Life Reclaimed

It seems about time for a blog, as I haven’t yet put to words anything that has happened since I arrived in the Congo that stormy November night! (Sounds dramatic doesn’t it?) Right now seems the perfect time, sitting at a desk in beautiful Zambia where I’ve been shipped to whilst the Congo’s unpredictably volatile elections take place. Where to start! These first two weeks have been filled with new sights, new sounds, and definitely new smells. Hugging the borders of my new home - the bustling city of Likasi, DRC – are countless communities devastated by a history wrought with war, disease, famine and the most heinous criminal activity. The Congo seems absolutely defined by its contradictions. The world capital of rape and torture, yet 95% of the country claim themselves Christian. Its brutal history has left scars on a culture that now seems definitively violent, a violence found as much on the market streets as in the halls of government, where current presidential candidates have promised bloodshed for anyone who doesn’t lend them their support. And yet for so many here hope is not absurd or misplaced but as integrated a part of life as the pain and poverty they experience moment by moment. In fact the two seem impossibly married. I’m learning this in my heart too.

Here I’m left without so many of those little things I never realised I would miss; chief of them chocolate, and the English language. You can slip into feeling isolated or alien when you’re lost in a people and a language you don’t understand. It strips you of your security and comfort. And yet of all that the Congo has given me already, that is probably the greatest gift. I’m learning every day that God is enough. Absolute dependency = extravagant provision. You can’t really open your hands to the gifts of God until you let go of everything else you’re clinging to. Sometimes he’s audacious enough to kick it out of your hands. Or send you to the Congo. It’s when I’m weak that God does his best work. That isn’t a cliché! It isn’t a Christian Hallmark card. It’s at the root of so much. I’m learning every day to see like Jesus sees. I’m learning to give of my selfish self without regard or request. I’m learning that God has a plan and a promise written upon the lives of every single one of his kids, that not one is forgotten, not one abandoned. There is not one of them whose fingerprint God didn’t labour over, whose hairs God didn’t count, whose future God doesn’t imagine, envision or dream about. And when you see that, then you see the real, deeper poverty etched into these children’s lives –that their future has been stolen from them.

In an urban community near our home I watched as the open coffin of an eight year old orphan was carried out before his wailing grandmother. I’m still not sure what to think or feel. A boy who watched his father walk out on him, then stood over his mother’s grave, and died at eight years old of a preventable disease. It makes you ask the kind of questions that might have answers, but you don’t expect to hear them. His grandmother knew that it’s enough sometimes just to yell. And that’s life in the Congo, and has been for such a long tainted past. Life stolen by Westerners who robbed the country of its resources and chopped off the hands of the enslaved for their death count quota. Life stolen by civil wars killing more than WWII and then left forgotten. Life stolen by volcanic devastation, by raiding rebels, by famine and disease and malnutrition. In the Congo life is fragile, and always on the verge of being broken. But there is life. Bursting through the cracks of the blood stained ground life is springing up, real and beautiful life. You can feel it. You can see it, there in the faces of the countless people living to bring hope to those with none, people who have refused to be a product of hopelessness. Teachers who every day walk 12km to give a lesson in one school then 12km back to give a lesson in another. Men who orphaned children run to because they see in them a father who cares. Widows pooling together everything they have so that none of their children will go hungry. Life is breaking through the cracks. As for me, I’ve come alive in the Congo in a way I could nowhere else. I’m stepping deeper into the Father’s heart. Without it, none of this is worthwhile. For now, this is exactly where he wants me to be – living in the plans and promises of God. And I get to watch, maybe even help, as life breaks through...more and better life than anybody ever dreamed of.

The Long Road to the Congo

DAY ONE

It is not so difficult to get up at 4am when you know that with the sunrise comes the beginning of a road trip like no other. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been embedded on my heart for as long as I have known that God was calling me to Africa, so you can imagine both the overpowering excitement and the underlying anxiety that got out of bed with me the morning I started my long journey to the Congo. It was going to be just three of us travelling, but with the very real possibility of our car breaking down on the journey we added the Hands @ Work mechanic to our party. And so before sunrise the four of us piled into the rickety old truck and set off – Dan our volunteer coordinator, Dave the mechanic, Sibu the Swazi and me. Road trips are rarely about the destination but about what happens on the journey. This one was different – the journey itself was made even more incredible because it anticipated an incredible destination.

We drove through South Africa the whole morning, stopping every half an hour for Dan and Dave to pee, until we reached the Botswana border at lunchtime. Despite the reputation of African border posts we actually sailed through and headed into Botswana. The rumours I had been told before I left turned out to be true: it is literally full of donkeys. More donkeys than people for sure. It’s actually the reason it is too dangerous to drive through Botswana at night – you’ll likely hit a donkey. It is also incredibly flat. On the straight roads that run from South to North you can see for miles upon miles around you. No mountains or trees to block the view and few towns or villages scattered along the roads – Botswana is no man’s land. The surplus of donkeys quickly lost its novelty and we were instead hooked on the families of elephants that roamed wild by the roadside in the North of the country. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures; Dave got some of him holding a big wad of elephant poop. By the time the sun started to set we weren’t near enough to the lodge where we had planned to stay, so instead we booked into a little getaway spot about ten kilometres into the Botswana bush. We had the honour of sharing in Sibu’s first ever experience of a swimming pool – amazing to watch! Nothing will knock you out like 16 hours driving, and after a little something to eat we hit the hay and slept like babies.

DAY TWO

I hadn’t realised when we started out just how many firsts this trip would involve for our Swazi friend Sibu. After another 4am start, hot footing the final part of Botswana to the Zambian border, we crossed the Zambezi river on Sibu’s first ever boat ride. He was anxious when Dan told him to watch out for crocs and hippos. On the other side we spent a good while getting through Zambian border control, but eventually were allowed into the country and headed straight for Victoria Falls, about 70km from the border. It is dry season in Southern Africa, and so the Falls were not the great thundering walls of water that I was expecting but more of a dry canyon with a great green river streaming through the middle. The upside to visiting in dry season is that you can walk along the top of the falls. As we waded through the Zambezi feeling like Livingstone himself we came across a big family of elephants by the riverside. Naturally, we chased them. We darted through the bushes, enduring the thorns in our feet, to get as close to them as we could. It was the most amazing experience and an absolute gift of God, and we sat there watching elephants as wild as ever we’d see them. After stalking big game (Dave took another picture of himself with elephant poop) we spent some time walking along the top of the Falls. I took the opportunity to scare Dan by hopping along the edge and jumping down to ledges out of sight so it looked like I’d fallen off the side. We stumbled upon an amazing pool right on the edge, hidden amongst the rocks that no one else seemed to have found. So we dived in off the rock about 5 metres above it and discovered it was so deep we couldn’t reach the bottom. It was so close to the edge of the Falls that if we’d gotten out in the wrong place we would have fallen off the side. But we didn’t, and once we’d finished in our secret swimming pool we got out and headed back to the car and onwards to Livingstone, where we spent the night in a little hotel.

DAY THREE

The day started early again with a 4am dip in the hotel’s swimming pool. We left Livingstone as the sun started to rise and headed northwards through Zambia, stopping in on a few of our Hands friends along the way. At a place called Kabwe we met with Beth and Ali, two of the volunteers from my own intake that had since been placed in Zambia. It was great to see them again, and after having a little to eat in their place we bundled them into our beaten up old truck and headed back out on the road, destination: the Hands @ Work farm in Luanshya, North Zambia. We got there hours later to find the place without power, which meant a rather romantic candlelit dinner prepared by three more of our volunteer intake – Alisha, Janine and Sara. We spent the evening talking, catching up and finding out what was happening where they were. It was absolutely incredible to see them again, but three days travelling, 48 hours of which spent in the car, had taken its toll and our charismatic company was tainted with an overwhelming tiredness from all 4 of us, so we headed to bed.

DAY FOUR

Dave, Sibu, Beth and Ali took the truck back to Kabwe, where Dave will spend some time before travelling home and Sibu will spend two weeks before joining me and Dan here in the Congo. The rest of us began our day heading over to a prayer meeting with a local Hands @ Work service centre, after which we travelled onwards to Kitwe where Janine and Sara have been placed to work. After spending time there James, the leader of Hands in Zambia, and Janine drove Dan and I northwards to the DRC border. We had to wait a while for Erick, the Hands @ Work DRC coordinator, but once he arrived we headed straight through to border control. Despite what we had been told to expect it was a surprisingly quick and easy process – the fastest border crossing yet. We said goodbye to Janine and James as we stood in no man’s land between Zambia and the Congo. Thunder clapped overhead and the bright skies in Zambia behind us became thick with black clouds, lightening and rain in front – like the weather too was subject to border control. It was hilarious – a metaphor written in the skies in the black clouds that introduced us to the place they call ‘the heart of darkness.’ On the other side we encountered the chaotic bustle of the Congo streets and hailed a taxi to make our way to Lubumbashi, 70km from the border. There we picked up Erick’s car and drove onwards towards Likasi, DRC – my home for the next five weeks. I love this place. It is vibrant red and green, just like I imagined, and in the storm that welcomed us to the country the earth and plants burst into colour. The drive from Lubumbashi to Likasi was probably the most precarious I’ve ever been on. At one point the car almost broke down in the middle of the flooded Congo countryside. Dan and I took it in turns to sit in the front seat helping Erick figure out whether it was safe to overtake and how far away those headlights rushing towards us actually were. But despite the rain, the Congolese enthusiasm for dodgy driving and Erick’s CD that only had three songs on played repeatedly for the two hour journey, we made it to Likasi sane and in one piece. I cannot wait to step into what God has in store for us here in the DRC. The journey was incredible, an adventure I hadn’t expected, but was nothing compared to what is ahead. I want to explore God’s heart for the Congo, step boldly into his plans and promises for me and discover as best I can the dreams he has written for this amazing nation. Bring it on!

Prevailing Footprints

This is not the kind of preparation I was expecting. Tomorrow I will be heading off to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to spend five weeks working in local communities with the orphans, widows and the dying. There is, somewhere in the region of my stomach, a strange mixture of excitement and the heavy feeling of complete unpreparedness. I don’t feel scared or anxious, just unprepared, and I think it is that which is making me so excited. I love this feeling, it’s like the deep parts of me crying out to God – you’re going to have to take care of this one, I’ve got nothing! Absolute dependency = extravagant provision. God is going to do something marvellous, of that much I’m sure. The journey alone is going to be an adventure in itself. Me, our volunteer coordinator Dan and Sibusiso the Swazi travel from White River, South Africa (the place we call home) to Botswana where we will be staying in a lodge. From there the following morning we will head upwards and cross into Zambia, stopping at Victoria Falls and staying overnight in Livingstone. The next day we will hotfoot it northwards, stopping here and there at Zambia’s Hands @ Work bases then staying overnight in the copperbelt town of Luanshya. Finally, Dan and I will cross over by bus into the Congo and onwards to our final destination: Likasi, DRC!

I’ve been so preoccupied thinking about the journey that I’ve probably wasted a lot of time I should have spent thinking about the destination! Yet God has been giving me a little teaching and training and guidance along the way. Just not the kind I expected. This week I opened a book I have been reading called Beautiful Outlaw, a book about the scandalous personality of Jesus. It has nothing to do with Africa, nor had it yet mentioned it at all, but as I opened it I read the author’s description of what Christ means when he says he is sending us out like lambs amongst wolves. Putting words in Jesus’ mouth, he writes: ‘Take this seriously. I’m sending you into the Congo with a butter knife. You are easy pickings. You must be holy.’ Gulp. The author may have been speaking in metaphor. God isn’t.

I know that the Congo is an unstable place, but like all places of turmoil and torment it is also beautiful soil for a breakthrough of God. And the Bible calls my God the Master of Breakthroughs.

The Congo is a nation utterly devastated and utterly forgotten. Its obscurity to the Western mindset (I didn’t even know where it was until I got to Africa) is the aftermath of a tragic but muted past. Around 10 million people were lost to the rubber slave trade of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, another 5.4 million lost to the Second Congo war of the 1990’s. But it is not forgotten to God – and that is so important! God is on the move. I really believe it. I don’t know why I believe it, I just do. It’s not hard to see in a nation so ravaged by war the footprints of the Enemy whose manifesto is to steal, kill and destroy. The poor of Africa are his killing fields. Sometimes it feels like the scope of the issues are simply too big, the roots of the problem simply running too deep. But that’s rubbish. Nothing can prevail against even the most unreservedly insignificant person that boldly and recklessly follows after the heart of God. He’s already on the move, leaving footprints behind him for us to track. He is teaching me that I don’t have to convince him to remember the Congo; he has plans and promises written for that nation that I could only hope to imagine. I’m just invited along for the journey. The Master has breakthrough in store, and I want to be a part of it. He’s written it on my heart. And I want every step to be holy, to carry the presence and peace of God. Holiness overcomes hopelessness. For now, this is just my first step into the promises of God, remembering as I go that nothing can prevail against you when you walk in his footprints, even if you’re armed only with a butter knife.

Braving Deep Water

It’s been a while since I have blogged or put to writing the things that have been going on here in Africa and in me. Perhaps I should keep a diary, as a couple of weeks of jam-packed schedule, new adventures and amazing encounters have somewhat jumbled into a bit of a mushy blur. I have definitely indulged, perhaps overindulged, my touristy side. A 110m swing off a cliff over a beautiful, waterfall gorge, trekking a mountain to the indescribable view-spot of ‘God’s Window’, a 4am start chasing the Big 5 in Kruger National Park – Africa demands of you that you try anything once. As for me, I’m striving to get the most of it by risking the slightly altered rule: try everything once, even if “everything” means bat wings for dinner. And so these last couple of weeks have entailed a lot of adventure, risk-taking, new experiences and culture shock. Yet beneath the surface of all of this there is an altogether different adventure. The orientation process, in which we as fresh, new volunteers are incorporated and saturated into Hands @ Work life, is finally at an end. 5 weeks of early mornings, late nights and exhausting days have rushed by too quickly, and I feel a great sadness to be leaving behind this time and passing into the next stage. But first introductions can’t last forever. We have simply scratched the surface of what God is up to here in Africa and here in Hands. We have just dipped a toe into his plans and promises, but to God that seems enough to ready us to brave deep water. So we are definitely being thrown in. Tomorrow morning 5 of the 10 volunteers who arrived, anxious and apprehensive with me in September, are leaving to live and work in Zambia. I will miss them so much. 4 of our team are staying here in SA, working in the unforgettable communities that I have fallen in love with since being here. And as for me, God is proving himself all over again as incredibly faithful, and incredibly funny. Ever since discovering that I was coming out to Africa a nation has been etched on my heart in a way that I couldn’t explain or ignore. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a nation of 65 million, the second largest in Africa, and claims some of the world’s poorest communities. I have prayed for so long, “Lord, give me the DRC. Get me to the DRC.” God proves himself faithful. In November I’ll be heading off to the Congo to work with some of the most amazing communities. However, the DRC’s two major languages are French and Swahili, neither of which I speak. I so longed to get to the DRC that I tried to learn a little French just before I left England. I’m not sure how effective a learner I was, but I guess that will be tested soon... God proves himself funny. My work in the DRC will include some narrative reporting – putting to words the stories of those who remain otherwise unknown, with the hope that relationships would grow and the forgotten would be known by name. I will also be helping in any way that I can in the Hands @ Work office in the DRC, led by Erick and Angel. But none of this is as important as the true purpose for which I am there: to trace and to chase what God is stirring in that broken nation. He is on the move. I can feel it. I say ‘Amen’ to it. And I won’t let him rest until I see it burst into reality. For now, preparations are all being made. Visas can be a real hassle when it comes to the Congo, and prayers are definitely appreciated! Loneliness, in the midst of a language and a culture to which I am completely alien, has been known to be a great issue for volunteers working there. Stocking up on English movies, books, podcasts, and a few home comforts (that would be chocolate hobnobs for me) is good medicine. Yet the utter joy of living in the plans of God is completely worthy of the cost. As I step into something new the words of Christ echo in my ears: “Don’t be afraid, O man highly esteemed. Peace! Be strong now; be strong.” (Dan. 8) Don’t be afraid – the safest kind of danger is to give up your life to the desires of God. I can’t wait to discover God’s desire for the Congo and for me.

Not One Nameless

Despite having had a wash, my feet are still wearing a little of the dirt from four days living in a small community not far from the Hands @ Work base. 12 of us stayed in different homes across the village, some with 14 kids and no adult carer, some with a Gogo (grandmother) and her orphaned grandchildren, some even with TVs! As for me, I stayed with a family I will certainly never forget - a 26 year old brother, his 18 and 14 year old sisters (all of them orphans) and beyond the house an extended family comprising a couple of other brothers and their wives and kids. These young people stood over their father’s grave in 2004 and then their mother’s in 2007. The youngest was just 10 when her mother died and she was left in the care of her brother and sister. I couldn’t help but think what kind of a story this would be back home in the UK, what I would do if I were to wander into the lives of three orphaned kids living in my neighbourhood, left alone in a house with two rooms, two chairs, two beds, a single mat, a stove for cooking and two spoons for cutlery. What would I do? What would the local church do? I don’t know, but what is for sure is that this family would be the talk of the town. With such a tragic story the local newspapers would eat it up, take photos of their home. Before they knew it they would be in the great care of the UK’s social services and government benefits. That’s if it was in the UK.

Actually, the world is wrought with this story.

Literally millions upon millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa, not to mention the entire third-world, grow up without a father or a mother. Staring into the face of such a monstrous statistic, the human mind simply can’t comprehend and the human heart simply can’t cope. I once watched as George Snyman (the founder of Hands) poured approximately 130,000 grains of rice into a big bucket to indicate the number of children made orphans in sub-Saharan Africa every month. It was difficult to muster the compassion and anguish for such a great number until George pulled out a single grain of rice and reminded us: “Every child has a name.” Why don’t we make a difference? Why don’t we read this story daily in the newspaper? Because we don’t know their names. For every single orphan there is a story. Don’t feel guilty that your heart doesn’t break at the Oxfam advert you see while you’re eating dinner. The human mind simply can’t comprehend and the human heart simple can’t cope until you meet one child, one family, one story. A name is more powerful than a statistic. 130,000 orphans may not move our fat hearts, but the face and name of a single child will. Why? Because they’re cute? No. Because as you get close their story invades yours, and yours invades theirs. You discover that they have a thumbprint. You discover that, just like you, God has counted every hair on their head and, just like you, gazed over every moment of their life in awe. I like this comparison: In a single field there might be hundreds of thousands of plants and flowers. Most of them will never be seen, most of them never plucked and smelt or admired. Yet God crafted every one of them. He intimately designed each one, set it in its place and adorned its quiet few days or weeks on earth knowing that it would never be seen. This isn’t soppy Christian sentimentality, it is solid truth. And there are fields and fields of orphaned children. Most of them we will never know, and I’m learning that that’s okay. It was not an overwhelming anguish that brought me back to Africa but the memory of a 7 year old Zambian girl named Grace who I met a year before. I came here for two people, Jesus and Grace, and yet the more stories that invade me and the more names that etch themselves on my heart and memory, the more reasons I have to stay. Not one of these children is forgotten. Not one nameless. Not one that God hasn’t created and cherished. I encourage you, in whatever direction and to whatever cause Christ has called you (and he has called you, whoever you are), to boldly position yourself to be invaded by the names, stories and lives of those you seek to help. Every new name, every new story, serves to empower the cause. We probably won’t change the world if it’s the whole world we seek to change. Better rather that we serve to rescue an orphaned world for the sake of just one orphaned heart. Statistics are no weapon against apathy, but apathy has no power over a heart scarred by faces, names and stories. I cannot live in lethargy while I know that that family I stayed with lives in hopeless poverty. My heart won’t allow it. You have to make the choice between half-heartedness or broken-heartedness. There doesn’t seem to be another option.

The Nobody Revolution

This week I visited a community about an hour away from the Hands @ Work base. It is one of the poorest of all the nearby communities in the country’s most AIDS infected region. A couple of us were invited to see the free clinic. We walked into a narrow corridor in which we could barely move for all the people, young and old, mothers and children, waiting for treatment. It was a great clinic with great facilities, but the stark hopelessness evident in the place was that many of these people, even with the treatment offered, would die. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what one young baby no older than a few months was suffering with that made him cough so much in the arms of his young Mum. I realise that hope never comes easy. Yet the place where it is most important to cling to hope is in the place where it is most difficult to do so. For these people, hope is not found in the faces of the few mlungu (white folk) that pass through their lives, and it certainly isn’t to be sought in the offices of government. As a care worker that walked me through the clinic yesterday said, presidents and politicians will never hear the names of communities like this one. For them the places where there is no hope are best forgotten and left to die. And yet here hope does have a face. And a name. Let me tell you Roger’s story.

Roger is a young man, no older than 20. He is himself an orphan and a carer for younger siblings, yet on top of that he’s also the youth worker for the entire community, a group that comprises many of his own peers. We spent a little bit of time with Roger as the village’s most vulnerable kids (themselves orphans) came together to be fed by the care workers. Afterwards we watched as Roger gathered the whole group together: young kids, teenage boys causing trouble, even the care workers themselves, and he spoke to them. Someone translated for us later what he had said. He told them that everything in life is a gift given without cost. It was therefore their responsibility to give of themselves freely, and in doing so they would make a difference in their worlds. He told them that with gratitude and with courage they could change the world around them. I looked to Roger and saw that with his words and with his life he is bringing waves of hope to those most destitute of it. God is using him to breathe life into dry bones. He is a light in a valley of darkness and death. And yet...the world will never know his name. He’s not going to win a Nobel Prize for services to the poor. He will probably never be invited to speak at a Christian festival or write an article for a Christian magazine. He is in all respects a ‘nobody’. Yet he is changing the world in the name of Christ.  The Kingdom of God is upside down, or you could say right side up. God loves to use nobodies. In fact it’s the only people he uses. Why? Because “man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The Kingdom turns the world right-side up and translates cowards into warriors, murderers into deliverers, the childless into fathers and nobodies into princes. The Kingdom of God belongs to those by whose hands it is built. We don’t know their names yet, but there is a silent army that knows the heart of the Father and is living to be beautiful feet in a broken world. These ‘nobodies’ will be the champions of heaven. I am amazed every day by the servant heart of those who care for the sick and the vulnerable in their communities. Many do it without incentive and all do it without pay. Yesterday I met a woman who walked 20km from her home to visit the children, then 20km back. Such is the life of a servant – spending themselves on behalf of the poor. For us too, we must bring what we can, but if we want to affect the world we have to start with our own hearts. We have to do everything from a desperate desire to serve. Jesus said of John the Baptist that there has never been anyone greater in the Kingdom of God. Why? Because he prayed from a genuine heart: “Jesus must become more, I must become less!” Do you know why Jesus is the King of heaven? Paul tells us. It’s because he humbled himself, more than any man or woman ever has or could hope to – the God of the universe, forgotten and alone on a cross (Philippians 2). It takes trust not to puff up yourself but to let God do the exalting. Yet we have to stick a flag in the ground and decide where our loyalty lies – to invest in these miserable few years of TV and taxes, or to live the servant’s life and claim the champion’s honour in heaven. By the sweat and tears of ‘nobodies’ like Roger the Kingdom of God is being built and the world transformed. We are desperately in need of a revolution of nobodies.