong! Agricultural scientists HAVE come up with highly productive alternatives for rural households in the DR Congo. On cooperating farms in the Lusekele area right now, new disease-resistant cassava varieties produce on average 3 to 5 times more than the regional average. Almost invariably when Lusekele farmers tell their stories of no longer having food shortages in their village, or finally having enough to keep their kids in school, or buying a small farm, or putting a tin roof on the church building, the story starts with the revolution of planting high-yielding, disease-resistant cassava varieties.

The basic innovations for a revolution in Congolese agriculture exist. What is missing are dedicated and knowledgeable people willing to serve as bridges, allowing God’s bounty to reach the people who desperately need it. If I were allowed to dream and had $2 million per year, I would unleash 1,000 agricultural extension agents, each working with 30 village groups. Put a manioc multiplication field in every village and you have 75,000 acres of planting material. Over three years you could have planting material available in every village. By the end of five years, every farm family that wanted the new varieties could have seed cuttings for their own fields and they could be on their way to a new life.

We don’t have a million and a half dollars. But God has given us enough to demonstrate what can be done . Partners in churches in North America have provided $26,000 a year to mount a campaign. Over 7 years Lusekele extension specialists Philo Bidimbu, Philippe Kikobo, Taflo Tanzusi and others have worked with 220 farmer’s associations. In most cases they simply have given farm families their first chance to try out high-yielding varieties of cassava peanuts, cowpeas and oil palms. They have organized 382 cassava multiplication and demonstration fields. Over 1000 farm households have established over 300 hectares (750 acres) of small-scale oil palm plantations, the first of which are beginning to generate additional family income.

The impact is measured by changes in villages, changes in families. Kibongo and Longo, villages formerly known for food scarcity and hard times, are now exporting manioc surpluses. All but one of Fala’s nine children are in school and the oldest has started university (a rare opportunity for a village kid.) Pastor Kikumbula’s parish at Lubidi roofed the church building with money from their manioc multiplication fields. Antoine Lemba’s experiments with new manioc varieties have inspired young people to think again about staying in the village and making a living from farming. Moliambo farmers parlayed success in manioc production into a small business making chipped manioc.

Paul tells the Philippians that Christ “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.” (Phil 2:6,7) Timothee Kabila and the Lusekele extension staff have adopted that attitude. The world accords no special honor for working with poor village people. The pay is lousy and the conditions hard. The world would have been content to leave people in traditional poverty with limited opportunity, ignorant of the bounty that God has already prepared for them. The disciples of Christ could not. They are bringing a secure food supply to Bandundu province, creating the opportunities for kids to get a better education, and generating surpluses that make it possible for families to improve their lives.

Philo Bidimbu -- a month of telling Congo's story

2009-08-11T18:02:00.004+02:00

Last Friday Philo sent us an e-mail. She was waiting for the plane that would take her home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Physically she was spent, achy with a minor flu, ready to be back home. She remarked on the gulf that separates life in the US and life in Congo. Still, she said, each of our peoples has something to share with the other.

Philo traveled from California to Washington, D.C., from Iowa to Florida, serving as a farmer-ambassador from the Lusekele Agricultural Development Center and associated farmers to the Foods Resource Bank network of supporters and missionary farmers in North America. A small project called Micro-DEVRU has made a huge difference in the lives of semi-subsistence farmers in central Bandundu, thanks to the commitment of the Foods Resource Bank network, even through the hard times of this past year.

Two weeks ago Philo (seen here with translator Timothy Chapman) were in Washington to give testimony to a House sub-committee. This was a rare opportunity for an African woman who works everyday with semi-subsistence farmers to comment on how US foreign aid is spent in Africa, in Congo. Maybe that rare perspective can be the catalyst that shifts the thinking and practice of all those incredibly bright people in Washington. Imagine using power and wealth to help African peasant farmers to end famine, to create opportunity and to nourish hope.

If you don't know about Foods Resource Bank, check out their website: http://www.foodsresourcebank.org/.
It brings together North American farmers with a heart for the world and Christians with a vision for creating food security and new economic opportunity for marginalized farmers in impoverished countries. You can be the hands and feet of Jesus in rural communities overseas. FRB has a remarkable talent for multiplying missions dollars to make a lasting difference in the world.

Philo invited to speak to a House committee

2009-07-20T22:00:00.003+02:00

Philomène Bidimbu is a gifted rural extension worker. She has spent over 20 years with ACDI Lusekele helping Congolese villagers to discover new ways of farming and to prove for themselves the benefits. She is competent, confident and works in rural development as a vocation given by the Lord.

This week she will join the Congolese ambassador to the US as part of a panel appearing before a House of Representatives' subcommittee discussing development aid to Congo. It is an unlikely opportunity. For a short time on Wednesday she will have a chance to express the hopes of traditional farmers and the vision of committed Christians for a different Congo than we know now. The technology for change is available: new disease-resistant varieties that could double yields of key staple crops are available right now. What lacks is the political will to mobilize funds and organization for putting them in the hands of farmers.

God has put Philo in this position for a reason. God has advocated from the begining of time for health and wholeness, for help for the poor. Now Philo has her chance to give voice to that advocacy before the representatives of wealth and power. Pray Wednesday morning for her. May she shine with God's message.

Home base Keizer -- 2009-2010

2009-07-14T16:39:00.001+02:00

Last Monday afternoon we drove into our driveway in Keizer, the early evening sun dropping in the west. Three colorful flower pots hung over the front porch and two red and white geraniums flanked the door. Inside the house was bare, characterless. But a small circle of warmth lay on the kitchen counter next to the phone book -- three welcome notes from our church family, close supporters and Thelma, Helen and all the mission ladies of the Miriam Noyes Circle. A welcome backed up by a fridge full of the essentials and two cupboards full of staples -- insurance against starving while putting our house in order. After seven days, starting with that small circle of warmth, our house for the next 12 months is beginning to take shape as home.

What a beautiful reminder that we are never alone in our mission to Congo! Our work is made possible because all of these other people share a part of the call. Some pray. Some share words of encouragement. Some help us to evaluate past accomplishments and chart future work. Some provide financial support. Some challenge us by example and unflinching word to go deeper in our walk with the Lord. And undoubtedly some will pick us up when we fall and put us back on the road.

This coming Saturday, July 18, we gather with the members of our missionary partnership team to map out a plan for the coming year. Two weeks later we join missionary colleagues for an evaluation and planning conference at Eastern University. Pray with us, that we may live with grace, serve others with love and glorify God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why walk in somebody else's shoes, when you can drive?

2009-06-29T22:24:00.003+02:00

“[Christ's] answer [to me] was: ‘My grace is all you need, for my power is strongest when you are weak.’ I am happy, then, to be proud of my weakness, in order to feel the protection of Christ’s power over me. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor 12:9-10

Most of us have a distorted view of weakness. Americans inhabit a wealthy and powerful nation. Money protects us. Military might protects us. Law protects us. Knowledge and information protect us. Not always perfectly, for sure. But we go into the world with a laudable confidence that we can change things for the better. With money, materials, know-how, courage and enthusiasm we can get things done, and done quickly.

It’s not at all surprising that we tackle our call to mission with the same confidence, optimism and energy. We do trust God. We do expect God to transform people and their world. But we also trust our money, our insurance, our government’s protection, our technology, our far-reaching support structures. In the process, we may lose track of which power is at work. When some of the wealth and power are stripped away, we might be surprised to rediscover the amazing truth in the Lord’s answer to Paul, “My grace is all you need, for my power is strongest when you are weak.”

Literacy for Family Well-being is the Baptist Church of Congo’s adult literacy program. We work on a largely volunteer basis in a country that has never heard of the volunteer movement. It is a movement of poor people working with limited means to help other poor people, almost always without pay. It is a shoestring operation. It has no office, no full-time paid staff, no film star sponsors, no long-term project money and NO CAR.

No CAR?!!! What do you mean, “No CAR” ?? How do you get around? How do you ever get things done over the distances you have to travel? Wouldn’t you and Rose be able to reach a lot more people if you had a car? Why would anyone want to walk in somebody else’s shoes if you could drive to your destination in a fraction of the time? These aren’t unreasonable questions, especially if you come from a place like southern California.

But sometimes strengths turn out to be big liabilities. In Congo, a car, especially a personal one, represents big bucks. If I come to a meeting of literacy volunteers riding in a car but don’t bring gifts, I am saying to people, “There’s big bucks in this . . . but I’m not going to give you any.” Then everybody spends all their time with me imagining how big the bucks are and trying to wheedle some of them out of me. Nothing I have to say or do will get through to them. By losing the car, there’s a chance that, even with my “rich white American” skin, they can hear me and we can do something together to the glory of God.

Remember, too, not a single one of my Congolese colleagues has a car and jealousy is a powerful distraction. A car gives status and comfort. If I think it is essential, why shouldn’t my colleagues think so too? And if there’s not enough money for that, not having a car could become an excuse. “But we don’t have a vehicle…” At that point, we all have strayed away from the vision God gave us: helping people to build better lives through literacy. Instead we have begun to focus on our own status and short-term comfort. We are no longer able to accomplish what God wants us to do.

So I get around the capitol the same way my colleagues do: by taxi and fulufulu, that jam-packed taxi-bus that is a standard feature of African cities. It’s less safe, crowded, hot and uncomfortable, and usually takes extra time. You have to stand out in the hot sun a lot. And you have to be quick in the scramble for a seat when the taxibus pulls in.

In the Kwilu River area I get around like everyone else: by foot or by bicycle. Getting to a village 30 miles away can take all day, and you’re sweaty, thirsty and exhausted when you get there. I can’t carry very much. From our American perspective it’s inefficient – that’s a lot of down time for a high value missionary.

Sometimes these shoes don’t seem to fit me that well. But they are the shoes my colleagues wear every day. Not having a car begins to make sense. It frees us to concentrate on essentials instead of on chauffeurs, parking or car vandals. In the walking, I begin to understand their world, their needs, and often their powerlessness. Because I’ve paid the fares, had the same trouble finding transportation, and walked or bicycled the paths, I know exactly what they’re up against and we can plan realistically. I see the everyday heroism of organizing literacy classes and supervising them.

Jeannette Mbaba, primary school teacher, our teacher, trainer and supervisor from Molembe has health problems, but she’s incredibly dedicated. The distances she travels on foot to conduct literacy classes and supervise beginning teachers are staggering even to an American used to walking. Over savanna, down and up steep paths, across rivers on precarious log bridges: I’ve walked with her.

Or Jonathan Mazabi, the laypastor at Kimwenge, who has the gift of gracious willingness. He teaches his fellow villagers and acts as a go-between for us with his bicycle. I’ve bicycled past his village. These people are my heroes. They’re the reason we’re doing great things in Congo.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that working in the way of our Congolese colleagues to achieve their vision for their people frees them to do so too. Seeing them accomplish what God has inspired them to do is worth all the discomfort.

But the American in us constantly pesters us: “Couldn’t you do a lot more for the Kingdom if you just showed a little less weakness?” The answer shouldn’t surprise us too much either. For all its weakness, the Literacy for Family Well-Being program of the Baptist Convention of Congo is the biggest, most dynamic, most experienced literacy group in the DRC’s national literacy campaign. About 125 Baptist churches have regular literacy classes. Since 1999, they have trained 1660 literacy teachers. Volunteers in local churches offer 240 neighborhood literacy classes and teach about 1700 people to read every year.

Walking in our colleagues’ shoes rather than driving up in the car, gives everybody a chance to see God’s power to shape, heal and transform this world. And that should never surprise us.

What happens in the off-season?

2009-05-20T19:41:00.004+02:00

What do Rose Mayala (our coordinator) and I do between literacy teacher trainings anyway? (Besides the administrative details of reading, tabulating and responding to teachers’ reports, doing financial reports, etc?)

Well, we’re combing our environment for recipes to make all sorts of things, writing them down for classes, translating short articles, writing brochures and booklets, writing project proposals, lobbying the national assembly, and preparing to meet the governor of Bandundu Province.

Since we returned from our teacher training trips at the beginning of April, I have been writing a brochure in Kituba on menopause: its symptoms and how to reduce them. Most of our students are women. This brochure adds a much-needed follow-up to our booklet on reproductive health issues. I also have been correcting and editing a Kituba translation of the Navigators’ lesson booklet on discipleship.

The literacy lobbying campaign is serious. A member of the provincial assembly who is a friend of our work has urged us to meet with the governor of Bandundu as soon as possible. The purpose is to acquaint him with the need for adult literacy in his province, what a successful program will require, and what the CBCO literacy program could offer. I have been writing an introduction to the program, describing our aims, our strengths and the elements that would increase chances of success for an adult literacy campaign in Bandundu Province. A meeting will not happen before I leave for US assignment this June, but Rose can do it without me.

When Rose returned to Kinshasa in April, she submitted the registration forms for provincial classes that missed registration in December. In theory, the government will pay literacy teachers a modest stipend. Rose continues to follow up on the registration process for all our provincial classes with the government office for adult education. Meanwhile some of our teachers have been staging protests over the time it is taking, and we, in the region, have been trying to “put out the fires”.

Rose and some of our Kinshasa supervisors have written a proposal for the post-literacy activities* mandated by the UN-orchestrated literacy campaign. The L.I.F.E. program formally opened in Congo this February. Our literacy teachers have been lobbying the National Assembly for its full implementation.

For years we have felt that “functional literacy” is a proper goal of any good literacy program. But it is also one of those aspects that we have considered ‘way beyond our reach’ except in a most abbreviated way. Now with the new UN program, it’s required of all “players” in this national literacy campaign.

What this means practically is that in the second level of our classes we must introduce participants to all sorts of literature that is relevant for their lives: biblical, medical, agricultural, legal, bureaucratic, culinary and mechanical. And then we must teach them how to use it. Never mind that simple, relevant literature is often not readily available, however sorely needed. So we’re scrambling for material, writing a lot of it ourselves, so that our teachers who have limited knowledge themselves have something to work with.

Here in Africa in particular, the mandate of functional literacy is especially to learn/teach knowledge and skills that will move students out of poverty. So we’re looking especially for things that could provide a livelihood. Everything has to be tried out in class. Teachers must learn as well as their students. Teaching some of these skills require equipment: for example, scissors, needles and sewing machines to teach sewing skills. All require materials. And all this requires a lot more money than we have to operate with. Hence the political dimension that has entered our work in the past year.

Rose is also pushing UNESCO to start the second phase of the literacy campaign with the Twa Pygmies of Central Congo. Last July UNESCO sent Rose and her group to promote literacy classes among the Twa in Inongo, a provincial town by Lake Mai-Ndombe. The Twa warmly welcomed the initiative. Now they are eagerly waiting for the promised literacy teacher training so that they can launch classes -- it has been almost a year. Failure to follow through on the promise would be fatal to the fragile confidence that was built in that visit.

You can see that we are faced with enormous challenges and perhaps enormous opportunities. It is a lot more than I dreamed of, anyway, when I responded to the appeal of CBCO urban women for literacy classes in 1995. Keep us in your prayers, and think of what you could contribute for a better life for your sisters (and brothers) in Congo.

* After analyzing past literacy campaigns in many environments, the international community has concluded that merely teaching someone from a non-literate background the mechanics of reading, writing and calculating is not enough. Too few people move independently from the simple deciphering of single words and basic sentences to being able to exploit the power of literacy. The UN literacy campaign focuses on the “post-literacy” phase of “functional literacy”.

Functional literacy means being able to read and calculate well enough to read anything that crosses your path in order to be able to use what’s relevant to you in your daily life. Similarly, a person has to be able to write well enough for the needs of their environment. It means being able to exploit the wealth of ideas and information encoded in print in order to improve your life.

Chief throws his weight behind literacy

2009-05-12T16:40:00.006+02:00

Ever since I heard, in January, that Chief Massanza, the head administrator of Luniungu Secteur*, wanted to sponsor a literacy teacher training seminar for his secteur, I was bemused. Why would a government figure ever ask us for a training seminar? At the same time it was an opportunity not to be missed. We had already done several training seminars in his secteur (Bengi 2004, Molembe 2006, Mukinzi 2007.) Other villages were clamoring for individual seminars of their own, but we cannot afford to import our training team from Kinshasa to help individual villages. As chief for the whole secteur Chief Massanza had the power to require remaining villages to attend a central training and to contribute the food necessary to make it happen. A Luniungu teachers workshop would move us toward the goal of saturating a rural area with classes, much like has happened in Kinshasa. When the concentration of classes increases in an area, it creates energy and enthusiasm, and increases the chances of success for individual classes and teachers. And it also would help us launch a local team of trainers, reducing our dependence on Kinshasa trainers.

Chief Massanza seemed eager, anxious for this training in the frequent phone calls. I wrote him about our conditions for seminars. Not a problem. What had motivated him? When we got to Luniungu the end of March, he told us.

His pastor father had educated his numerous sons well. But he thought his daughter was better off unschooled and illiterate. Then last year Chief Massanza had seen his older sister reading a Bible. He was astounded. This was wonderful! How had it happened? Well, her friend, Thérèse Kininga, (trained in our Mupulu workshop, 2003) taught her in her reading class in their village of Kindela.

He thought this was a wonderful isolated initiative for development. Then our lady in Mukinzi, close by, told him that, no, there were lots of these teachers and classes all around his secteur and other villages in the region, and that it was coordinated by a Baptist pastor’s wife in Kinshasa and a missionary woman in Lusekele, not far away. Best of all, it was Christian. Each lesson includes a Bible lesson. What was there for an earnest Christian and member of the Bible Study League not to like? As chief for his secteur, this would be an important step for development in his secteur too. (He hadn’t even heard yet that Congo has officially opened a national campaign for adult literacy this year.) This he had to have.

As you see, above, Chief Massanza not only made it possible for 43 other people from several villages in his secteur to be trained as teachers, he and his wife also took the training. And a literacy class started in their settlement the same week, thanks to our hyperactive fellow trainer, Raymond Mafuta. The CBCO lay-pastor shown in front is teaching it. Will the chief and his wife teach classes themselves? I’m not sure. I’m betting she will. He may be too busy. What’s sure is that he will do everything he can to support and spread this literacy movement in his jurisdiction. …Because he saw his sister’s life changed.

* the secteur is a local government entity similar to a county in the US.

Opening a door for Jean

2009-04-26T13:33:00.004+02:00

Jean Bakoma, the man on the right in the picture, left the savanna and villages of his native Kasai region as a young man. He sought a better life in Kinshasa. He had no idea how hard that would be. Jean didn't read ... at all. After all what does a youth growing up in a remote corner of Congo need to read to survive in a village?

In Kinshasa things were different. Without an education, without being able to read, Jean had to scramble for any kind of laborers' job to make a bare living. He married. Children and more children were born. Feeding and clothing everyone, not to mention school fees for them, consumed every ounce of strength he had. Every day started with a question: will we eat today? The dreams of a better life were lost in the grind of daily work.

One day Jean tried to touch up his older and more successful brother for some help. It wasn't the first time. Frustrated, his older brother exploded. " You say, 'Help us out, help us out!' Till when? You and your family will always be a drain on us. What kind of a job do you ever expect to get? You can't speak French. And you don't even read."

The insult, the contempt in those words shocked Jean. He vowed that he wouldn't speak to his brother until he could read, write and speak French. It would take three years of determined effort.

Jean heard about literacy classes at the nearby Lemba Matete Baptist Church. Many young people in the neighborhood were taking a course or had already graduated. Jean was older. But he swallowed his pride and enrolled in the first Lingala reading class. Raymond Mafuta, one of our veteran teachers and supervisors (seen at the left of the picture), led the class through the two readers. Jean learned the magic of reading and writing symbols that communicate words and ideas.

Armed with this new knowledge Jean enrolled in a course for tailors. Finishing that course, he set up shop for himself and started earning a good steady income. That helped when his wife became ill and needed care. It also helped pay for his kids school fees.

Jean's own struggles have only intensified his determination to give his 13 children a good education. Another man would have pulled his oldest daughters out of school to run the household when his wife died, but not him. His oldest daughter recently graduated from high school and another daughter will sit the state exams this spring.

Meanwhile, as soon as he finished the Lingala courses, Jean enrolled in the beginning French class. The time came when he could read and speak good everyday French. For the first time in years he could meet his brother without hanging his head. They're on good terms now. Still Jean is continuing his French classes. He listens to the newscasts in French on television and radio. He is adamant that he will no longer remain on the sidelines in the debate of big ideas and the future.

Jean's story started with a stinging insult. But that insult galvanized a Presbyterian man to walk into a Baptist church and begin a trek towards a new life.

The Next Step

2009-04-21T16:43:00.018+02:00

Rose and I have just finished series of literacy teacher training seminars. Our major objective was to choose, train and give experience to local teams of literacy teacher trainers. We tried to create local teams of trainers in 2007 -- and failed. The people we worked with didn't have enough experience for us to feel comfortable letting them loose. Still, we couldn’t fill all the demands for training teachers.

In December we were told that the Bulungu group of teachers had capable people. So, the end of March we went to the town of Bulungu to conduct a second workshop specifically for trainers. We also invited the best people from nearby Luniungu Secteur (equivalent to a county in our terms) who participated in our 2007 training. We quickly found that most of the Bulungu literacy teachers were not capable of training others; indeed, they needed a refresher course themselves. The workshop served that purpose just fine, greatly improving the program in Bulungu.

In the end, two people from Bulungu stood out. To our delight, 4 more participants from Luniungu villages showed clear promise as trainers. Let me introduce you to them.

Pastor Mibwe is the pastor of the Patmos Baptist Church in Bulungu.

Mamie Fala is a primary school teacher in the village of Mukinzi, and the wife of Jean Ndulu.

Jeannette Mbaba is a primary school teacher, wife of the primary school director in the church center Molembe, and the motor of literacy work in her area.

Charlotte N’sele is a high school teacher and wife of the primary school director in Zaba Center.

Anne-Marie Lusanga is the president of the Baptist women for the district of Bulungu, a high school teacher and wife of a school director, and motor for development activities in her area.

And Jean Ndulu is a nurse in charge of the health clinic at Mukinzi. They’re all active teachers of literacy classes and active in their churches.

After choosing our new local literacy trainers, we divided them into two teams and took them to do training seminars in two locations under our supervision. The Luniungu team we took to the Luniungu Secteur headquarters to train teachers there, as requested by the secteur chief. The next week, we took the others to Kikwit to lead the long-awaited teacher-training there. They all did a satisfactory job for a first time.

It is the first fulfillment of a dream we have long cherished, to have regional teams of literacy teacher-trainers working in the interior of the country. It will cut our high cost of training seminars in those places and enable us to respond to more invitations. It will enable us to saturate the Kwilu area with classes and teachers at the same time that our primary literacy team can move on to focus on other areas.

God be praised!

A STAR IS BORN! …We think

2009-04-17T21:20:00.003+02:00

…Think what sort of people you are whom God has called. Few of you are men of wisdom…few are powerful or highly born. Yet, to shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness…to overthrow the existing order. I Corinthians 1:26-28

Nsey Diakoko is a beautiful young woman, one of the 32 literacy teachers we trained in Kikwit, Bandundu’s commercial capital, last week, and I suspect that among all those we trained, she will be one of their best and most dedicated teachers for years to come. Despite her difficulties getting around quickly to different parts of the blackboard to give her lesson (Nsey uses platform orthopedic shoes, braces and crutches), she is intelligent and determined. In our juries her lesson stood out as one of the best.

Nsey was not our only physically handicapped trainee at Kikwit. In the French course training, we also had the president of the Bulungu Handicapped Association, Mr. Mungombe Epiphane (here miming smoking a pipe for a lesson), who followed us from the town of Bulungu to be trained to help his fellow parishioners and handicapped persons there.

What Nsey and Epiphane have in common, besides being physically handicapped and new literacy teachers, is that the Congolese society of today doesn’t expect much of them or offer them a lot of options, but they are determined to overcome their odds. It is our experience that some of our best and most motivated teachers are those who missed out somewhere in their personal lives: the intelligent young woman in Bulungu (Epiphane’s co-worker) who missed out on finishing high school because she got pregnant and married early, the young man in Masi Manimba who failed so often to pass the state exam for a high school diploma that in shame, he changed his name, the older brother in a prominent family who also couldn’t pass the state exam. These are the people who really take pains to help others improve their lives through literacy, who feel a sense of calling and fulfillment for their own lives in this work. They’ve become truly exceptional teachers.

Through this medium of teaching others to read and write and empower their lives, God is making exceptional people out of those the world has counted unworthy of notice or investment.

Here’s looking forward to seeing Nsey and Epiphane star in Kikwit and Bulungu!

One Pastor's Vision for Change

2009-04-01T09:15:00.007+02:00

Pastor Georges Kasaka Kasiala reflects on the lives of people in the 25 local congregations that he oversees. Isolated by political neglect and notoriously bad roads, their children attend poorly staffed and equipped schools, they have no functioning agricultural extension service and they must make do with seasonal trade with only the most intrepid entrepreneurs (usually to their disadvantage.) The physical obstacles to contact with the outside world reinforce an isolation of the mind and of the spirit. Over half of village women do not read, another barrier that keeps opportunity (and sometimes hope) beyond reach.

A district pastor doesn't have the political muscle to fix the national highway, but Pastor Kasiala is determined to break that isolation of the mind and spirit around Kipata Katika. On March 14 he launched the district's literacy campaign by hosting a 5-day workshop for adult literacy teachers. Over 45 people attended. They learned principles of teaching adults, observed practical reading lessons and developed lessons themselves. Participants chose between Kituba and French. The ultimate goal is to have at least one literacy class in every one of the 25 district churches.

The excitement was evident. As one unlikely looking young man worked with two women preparing a practice lesson he smiled brightly, gestured with rapidly moving hands and stabbed at letters on the chalkboard with an improvised ruler. He enthusiastically explained to his two team mates how the sounds make up syllables and syllables make up words, how symbols on a page represent the words that build and communicate ideas. The team worked on honing their new found teaching skills.

The local organizers felt that workshop sessions should be limited to afternoons in order to allow primary and secondary school teachers to participate. That left mornings free. Raymond Mafuta, one the workshop leaders, took advantage of the down time to start two small literacy classes. Underneath a palm frond roof in the unfinished main church building, 16 women split into two groups began their lessons -- one group in Kituba and one in French. They were delighted. With students already sitting on the benches, newly trained teachers won't have to wait to start classes.

Five hectic days passed. On Friday afternoon Rose, Miriam and Raymond evaluated 41 teacher candidates as they put their learning on display. Each one taught through a sample literacy lesson, from phonetics to words to reading sentences, capped off with a short Bible devotion on a theme for literacy. When the dust settled late Friday night, 40 new teachers were certified to teach reading to adults in the Kipata Katika district, Pastor Kasiala among them.

Pastor Kasiala is determined that the pastors he shepherds will become more effective communicators of the Gospel. He is determined that their parishioners will have free access to the word of God. He is determined that parents will be able to contribute to a better education for their children. He is determined to break down the obstacles that keep his people isolated, ignorant of the opportunities that God has already prepared for them. Maybe you will want to pray for him and pray for the other 39 new literacy teachers as they try to dismantle the walls that so often keep spirits from soaring. I imagine that God will be pleased to see people truly free for the first time in their lives.

When horrible is taken as normal, we have to do something

2009-03-28T14:15:00.003+01:00

Pastor Marcel led the way, down a steep path, through a dense stand of Imperata grass, across a small stream and up the hill on the other side. Fifteen minutes later we stood in middle of manioc fields. Pastoral students, like most of the rural people they will serve, depend on these fields for their daily "bread" -- luku. But as I looked around, all I saw were spindly stems, blotched yellow leaves and short plants. The students accompanying us on our tour don't see anything out of the ordinary. It's just a normal, mediocre field. No one has ever explained to them that their manioc is suffering from a serious viral disease. And almost no one is aware that there are 4 good disease-resistant varieties available for those with the patience to multiply seed cuttings at Kikongo.

A week earlier, Philippe Kikobo was in another manioc field 60 miles to the south, in a river valley below Kipata Katika. Every plant in the field showed signs of mosaic virus. He asked the group of women who planted the surrounding fields what was wrong with the field. They were convinced that lightning had struck the area, damaging the plants. No local farm agent comes by regularly passing on critical information. In fact, those women live only 12 miles away from a group cooperating with an international aid agency to multiply the 4 new disease resistant manioc varieties since 2006. They have never heard of the new varieties nor the disease devestating their main staple crop.

In the past two and a half weeks we visited dozens of villages in the corridor between the Inzia and Lukula rivers, in the Kikongo health zone and in the Mosango health zone. More than 300.000 people, almost all depending on agriculture for their livelihoods, live in these areas People from Baptist churches, Assembly of God churches, and Catholic churches told us the same story. Most know nothing about manioc mosaic virus. And new high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties are available only in isolated pockets to those who were lucky enough to land a contract with an international aid project. Farmers are benefitting from these new varieties only in areas where a strong church group has made a serious effort to inform farmers of the disease problem and to systematically multiply and distribute the new planting material.

The 4 new varieties of manioc are part of God's heritage offered to the people of Congo. All are superior to local varieties. And each is adapted to a slightly different environment, giving alternatives to farmers working in different places. All produce at least two times what diseased local varieties produce. In some places the new varieties produce 4 to 5 times the regional average for manioc. For farm families living in poverty and close to the limits of subsistence, this is an enormous margin of food security.

We have come away from the survey trip troubled. With the limited resources God has given us, how can the church step into the vacuum in areas not close to Lusekele? How can we help people to get information and seed cuttings that can double their manioc production right now? And in the longer term, how can we advocate for an effective government extension program that serves farmers in every district? As committed followers of Christ, our heart compels us to make every possible effort to make God's heritage available to every family in need, and especially to those in the fellowship of faith.

The market just got 146 kms closer

2009-03-09T09:31:00.007+01:00

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.

Changing the rules

2009-02-15T08:00:00.010+01:00

It's common for events to turn out much differently than we expect them to beforehand. It's even more common where communication is difficult and close collaboration is not particularly valued. So when the National Council of Development NGOs (CRONG) and 11.11.11 (the outreach arm of a coalition of Belgian NGOs interested in North-South issues, hunger and poverty) proposed a meeting we thought it would revolve around "developing the agricultural sector." Timothée reassured us that we would see the agenda when the meeting got started. ACDI was charged with encouraging as many representative groups in the agricultural sector to participate as possible. And Timothée moderated the gathering.

We never did see an agenda. It was only after a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture began a 2-hour presentation that participants began to understand the goal of the gathering. The government and CRONG were asking us to form a Council for Regional Agricultural Development. The council will bring together the different players: government officials, farmer's associations, universities and research centers, church project leaders, business people associated with the ag sector, extension projects, and investors. The goal is to provide a voluntary working group that can promote development in the agricultural sector, troubleshoot obstacles, encourage cooperative initiatives among farmers, facilitate the diffusion of information on better techniques and market conditions, arbitrate where land tenure ambiguities create conflicts of interest, search out creative ways to provide start-up capital for young people . . . -- the list goes on because a dynamic council could become an exciting crucible for change.

If the government is in earnest, a Council for Regional Agricultural Development represents a significant changing of the rules. First, the Ministry of Agriculture is telling Congolese citizens that they have a responsibility to shape the future development of the rural sector. Successful agricultural development will happen only when all the different players start working toward common objectives, systematically removing obstacles (like corruption and harassment) and creating favorable conditions for improving productivity (like information on better technologies, regular extension visits, improved ag education, responsive ag research programs etc.) Up until now the central government has gone it alone and citizens abandoned long ago any sense of control over or responsibility for the direction of "development." Now the door is being opened for local vision and initiative to drive regional development. That's a big change.

Second, the government is implicitly giving citizens permission to exercise an oversight role over local officials. The Ministry of Agriculture suggests that the Council keep an eye on local government taxation (formal and informal), encourage diffusion of information on legitimate practices, and hold government officials accountable for abuses. This is astounding and in fact may be too good to be true in practice. Still the escape hatch from the stifling environment of local corruption and intimidation appears to have opened a crack.

On day two of the meeting delegates chose a provisional slate of council members. One-third of the 35-40 people are drawn from the district administration. The remaining two-thirds come from district NGOs, church groups, farmer's associations, traders and partner reps like me. ACDI Lusekele, the farm resource center program for the Baptist Community of Congo, has 3 seats on the council: Timothée Kabila, Philomene Bidimbu, Philippe Kikobo, while Brother Kurt and I have been invited to be observers / advisors of the process.

Twenty years of experience in the Congo furnishes plenty of reasons to expect failure of noble initiatives. But I want to believe that this initiative has a chance to inject a little hope into the central Kwilu region. On offer is a future where the government becomes a facilitator for improving the livelihoods, well-being and opportunities of its citizens rather than one of the major obstacles to widespread economic development. Maybe it is devoted Christians who will tip the balance. After all, we claim to have a new ethic -- an allegiance to love, compassion, justice, righteousness, truth, peace. We even make the audacious claim that God's Spirit lives in us, giving us the power to choose goodness and consistently do good. God help us to shine with His light; may we be a refreshing rain that brings God's blessing to the just and the unjust alike.

Literacy workshop on the Congo estuary

2009-01-28T14:04:00.004+01:00

(This “news” is three months old, but still needs to be shared. - Miriam)

The training had been talked about and always put off. Now, near the end of October, we were on the overnight bus rattling along toward Boma, the first port city to the Atlantic in Bas-Congo Province. In the Saturday evening dusk, porters had trussed all the baggage up on top of the bus and passengers piled in, wedged between narrow seats. Four of us were going: Chantal, Mama Yango, Rose and myself. Chantal and Rose are traveling companions from ‘way back. Sunday morning , in the still coolness of morning, the bus pulled into the parking area, downtown Boma. It was one of the most comfortable trips we’ve made, despite having to travel all night.

Literacy is particularly important to town-dwellers. In rural areas people get by without reading. But when they move into town they find themselves at a disadvantage. They’re handicapped. So much information is written. Deprived of information, people have fewer opportunities to make a better life.

Boma has statues everywhere. Some of Congo’s best sculptors live here. We collected our bags, passed the square’s statue and took a taxi bus through town to where our hostess waited. She shepherded us up her steep hill, past one church being built out of rough lumber near the bottom, turning a corner up a steep narrow pathway past another church on a terrace cut into the hill about half-way, another turn, then up steeply past some houses on more terraces, then finally up past the trees to look out over the Congo River estuary and Boma’s ocean shipping port just before the rise to their gate. The hill continued up just a little more to another church, the mother Christian and Missionary Alliance church for Boma. I later discovered that the national headquarters of the C&MA church which had evangelized this area was on this hill: past missionaries’ houses (I’m sure our host’s was one), offices, a school, their printing house and library, their legal rep’s house and a guesthouse, where we had stayed one night on a trip to the coast when our kids were little.

Besides their international shipping port, statues and the C&MA, special features of Boma are history, hills and rock. Boma is a special town: one of the first ones settled by Europeans. The encyclopedia says that Boma was founded in the 16th century as a slaving station when the respectful relationship of the Portuguese and the Kongo kingdoms deteriorated into a slaving one. When King Leopold II of Belgium was running Congo as his personal colony in the end of the 19th century, Boma was the base of operations. It continued as the capital city of the Belgian Congo to 1926, when the capitol was moved to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa.) Their #1 tourist site is the baobab tree in which Henry Morton Stanley slept (old ones often develop large hollow interiors) when he was in town. On a hill facing us is one of their oldest buildings, a small chapel, built for King Leopold’s men.

The Baptist headquarters in Boma, where we had our training, is on the peak of another formidable hill across town. Strong winds routinely batter their church and school. Surprisingly, this church functions in Lingala, to reach the many Boma residents who come from elsewhere in Congo.

Negotiations for this training had gone on for months. Local leaders had neglected the necessary groundwork. The women’s president, a thoroughly urban woman, had not considered the onset of the rainy season and the planting schedule of women dependent on farming. No churches of other denominations in town had been invited. Even the CBCO churches in the outlying district had been ignored. Many of the women were out of town planting peanuts, and few came to be trained. No one was available to become a French teacher for adults. In a preliminary meeting, the mayor of Boma almost wept at the wasted opportunity for her town. Last minute phone invitations were made.

We had 8 trainees from the church plus 3 others. Most of them were well educated and understood things quickly. All were capable. Most chose to teach in Lingala. A couple of women chose to teach Kikongo for locals. Three lay leaders of one of the village churches arrived for the Kikongo training, excited at the opportunity. The pastor joined, haunted by the memory of all the illiterate people in his village, and their dead-end lives.

The workshop participants were divided into two groups: one for each language, one at each end of the sanctuary. Our “blackboards” were raw plywood sheets propped on benches, there for a church construction project. The dynamic woman leader only had a junior-high education, but is a pusher. She’d done more with her education than many high school graduates. She’s the kind of woman who transforms her village.

The villagers were fun! Their dialect of Kikongo, KiYombe, drawls and sings. Each word in the lesson became extraordinary. There isn’t a KiYombe dialect Bible. But since the curriculum includes daily Bible lessons, we had come with two modern Kikongo version Bibles (thanks to you), recently off the press. Even the pastor hadn’t seen them yet. We gave one to the pastor, one to the village leaders. Such a treasure! They trembled with joy.

The second part of each day’s session was learning to make beaded mobile phone pouches. They are all the rage in Kinshasa and sell for $10: a good cottage industry, where you can get the beads to work with. The Boma women really loved this part, and some ladies came just for these sessions. Our trainees were learning to make the pouches in order to teach their future students.

Why? International literacy circles say that simply getting through a reader or two does not make most adult learners functionally literate. The real goal is to navigate easily in the literate world. People should be able to find their way around a Bible, read and understand charts and diagrams, work with written instructions, understand and fill in voting ballots and other forms, etc. Part of the vision of my colleagues, and the Boma women participating, is to lift themselves and their reading students out of poverty. So we now include in our teacher training events some written instructions to give to their classes to practice reading and trying out: sewing instructions, handicraft instruction like that of these pouches, cooking recipes, or recipes for other saleable products. I suppose that if our classes were all male, we would give building instruction or include some pages from a mechanic’s manual to work with.

A week later, Chantal, Mama Yango, Rose and I were on another night bus, rattling our way back toward Kinshasa. We left behind 11 intelligent and motivated people equipped with the tools to teach adults to read. Sometimes it’s not the number of people we train, but their quality and sense of purpose. The Lord brought us together for a purpose. Now we wait for news that they’ve started classes, with the beginning of this new year.

10 Years of Literacy Work!

2009-01-12T19:49:00.005+01:00

Rose and I launched the CBCO women’s literacy ministry in 1998. The training team has put a lot of effort into this work. The ministry is considered by many to be the leading literacy group in all of Congo. In Kinshasa we have some 70 class sites, and have graduated nearly 1500 people. And we are the only group that tries to work on any scale in rural areas.

In Kinshasa anniversaries are a big deal. All occasions are opportunities to raise public awareness about the importance of literacy in modern life. But when the program already operates on lots of volunteer effort and a starvation ration for a budget, how do you celebrate. Badges? T shirts? Matching outfits for everyone? Influential people to speak? TV exposure? Sometimes it seems like a couple of hundred dollars doesn’t buy anything anymore.

But Rose was adamant. She took out a loan to get T shirts printed up: “Learn to read for your family’s well-being - 10 YEARS!”, with the Baptist literacy logo. The supervisors and teachers pooled resources for refreshments, and flaunted a kind of uniform at our gathering. Graduating students got their diplomas. We had a cautionary play about how reading and following directions can save your life when sick. The assistant director of the government adult education department spoke. That begins to sound like a celebration.

At the ceremony I noticed a group of young people off to the right. Who were they? They are school kids who are enrolled in adult classes in order to improve their reading, writing and French. They represent increasing numbers. Several people told about how literacy classes had helped them. One young man was an orphan. His extended family had taken him in, fed him and clothed him. But they didn’t pay for school. Learning to read and mastering simple arithmetic, he now has the means to work his way into a decent job.

Women testified about getting positions of leadership since learning to read and write and learning to use the Bible. Other women spoke of gaining new respect now that they could speak, read and write French. Several women had passed the state exam to get the equivalent of a GED.

On a side table, a pile of class projects caught my eye: clothes for sale by budding seamstresses, handmade mobile phone holders ($10 on the local market), doilies and hats represented new income-generating activities learned by our literacy students in class.

Another group of teenagers and young women turned out to be daughters of soldiers. Their families moved around so much from post to post that they never got any schooling. At Lemba-Matete, the biggest Baptist church in Kinshasa, these girls make up ¾ of the classes.

All of us in this ministry truly celebrated what the Lord has done in people’s lives through dedicated teachers in local churches. This was a day off to give thanks. But no one is more aware than we how much remains to be done if Congo truly wants to reduce adult illiteracy by 50%. Fifteen hundred people have new opportunities. Imagine if the Church throughout Congo could open the same doors for the 10 to 15 million people, most in rural areas, who still can’t read. Now that would be cause for celebration.

Appearances can deceive, Thank God!

2009-01-12T14:08:00.005+01:00

How often have Rose Mayala and I asked the question, “Have we accomplished anything worthwhile in our literacy efforts?”

When we started training literacy teachers in rural areas, we imagined an effective network growing relatively quickly the way it had happened in Kinshasa. We would create a mobile team of highly motivated and capable teachers in each area. These teams would train volunteer literacy teachers in local churches, expanding the number of villages involved until we had each area more or less covered. Proud new readers would finish classes each year. Motivated students would pool their contributions to give the teacher a “thank you” gift and buy chalk, notebooks, pens and reading primers. They would start by sharing books. By pooling resources, each student eventually would be able to buy her own book, if she wanted one.

The dream hasn’t translated well into practice. The first literacy classes here in the Kwilu River area around Vanga began in 2001. Since then only one student has received a reading certificate.

People want literacy classes. Women flock to them. But they will not buy teaching supplies and readers, however enthusiastic they are about learning. Village people cannot articulate the reasons, but they very often feel that teachers owe them free classes . . . and all the supplies. Nearly all teachers sacrifice time otherwise spent providing basics for their families in order to teach classes. But most teachers say they get no help from students. Many that we train become discouraged and stop teaching.

Why do many village classes progress so slowly, when Kinshasa literacy classes have people reading pretty well in several months? It’s hard to know without visiting classes myself. But one can speculate. Supervision is much harder for several reasons: villages are far apart; transportation is scarce or non-existent; and fluid schedules and poor communication make it hard to coordinate so that the supervisor arrives when classes are being taught. This makes it more difficult to correct deficiencies and encourage teachers. Subsistence farming imposes an irregular schedule and often leaves women little free time for classes. The benefits of literacy are often not immediately as evident as they are in the urban setting. And sometimes even trained literacy teachers may not be confident readers themselves, especially in French.

The apparent results of 2008 seemed especially discouraging. Only two local groups reported on literacy classes. “Sidewalk radio” buzzed about other classes, but where and how many was hard to guess. One of our two supervisors spent the year taking care of family members at the hospital or being treated herself. The other has a heart for literacy but struggles to put together informative reports. Without a clear picture of what was going on in individual churches, it was hard not to assume the worst.

This year UNESCO finally geared up for a 10-year campaign to halve the number of illiterate adults in Congo. They wanted to register all literacy classes and teachers in return for promises to channel support their way. This was something to get excited about! Bureaucracy grinds slowly. The forms arrived only at the end of November and all registrations needed to be filed before the end of the year. How to do it?

December is not a good time for a general meeting. Many of our teachers are primary or secondary school teachers as well. Schools have finals in December and insist (quite rightly) that their teachers be present. And gathering teachers (who must walk or bicycle 40-50 miles) is not easy. We had no idea how many literacy teachers would show up. Imagine our surprise (and delight) when 57 teachers showed up with reports in hand to prove that they’d been teaching most of the year. A year’s worth of reports all at one time! I still can’t say how many villages that represents -- perhaps 70.

First, local literacy volunteers are accomplishing something, despite the obstacles. CBCO literacy efforts in Bandundu in 2008 were not the disappointment they seemed to be. We will be “reaping our first harvest.” Many students are close to finishing. Local classes will be graduating students all over this area. Graduations encourage teachers. They make the village sit up and take notice. They encourage other students to redouble their efforts and bring more people to join classes.

Second, most of our CBCO literacy classes in the Vanga area are registered. There is at least a glimmer of hope that the government and UNESCO will strengthen our literacy initiatives.

Of course the global economic downturn could turn Congolese government finances completely upside down, pitching adult literacy toward the bottom of the pile of priorities. And local corruption constantly threatens to divert resources intended to develop human capital. Those are good subjects for intercessory prayer. For the time being Rose and the team do what they can with the modest resources that God has provided – yearning to see opportunities created and lives truly changed as people learn to read.

Disappearing Village

2008-12-16T14:39:00.003+01:00

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

2008-11-03T08:21:00.006+01:00

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

2008-10-23T15:51:00.002+02:00

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

2008-10-23T11:39:00.009+02:00

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!

2008-09-12T12:32:00.007+02:00

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

2008-09-04T21:51:00.003+02:00

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

2008-08-22T18:16:00.004+02:00

(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 !

2008-08-01T15:51:00.003+02:00

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)

2008-06-07T07:00:00.009+02:00

(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

2008-05-19T17:31:00.004+02:00

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

2008-05-19T00:40:00.006+02:00

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 ! !

2008-05-18T23:58:00.004+02:00

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

2008-05-06T20:06:00.004+02:00

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

2008-04-10T21:00:00.004+02:00

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

2008-03-04T16:10:00.006+01:00

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

2008-02-14T13:59:00.004+01:00

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

2008-02-11T11:39:00.000+01:00

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...

2008-01-23T12:29:00.001+01:00

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.