Today I returned with Alan and Marion Turnbull from a weekend at a village near Nsanje in the far south of Malawi. We had left home on Friday morning for the journey south, first dropping almost three thousand feet as we negotiated the z-bends of the road that winds down the escarpment into the Great Rift Valley and then following the level main road for the remainder of the 125 miles, passing through the Sucoma sugar cane plantations beside the Shire river, and then the cotton plantations until eventually we arrived after a gruelling five hour journey at our destination in a village a few miles off the main road.
The main road had once been quite good, but now the surface had degenerated for much of the distance to a state only passable by commercial and other high-clearance vehicles. I travelled in the canopy at the back of Alan's Ford Courier pickup with Peter Makupe, a pastor and smallholder from Bvumbwe, and Elias Chisale who had recently returned from Ameva Bible School in Zimbabwe. They would be acting as interpreters at the meetings.
All around us were packed suitcases for the weekend, sleeping bags, a camping table and gas stove, a pressure lamp for light at night, bottles of drinking water, loaves of bread for us, and maize flour and cabbages for our hosts. As the pickup negotiated the bumps, with Alan steering from one side of the road to the other to miss the larger potholes, and even going off the road to miss particular trouble spots, we spent an appreciable proportion of our time suspended midway between our seat and the roof of the canopy.
We stopped for lunch and I sampled everyone else's since my contribution, lovingly prepared by Janet, was still in the fridge at home. At Bangula we stopped long enough to stretch our legs and to pour ice-cold drinks from the fridge at the petrol station down our parched throats. My current favourite is cherry-plum.
Mr Molensen, a pastor for the Independent Assemblies of God welcomed us when we arrived, and showed us to a dwelling just across from the church where we were to stay for the weekend. The house belonged to his son, who was away from home and very happy that we should use it. In the mud-brick dwelling which had an earth floor and thatched roof, there was a main room where we could cook and eat, and two adjoining bedrooms with "This is a gift from the people of the USA" maize sacks over the doorways to provide privacy. The windows which were holes in the wall, could be covered with roll-down bamboo mats for privacy at night. Over some, the ancient mosquito netting was efficient in keeping the flies in. A layer of brown dust blown in by the warm breeze covered everything we touched.
In each bedroom there was a bamboo bed-base upon which we spread our blow-up mattresses and sleeping bags. Alan and Marion had one bedroom, and I the other, Elias sleeping in the main room, and Peter in the church with other visiting pastors. Alan's bed-base sloped to one side where the supports had sunk into the floor, but a few bricks found lying around outside corrected the list.
We made ourselves comfortable and put the kettle on for a cup of tea. By now it was 5pm and getting dark so Alan lit the Tilley paraffin lamp and hung it under the thatch. Janet had supplied a sponge cake, a large pizza and sauce, and some rock buns, to add to the things that Marion had provided, so we had a buffer from purely African fare during the weekend.
During the weekend, the ladies of the village fed us well with rice porridge for breakfast, and rice, nsima (a stodge made from maize flour much beloved by Malawians), stewed cabbage and a little beef, chicken or fish for the other meals. They were very generous to us, because they commonly live on only one meal a day.
We had a short meeting on the Friday night to which about 40 people came; Marion told a story using flannelgraph, and I spoke for a little while too.
At about 9pm we went to bed, the others lighting mosquito coils and I using my safari net. I woke up after a little while to discover a cockroach about three quarters of an inch across walking across my face. I removed it, tucked my net in better and went back to sleep. In the morning, as I surfaced, I became aware that the chicken noises that had been distant were now very loud. As I opened my eyes, the hen that had been been searching for a good place to lay it's egg, went scuttling past my bed and headed for the doorway, ducking under the sack on its way out.
Four goats had made their way in through the back door during the night and were polluting the atmosphere beside the sack that hung over the doorway into the room where Alan and Marion were ensconsed. The hen tried each room in turn, ending up on a old bookshelf next to the goats.
We rose to face the day, and one by one went out to the bamboo fenced cubicles in the open where a bucket of warm water and a tin mug had been made available for washing purposes. The water has to be carried from a well and heated over an open fire in a bucket, so we were very grateful for the luxury of a warm wash or shower. During breakfast Alan remarked that a cockroach he had seen by the light of his torch in the toilet the previous night had been fully 2 inches long so I had got off lightly with such a small one. God is good!
Following breakfast, the cows that should have been overnight in the enclosure next to the house appeared with their flies, having spent the night by the Shire river a mile away because, after they had drunk from the river, it was too dark to bring them home. God's grace operates in wonderful and mysterious ways.
The meeting, scheduled for 9am began properly at about 10.30 with much joyful singing of hymns and choruses accompanied by a drum and other instruments of torture, and was followed by three other meetings that day. Alan spoke very clearly and well from Ephesians, bringing in relevant cross-references from other books, and the people, many of whom were pastors, scribbled furiously in their notebooks lest they miss any detail. The people listened attentively and seriously. Many were from Mozambique, just 15 miles further south, and at least one of them had walked 25 miles the previous day to be with us.
The Mozambicans in the refugee camps are beginning to return to their own country, and there are an increasing number of invitations to visit them once they are established.
Marion and I also contributed during the day. Her use of flannelgraph in telling old testament stories to put over the new testament message is graphic and very powerful, capturing the imagination and appealing to people of all ages.
About 4pm, we walked the mile or so to the Shire river, crossing the fields which until the last drought were marsh. The river, about 12 feet below us, 100 yards wide at this point and obviously very deep, flowed rapidly carrying numerous small islands of water hyacinth on its way to join the Zambezi. Over on the far bank there were a couple of small houses in use by the Renamo soldiers that occupy that part of Mozambique to guard the border with Malawi.
A dugout canoe plied across from one side to the other, the fare just 5 tambala (there are about 6 tambala to the penny), carrying local people with firewood, or baskets of tomatoes, or other crops on their way back to their villages. Peter and Elias had been across the ferry earlier in the day to talk to the soldiers about the Lord.
We watched the boatman make several journeys, going far upstream before crossing, because of the strength of the current, and then it was time to return for tea. The forty or so children and adults that had joined us by the river trailed along behind as we went back through the fields. It was just like a warm peaceful summer's afternoon in the south of England. I wished that Janet had been there to share it.
That evening we went to bed again at 9pm and slept better, although Alan was bitten twice by mosquitoes because his inferior mosquito coils had gone out during the night. However the goats didn't seem to smell so bad and the hen had turned her attentions elsewhere.
The next morning, Sunday morning, after a wash and breakfast, we packed our belongings and presented ourselves at 9am for the meeting. At 9.30 we went for a coffee and returned at 10am when the increased volume of the singing has signalled that everyone else were ready to begin. Marion spoke again, I continued with Ephesians 4 and the time disappeared. After the meeting we dined from a chicken to which we had been introduced the previous day as it walked around. We were told it was one of the progeny of a chicken that Alan and Marion had given Mr Molensen some months before. As Alan said "Cast your bread upon the waters..."
We left at 2pm for the long ride home, after much talking and hand-shaking, taking two of the ladies with children who had travelled down to the weekend from the Tengani refugee camp that lay close to the road on our way back, and arrived back in Bvumbwe four hours later after a good journey, the weather being pleasantly cooler.
My clothes smelt of wood smoke, and my pillow of smoke and paraffin, so everything went out for washing, and I enjoyed the civilisation of a comfortable bed again after a thoroughly profitable weekend.
