How Will They Live Their Lives?

We have been reading a lot of James Mitchener while in Malawi. Books such as Texas, Carribean, Recessional, all fairly lengthy and detailed. The stories seem to follow a pattern. Chapter 1, 2 and so on; however, the character development continues creating both a familiarity and an intrigue. How will they live their lives?

This is our second time in Malawi doing food relief. This time, however, we were more engaged in food for work. We are getting near the end of another chapter. Completing a project is easy but what next? How will they live their lives?

As in Mitchener”s books, we have become intertwined with the character of Malawi. Real people engaged with real struggles not living far away, but as our neighbours. Not in a physical sense as the areas we were engaged with, are both more than 110 km from our place of stay in Lilongwe. Real people because we have listened to their stories about suffering and loss along with joy and hope. So these people stay in your mind, as long as you don’t change books. How will they live their lives?

The people of Malawi are also your neighbours. You have met some of them through the blog. Beautiful people, dedicated to living for their daily bread, wanting something better for their children. It may be the same story as some of our families that still remember immigration to a new country experienced.

God knows the next part of the story. Somehow we are invite to participate in his-story through trust and obedience. We have been engaged in writing the next part. The story started with hungry people. It continued with planting crops for the next season. The harvest has been blessed through many prayers. The grain banks will be filled. How will they live their lives?

We dream that the story continue something like this…



Wow, it appears so fuzzy? That is the way it sometimes is in life. Not knowing what will actually happen to the food in the grain bank and the impact it may make. But this we know, we will LEAP, a trust in God that he directs toward DREAMS, that we can trust in His direction. How will their lives end up?

Celebrations!

Everyone came to celebrate and give thanks for the food for new beginnings, the harvest for future promise and the blessings of people everywhere!





When God blesses you, it is so you can be a blessing to others!




Such beautiful sounds...such intensity... such aliveness!




The new grainbank is almost completed! Fill it up with the harvest!




Zikomo, zikomo, zikomo!

With an End...A New Beginning

We have less than a month to go with so much excitement yet to come as we come to completion of this phase of the project. This week we’ll have the last distribution in Ulongwe and in early May we’ll be in Chipoka for the last distribution there. There will be celebration as this is the time when the harvest of the maize crops will also be happening. The good and plentiful rains have been there at the right times. It’s amazing how quickly things change. No more rains, cool nights (great for sleeping) and beautiful, warm, sunny, clear days. Winter is coming…  And then we must leave… the on-going work, the hope and the anticipation of other harvest, of food security, all in the care of the communities themselves and our partners who work in these communities.

This week at church we heard a pastor from an organization called Visionledd tell of the work that a few paid staff but many, many volunteers were doing in so many different countries working with widows and orphans. He so challenged us all to be redeemer kinsmen for the vulnerable and the marginalized. Remember the story of Boaz and Ruth? He was the redeemer kinsman. We just celebrated Easter. Jesus is our redeemer kinsman. Whose redeemer kinsman am I? Isn’t that the challenge of living in the Kingdom of God? I am so taken by the challenges that continue to be laid in front of me in what I see and what I hear. Maybe because the challenges are more evident here but they are surely there in North America! I do not always want to see the need, or possibly it is easier to blame the situation on those involved. Again I am always given lots of things to reflect on but more importantly, challenges to act on.

Easter for Living!

On this day between Good Friday and Easter, I find the words below from Jim Wallis "A Call to Conversion", an exclamation mark of why we do the things we do, because so often, I forget and then become discouraged and frustrated. So we are reminded, remember and live!



What is the good news? When all that sin had done, or could ever do, was laid on Jesus, it did not overcome him. Death could not swallow him. The grave was denied its victory. The witness of history and of his followers is that “he is risen.” He is alive. He has triumphed over all. He is the victor over every sin, hate, fear, violence, and death. Nothing is stronger than his victory—nothing past, nothing present, and nothing future.



On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, “We have seen the Lord.” We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.
His way is life. The world’s way is death. We can now stand before the world’s false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.



We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus’ way is stronger and truer than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.

May God convert us to such foolishness.

Some photos, some people!

We'll share some photos this time, of some various aspects of our work and our joy.


Jane, one of the CDF's with her little boy, the same one I held in 2006 as a 6 month-old. Time flies.



Hans is just astounded at the little lady who is carrying a 50 kg bag of cement which will be used for the restoration of a grain bank.



Mr. C is showing a maize cob from his farm. It is drying and some of his maize may be ready, fully dried in a few weeks. This garden was planted in late November. The Food for Work gardens will take into June to be ready for harvest.

Assumptions

Today, there is another voice that you read. Hans wants to share some of his thoughts.


My son once told me that I should not ‘assume’ anything. As in the modern vernacular it may turn out to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. Even after having spent over a year in Africa I still find myself assuming things. One of the most striking is that any kind of planning or thinking that I do might not apply, be relevant, be of concern to or even assist in the assumed progress of Africa. Take for example when we have a Food for Work program which is currently underway. Charts on what is growing where, how much, the time of planting, fertilizing, weeding, and expected harvest seem simple enough to capture on a document that might reflect the goals for the FFW. Life is not a simple straight line. The earth is round. It took mankind even a while to get rid of the flat earth assumption.

So the written, bureaucratic, non-African in some places, is not as easily constructed as one might like. Should it be? We forget the reality of just living, having enough concerns about what will my family eat today or why is my child sick and the hospital so far away or why are the FFW field so distant from my village?

The best way to overcome assumptions of course is to live beside someone or work with someone or dialogue intentionally with someone. Not a perfect method but at least there is a sharing to overcome the mis-understanding that people are either lazy, don’t want to do it, cannot get it, don’t appreciate what you do, are not smart enough, etc!

Village life is different. Distances to and from ‘your’ garden, to the water supply, to any kind of market, to school, to a hospital, even to church are significant. Significant because most of it is done on foot often without shoes. Here we arrive with the large SUV able to move mountains. Drink coca-cola whenever we want. Seem to have an endless supply of money to pay for things like seed, fertilizer, tools, storage facilities, etc. What do they assume about me? There is a challenge to find a middle road, a way to walk together to share and know that we are together or as one villager reflected “you have sympathy with us”. Does God have sympathy with us?

Enjoy some pics of the village life. Take them for what they are. Another person’s life, simple, often struggling, rejoicing and celebrating life just as we do before God’s grace.





The granery where the cobs of maize are kept.



Such a hospitable family who showed us the hard work done in the gardens.



The proud farmers in the soya bean garden.



Maize and relish drying in the sun for future use. The relish is tomatoes and pumpkin leaves.

Dreams of the Poor.

When we first came to Malawi, we were asked “what does poverty look like in Malawi?

We can see the young boys everyday hanging out by the grocery store in their tattered clothing, bare feet and always with their hands stretched out as you come along. Everyday we see the young boy leading the blind man in amongst the traffic also with his hand out. Everyday the same woman with her baby on her back meets us as we walk into town with her hand out, pointing to her baby and gesturing that she needs food. And more women, boys and men, old, young, are all at their own place along our walk into town. Everyday we see the disabled on the ground dragging themselves along as the traffic of cars and people pass by. Yes, this is extreme poverty staring us straight in the face each and everyday. This is what poverty does to many people. Their only way to get a little is to beg for it. They cannot find another way. This has nothing to with self-worth as it only has to do with survival.

Then we go to the villages and where there is singing and dancing when the food aid is brought in. But it is time to have conversations with the beneficiaries. What is your life like? What are your hopes and dreams? Mary’s husband has left to go into the city, never to return leaving his wife and eight children between the ages of six and twenty. When her garden’s harvest runs out she gathers and sells firewood to buy food. Her children cannot go to secondary school even if she has been able to scrape together the school fees because they don’t have proper clothes and have no food. She dreams for her children to get an education and for her family to have enough food all year around.

I meet Sosage who is a widow 58 years old, still has four children at home and five grandchildren from her eldest who has passed away. She too does piecework, gathering and selling firewood to buy food whenever she can. She shares that she would be dead if it wasn’t for the food aid. She shares how weak three of her grandchildren were that she thought they too would die. A kind CDF gave her a blouse to wear and another gave her a chitenja. Her simple dream but a dream it is, is to have food and clothes for her family. When one has so little the dreams seem so little too.

And then there is Margret, a warm, kind woman. She had a job in the city as a home craft worker. She lost it when the new government came in and abolished that department. Not that she was making enough income, not nearly enough. Even with her husband’s small salary as a market fee collector they had a difficult time feeding their six children. And then her husband was killed by a car as he walked along the road one evening. She had no choice but to go back to her village where she was given one and a half acres to farm. Her home is tiny with a grass roof, everyone sleeps on straw mats and four young orphans came to live with the family when her sister died leaving the children alone. Her husband’s village is helping her eldest go to driving school not that they might have a car but that he might be able to become a driver. At times her church is able to provide some funds to allow her two daughters to go to secondary school. What happens during the hunger months? Cooked green bananas and mangoes make up the one daily meal. Food aid was God’s blessing during this difficult time. Margret worries for her children. They must get an education and leave the village. She dreams of a little bigger house with iron sheets for the roof so that eleven people could be a little more comfortable and dry.

Why are the dreams of the poor so difficult to realize?