Latest News and Addition to Trip North Saga

It’s been too long since I was able to get another installment written and posted telling about our trip north. We’ve been really busy with all kinds of things going on. In addition to our regular work at the Seminary, I (Dave), along with two other of our faculty members, have been doing two online courses with Nazarene Bible College in the hopes one day participating as teachers in an online degree program in Portuguese that will be available to our people here in Mozambique.

We have also been visiting new preaching points, and future churches, being supervised by our Matola City Church. It has been a blessing to visit these new congregations and to see some of our graduates in action, and to see what the Lord is doing. We have appreciated these experiences a great deal.

We also had the privilege to make a flying trip to Johannesburg, South Africa on September 18th and 19th to attend the induction service of our new Regional Director, Dr. Filimão Chambo. Fili, as we know him, was our Seminary director here in Maputo from 2002 to 2005, and is greatly loved by all of us here in Mozambique.

Now I have finally had a few minutes to continue the story of our trip north, so here comes installment number 6.

Installment 6 of THE JOURNEY: Our Trip to Northern Mozambique – 23 June to 16 July, 2009

Sunday, July 5th - We were up at a good hour this morning – about 6am I guess it was – and had a nice breakfast. We piled into the pick-up, along with all the Mirashi family, for the trip out to Rapale where we were to attend church this morning and where I was to preach. It was about 20km back the same way we had come last night. At least on this trip we would be doing it in daylight.

We got to the church by 9:30am and Sunday school was already in session. We waited outside and then when it was over, we greeted our former students, Rev. Costa Martins Noventa and his wife, Laura. We also got to see his uncle, Albino Noventa, who is also one of our graduates, though he is not pastoring now. The service was very inspiring with about a hundred in attendance. There were a lot of young people and children and that is the norm in most services here in Mozambique. We followed our usual routine with Rhoda and Mama Uate bringing greetings and I gave a brief report on the Seminary as well as preaching what was my usual sermon on the trip – Zacchaeus up the Tree!

After the service we were invited to walk to the pastor’s house, just a short walk from the church. There we were presented with several gifts – a live chicken, and big bag of beans. We gratefully received both gifts and took a number of photographs and then we were escorted back to the church from where we bid farewell and set off back to Nampula.

Back in Nampula, Busi Mirashi fixed us a nice lunch and then we packed up our bags and got ready to leave for our last of ten provinces in Mozambique, Cabo Delgado. About 3:30pm we loaded up the car and with Bonifácio guiding the way we headed east out of town. We filled up with diesel just outside town and then continued toward the coast, delighted to be traveling on a paved highway for a change – our first in a week. About 85 kilometers from Nampula we came to the town of Namialo where we turned north toward Cabo Delagado. We still had about 200km yet to travel and it was already going dark. We passed through places we’d only heard about and as night drew in the road kept taking us north. We crossed the Lúrio River into Cabo Delgado and at the end of the bridge we were stopped by the traffic police. They are an ever-present feature of passing from one province to another. We exchanged greetings and explained we were heading to church meetings and that was enough for them. They waved us off with a “boa viagem” (have a good trip).

We kept pressing on and came to the major junction – right and east to Pemba, the provincial capital and fast developing seaside resort for the well off; left and west to Montepuez and the northern interior. We went left and headed on toward Montepuez. There was almost no traffic on the road and by now the stars were shining overhead. Now and then we passed clusters of houses along the road and saw people gathered around low cook fires. We passed through a couple of small villages with electric lights burning brightly. They were the few bright spots in an otherwise totally dark landscape. We had the impression that we were traveling along the edge of a ridge with the land sloping off on both sides, but we could not tell if it really was that way or if it was just an illusion. There were few trees and vegetation consisted of grass and low bushes, at least what we could see of it along the road in the light of our headlights.

Around 8pm we began to see more and more houses along the road, a sign that we were approaching a larger town. Finally we were nearing Montepuez. As we entered town we reduced speed and just on the edge of town we came to our church. It was a good sized building facing right onto the main road as we entered town, a terrific strategic location! The pastor/district superintendent was there waiting for us along with some folk from the church. They had a light supper prepared for us and after eating and a short visit, the pastor went ahead of us on his motorcycle to show us the way to the place where we were to spend the night.

It was the only guest accommodation in town. It could call it a motel, but that would be stretching it a bit. It looked like it had once been quite a nice place with lounge, game room, restaurant, and about 100 guest rooms. Now it was quite run down with nothing much in operation except a reception area where an aged color TV was showing a soccer match being played somewhere in Africa. We were shown to our rooms down a veranda that looked out onto a grassy courtyard area with another veranda opposite, also with rooms. The rooms had obviously seen better days. The bathrooms left much to be desired, though they did have toilets and sinks with running water, though it was cold water only. The mattresses were lumpy and we were glad to have our own pillows with us. The one redeeming factor was that the room had a mosquito net, and it was relatively clean. We were dying for a cup of tea before we went to bed and I went to the reception desk to see if there was any possibility of getting some hot water in our thermos, but unfortunately they were not tea drinkers and they could not help us. We ended up just having some juice in cartons that we had brought along with us for just such and occasion as this.

Monday - July 6th - We were up the next morning around 6am and we were out and on our way by 7am. The assembly was scheduled for 9am with breakfast before that at the pastor’s house. We filled up with diesel on the way and made a call at the local bank’s ATM before making our way to the pastor’s house. We had tea and bread with honey, and then headed to the church. The assembly started on time but the congregation was small. There were about 20 people present, but there were only ten churches and preaching points on the predominantly Moslem Cabo Delgado District. For us one of the high points of this assembly was seeing the Uantes, although Mrs. Uante was not present having gone to Nampula for medical treatment. They had a new baby when they were at Seminary with us in Maputo in 2001 and we’d not seen her since they graduated in 2002. She is quite a grown little girl now. We also saw the Pinto and Ersilia Hariri who graduated in December last year. We had sent a suitcase to them after they left and it had made it as far as the district superintendent’s house in Nampula, and he’d not had opportunity to send it on. He gave it to us and we were able to deliver it to drop it and them off at their house after the assembly on our way to the next assembly in Nacaroa.

After the assembly session was over, we returned to the Uantes’ house for lunch with the other pastors. It was a bit rushed because we needed to get on the road to the next assembly. We left Montepuez around 3pm with the Hariris and dropped them off at home about 30km out from Montepuez. We got to see their kids and gave them some candies. Then we continued on to our next stop. We retraced our steps of the night before and discovered that our impressions had been wrong. We had not been on a ridge but had been driving through savanna bushveld country. We approached the police check point at the Lurio River at a pretty good clip and as it was at the bottom of a curing slope, the police officers didn’t see us coming, and I didn’t see them either. They were standing along the road with their backs to us and were in deep conversation as we breezed by. They jumped with startled looks on their faces and waved in a half-hearted attempt to get us to stop, and then their faces turned into grins and their waves to waves of farewell as we just continued across the bridge without even slowing down.

We arrived in the town of Nacaroa around 5pm. The sun was already starting to set and proceeded through town as Bonifácio phoned the district secretary who was making arrangements for our accommodation. He said to wait at a specific place and when we got there, here he came from another direction on his bicycle. We followed him a short distance down a lane and then in a gate and between some buildings that obviously appeared to be some sort of accommodation. No one was around and a thatch roofed reception area with a kitchen to one side looked rather deserted. Finally, a lady with a baby emerged onto the veranda from a room at the far end of the building. She was the caretaker. The district secretary spoke to her and after some discussion as it was going dark, it was agreed that we could spend the night there. Suddenly, at exactly 6pm, the lights all came on. We discovered that Nacaroa has its own generating station that runs every night from 6pm to 10pm. Then it is turned off again!

The rooms were clean and well taken care of, though not fancy by any stretch of the imagination, and it was obvious that they had been there for some time. The district had not arranged for any meal for us so we asked the caretaker if she could get some hot water for us. A little girl of about 10 appeared a few minutes later and prepared to make a fire at the edge of the reception area and put a kettle over it to boil. We opened up our cold box and brought out our standby meal supplies. We had instant soup packets, cups and spoons, crackers, peanut butter, tea bags and instant milk powder. With that, we made ourselves a fairly decent supper. At least we felt satisfied, and with more than a couple of cups of tea, what more could we want? About 9pm we turned in for the night. We were all well and truly sound asleep by the time the power went off and the lights went out.

Tuesday - July 7th - We were up around 6am. Again, the caretaker lady had a fire going and water was already hot by the time we emerged from our rooms. We made ourselves some tea and coffee and had some hot, freshly cooked manioc (cassava) for breakfast. As we ate we discussed plans for the day and by 8am we were packed up and ready to leave. We met our district superintendent, Rev. Gervásio Raimundo, one of our first graduates in 1993, who had come down the night before from Nampula and together we went to see a plot of ground in the town where a new church and district center was to be built. It was a lovely piece of land, a short distance off the main street through town, measuring about 100 meters by 100 meters. From there we headed out of town to the church where the assembly was to be held. We drove about two kilometers down the road toward Nampula where we came to a large crowd of people gather beside the road in front of a long, narrow, low thatched building. It was our district assembly! We parked in the shade of a couple of huge, towering fig trees and got out of the truck to greet everyone who had begun crowding around. We greeted everyone and made our way over to the church. We had to stoop to get through the narrow doorway and once inside, it was so dark we could hardly see a thing. There was one window at the platform end of the building, and a few small windows down both sides of the long, narrow mud-brick building. It was obvious that this was not the best place to hold a district assembly so the decision was quickly made to hold the assembly outside under the trees.

The assembly proceeded according to plan with lovely shade and a nice breeze to keep everyone alert. Reports were given and we did our report from the Seminary along with testimonies. During the assembly, in full view of the highway, we were able to witness some of the many and varied forms of transportation that people use in northern Mozambique. There were bicycles by the hundreds that passed, many of them laden down with heavy loads – sacks of grain, bags of charcoal, timber, persons, even a live pig! There were also buses and trucks. Most of the trucks, in addition to their regular cargos, also carried passengers perched precariously on top of whatever else the trucks were hauling. It was very entertaining, and at times frightening, to see all that was passing by. It is no wonder than many traffic accidents result in multiple deaths.

Business was finally concluded around 2pm and then it was time for lunch. We had our lunch served in the church. A table was spread and food that had been cooking during the assembly was brought in a variety of pans and dishes. We were served rice and a white porridge made from millet along with beans and curried chicken. Once we had eaten to our satisfaction, it was time to express our thanks to all and then to pack up and prepare for the journey back to Nampula – about a three-hour drive. We got our things loaded into the car, and then we climbed in to get ready to go. Along with the four of us, we were also taking the district superintendent back to Nampula with us. And one of the delegates asked if we could give her a ride as far as Namialo, about 60 kilometers to the junction with the main road to Nampula. We squeezed her into the back of the truck with the baggage and we took off for Namialo. About an hour later we arrived at her dropping off place and then we continued on to Nampula. About half way there we came upon a convoy of vehicles returning from a political rally. There were about five vehicles, several pick-up trucks with people riding in the back and waving flags and singing and having a great time. They were traveling at about 80 kilometers per hour and blocking the road preventing anyone from passing them. We could have done, and wanted to do, about 100kph but there was no getting around them. Before long we had our own convoy of vehicles backed up behind them cruising up the road. Several impatient motorists tried to get around them but were blocked from passing, although one brave guy managed to squeeze past on a long straight stretch. We followed them for about 30 kilometers when they finally got to where they were going and pulled off to highway. We were relieved to get past them. By the time we got into Nampula it was getting dark. We took our superintendent home and then made our way to Bonifácio’s house. Busi had a lovely dinner ready for us that we thoroughly enjoyed. With dinner over, and after a nice warm wash, we called it a day. Wednesday would be another adventure with a trip to the southern corner of Nampula Province, to the district assembly at Moma.