Why are we moving to Africa?

There are many answers to this question. As strange as it may sound, it feels like the logical thing to do given the path our lives have taken these last 5 years. While there is a significant sense of loss for what we will leave behind, there is an equal sense of "calling" towards this -- not that Africa needs us, but rather, we need Africa. We are going to learn, we are going to witness, we are going to do our small part to help, but most of all we hope that we are going to be a bridge between two worlds that both need each other. The quote below from Shane Claiborne captures this idea well. We want you to go with us, we need you to go with us.

Dave Anderson and friend, DR Congo, October 2005


"I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners, and for each to see God's image in the other. It's no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end."

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution

What will we be doing?

World Vision received a $35 million U.S. government grant to fund a country wide program involving many partners to serve people made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS at the household level. The program meets both the immediate needs of orphans and vulnerable children, and people living with HIV/AIDS but also creates a platform for developing the resilience of these households.

I will be working for the National Director of Zambia and the Director of this program to help meet communication needs related to this project and to help develop the strategies for raising an additional $9 million in private funding needed for this program.

95%+ of our staff around the world are indigenous to the countries or regions where they are working, which is one of our greatest strengths as an organization. This opportunity for me to learn and experience the program side of what we do is a great gift that I want to steward well. I have the chance to learn first hand from some of the most effective people in the world who are working and making a difference on the ground. I am grateful for this chance.

Molly and the kids will be experiencing a whole new life that we can't even pretend we understand at this point. We do know that the kids will be at a wonderful school that will challenge and enrich them. Molly is looking forward to being able to involve herself first hand with ministries that are caring for the children who have lost their parents. We will have the chance to explore Zambia and southern Africa (e.g. Victoria Falls, Kafue National Park, Zambezi River) and will be bringing our tent and Bennett's wooden sword and Masai club to keep us safe from the animals. Come join us.

The plan at this point is for me to go over to Zambia for 4-5 weeks on April 6th (Please be in touch with Molly on ways to help her out while I am gone.) I will then be back in May to wrap things up here/transition, celebrate Brad and Carrie's wedding, spend time at the cabin and with friends, and say our farewells, with a mid-July departure date for the whole family.

We ask for your prayers over these coming months and as we go. We truly believe that we are going as an extension of you and in some mysterious way, with you.

We will be updating this page often in the coming months - At the bottom of this page you can sign up to get an automatic e-mail every time we make a new posting.

Thank you for your love and friendship.

Africa the Beautiful

Kenya, Africa 2005

While there is unprecented suffering across much of the African continent, there are large deposits of hope and potential. You can see it in a new business, a sunrise and the smiling eyes of a child.

Eternal Optimism

The Following Article from today's NYTimes reflects my own experiences with people across Africa. It is a wonderful paradox.

Why So Starry-Eyed?

Misery Loves Optimism in Africa

By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: March 5, 2006

Nowhere to Look but Up A Gallup poll found Africans to be the most optimistic people in the world despite the dire conditions in countries like Chad.

AMOUNA MUHAMMAD sat quietly in the shade of her canvas tent, imagining the future of her 3-month-old son, Haider, bundled in her lap. "My son will go to school," she declared, absentmindedly waving away the flies that clustered around his unfocused brown eyes. "He will have doctors and plenty of meat to eat. He will live in peace."

Ms. Muhammad has seen little of those things in her 20 years. I met her here, at a refugee camp deep in eastern Chad, just a few days after she arrived from the western Sudanese region of Darfur. There, war has killed at least 200,000 people in the last three years and sent millions like her fleeing their homes.

And this was the second time she had been sent packing in those three years. The first time, she fled attacks by Arab militias who thundered through on camels and horseback, guns blazing as they stole cattle, slaughtered men and raped women. She went to a camp just inside Sudan, the land of her birth, which ranks 141st of 177 nations on the United Nations index of human development. Now, with the war spreading and spilling over the border, she has run again — to a camp some 60 miles inside the even more desolate, barren land of Chad, which ranks 173 on that scale.

Yet in all this chaos, here was Ms. Muhammad, planning a future of unimaginable goodness for her child. "There are so many bad things in the world," she said. "But I know good things will come for Haider."

Where does such relentless optimism in the face of unyielding misery come from? One glance at the statistical profile of the continent's 900 million people will tell you that Africans can expect to live the shortest lives, earn the lowest incomes and suffer some of the worst misrule on the planet. They are more likely than anyone on earth to bury their children before the age of 5, to become infected with H.I.V., to die from malaria and tuberculosis, to require food aid.
Yet a recent survey by Gallup International Association of 50,000 people across the world found that Africans are the most optimistic people. Asked whether 2006 would be better than 2005, 57 percent said yes. Asked if they would be more prosperous this year than last, 55 percent said yes.

These data bear out what I see all the time as I travel across sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent: that every single day lived here, each birth, wedding, graduation, sunrise and sunset is, in ways large and small, a daily triumph of hope over experience.
Hope, it seems, is Africa's most abundant harvest.

"If I put on my academic hat, I would have nothing to tell you to explain this," said Kayode Fayemi, a political scientist in Nigeria and a leading pro-democracy activist there, a man who has every reason to be pessimistic as chaos threatens to engulf his country. "The only thing keeping people going is hope and optimism about the future that is unknown. The hope is the evidence of things not seen. I think that is the only way to explain optimism, because you can't base it on any analysis of our current condition."

Experts at Gallup International have grappled with the meaning of the data, which seem counterintuitive, but turn out to be consistent over time and in many places that have suffered through catastrophe. Places like Kosovo and Bosnia, for example, which have emerged from bloody wars to face an uncertain future, score high on the optimism scale.
Africa has topped that scale for years, a ranking indifferent to the continent's repeated cycles of hope and despair.

Meril James, secretary general of Gallup International, said that Africa's optimism might reflect a reality so grim that nothing could really be worse. "There is a sense that when things can't get worse you've reached rock bottom, so things must improve," Ms. James said. Religion doubtless plays a role. Other Gallup International surveys have found that Africa is the most religious continent. The only region that rivals it on that score is the United States, which is also a very optimistic place.

"We have our faith, if nothing else," said the Rev. Joseph Ezeugo, pastor of Immaculate Heart Parish in Onitsha, Nigeria. Not far from the church where he spoke were dozens of charred bodies, the victims of sectarian violence. "We can find hope in faith," he said, "even if there is darkness all around us." But the survey also reveals that Africa's optimism is not simply the optimism of faith. Africans, the data reveal, are painfully aware of the inadequacy of their leaders: 8 out of 10 said "political leaders are dishonest"; three-quarters "deemed them to have too much power and responsibility"; while 7 out of 10 "think politicians behave unethically."

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Map of Zambia

Zambia is located in central, southern Africa and is bordered by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola.

The friendliness of the people and the beauty of the country are well documented -- Unfortuneately, so is the ugly impact of HIV/AIDS. More than 1 million people live with the disease, and the average life span has dropped to 39 years.

46 percent of the population is under the age of 14 with many of these children having lost one or both parent due to AIDS.

Our Journey

" You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen."

- Paulo Coelho