Nov.15-20

Many thanks to each of you who have responded to my Blog. It makes the USA feel not so far away and it’s great to hear from you. God bless you all.

All of Nkhoma is greatly sadden by the death of Chief Mazengera. He was the patient that Barbara took to intensive care in Lilongwe last Saturday. He was the Chief of Berea’s (Barbara’s cook) tribe. I understand that he did many things to improve the poor farmers’ conditions. People say he will be greatly missed. They expect the President of Malawi to come to the funeral. The Chief was only 41 years old. According to Malawi custom any male on his side of the family may go to his house and take anything and everything he wants. They feel the deceased is still a part of the family and whatever he had belongs to them. The wife can be left penniless so I understand. The family has just built a new home and haven’t had a chance to move into it yet. The missionaries are concerned for the wife and hope and pray that the wife will be taken care of by his family. He was a member of Berea’s family. Berea seems to be such a dedicated Christian. I just hope and pray all the family members are Christians and will respond to the wife with Christian love.

Barbara and Raynier were at the funeral from about 9 am and returned at 12 noon and the Christian funeral had not begun at that time. There were many dignitaries there and certain non Christian customs such as the witch craft dancing done by the traditional heath curers, dressed in very elaborate costumes most of which are very ugly, according to the ones I have seen in some of the villages. We were told that was necessary for the attendance of certain digniteries. That’s an example of the confusion of Christianity trying to become established in a heathen nation

This week we have used the expressions TIA (This is Africa) and AWA (Africa wins again) many times. The best way to describe that is to tell you about an Ebenezer School Committee meeting. For several weeks we have been scouting for a good used truck to be used in construction of the new school building. The committee members who have been active on the committee have all been very involved with all the decisions that have been made thus far. On this past Wednesday we met to give permission to Chapola (good trustworthy auto mechanic from Nkhoma) and the Holland contractors the permission to buy a car in Blantyre. They had done a search in Nkhoma and in Lilongwe and had asked many reliable folks for help here in finding a good buy. The 4 men were in Blantyre, the best place to make such a purchase according to the Malawan and old-time missionaries. After buying the truck, the boys were to take the truck to climb a mountain in Southern Malawi, and Chapola was to come home in his car. We were ready to make the call to them when a committee member who had not been to a meeting since I have been here showed up and said that was not the best buy so he started calling people in Lilongwe and Nkhoma and the whole issue came to a halt with the 4 men having to spend the night in Blantyre and wait for information from the committee after 9 am the next morning. The member making all the demands was a member who had received his 3rd and final letter of warning about being replaced on the committee for lack of attending the meetings.

Just as we were beginning to deal with the cultural customs in our responsibilities of dealing with issues of funeral expenses for family members, the phone rang. It was the Abuso (Minister of CCAP, Nkhoma). He requested to come to our meeting with a church member to discuss an issue. They arrived shortly and told us that we had just begun digging the foundation for the new school block on the church member’s nursery plot. He had been told by the former Abuso that he could use the plot of land to plant seedlings of trees. They were to be planted in Nkhoma to replace trees that the people cut down for firewood. In the past year or more the churh member has not planted on the plot.

The use of land is granted to people by the current Minister. The former Minister is the one who granted the use to the individual, but of course there are no written records and when the new minister took over he probably was never informed about the permission to use the land as a nursery. The Ebenezer Committee cleared the use of the land with the present Abuso; thus we were completely surprised to find out that there was a problem. Thus we had to call the contractors to have them to cancel all work until the issue can be resolved!!! That’s a real headache when we are trying to do the construction in just three month’s time. TIA This is just a little information to let you know why things move so
s-l-o-w-l-y in Malawi!

Barbara and I have been entertaining the Ebenezer staff at a luncheon. We had 3 of Happy’s teachers last Friday and tomorrow we are having the rest of the staff.
Melia and Anna, Barbara’s older girls come home for Christmas on our Thanksgiving Day. We will be celebrating with other Americans on Saturday since Thursday is not a holiday here.