Life in the slow lane

Home on the Range

Although there are drawbacks of living in a fairly isolated part of Africa, one great aspect is that we really do feel that we are IN Africa and can learn so much about a different way of life to what we have been used.
I have posted a number of photos on our blog here, and on the children’s blog (see link on the right), to try and give you an insight into a traditional Owambo homestead.
A homestead is a ‘maze’ of corridors, with walls made of sticks. These corridors open out into different area.
You will see Caris on David’s shoulder’s, entering a ‘living room’; an open space with logs on which to sit. There is often a display of cattle skulls. Traditionally, whenever an ox is slaughtered, the skull is kept as a sign of prosperity (the more skulls on display, the more affluent the family).
There is also a cooking area, and a photo of dried spinach (looks like a cow pat) is shown in a photo on a traditional plate that people weave from the leaves of the local Makalani palm (see the trees alongside the [lovely!] tarred road and the sunset shot).

There is a photo of Caris looking into a woven silo where grain is stored. The main crop is mahangu (millet). Pounded, it can be made into flour or be brewed as an alchoholic or non-alcoholic drink. You will see me drinking some non-alcoholic oshikundu (it can be bought by the – communual -cupful at open markets and often takes the place of a meal) and a woman holding a plate of the flour. It is cooked to make bread or oshimbobo, something similar to polenta. However, be warned of chewing with teeth too closely together, as there is a lot of sand in it. This is explained by the fact that it is pounded in holes in the ground. You can see Caris having a go.
I gave Étienne the camera and he managed to get (rare) photos of me! I am with two ladies as they farewell us from their homestead, where we had just eaten. They were singing a song that translates as ‘I thank you, God’. (The ladies at Engela sang it to me when I had finished the workshop for them.) They were also ululating – I am not very good at that but had a go! How many times have YOUR hosts farewelled you with singing!?

The traditional drink is always served in a handmade pottery bowl that is usually surrounded by wet sand to keep it cool(ish), and dispensed with a hollowed gourd. Even when we visit people in town (in standard houses), the men are served omulodi (the alcoholic version) in traditional wooden cups from the bowl via the gourd.
Rural transport is ‘Shank’s pony’ (on foot) or donkey/ox carts. I also took photos of a lady fishing in the traditional way. It is a cone of twigs that is thrust into the water. There is a hand-hole to feel if there is a fish trapped. Beware the fish with painful barbs, though!

The children enjoyed spending time on the banks of an oshana. Oshanas are natural depressions that hold water when the rains come. Fish eggs (and hibernating fish) hatch from the mud and offer a change in diet. The oshanas provide water for washing (clothes to be dried on nearby bushes), drinking, bathing, livestock, etc. Until they dry up.
You can see how flat and sandy the landscape is. Very hard to coax crops from it. Especially with precious wood having been cut down for homestead walls and firewood so the topsoil is lost.

On the children’s blog you will see them demonstrating a plough (Caris is playing the role of donkey or ox). There was also an underground pigsty!
I walked around the homestead with some of the older children and they asked about Australia. Do we have cows and goats and chickens? What languages do people speak? When I tried to explain to these subsistence farmers about the size of paddocks in rural NSW, one girl, now studying agriculture at tertiary level by correspondence, asked if it meant they farmed commercially – everyone here just grows for family needs.
Aune lived in such a homestead for her primary school years and said she spent the evenings studying by candlelight as there is now electricity. Another girl we met when we first came had only completed grade 7 as a goat then ate her school books and her family could not afford to replace them.
At the moment there is an outcry against the fact that some rural schools only have one text book per 3 students.

A bit about the workshop. Onaanda is west of Oshakati and is deep Kwambi. Most speak zero English and David has, more than one, had to teach in Kwanyama and have someone translate into Kwambi! This time, however, we took Aune with us and it is her home language. So, she was a great blessing during the course of the workshop.

David left home very early last Sunday to attend a local church, where he had been invited to preach. I think the service had been going for about 2 hours before he was called up to speak. And, even though the service still had an hour or so to run afterwards (!), he had to then leave to go on to Onaanda for the workshop. We, as a family, had been invited to a homestead for lunch after the workshop. It was a six hour round trip, but I enjoyed seeing David ‘in action’.

Workshop at Onaanda & local homestead

Sunday School Workshop - Engela

Last week, when David was in Windhoek, he got a call from a Lutheran minister he had met, Rev Daniel. David had mentioned to him that I was willing to train Sunday school teachers and the call was asking if I would do it this week!
With Noémie here, I was able to devote a few days to preparing material.
When I spoke to Rev Daniel, I asked how long the workshop was.
‘Two days. You can have 3 if you like!’
No, he did not know how many people would come. If no one came, he said, he would cancel it!
The venue was Engela. You won’t find it on the map but it is very close to Oshikango, on the Angolan border: 90 minutes’ drive away. So, we decided I should sleep over.
I got to listen to a whole sermon in the car as I drove, which was a real blessing.
I arrived to find 24 very eager ladies (and one baby) waiting for me.
Each one represented a different parish.

I taught the first day till 6 pm and the 2nd day till 3.30, and poured out a wealth of information into their receptive minds and hearts.
We learned how to make crosses from paper aeroplanes, we sang action songs (which were a HUGE hit), practically saw how games and quizzes reenforce the lesson, did a memory verse presentation, discovered how to make simple visual aids with minimal resources and how to present Bible passages as a little play. I divided the group into 4 and their homework the first day was to prepare a short drama from a Bible passage. I include a photo of the Fiery Furnace one (worshiping an idol – the paper roll).

On a more serious side, we discussed why children’s ministry is important, how to find the meaning of a passage, the necessity of good preparation, why and how to pray, and the importance of reading the Bible themselves and of practicing reading the Bible aloud so they can read clearly to the children.

A basic Bible overview fascinated them, as they discovered where various key biblical charaters fit into God’s Big Picture.
Questions asked included:
‘What did Satan eat when he was in the Garden of Eden?’ and ‘Is killing a cow to eat, murder?’!

One problem I encountered was that the ladies came from 5 different language groups. Although the 8 languages that comprise Oshiwambo are considered ‘simply’ dialects of one language, the differences can be HUGE.
For instance, the Ndonga word for ‘blood’ is Ombinzi, The Kwanyama word is Ohonde. You can see some similarities in these following words for the traditional bread:
Kwanyama – Omungome Mbadja – Oshingome Ndonga – Oshikwiila Kwaluudhi/Njandjera/Kwambi - Oshima Mbalantu – Ohima
This mixture of languages made a united saying of the memory verse hard as I had prepared it in Kwanyama … and many could not understand it!
It was great fun teaching them to make a paper aeroplane. They had never done such a thing before … and the delight in their faces – especially when tearing it to pieces resulted in a cross - can be seen in the photos!

Another workshop was in progress (for pastors) and there is a sewing and computer ‘school’ there, too. So about 100 people were around.
I had a very competent translator, a young man who is, himself, a pastor (he is in his 7th month of pastoral ministry). Ezron is a lovely young man. He said that, even though he had studied theology in Windhoek (Lutheran seminary), he had learnt so much himself over the two days, which encouraged me tremendously. Although I spoke a bit of Oshiwambo, he basically translated for me as I am nowhere good enough. And, being a native speaker, he could also explain things in such a way that linguistic barriers were effectively breached.
I did make one mistake when I said the Promised Land is ‘meyulu’ instead of ‘meulu’. Sounds innocent enough, hey! Well, I said it was in the nose instead of in heaven!!!! But I won’t tell you about that incident as it is a bit embarrassing!

Pastor Paulus headed up the whole thing and was delighted to find I spoke French as he had spent 7 years in Sengal and could now practice his French! We were both rather rusty but it was fun. He even organised a bucket of hot water to be brought to my room in the morning, so I could wash in comfort!
He also asked me to lead the devotions on the 2nd morning, which was a privilege.
He is keen to have me back to teach the workshop to the pastors. And they want to know more about the work of NETS so we will be going back there for a meeting sometime.

And Odibo, where I went with the team from South Africa, have asked to to come back in September and train more people!

The 50 copies of the manual has been a great hit … which means I have all but sold out. Please pray for me as I chase up ways of printing more. A church in Cape Town is photocopying some for me, to tide me over a little. I hope to get them by September. However, we need enough for David to be able to take copies with him to give to the many churches he visits.
I included the words of some non-copyright Sunday school songs in the manual and the SA Team sang them into my computer. So now I have a disc to give, along with the manual, which gives the tunes to the words.
I cannot begin to tell you what a gift these people consider a book designed to help them teach Sunday school to be. Such a thing was never imagined possible. Think of all your teaching resources from Koorong and the like (CDs, books, manuals, Bible studies, dictionaries, concordances, novels, biographies, music sermons, ‘how to’ books … and try to imagine having NOTHING!

I got home in time to go dancing. I picked up one French person, one Oshiwambo, one German, and one Dutch girl. And joined one Dane, one Finn, one English woman, and some Canadians at the home of the Zulu! How about that for a ‘league of nations’!

I also include some photos I took along the way there and back. The advert for a bull as a prize would go down well in Armidale, I expect. The dirt road is finally being upgraded to a gravel road, but it will take a long time yet, I think.
Although Ongwediva and Oshakati have a veneer of ‘modern day’ when one sees the shops and internet access and things like that, you do not have to go far off the tarred road to realise you are in Africa. Wheelbarrows are good for transporting water, if you can’t afford a donkey. The other option is carrying the container on your head!
Other photos I will be posting in the next day or two are: us with the SA team, David joining me in a bit of Zulu dancing (!), me with some of the Bible Club children at library time and with David at prayer time.

Teaching the teachers

A transformed life

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40.8)

These were the words Daniel recited to me (in English, doing a translation from Oshiwambo on-the-fly) soon after his graduation.
Daniel’s graduation was a moving experience.
He started his NETS course at Oluno prison, Ondangwa, close to where we live. Everyone testifies to the fact that he was a “very bad man”. No-one wanted to cross him before he came to prison. The names of God or Jesus would not cross his lips, except in blasphemy.

But Daniel was transformed in prison. By God’s grace alone – and it came through very clearly in his testimony he gave at his graduation at Farm Scott Prison, Tsumeb. Spoken in eloquent English, and translated back into Oshiwambo, he majored on the sovereignty and grace of God, “choosing” him and “calling” him and “saving” him. In fact, if you closed your eyes, you could have been excused for thinking you were listening to the apostle Paul, or John Calvin.

It was the first time I had visited Farm Scott Prison. There are few people who are transferred there, it is a (yup, you guess it) farm which grows food for the other rehabilitation centres in Namibia. The inmates are entrusted with big machinery and can go off for kilometres on the headers and tractors without supervision from officers. Only in Namibia ….. !?

Whilst there, I was able to find four other students keen to enrol in the NETS DDE programme, meeting together to use the NETS TEE material to know God better and be trained as leaders. Daniel will be supervising their weekly meetings, so I know they are in safe hands. In fact, as I said at the graduation ceremony, I praise God that NETS has another person in their team – Daniel Nafuka.

Praise God for Daniel’s transformed life. And pray for him, and for his continued example at the prison. And pray for the 4 students in his group.

(Sorry for typo in below photo - Ed.!)