Cate
Is it possible to sum up two months in a few paragraphs? It is even more of a challenge when those two months are spent intensely, sometimes learning an abundance of new thoughts, sometimes mediating on the beauty of the oldest truths, the heart whizzing through the weeks with barely any time to digest all that is poured in. Does that make any sense?
Let me start with our home. We were given a little concrete house amidst fifteen other houses. In this little house we had a room a little larger than our double bed. We shared our wee kitchen with eight other women (also doing the school). This was to be our community for the next ten weeks. We woke around 6am, to have tea and bread for breakfast, have a quiet time, sometimes hand-washing our clothes until we dripped with sweat, and began class at 8am singing to God and loving him with all our hearts. We sat on the floor for 5 or 6 hours listening to some of the most inspirational people walking the earth share with us – on all manner of things… on love, on being with the poor, on learning a new culture, on miraculous healing and raising the dead, on being intimate with Jesus, knowing the Father’s heart… It was truly shaping and we would always leave for beans at lunch with our heads spinning and our hearts on fire – inspired to be what we heard about.
Afternoons were free, but we would often have meetings, hang around with kids, read our required book list… Yet sometimes Nick and I would escape the crazy schedule and catch up over a soda. It was a deeply beautiful time and we learnt a lot. During those months it felt like my head was full, my heart was full, and I was hungry to see what all of this teaching looked like in practice.
A question Heidi often posed to us was “what does love look like?” To the widow, to the orphan, to the rich banker, to your sister, to the lonely? And I felt my heart enlarge… She shared from her depths, pleading with us to stop with compassion for the one in front of us, and also inviting us to stop to spend time with God, to let him be a Daddy to us, to cover us with his love. Often we would spend time singing to him, talking to him after someone had taught, and it was in these times that I felt him open my eyes to new things – like, for example, I felt a huge joy that I had been forgiven. Often people tell you in church “oh you are forgiven through Jesus” and we are supposed to be happy about it, but sometimes we are pretending because we don’t know what that really means. One day after Rolland shared about Jesus saving us I felt so happy, so delighted, so grateful I was in tears.
Nick
The Iris Harvest School is an incredible opportunity to grow in your faith. For us, it was like someone holding our hand as we had ventured out of our home countries into Africa, following a sense of God’s call to work with children in need, but with no home or place to go. Some of you may have been to church conferences or church weekends and experienced God in a new and more powerful way. The school was a bit like that, but tenfold. People had come from all over the world to experience God and that itself bought a really exciting feel to the group of 150 or so students. On the other hand most of us found being outside of our comfort zones pretty tough – lack of personal space in the houses and out and about, the soaring temperatures, the basic diet (oops, we’re now responsible for that diet!) – and that meant it was pretty difficult at times. Also, for me it was stretching to hear so much about miracles and the supernatural and to be with a group that was quite as loud as this one was in the meetings. At times some would scream and laugh and cry and fall over when they were experiencing God in some way. It’s always tempting to judge people for doing this and want to feel like they are looking for attention, but I tried to fight this as hard as I could and just focus on my response to what we were learning about.
By far and away the most inspirational teaching came from Heidi Baker who started the ministry with her husband. I have never heard teaching with the heart that she has and with real life action to back it up. The only reason Iris is here in Mozambique at all is because 15 years ago she started going to a rubbish dump and telling them about Jesus, and then started taking in kids to their home when they found orphans who’d been left to fend for themselves. Rolland Baker too brought excellent teaching, bringing a lot of wisdom and balance to the more fiery visiting speakers. And fiery ones there were! From the USA, from Singapore, from Brazil, from Mozambique… people Heidi thought would inspire us and who were walking the walk too. Some of the major themes were taking risks, expecting miracles, being compassionate to the one person in front of you when surrounded by so much need, coming to a new culture humbly and from a place of service and bringing in the kingdom of God through preaching the gospel and praying for the sick. Iris Pemba has an incredible commitment to send out teams every weekend week in week out to visit villages in the bush to show the Jesus film, preach the gospel and pray for the sick.
I think this last thing was the thing that impacted me most on the school. I think for a long time I have drifted from the commitment I had in my 20’s to enable people to hear of the wonderful grace that is available to them in Jesus. He has absolutely transformed my life and continues to do so, and I want to live and speak in a way that brings people to God. I think for a long time, under the cover of sensitivity or feeling like I was too hypocritical to preach any message, I have long ceased to live like that. I felt like a weight lifted off me on the school. I think it helps stepping out of the UK and being in a different culture – it helped me see more clearly what my life had become. I was also spending a lot of my time and energy focusing on issues of the environment and of the institutional church. These are still areas I am passionate about, but they had become far too dominant for me. Jesus’ first disciples had a pretty simple message on their minds when they travelled village to village.
Cate
For me, the school was not only a beautiful walk but a wrestle. “What does love look like?” is a challenging question, and I found myself constantly probing myself. Is it ok to have a coke? Should I live in a mud hut? It is easy to say “no, no, don’t be too extreme” to these kind of questions, but I think there is beauty in loving the poor so much that they become my family, and it is difficult to see huge gulfs of wealth between me and my family. But there is also a beauty in letting God be Daddy and letting him treat me, nurture me, look after me, and that might mean a coke! Throughout the school I wrestled a fair bit, and occasionally drifted into the arid lands of pushing myself towards a simplicity of lifestyle that I could not achieve – nor one Daddy was asking of me. I found the food tough too and found myself longing for a feta salad like never before.
Despite all this, I was ringing with joy from so many different wonderful experiences. With hindsight now I see a lot of beautiful thoughts were carved into my heart during that time… But, really, life is more beautiful now we are actually living it (more about this later). Yes it harder now. Yes we have to engineer our own spiritual input rather than pitching up to six hours of teaching and singing. Yes now people can be really mean and a lot of people during the school was amazingly sweet. Yes we slept more then than we do now. Yes, then, we were free to go to the beach whenever we wanted, and now we have to hand out plates of beans and deal with terrible conflicts. But I found learning about love was absolutely not what I crave. I crave to live a life of love. A life that spends hours receiving the beautiful love of my saviour, and a life that pours out, like wine, unceasing, full of compassion for the one who fights, full of healing for the one who hurts, overflowing and pouring, redeeming and changing. Why only learn about the most beautiful thing on earth when one can really become it?
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Friday, 20 May 2011
Danger in Dar
Nick
If you were following our blog when we travelled down to Mozambique from London, we got as far as the Kenya-Tanzania border where we had our third and most embarassing incident of not having enough money to buy the visa into the next country & where I had to spend a few hours travelling back to a town with a cash machine while Cate sat with the border police. All of this meant that by the time we had cleared the border – getting on the back of a motorbike being the only way to travel between Lunga Lunga in Kenya and Hora Hora in Tanzania – it was too late to travel further, which we had planned to do, as we had often read dubious reports of small border towns.
It was a slightly scary experience, as the almost complete lack of electrical lighting added to our general fear of borders, but we found a basic hotel which served an even more basic meal. We even braved a walk around and talked to some of the people, who were very friendly, and there were plenty of Masai in their traditional dress. In the morning light, all fears were gone as we waited for the next bus travelling down to the capital, Dar Es Salaam. This bus proved to be the bumpiest we had yet experienced with us being thrown right out of our seats for a particularly bumpy stretch. Nevertheless we made it safely to the city.
When we arrived, the taxi drivers outside were already competing for our custom by trying to catch our eye on the bus & we agreed to go with a particularly keen man who gave his name as ‘Jones’. With the benefit of hindsight there will be many points where it is hard to see why we didn’t smell something fishy, but remember we had travelled across Europe, through the Middle East & down through half of Africa without a hitch, so we’d become very trusting.
We had a few budget places in mind to stay in, but he recommended the Arocha Grand Hotel & we decided to go with his advice. We noticed he sat in reception for the whole time we were checking in and was keen to give us his number if we needed a taxi later on. We did need a taxi to take us to the ferry port for our trip to the island of Zanzibar, so booked Jones to return the next day. He picked us up with his friend in the car. This would be very strange in the UK, but it didn’t feel any different to us than a lot of other strange experiences we’d had on our journey down.
At the port, his friend accompanied us through the ticket office, which was appreciated as we didn’t know much about what to do and there was a lot of hassle at the port, like men arguing and picking up rocks outside the office. At the end Jones’ friend asked if we wanted a taxi to pick us up on return to Dar two days later. We booked this friend, and told him our return time.
Cate
And so off we zoomed to Zanzibar for a special couple of days. A birthday treat and a celebration of the near-end of our travels, we booked into a lovely beachside place. With an entire apartment to ourselves, we walked on white sands and swam in astonishingly blue waters. I had a lovely massage listening to the gentle murmuring of waves, and we nuzzled up with prawns by candlelight. The sound of Zanzibar evokes wealth in the imagination, and fittingly so– exotic and beautiful, a picture of boats in azure sea in the afternoon, warm fushia skies by night.
Nick
Two days later in the Zanzibar port, the morning ferry was cancelled. Still, after getting the afternoon ferry after a lovely lunch in Stone Town, the man was there to pick us up. I felt bad that he had waited all day for our custom.
He took us to his taxi where there were two new men – one was introduced as his driver and the other his uncle. We had gone from having 1 to 2 to 3 men in the taxi each time and had thought it was just a cultural thing – we had often seen the Afircan custom of sharing business with friends or family even when it wasn’t what we would call efficient or needed. They were also incredibly charming and friendly – some of the friendliest men we had met on our travels. We had intended to go to the Mozambique embassy that day, but because our boat was delayed, we knew it was now shut. The guys said they knew the embassy worker and could take us to his house, where he would arrange a visa for us. We were so pleased about this as we were behind schedule in getting to Pemba and thought it was a real stroke of luck. Within about half an hour we were driving out of town. They turned off the main road, saying we were near the embassy worker’s house. I remember feeling a slight twinge at this point, that perhaps it was a little bit odd that we were driving out of town with three guys we didn’t know, but I put it down to just one more of the very different experieces that we’d had on this trip.
They turned off the main road – saying it was to avoid the traffic – and as we were heading away into a quiet, dusty, residential area they stopped the car and in got one more man. We now had four men in the car – two of them in the front and two squeezed in the back with us. I know it seems hard to believe, but even at this point we trusted them. Even now we were laughing and chatting away with them and with this new man, believing them to be some of the nicest people we’d met on our trip.
A few minutes later they stopped the car and said it was time to introduce themselves. This was a chilling and horrible moment. In an instant all their charm and friendliness vanished. The newest man seemed to take the lead and calmly explained that they were going to take all our money, and that nothing would happen to us if we cooperated. The man in the front was much more agitated and shouted at us that they were dangerous. We had long ago decided that in a mugging we would do what was asked of us, that money was nothing compared to saftey. We were also trapped. The doors were locked from the front, they were four strong men & I remembered that I had waved to children before and they’d looked right through me. The windows were reflective.
So I handed over all our cash and cards. They took all this, but they were quite nervous and agitated and quite soon they were having a four-way shouting match with each other. Cate was crying by this time and pleading with them not to hurt me. Under pressure, Cate showed her selfless character. The man in the front was angry that Cate was crying, saying that they hadn’t hit her or anything. In a panic they thrust all the cash and cards back at me and drove off, as if they weren’t happy with how this was going. That didn’t last long however & they stopped again and took everything back.
We had already been in the car with them for about an hour by now, Congolese music playing the whole time in the background. We were more than ready to get out of that car. But their method was to drive around the city using different cash machines, not taking too much at each machine, until they had reached the limit on the cards. On our journey we had constantly had problems with our cards not working in all machines or with all banks and sometimes not working in a country at all. We tried to explain this to them, as the cards were not working at the first few machines they tried. They seemed to believe us for a time, but as time went on and they were getting increasingly stressed. They were driving madly around, finding new ATMs, parking up, getting out and queueing, using the card and seeing no cash. They decided we were lying about the PIN numbers. This was a sickly, horrible time as their threats increased, as did our pleas that we were telling the truth and that the cards were at fault. They kept saying, “Maybe you have made a mistake with the PIN number” as if I was lying and that would make it easier to say “Sorry, you’re right, I have made a mistake, this is the right number.” But I knew I hadn’t. It was starting to feel like we’d never be released. Even so, we were able to explain that as Christians we forgave them for what they were doing & that we wouldn’t hold it against them.
Cate
After three hours of no success, they were convinced we were lying. They provided an ultimatum, that they would kill me if Nick did not confess the correct pin. The man left the car for what he said was his final time. We were praying like crazy, unbearably desperate. I felt as though God showed me a huge ring of fire around us, protecting us. Sure enough, that time the pin worked! I tell you, it was a complete miracle and I believe God utterly broke in and saved our lives.
After retracting a nasty amount of cash, they put us in a tuk tuk (three-wheeled taxi) and sent us off to a hotel of their recommendation. Not keen to take advice from our fellow bandits, I requested we go straight to the smartest and safest hotel in town. There we spent a few days resting, worshipping and recovering. It was a beautiful time. We were fragile and yet so held by our loving God. We would get scared and then we would worship and feel safe and bold. We slept in unimaginable luxury after two months of roughing it to reach Africa. We ate a lot of food. We also caught a flight to Pemba, keen to head towards our destination. And I must say once we arrived in our little Pemba place, we let out a big sigh of relief. Rich and incredibly joyous, and yet full of hard hours and tears – the long journey south was finally over. At least for the moment.
If you were following our blog when we travelled down to Mozambique from London, we got as far as the Kenya-Tanzania border where we had our third and most embarassing incident of not having enough money to buy the visa into the next country & where I had to spend a few hours travelling back to a town with a cash machine while Cate sat with the border police. All of this meant that by the time we had cleared the border – getting on the back of a motorbike being the only way to travel between Lunga Lunga in Kenya and Hora Hora in Tanzania – it was too late to travel further, which we had planned to do, as we had often read dubious reports of small border towns.
It was a slightly scary experience, as the almost complete lack of electrical lighting added to our general fear of borders, but we found a basic hotel which served an even more basic meal. We even braved a walk around and talked to some of the people, who were very friendly, and there were plenty of Masai in their traditional dress. In the morning light, all fears were gone as we waited for the next bus travelling down to the capital, Dar Es Salaam. This bus proved to be the bumpiest we had yet experienced with us being thrown right out of our seats for a particularly bumpy stretch. Nevertheless we made it safely to the city.
When we arrived, the taxi drivers outside were already competing for our custom by trying to catch our eye on the bus & we agreed to go with a particularly keen man who gave his name as ‘Jones’. With the benefit of hindsight there will be many points where it is hard to see why we didn’t smell something fishy, but remember we had travelled across Europe, through the Middle East & down through half of Africa without a hitch, so we’d become very trusting.
We had a few budget places in mind to stay in, but he recommended the Arocha Grand Hotel & we decided to go with his advice. We noticed he sat in reception for the whole time we were checking in and was keen to give us his number if we needed a taxi later on. We did need a taxi to take us to the ferry port for our trip to the island of Zanzibar, so booked Jones to return the next day. He picked us up with his friend in the car. This would be very strange in the UK, but it didn’t feel any different to us than a lot of other strange experiences we’d had on our journey down.
At the port, his friend accompanied us through the ticket office, which was appreciated as we didn’t know much about what to do and there was a lot of hassle at the port, like men arguing and picking up rocks outside the office. At the end Jones’ friend asked if we wanted a taxi to pick us up on return to Dar two days later. We booked this friend, and told him our return time.
Cate
And so off we zoomed to Zanzibar for a special couple of days. A birthday treat and a celebration of the near-end of our travels, we booked into a lovely beachside place. With an entire apartment to ourselves, we walked on white sands and swam in astonishingly blue waters. I had a lovely massage listening to the gentle murmuring of waves, and we nuzzled up with prawns by candlelight. The sound of Zanzibar evokes wealth in the imagination, and fittingly so– exotic and beautiful, a picture of boats in azure sea in the afternoon, warm fushia skies by night.
Nick
Two days later in the Zanzibar port, the morning ferry was cancelled. Still, after getting the afternoon ferry after a lovely lunch in Stone Town, the man was there to pick us up. I felt bad that he had waited all day for our custom.
He took us to his taxi where there were two new men – one was introduced as his driver and the other his uncle. We had gone from having 1 to 2 to 3 men in the taxi each time and had thought it was just a cultural thing – we had often seen the Afircan custom of sharing business with friends or family even when it wasn’t what we would call efficient or needed. They were also incredibly charming and friendly – some of the friendliest men we had met on our travels. We had intended to go to the Mozambique embassy that day, but because our boat was delayed, we knew it was now shut. The guys said they knew the embassy worker and could take us to his house, where he would arrange a visa for us. We were so pleased about this as we were behind schedule in getting to Pemba and thought it was a real stroke of luck. Within about half an hour we were driving out of town. They turned off the main road, saying we were near the embassy worker’s house. I remember feeling a slight twinge at this point, that perhaps it was a little bit odd that we were driving out of town with three guys we didn’t know, but I put it down to just one more of the very different experieces that we’d had on this trip.
They turned off the main road – saying it was to avoid the traffic – and as we were heading away into a quiet, dusty, residential area they stopped the car and in got one more man. We now had four men in the car – two of them in the front and two squeezed in the back with us. I know it seems hard to believe, but even at this point we trusted them. Even now we were laughing and chatting away with them and with this new man, believing them to be some of the nicest people we’d met on our trip.
A few minutes later they stopped the car and said it was time to introduce themselves. This was a chilling and horrible moment. In an instant all their charm and friendliness vanished. The newest man seemed to take the lead and calmly explained that they were going to take all our money, and that nothing would happen to us if we cooperated. The man in the front was much more agitated and shouted at us that they were dangerous. We had long ago decided that in a mugging we would do what was asked of us, that money was nothing compared to saftey. We were also trapped. The doors were locked from the front, they were four strong men & I remembered that I had waved to children before and they’d looked right through me. The windows were reflective.
So I handed over all our cash and cards. They took all this, but they were quite nervous and agitated and quite soon they were having a four-way shouting match with each other. Cate was crying by this time and pleading with them not to hurt me. Under pressure, Cate showed her selfless character. The man in the front was angry that Cate was crying, saying that they hadn’t hit her or anything. In a panic they thrust all the cash and cards back at me and drove off, as if they weren’t happy with how this was going. That didn’t last long however & they stopped again and took everything back.
We had already been in the car with them for about an hour by now, Congolese music playing the whole time in the background. We were more than ready to get out of that car. But their method was to drive around the city using different cash machines, not taking too much at each machine, until they had reached the limit on the cards. On our journey we had constantly had problems with our cards not working in all machines or with all banks and sometimes not working in a country at all. We tried to explain this to them, as the cards were not working at the first few machines they tried. They seemed to believe us for a time, but as time went on and they were getting increasingly stressed. They were driving madly around, finding new ATMs, parking up, getting out and queueing, using the card and seeing no cash. They decided we were lying about the PIN numbers. This was a sickly, horrible time as their threats increased, as did our pleas that we were telling the truth and that the cards were at fault. They kept saying, “Maybe you have made a mistake with the PIN number” as if I was lying and that would make it easier to say “Sorry, you’re right, I have made a mistake, this is the right number.” But I knew I hadn’t. It was starting to feel like we’d never be released. Even so, we were able to explain that as Christians we forgave them for what they were doing & that we wouldn’t hold it against them.
Cate
After three hours of no success, they were convinced we were lying. They provided an ultimatum, that they would kill me if Nick did not confess the correct pin. The man left the car for what he said was his final time. We were praying like crazy, unbearably desperate. I felt as though God showed me a huge ring of fire around us, protecting us. Sure enough, that time the pin worked! I tell you, it was a complete miracle and I believe God utterly broke in and saved our lives.
After retracting a nasty amount of cash, they put us in a tuk tuk (three-wheeled taxi) and sent us off to a hotel of their recommendation. Not keen to take advice from our fellow bandits, I requested we go straight to the smartest and safest hotel in town. There we spent a few days resting, worshipping and recovering. It was a beautiful time. We were fragile and yet so held by our loving God. We would get scared and then we would worship and feel safe and bold. We slept in unimaginable luxury after two months of roughing it to reach Africa. We ate a lot of food. We also caught a flight to Pemba, keen to head towards our destination. And I must say once we arrived in our little Pemba place, we let out a big sigh of relief. Rich and incredibly joyous, and yet full of hard hours and tears – the long journey south was finally over. At least for the moment.
Thursday, 12 May 2011
What has happened since we last wrote
Nick
So we did finally fulfill our original blog title and make it all the way from Camberwell to Cape Town. We travelled through 3 continents & 18 Countries, on 30 long train & bus journeys (many of which were through the night & a couple were more than 24 hours!), plus 2 plane flights, 3 ferries, quite a few taxis and tuk-tuks and motorbikes and one camel. London to Cape Town is about 6000 miles as the plane flies, but I think we travelled around 9000 miles to get there. It cost a lot more in pounds and a lot less in carbon dioxide. And we had a life-changing experience of cultures and people that we may never have again (or might have in a couple of years if we want to come back and visit!) I’ve got to say that neither of us are born travellers – we didn’t chose to do this for fun and it was pretty tough at times. But I think it has shaped us and our ability to adjust to the different culture that we now live in.
Cate
Let’s go back to early October last year. We will spend a bit of time going through our experience in Dar es Salaam – mainly the reason why our blog stopped so abruptly. Then we must share a bit about our two months attending the Iris school in Mozambique, zoom onto our month in Zimbabwe, share stories from South Africa and finally report back from our long trip north – back to Pemba. I now sit in Pemba looking out on the expansive blue Indian Ocean, the sun beginning to sink in the sky. We now call this place our home. But I am skipping ahead. Back to Dar, and then onwards and upwards!
So we did finally fulfill our original blog title and make it all the way from Camberwell to Cape Town. We travelled through 3 continents & 18 Countries, on 30 long train & bus journeys (many of which were through the night & a couple were more than 24 hours!), plus 2 plane flights, 3 ferries, quite a few taxis and tuk-tuks and motorbikes and one camel. London to Cape Town is about 6000 miles as the plane flies, but I think we travelled around 9000 miles to get there. It cost a lot more in pounds and a lot less in carbon dioxide. And we had a life-changing experience of cultures and people that we may never have again (or might have in a couple of years if we want to come back and visit!) I’ve got to say that neither of us are born travellers – we didn’t chose to do this for fun and it was pretty tough at times. But I think it has shaped us and our ability to adjust to the different culture that we now live in.
Cate
Let’s go back to early October last year. We will spend a bit of time going through our experience in Dar es Salaam – mainly the reason why our blog stopped so abruptly. Then we must share a bit about our two months attending the Iris school in Mozambique, zoom onto our month in Zimbabwe, share stories from South Africa and finally report back from our long trip north – back to Pemba. I now sit in Pemba looking out on the expansive blue Indian Ocean, the sun beginning to sink in the sky. We now call this place our home. But I am skipping ahead. Back to Dar, and then onwards and upwards!
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