Easter in the Village

Last week I visited one of our project areas a couple hours from Lusaka. I was struck by the beauty of the rolling hills and fertile fields, the warmth of the Tonga people who live there, and the grace and dignity of the chieftainess (one of just four women chiefs in Zambia) who rules the area. I asked our staff member, Dream, if I could bring my family back to camp for Easter weekend and he agreed to set something up for us. We arrived home last night and I have to say that our time in Chikinkata was one of our highlights of our time in Zambia.

Dream had us set up our camp in a small compound comprised of several empty mud and thatch huts. Similar compounds dotted the hillsides and ripening cornfields covered every valley as far as the eye could see. Kids herding goats and cattle, and women walking back and forth collecting water and firewood, as they have done for millennia, surrounded us. And there we were, white folk from Edina, Minnesota, right in the middle of it all.

PICTURES OF OUR WEEKEND HERE…

It did not take long for the kids to figure out that we were in a sweet spot and they dove in…Making friends with the neighbor kids, chasing goats, running to the tops of the hills. Total freedom. Each morning and evening the women and children would congregate around the well to gather water. Our kids would join them to help pump the cold, clear water into buckets. Our kids would speak to them in English and they would speak back in Tonga and somehow it worked.

Clara picked up on the communal aspect of the village. She said, “everyone helps everyone else…” She is right. Africans by and large still hold closely to the concept of “Ubuntu” which roughly translates to “I am, because we are…” It fleshes out the second of Jesus’ two great commandments, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As Desmond Tutu says, “A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. A totally self-sufficient human being is ultimately subhuman. We are made for complementarity.” As Westerners conditioned to individualism it is refreshing to be immersed in an “Ubuntu” context. Desmond Tutu goes on to talk about how just as individuals have something to offer one another, so do different nations and people groups. There is not a better or worse. He says, “God is smart, making us different so that we will get to know our need for one another. We are meant to complement one another in order to be truly human and to realize the fullness of our potential to be human. After all, we are created in the image of a God who is a diversity of persons who can exist in ineffable unity.” (From the intro. to An African Prayer Book.) An example: Each morning the woman next door walked over, greeted us kindly, and took a coal from our fire with no more thought than if she was getting matches out of her own cupboard.

On Saturday morning we drove (in four-low) up a road, over a river, that became a trail, that became a dry river bed - until we forced`to stop driving. We proceeded to hike for a couple miles, further and further into antiquity. Ox-drawn carts, shepherd boys, simple huts…It could have been 2,000 years ago -- Which was an interesting time to be in as we reflected on Easter. The world that Jesus lived and died in was not much different than the one we found ourselves in this last weekend and, in that, we felt much closer to the Jesus whose resurrection we celebrated.

On Easter morning we were up before the sun (with the roosters) and enjoyed a brilliant sunrise. True contentment. We had an Easter egg hunt (a little strange given the context) and then we packed up our camp and went to meet Dream for church. Since it was Easter Sunday, several of the churches gathered together at one spot. Each year they rotate the location and, let’s just say, we drew a bad year. We drove for a good 30+ minutes over rough roads to get the site of the service. The kids were already going nuts before the THREE HOUR service in TONGA was going to begin. Fortunately, Dream was acute to our Western sense of time and volunteered for us to go at the half time of the service, before it even started.

The trip to church did have another purpose in that we think we might have found a small piece of land, on a hill-top, that we can purchase - something that we have talked about doing before we move. This inexpensive piece of land, with million dollar views, could be the future site of a small African home for friends and family to use in years to come to experience what we did this weekend – Ubuntu. We’ll let you know what happens and how many cattle we may need to part with to secure this ground.

We board a plane two months from today and there is excitement all about. We are trying to store-up the treasures of this time, like this weekend, knowing that they will take on dream like characteristics in the months and years to come. I am reminded again of the Robert Frost poem that I reflected on as were preparing to leave MN two years ago - Nothing Gold Can Stay – we continue to try to learn to live life with open hands.

Peace from Africa –

Jeff, Molly and Kids