Women

During our time in Tanzania we met so many amazing women.  Women who were bringing up large families, women with important jobs, women walking miles with heavy loads on their heads, women doing hard manual labour with babies strapped to them, women who were overlooked despite their skills because of their gender, women who were studying hard, women who exuded joy, women who seemed crushed.  It was a privilege whilst there to have a week as a group teaching and spending time with the students at Lake Tanganyika Theological College. This college runs to train priests and evangelists and anyone who wants to undertake, and can afford to undertake, theological training within the Diocese of Western Tanganyika.

 

At the moment in the diocese, women cannot be ordained priest, and because four of us in the visiting group were ordained women, this generated some great conversations.  Everywhere we went people were very gracious and accepting of our ministry.  The principal of the theological college is keen to encourage women to study and train for ordination in the hope that the diocese will approve the ordination of women in the near future, and one of the things we did during the visit was to lay a foundation stone for a new women's dormitory at the college. Money that has been raised through offerings in Gloucester Diocese, including at my own ordination, have been sent as a gift to help with this building project.  It was a joyous moment to see the building emerging from the mud, and we prayed for the women who would study there.  £25 a month will cover their tuition fees, and sponsorship is needed as it is harder for women to get funded than for men at the moment.

During our time teaching at the college, we looked at several different biblical characters, and the leadership lessons that we could learn from them.  It was a really good learning experience for us and for the students as we looked at the Bible from very different perspectives.  At the end of the week the students gave feedback to the whole college, and it was really encouraging to hear a shift in the perspective of the (all male) students.  I wrote down a couple of things they said:

 

"I learnt from studying Deborah in the book of Judges that the service of God is not just for men but for women. We can support them to become brave. We can empower them to become good leaders."

 

"We learnt women can do everything a man can do. They can be brave strong leaders."

If we did nothing else during our trip, it was worth it to hear these things, and we pray that it has opened the door a little wider for the women God is calling to serve in the church in that diocese.

Markets

I have really enjoyed going round the markets here. Such a huge range of fresh produce and all sorts of other things piled up ready to sell. Haggling is a big feature of buying anything but my heart hasn’t really been in it. Huge juicy pineapples available for 40p and I bought 500g of salt that I’m hoping to get home ok, from a woman who was so pleased that I hadn’t haggled her down from 15p that she gave me lots more! Most of the fruit and vegetable sellers have one or two items to sell, so you walk through the onion area, then sweet potatoes, maize, carrots, spinach, ginger, garlic, mushrooms, peppers, avocados, pineapples, passion fruit, bananas  etc etc. Each seller has a  pile in front of them and they are nicely washed and arranged on a groundsheet. I asked whether people grew their own produce for market but it seems most buy from the farmers and then sell on. I can’t quite imagine what the farmers are being paid if the sellers are making a profit on the prices they sell on.... It feels hard not to buy things from every stand.

Wandering around an unsuspecting visitor has to be careful not to fall in drainage ditches which are all over the place. We’re on the edge of rainy season so have had a short period of heavy rain each day. This makes the red mud into sticky, slippery clay and I’ve had a few close shaves! Once again though the simplicity strikes you. When we haven’t been eating meals at churches we’ve enjoyed bread, tomatoes and avocado followed by pineapple, banana and watermelon with a handful of peanuts. Perhaps I would get bored in the longer term but at the moment it is so good to eat well and simply. I find myself valuing what we have so much more, and it is so good to know it hasn’t travelled more than 5 or 10 miles.

Simplicity is a Christian value, but not widely part of our tradition now, except in monastic life perhaps. But it is good to be reminded in Lent that fullness of life does not come by striving for things.

Greetings

I have been very struck here by greetings. Everywhere we have gone we have been introducing ourselves, and it is very important to say your full name, details of your family, and then to bring greetings from your family and church communities. It has been an interesting thing for me to navigate because if I say I’m single then everyone laughs and nudges all the single men and then I have to deal with endless questions about that. If I send greetings from my parents then everyone thinks they’ve done a bad job by not making sure I’m married at my great age! So I have settled on bringing greetings from ‘my family and my churches’, and that seems to be working!

It is interesting that in the UK when we greet each other we often immediately ask each other what we do, here they say they ask ‘who is your uncle’? Establishing family connections and knowing names helps people connect to each other. There is still such a strong sense of community here, people looking out for each other, and of love and support. It highlights for me another thing that is lost from our society at home. It feels a constant challenge to build a strong sense of community, and I wonder how possible it is when we move in and out of areas much more and are not involved in the lives of our neighbours in the same way? I wonder what it would do if we did ask each other a different question as a greeting? One that values our connections rather than our productivity. Maybe I will have a go when I am back: ‘Hi, I’m Jo, tell me who is important in your life?’

Joy

We have been to visit several different parishes now, plus the Cathedral, Theological college and a Compassion child sponsorship project. Everywhere we have been we’ve been met with great joy and celebration. Singing and dancing and many many handshakes and welcomes. This evening we went to a parish a little way out from Kasulu. The church had been planted with a small group 6 years ago and now has lots of members, and mainly women leading small groups in the church. They had two choirs and they sang songs of joy and thanksgiving complete with excellent dance moves! They enjoyed watching us trying to join in!

As I was sat there looking at the mud floor, wooden frame building covered in nailed on canvas sacks, benches and some colourful cloth drapes, physically it was so poor, and yet there were 100+ men, women and children with the biggest smiles.  There was a real sense of joy and thankfulness to God for all they had, and for our visit. And it made me think that we seem to have so much at home and so many things that make us ‘busy’ and yet here life is difficult, people live so simply and yet they seem have a deep joy, appreciation and pleasure in things that I suspect we would just pass by at home.

Being single

I knew before I came out here that my being single was likely to be a talking point. Today as we got deeper into conversations with people, more challenging questions began to emerge. It seems to be virtually unheard of that a woman would choose to be single. It would leave her very vulnerable both financially and in later life when care would normally happen via children. Every conversation partner has asked when I’m going to get married. 

It is interesting to reflect on the cultural difference with the UK. Here the priority is to have children and the only way to (acceptably) to do that is to be married. When I mentioned that Paul says in the Bible that it is better to remain single than have your attention distracted from God by a husband/wife/children, then they understood more conceptually but I’m not sure in reality that the status of being single and being married would be considered equally acceptable. I found out more about the cultural background, and there is a strong tradition that by choosing to be single you are a ‘world destroyer’ because being married and having children destroys death by allowing your family line to continue. If you choose not to marry and have children you give death the upper hand... More to explore as the week goes on.

In the UK, in some ways the church is not that much better at valuing singleness as a status. And this quite probably roots back to not dissimilar reasons. But I’m hoping to explore here some of what the Bible has to say about the way Jesus redefined the meaning of family. Jesus was a single man with no children and yet the Bible talks about him delighting in his offspring. The Bible is also full of language about those who follow Jesus being children of God and brothers and sisters together. Most importantly perhaps in a culture that values the continuity of names, God promises to remember people’s names, a promise also given to eunuchs (men who couldn’t have children). For me, all this is important in feeling valued as a single person, knowing how God sees and values me in a different way to the culture(s) that surround me. God is interested in my relationship status, but it is the relationship I have with God that is the key one. 

Giving what you have

How do you gather a full day of new people and experiences in one reflection? Today we’ve visited the Cathedral, Theological College, a Compassion child sponsorship project, the market, a village community and ended the day at the bishop’s house for dinner with a football team he sponsors! 

Today has also involved a few tears. My niece and nephew gave me some of their pocket money to buy paper and pencils for children here. It was very moving to see the children of very similar ages rushing to queue up to each get a pencil and a couple of sheets of paper. They were so excited and grateful with something so little, it made the contrast with home so stark. I wished my niece and nephew had been there to see how much impact their little gift made.

And there we were also given a gift in a ceremony that involved lots of singing and dancing and bowing and smiling. Each of us received some lovely African material which they wrapped around us once we’d unwrapped it. Together with feeding us meat, they blessed us generously from the little they had.

It all made me think about how God is in the business of taking the little we have to offer and multiplying it. In the story of the feeding of the five thousand, it was the packed lunch of one boy offered to God that fed the crowd. But nothing multiplied by anything, however big, remains nothing. We have to be prepared to offer something if we want to see God multiply it. And I think God is often waiting to surprise us with what God does with even the smallest thing we give with an open heart. As they say here all the time: Bwana asifiwe! 

Out of Africa

We have been in Tanzania now for 16 hours and I already feel quite overwhelmed by new sights and sounds, the people we’ve met and the early taste of a very different culture. The international airport of Dar Es Salaam quickly gave way to sunrise over the plains and mountains and on arrival at Kigoma taxiing across compacted earth to a tin roofed shelter where our suitcases were passed one by one through a hatch brought it home that we were now somewhere very different.

The smiles of our hosts gave a warm welcome and then it was amazing to see our suitcases piled on to the roof of the land cruiser and we were piled inside! First stop was to see where Livingtone met Stanley then we visited a couple of parish churches before stopping for breakfast of fish soup and chapati. The whole fish winking from the bowl had been caught a couple of miles away in Lake Tanganyika earlier. As we left the restaurant we had our first encounter with significant poverty as 3 boys aged 4-7ish fought over a small bottle of water one of them was given. We were told they were too poor to be in school. Tanzania has about 25% of children not in primary education. As we began the 2 hour journey weaving up the mountains that border Burundi, we saw many children on or playing by the road aged 2 and upwards mostly with no adults or older children. The contrast with home was stark and increased as we saw many women carrying huge items on their heads, people moving piles of mattresses and firewood balanced on bicycles, and road side stands selling piles of fresh pineapples and more.

Our final destination was reached and it has been a blur of meeting new people and familiarising ourselves with where we’ll be staying and what we’re doing. Much more could be said about the animals we’ve seen and the new sights and sounds. But all day I’ve been wondering about how I glimpse God when everything around me is so different to normal. Kim said one of our challenges is learning to be guests not hosts. To graciously receive food that’s costly to give and yet you’d avoid in other situations, to feel helpless in the midst of an unfamiliar language and culture. These are the places we glimpse God, because we are discomforted and out of control. When everything is cosy and controlled I can begin to forget I need God. So here we go, adventure underway and I wonder what will come out of Africa...?