A couple of weeks ago we went to a small village in southern Malawi. We met with Pastor Rodney who was in his early sixties and walked with a limp. He met us at the junction off of the main road on his motorcycle to help us navigate the very rough road of about 10 kilometers to the church. I am thankful that the Presbyterian church has donated this motorcycle to him to get around to his five churches and two prayer houses. We go to bed exhausted around 8:30 p.m. and drop swiftly to sleep. But as so often happens, three hours later I lie wide awake in bed, my senses tingling from the day’s events and so I get up to write to try and calm down so that I can go back to sleep. The feeling is sort of like being tickled by someone until it almost hurts.
Every time I think that I must have experienced all that Malawi has to offer me … I again get swept off my feet and out of my mind, with the sensory input that the warm heart of Africa is so stunningly capable of providing. The first surprise at this church was that they couldn’t sing the hymns. Even #1, Holy, Holy, Holy was all over the map. I thought “Wow, this is the first church I’ve been to where they can’t sing.” Wrong. They just couldn’t do old, white, Presbyterian hymns. When the choirs got up and there were many of all ages, they blew me away with their harmony, body movements and freedom. They did “O Come All Ye Faithful” in Chichewa, such a familiar Christmas carol in the heat and in the warmth and deepness of African voices. It was a thrill.
The church is old, the walls cracking, the roof falling down and it had a strong smell of rodent about it. We got a tour of the village. The school with its cracked cement floors, no desks, no books, no chalk, no anything except the will to learn. There is no electricity in this village but the medical clinic was solar powered. The ambulance was a motorcycle with a side cart attached to it. As the pastor showed us around we asked him about the biggest challenges he faced. He said the congregation has about sixty orphans that they support and it is difficult to keep them fed.
Their faces are works of art in their own right. Young, snotty, shining eyes, brilliant smiles and old, wizened, leathery skin with rotten teeth and deep knowledgeable eyes.
A feast for the looking.
The service had its usual amount of excitement, baptism of babies, new elders, visitors, choirs etc. but the part that was like a living portrait of sound, smell, sight, touch and sound was the actual harvest parade. At the appointed time the young people at the back of the church started singing, accompanied by drumming, dancing and clapping. The women and men of the congregation went outside and then a whole procession of people made their way into church. The people themselves are beautiful enough, with their brilliant coloured chitenges and bright coloured head scarves. But today they came in with different coloured buckets and bowls of all sizes; containers balanced on their heads. Orange, blue, green, red, enamel, plastic, tin, large, med, small, tall and short. The buckets were mostly filled with chimanga (corn) and on top of each heap of chimanga there was arranged, a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Mostly Bougainvillea; purple, red, orange and pinks. The women danced and sang to the front of the church and yodelled, while the men would help lift the containers from the women’s heads and then they would toss the corn on to a big pile on the floor of the church. Above the music you heard the constant offering of tinkling chimanga as it fell from the buckets on to the piles on the floor. Sometimes two men would come in carrying a big sack of chimanga and pour out the offering. When the pile got too big another pile began. Bananas, millet, oranges, 12 foot long stalks of sugar cane, cassava, cabbage and sweet potatoes were also brought in. So much joy in the giving.
I have been reading Leviticus for my own devotions and for the first time I could see the sacrifice, sprinkling of blood, incense and music of that time as something to help the Jewish people celebrate. It must have tingled their senses as well. I always thought it was gross, all that butchering and bleating and burning of animals and yet a sensory experience it must have been for the Jewish people, to hear and smell and taste and see all those sights. Our North American culture is so sanitized and so free of sensual experiences.
I write this in the wee hours of the morning but the thankfulness I feel for all I have experienced at worship remains vibrant. Those villages were dirt poor and yet rich beyond belief in how they worship the living Christ with all of their senses.
We were invited to Rev. Maseya’s new manse for supper this week. We ate the usual traditional Malawian meal and talked about Maseya’s time as a missionary in Korea. He couldn’t believe that people actually ate crab. He just couldn’t do it he said. In Malawi only very poor people eat crab and they find them in the rain gutters. On the other hand he couldn’t understand our aversion to mouse on a stick. He said they call it underground sausage and if you are lucky to find someone selling them on the side of the road we should stop and get some because they are very good. Different cultures.
As luck (providence?) would have it, four days later we were driving to Mbevu for an evangelism rally when our vanload of Malawians excitedly told us to quickly pull over. As we pulled to the side of the road, many little boys came running towards us and pushed underground sausage through the window into our van. The sticks, a little over a foot in length, have ten, dried, flat, dead mice in a running position tied to them in a row. Hair and tail included all for 150 kwacha (approximately $1.25). Our van full of Malawians rejoiced in their find, telling us how they would wash the mice, fry them up and how tasty they would be with a little pepper. Different cultures.
There is a Sunday school class in the Netherlands who sent us plastic flags with pictures of the children in their Sunday school class. Pictures of healthy, bright, wealthy, white Dutch kids. Mostly blonde, blue eyed, living in one of the richest countries in the world. We hung these flags up in our Ndirande club. Strung across the dark hall; it was a festive sight. I took photographs of our poor, mentally and physically challenged, black Malawian children. We made flags from construction paper, wrote their names and their ages, decorated them with donated markers and stickers, glued on pictures, strung them together and sent them to Holland. Two very different cultures somehow joined together. When I look at the pictures of the Dutch kids and our Ndirande kids I see many similarities. Beautiful smiles, joy filled eyes, enthusiasm, hope for the future.
We went on a field trip with the Ndirande Club today. We rented mini-buses and drove our own vehicles. The logic was that our Ndirande folk never have a chance to give, they are always getting and being helped. Going to the large, Queen Elizabeth hospital they would have a chance to give instead of always receiving. The women of the club have knitted little sweaters all year long. They get 50 kwacha for every sweater they knit. The tailors have sewn little purses, which we filled with little sweets. When we came to the hospital we visited the newborn wards, where we passed out the sweaters and the children’s wards where we passed out the little bags. We passed out hundreds and wished the mothers and the children well. How do you think they felt? The joy of giving. Deep, satisfied joy. Hallelujah!
Ed—Rev. Ed Hoekstra, and the author’s husband—was at the GEC (General, Administration Conference) and was sitting with some of the other ministers over lunch when he got this lesson in romance. Anyone who knows Ed knows that he needs all the help he can get. This story was relayed to me by Ed the following day. He said that they were eating lunch when Rev. Zangalei pontificated about how he thought he knew his wife, but now he realized he really knows his wife. The other ministers were all ears, since they too have this life mission of “knowing their wives.” Zingalei continued that he thought he would do a really romantic thing for his wife so when he was travelling back from Mbevu he stopped by the side of the road and picked up some mice on a stick. When he came home he lovingly presented the mice on the stick to his wife who promptly told him in an angry voice, “I don’t like mice on a stick!” At this point in the conversation another minister, Rev. Dothi said, “I like mice on a stick.” Ed replied, “Yeah but your not Rev. Zangali’s wife.” “That’s right,” Zangali said. He then reiterated that now he really knows his wife. Ed thought that was the funniest thing and assured me that he has taken this romantic lesson to heart. You never know what important thing you may learn at the GEC.
Today I boarded a mini-bus with 16 other mai mvano members to go to a meeting in Limbe to dedicate the new mai mvano co-ordinator of all of Blantyre. I still get a big kick out of putting on my uniform and being with a whole group of women who look a lot like a bunch of penguins. We sang all the way there and back. The conductor of the mini-bus (the one that collects the money) sang right along with us. The meeting started at 9:00 a.m. and finished at 2:00 p.m. without a break. You can see what a bunch of wimps us Canadians are. Every church that came sang a song. Every church that came danced up to the front, gyrating hips and swaying arms, with gifts for the new co-ordinator; chimanga, plastic buckets, clothe, mattress, pots and pans, rice. The camaraderie, the laughter, the love for God and for each other is enough to give you a real high. These women are a powerful force of good, of reaching out to their neighbours in need. They make me proud to be a woman, proud to be a Christian, glad to be following this path of Jesu Kristu.
Sunday evening was one of those services at St. Michael’s where you feel your soul lifting a little closer to something more. At around 4:00 p.m. when the day has been full; Ed preached his first sermon in Chichewa, we had a cottage come and visit, the last thing I feel like doing is loading up the van with the piano, cello and violin and try to give some logic to the boys (two of the Hoekstra’s five children) about why we are headed to the church again. This is where mere feeling should not come into play. What I feel like doing is making a cup of tea, putting my feet up and watching some TV (if we had one to watch.) Instead, discipline takes over. Mind over emotions. We close most Sundays with worship at the 5:00 o’clock service whether we feel like it or not.
We arrive at 4:00 to practice the music and while we practice dusk creeps up. The little candle shaped lights on the side of the ancient cathedral barely light up the place. People filter in slowly. Maybe they too are marching in to disciplined steps, acts of their will. Usually there are people from all over the world at these services. They come on short term, long term mission trips, holidays etc. Today we have present with us Mrs. Ross an elderly woman and her son who have come to commemorate her husband’s work in Malawi. He worked in the tumultuous time of independence from the turn of dictatorship to multi-power rule.
We sing, “Gloria, Gloria, Glory in the Highest, Gloria, Gloria, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.” Our different voices from different parts of the world rise and blend and seem to soar to the heights of the cathedral ceiling. It seems like many more voices from the past have drifted in and joined ours. It is a fitting setting for the scripture reading from Habbakuk. The scripture reader quips in his Irish accent that if we can’t find the three chapters of Habbakuk it is right between Nahum and Zephaniah. As often happens the scheduled preacher doesn’t show up, but lucky for us Glenn has a barn burner in his back pocket. I wonder what Habbakuk means. I’ve been pondering about names a lot since we have a new grand child coming into the world who will need a name. There are so many rich names in Malawi. Chifundo—Kindness, Chisomo—Grace, Mtendere—Peace. I turn my attention back to the preacher with his North American name, Glenn as he begins to expound Habbakuk.
He reminds us that it is still harvest time here in Malawi. It is easy to be thankful when the harvest is good, when the rains are plenty when things are going well. Habbakuk finds Israel in a hard place, a place of exile, confusion, violence and he cries out “God how long do I cry out for help before you listen?” We too cry out like Habbakuk. “God can’t you see that people are killing each other in the Congo, that women are being raped in Darfur, that Palestinians do not have a home land, that people in Malawi do not have jobs and cannot feed their families. This is when God speaks to Habbakuk and tells him to write it out in big block letters so that anyone can read it on the run as they run by. The big block letters say, “Wait, wait for the appointed time.” It points to what’s coming, it aches for the coming. It seems slow in coming but wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.
Then Glenn gave examples of generations of people waiting for communism to fall, and it did; waiting for apartheid to end, and it did. We are waiting today, for the Palestinians to have their own homeland; we are waiting for our world economic order to treat the poor countries as equally as the rich. And that’s the faith we live by. Even in hard times, in difficult times we will sing joyful praises to God, we will trust in the appointed time. Anyway I cannot do justice to the sermon, there was a lot more to it but I came away strengthened by the words of Habbakuk.
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Saviour.” Habbakuk 3
After the sermon we sang, Now The Night Has Fallen. It is inky, black, dark when we leave the church. I leave content, surrendering the day and letting the quiet darkness still my soul. I have been nurtured in worship.
Just so you know, this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I rant and rave when I come home from worship. The preacher that has just spewed at me for a half an hour has twisted and changed the gospel so much that I feel lacerated, angry and trembling with indignation. I wonder why I go to church, why I spend so much time in worship, why God doesn’t fix all those idiot preachers up double quick. This is when my husband usually calmly tells me the positive parts of the service, the redeeming parts. Ed reminds me that we are all idiots and that’s why we go to church; to acknowledge that we need to change. I don’t know why I so easily forget this. I feel like making myself some huge block letters.
We hope to see many of you in Canada. If not it is not because we do not love you it’s because we are finite. We will let you know what it is. When Nico was born at home it was Jacob’s job to tell us if the baby was a boy or a girl. We primed him up for his job. We told him, “When the baby is born, you say, It’s a boy! Or It’s a girl.” When his brother was born he proudly said, “It’s a boy! Or It’s a girl!”
