Mozambique Floods

Today's blog post was written by our colleague Fiona Welsh and was posted on the BMS website earlier this week. The original BMS post can be found here. Since the post was written, the death toll from flooding in the lower Limpopo river now stands at 80 (according to Reuters news agency).

(Photo credit: Phil Hay/UN/Word Bank)

Intense flooding in Mozambique has displaced at least 150,000 people and killed 40 so far, the United Nations said on Monday, with the figure expected to rise further as fresh rains spread flooding northward.

BMS worker Fiona Welsh asks for prayer:

I'd like to ask you to pray for people affected by the recent floods in Mozambique. The rains are due to continue until the end of March so the situation could still get worse:

The flooding from the Limpopo river, which began on Wednesday, killed around 40 people and forced more than 100,000 others to flee.

Amid the catastrophe, two babies were born on roofs where their mothers had taken refuge in the southern village of Guija.

(Photo credit: Anna Wallenlind/IRIN)

The mud-filled hospital in Guija is empty, with all the furniture and equipment drying outside, while a nurse distributes painkillers to the sick and ensures the injured are airlifted to hospitals outside the area.

Local medical staff have already treated around 70 cases of diarrhoea and are keeping an eye out for cholera and other waterborne diseases. Apart from air transport, which is reserved for urgent cases, the only way to access the community of roughly 7,000 residents is by boat.

Local officials estimate that Guija will remain isolated for at least three months, the time it will take to rebuild the roads and bridges swept away by the Limpopo waters.

(Photo credit: Leonor Fernandez/WFP)

Four bodies were found in Chokwe, whose flood-ravaged streets were also littered with rotting animal carcasses.

A Baptist pastor contacted us on Monday to say that they have had 2.5 metres of rain in a few days in Chokwe.

Please pray for the local churches as they attempt to help their local communities at this terrible time.

Thanks

Fiona

Christmas Card

Tuning into the sounds of Mozambique

This is just to say that we recently had an article published on the BMS World Mission website that tries to describe some of the drama of modern-day Mozambique. You can read it by clicking here or going to www.bmsworldmission.org and looking in the list of recent articles. Enjoy!

Tradition and responsibility: Life after death in Mozambique.

A few months ago, Mario’s (not his real name) father died. Although he was an old man for Mozambique (life expectancy is 42¹), the stroke was quite sudden. He was brought from his village to stay near the city not far from our house to be with his extended family, most of whom have migrated to Beira for work. In Beira he was also able to see a nurse² but he never recovered and died about a week later.

The funeral took place on a Tuesday. A short service was held in a catholic church and he was buried in the cemetery. Back in the UK, we tend think about funerals as marking an end of a life, but in traditional Mozambican culture, the funeral is just the beginning of a series of ceremonies intended to help the safe passage of spirit of the deceased into the realm of the ancestors. The village shamans and healers play an important part in this. For example if the ceremonies are not done well enough, the spirit can turn malevolent, wreaking havoc on the family health, crops and livelihoods.

During one ceremony, the spirit chooses a family member to inhabit, joining the ancestors that live on after death in the living. Although not the eldest son, Mario was chosen to receive the spirit of his father, he said, because his father loved him the most. And with this honour came all the responsibilities due the new head of the family; no small deal for a young guy still studying.

We first noticed a change in Mario quite soon after his father’s death. He was less cheerful, less talkative and more sullen. We knew that he’d started turning up late for work but we put this all down to stress, mourning or the weight of extra responsibility.

Then one day he nearly got fired. He’d turned up for work drunk and unable to do his job. In desperation he spoke to us about his problem. Everyone knew that in life his father had liked a beer on a Friday evening, but he told us that in death the spirit of his father was making him drink away every last metical of his small salary. He knew he was in trouble but how could he reject the spirit of his father?

Whatever you believe about this kind of thing, in Mozambique the physical and the spiritual are believed to be intractably interwoven in the fabric of everyday life. Every action taken in this world is watched, judged and acted on by those that inhabit the spiritual realm. The only way to overcome a problem in this world is to also overcome the spirits who are causing it in the other.

Whether you believe Mario’s experience is a genuine one, or just put it all down to psychology, he needs to find a way of getting out of this mess whilst feeling that he is honouring his father. But in this culture passages like 1 John 4 really come into their own.

Test the spirits, writes John. If they’re from God then they’ll acknowledge Jesus, if not they’re false and therefore liers. He tells his readers that because God is in them they can overcome the lying spirits and in a twist of logic he says now that they are from God and the spirits are from the world.

We believe that through Jesus, there is a way out that both saves Mario’s job and livelihood and honours the memory of his father. Please pray for him as he begins to study his bible and discover this wonderful truth.


¹According to the United Nations, Mozambique has the second lowest life expectancy in the world:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf

²Access to rural healthcare is very poor. There is roughly 1 nurse per 5000 people and the vast majority are based in cities and towns:
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/WorldStats/HNP-nurses.html#map

'Normal'

 

As I was driving down the dual carriageway on my way into town the other week, I carefully avoided the motorbike driving at speed the wrong way and very much on the wrong side of the road. A few minutes later what surprised me was my lack of surprise. I realised how I had barely thought about the situation, let alone been shocked by the disregard for road safety laws. It got me thinking about all the things that have become ‘normal’ for us over the last few years. Here are just a few:

1. Pot holes in roads big enough to swallow a car.

2. Never ending sunshine... So much so that we often long for rain.

3. The sight of small children wandering unaccompanied along busy roads.

4. Watching an incredible amount of development, at a scary rate. For example when we arrived, Beira had one supermarket. It now has four with two of them opening up just the month gone buy.

5. Having people asking for money when you get out the car in certain zones in town.

6. Seeing all types of vehicles, from bikes to large lorries, overloaded with all sorts of items, people, animals and machinery.

7. Seeing the countryside alight as people set fire to the old season’s crop in preparation for the new.

8. Some ‘special’ clothing choices. My favourite being a man who was selling rugs at a local market dressed only in a dressing gown.

9. Neighbourhood monkeys, some wild, some kept as pets.

10. People offering to work for me as a nanny when I take the children with me shopping.

New prayer letter

Our most recent prayer/news letter can now be found online on the BMS World Mission website. Click here to find it if you haven't read it yet! In this letter, Christine has tried to tell the story of the car accident in some detail, sharing how God has been at work through it all.

Six months in two pages

 

Jeremias with his family

I’ve just looked to see when we last wrote a blog… I’m very embarrassed but not at all surprised! Since the last blog post our world has been a little shaken to say the least. But if I’m honest, I know I’ve been putting off writing about our life here as I’m still taking time to make sense of the country we live in and our recent experiences. Anyway I’ll do my best to fill in some of the details of the last few months.

I’m sure that many of you who follow us are aware that I (Christine) was involved in a car accident in April. Having driven for nine years without an accident it was pretty terrifying. As is so often the case here, while I was driving on a clear road with no car in front or behind me, a boy (Jeremias) of around nine years ran straight out into the car. Thankfully he is alive and despite serious injuries which originally looked fatal, he seems to be making a full recovery. This happened soon after our last blog post and affected a great portion of our time and lives afterwards.

Our language teacher at work

The time after the accident in some ways went on as normal: we’ve had Portuguese lessons every morning at the language institute and various BMS tasks to do in the afternoons as well as extra informal language on top of bringing up two lively children. But Mozambican culture dictates that we were also expected to regularly visit Jeremias who was staying in Beira hospital with his father recovering from serious injuries and waiting for various surgeries to restore him to health. It also dictates that not only did we need to visit but were also required to provide for all the needs of Jeremias as well as his family while they were staying away from their home. Although officially hospital is free here and food is provided for patients, needs of family members staying with the patient are not. Jeremias’ family had no relatives here so we became providers of food, company and accommodation as they were needed. We made cultural mistakes on the way but the family were gracious in understanding our lack of cultural knowledge.

At times we found the visiting and expectations very difficult to deal with especially in a society that says the driver of the car, whether at fault or not, has to provide for the injured party’s needs. I’m pleased to say that we have formed good friendships with Jeremias family, especially his father and that Jeremias is back near his home town on his way to a hopefully full recovery.

As part of the continued sorting out of the accident I was called to a tribunal up in Manica near the Zimbabwe border. We were reassured that this was just a regular procedure to formalise the expectations of the driver towards the injured party and their family. We received a letter telling us to be ready outside the courthouse at 9am and that failure to turn up could lead to a prison sentence! Knowing this we were nervous as to what to expect but safe in the knowledge that the proceedings, however intimidating, were to work out what the insurance company would pay out. Manica is a five hour drive from here but we decided that we could go and come back in a day so as not to have to ask a great deal of the babysitters who were looking after the children.

 
Leaving at 4am with a friend, Camica, who had kindly said she would translate for me we started out to Manica. The thick fog on the dark roads did not help my nerves but Camica, happily chatting away despite the hour, was a real blessing. We picked up Jeremias’ father and mother on the way and continued to the courthouse. Arriving early, we handed in our paperwork and waited to be called. Here I got a huge lesson in patience, a seven hour lesson to be precise. Eventually we were called. I think the Judge was as hungry for his lunch as we were by this time and didn’t even open the paperwork provided by ourselves and Jeremias’ family which explained what had happened. He assumed as with most motorists here that I had simply run away and had been caught by the police at a later date. Needless to say, proceedings did not go exactly smoothly: I was refused a translator, told I was a bad person, and then the case was thrown out as we needed to wait for a final report on Jeremias’ health which would be more likely to come along in January 2013. With the insurance company lawyer not even being given permission to speak we decided to go out for a late lunch all together. After a long day we drove back to Beira arriving to find the house still enshrouded in darkness from the longest power cut we’ve had since we’ve been here (over 48 hours). I can’t say it was one of the best days in my life but I was very thankful for all the friends and family both here and back in the UK who supported us with practical help, prayers and messages.

A cafe: the most important stop on a guided tour of Beira

I could say that since then life has continued as normal and so it has in a manner ‘normal’ to life here. Soon after the accident my Mum came to visit and was amazed at how long everything takes. Getting money out the ATM seems like such a simple task but does rely on the ATM having money in it and working! Sorting out a small issue should just be a short phone call but is often hours spent sitting in an office, followed by collecting of documents that need signing and stamping which then involves sitting in another office for hours waiting for the official person to stamp your papers. So life goes on.

We have finally finished our formal language studies and are officially fluent in Portuguese at least if not in reality. We still make plenty of mistakes but can generally say what we need to say and understand what needs to be understood. As I’m still learning new words in English I’m sure our informal study of language will never end. We marked the finish of our language study with a visit from Geoff’s parents and my cousin, Jen. We took some well-earned holiday, showing them around Beira cafes as well as going to Savane Beach resort for a few days followed by a visit to Gorongosa National Park where we were privileged to see a lion as well as some elephants pretty close up.

The last few months have probably been some of the most trialling we’ve been through, however, as formal language is over it’s back to a slightly different type of work. I’m starting to visit some of the church pre-school program as Geoff starts looking at how to practise some of the basic farming techniques he has leant on a ‘Foundations for Farming’ course in order to help some orphanages in the local community provide their own food.

We’ll keep you updated with our progress.