ZEST: Zambian Experiences with a Serving Thirst : Chiwang'ombe...A trip back to the village

The last house we visited was the farthest away from the tarmac road. We followed our guides, a young man and a boy of around fourteen. The CCAP youths from Lusaka didn’t speak to them much, but they gave a steady presence to the experience. Just follow them. I was touched by their gift of time and couldn’t stop thinking about what their life in a rural village was like.

We turned into the compound area full of huts with dried grass roofs, wooden stick structures for drying pots or food, and a few, small sandy brick houses, weathered by the wind. We found eight children and a dog, who quickly rearranged themselves to sit on the ground around the edge of a circular, brick structure. They wore second hand clothing and I noticed how the dust clung to their legs. One girl sat in the middle in a faded navy blue dress with multi-colored polka dots. Her smile could not be contained. The six city kids from Lusaka and one white American sat on old car battery boxes and a few wooden stools. We lined ourselves up to face them. Then a noise behind us signaled the entry of the father figure, emerging from his hut.

“Hannah will do the bible speaking,” I was told by a fellow CCAP youth before we got to the compound. We were there as part of a CCAP Midlands Presbytery Evangelism youth weekend.

Now the word, “evangelism,” sort of freaks me out. I think when you tell someone what to believe, even scare them into believing; you aren’t really following the Gospel that teaches radical love and justice and brings hope for unity. I don’t believe unity means we all have to be the same. So for me evangelism can’t really be about changing people to what I think is right. Instead it is about sharing in life and God, coming together to just be and learn. Neither of the parties has to be right. They can just be together.

As I started reading Micah 6:8, (What does the Lord require of you, but to seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God) things started to get a little mixed up. My friends couldn’t translate for me. Then the father got up and went and got a Chewa Bible, leaving a very long and awkward silence while we all just sat there staring at each other and waiting. I started to think I had failed. Crossing cultures and languages is hard. My words about the verse were very simple, both to ease the burden on the translator and because almost all of the people I was talking to were children. I simply tried to explain the words: justice, love, kindness, and humbleness… no easy task, of course. Then the father spoke. I had to wait for the translation.

He told us that we had done a great job. We started by introducing ourselves and preached a message of love. We all needed to hear more about love, he said. I cherish those words of affirmation. Together, an American and some Zambians sat down for ten minutes and talked about God. The man and his family didn’t ask us to come. We just showed up. And thankfully, even surprisingly to me, he appreciated it. He said we had done so well he wanted to give us a gift.

The gift? Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets. The evangelizers were getting evangelized. It seemed funny at first, but I think it was actually the perfect gift. It was as if he was saying, you share a little about what you believe and I’ll share a little about what I believe. If that’s not a miracle of unity, I don’t know what is. We weren’t there to bring God, but to see where God was working.

I often think about how much I’m getting myself this year. I’m the volunteer doing all of this “service,” but the purpose of this year isn’t just for me to “help” but to transform my life and hopefully a bit of the world along the way. It’s not about me pouring myself into an empty cup. I am the cup and each day I am filled with the joy and bustle of life in Zambia.

My cup was certainly filled this weekend as I enjoyed the beautiful Zambian mountains with CCAP youth. We sang and prayed (A LOT), ran and played football, and ate plenty of nsima. I was often confronted with my need to control, to know what’s next and even control food goes into my body. It’s very hard to feel out of control. But I was humbly reminded that the need to control wasn’t worth the stress. I had food, a place to sleep, a hole to squat over. I was going to be ok.

I blessed a living goat before it was slaughtered for our dinner. I slept in the house of the village headman. I sat on the dirt mound benches in a thatched roof church and on the thick grass outside. I even survived the cold. Yes, Zambia has gotten cold. Once the sun went down I put on three layers of pants and four layers of shirts/sweatshirts to keep me warm through the night.

It was a beautiful, exhausting weekend. And I’m so thankful for the memories.

The village headman's house.

New friends!

The goat. Post-Blessing.

On the road.

BEAUTIFUL ZAMBIA

I’m trying to eat sugar cane, a seasonal delicacy here. It’s quite difficult to peel the hard outside with your teeth. I think my face captures the determined confusion I often feel here. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it, darn it!