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February 19, 2001
Beloved in the Lord,
Blessings from our new home base in Chimoio, Mozambique!
It’s the rainy season. The rain never stops, it just pauses,
and mildew could be a cash crop. A young man passes us on the
busy city street, riding his bicycle with one hand as he holds
a blue- and-green plaid umbrella over his head with the other.
Young girls wear tissue-thin, grey and black striped plastic grocery
bags on their heads, tied like scarves. Once, during a pause in
the rain, I admired a woman with perfect posture casually walking
by with her closed umbrella poised on her head, pointing the way.
The footwear de
rigueur is cheap, rubber thongs. The occasional knee-high pair
of rubber boots, while a symbol of affluence, must be podiatric
torture chambers in this humidity. The many hatless, bare-footed
pedestrians have one advantage. If they can find leak-proof shelter,
skin dries quickly and easily. Everything else remains perpetually
damp.
I (Diane) remember muttering to myself in Maputo about having
to maneuver through muddy streets, oily puddles, broken sidewalks,
trash, and dog waste. Then I saw this paralyzed man, dragging
himself across the street on pads duct-taped to his knees and
elbows, his face eight inches from the ground, and I resolved
to never again complain.
For people raised in an antiseptic culture of health and wholeness,
the cityscape of Chimoio is Fellini-esque (and for young folks
reading this, that’s pre-Spielberg filmmaking). Cement walls
perspire week-old rainwater. Black diesel fumes spout from buses
overburdened with passengers, baskets of produce, and tethered
goats excreting freely on the roofs. Even outside the city center,
palhotas (thatched huts) eerily steam vapors whenever the sun
repents of its errantry.
The first time Charles saw Zaccheus, he thought he was standing
in a hole in the sidewalk with his muscular arms folded over his
chest. Then he unfolded his arms and began to move, swinging his
2/3 torso forward on his hands at a steady pace. Zaccheus is a
handsome young man, with a bright smile and a body cut off just
below the waist. We were happy to learn he is a student at the
secondary school. Another man, whose name we do not know, hobbles
around on four stumps, begging, his hands and feet most likely
sacrificed to the ritualistic mutilations inflicted by rebel forces
during the civil war. Another man with two withered legs drawn
up to his chest slides down the street on his butt.
Two weeks ago we visited a small, downtown restaurant called
the "Social Clube." We were standing at the blackboard
menu trying to decipher the smudged chalk in Portuguese. Não
houve problema—they served peixe (fish), t-bone, and limp
salad, just like every other café in town. I sensed someone
behind me and was startled by a blind woman beggar who had silently
entered the restaurant, led by her adolescent daughter. I turned
away, offended by the impropriety of their presence. They left
after passing by the few other customers, unacknowledged, and
we sat down at a small table.
We tried to order a grilled cheese for the children, but the
waiter brought cold rolls with cold cheese. With the help of another
patron who spoke English and Portuguese, even demonstrating with
hand motions, we explained that all they needed to do was put
the cheese in the bread, put the bread in the pan, put the pan
on the stove, wait a few minutes, turn it over, etc. We were baffled
by the waiter’s seeming intransigence. Finally, he explained
the problem: they didn’t have a stove. The Centro Cultural
is another restaurant without a stove. They serve pizza baked
on an open hearth, and there we once waited two hours for two
pizzas, watching the cook intermittently blowing on the embers
as Isaiah fell asleep at the table.
Now another blind beggar entered the restaurant, shuffling between
the tables. This was a younger woman with a baby bundled on her
back, led by her 7- or 8-year-old daughter. I was so taken aback
I looked away until they left.
The cook managed to hold the cheese sandwiches over the coals
for a few minutes, and we finished our meal, awaiting our check.
A third blind beggar walked through the restaurant. This was a
tall, middle-aged man led by a boy of 12 or so. This time we were
better prepared and quickly handed them the few slices of bread
remaining on our table. As they were leaving, the boy hungrily
eyed the steak bones we intended to take home to our puppies.
I remembered a scene across the border in Zimbabwe a few weeks
earlier. Charles and I came out of a restaurant and tipped the
lean, jobless street youths a few coins for "guarding"
our parked vehicle, as is the custom here. They saw his sack of
bones and gristle. "Give us food!" they cried, "we
are hungry!" Charles handed them the sack. As we drove away,
we saw them fighting over the scraps like a pack of dogs.
We left the Social Clube, dodging the rain in our Land Rover.
I tore the meat and fat from the bones, thinking somehow that
lent more dignity to our offering. We found the blind woman with
the baby on her back a few blocks down the street, and I ran over
to place the sack into her older daughter’s hand. It’s
hard to feel holy in Mozambique.
Sitting still for hours on broken wooden chairs in government
office waiting rooms, leaning on counters inside unstocked grocery
stores with no customers, the Mozambiquans compose colorful tableaus
that resemble Norman Rockwell paintings. But without the optimism.
Yet whether by inextinguishable instinct or sheer defiance, people
still exhibit hope.
We have read that Marxism was a failure here because Africans
are true capitalists at heart. We see women along the road sitting
patiently on brightly patterned blankets with their carefully
piled pyramids of mangoes. The children stand in clumps amidst
baskets full of mangoes, with armfuls of mangoes, outstretched
hands bearing even more mangoes aloft, waving as we drive by.
"Buy my mangoes!" "Buy MY mangoes!" "Buy
my MANGOES!" Mangoes, mangoes, everywhere, but not a buyer
in sight.
One of our security guards is named Betinho. He lives with his
brother in Bairro Cinco in a large hut with holes in two sides
through which the rain washes. It is a few kilometers away from
us on the other side of town, down rain-soaked muddy paths lined
with crowded huts and shanty stores that sell very old packs of
dry cookies, candles, damp cigarettes, and recycled bottles of
some mysterious, highly flammable-looking liquid. He is a young
man with a wonderful smile. A few weeks ago he stood outside our
home, singing with joy a new song he had learned at his church:
"I want to praise my Lord, from generation to generation…."
Centuries of colonialism, racism, slavery, war, drought, famine,
and flooding have deeply bruised this generation of Mozambiquans,
but God is at work. I am committed to staying here and supporting
the work of the church because I believe there is power in the
gospel of Jesus Christ: power for hope, healing power—for
repentance, forgiveness, political transformation and deliverance
from the curse of poverty. Power for perseverence in the face
of fathomless problems; power to praise the Lord in all circumstances!
There is an international community of missionaries here at work
to encourage, equip, and inspire the people without creating a
culture of dependency.
We need your prayers, and we know that you also need ours. We
all are engaged in a spiritual warfare against forces that would
hinder God’s kingdom on earth. Whether they manifest in poverty
or materialism, shame or intellectual pride, fear, doubt, or presumption,
we pray that God will break in with a powerful outpouring of His
Holy Spirit.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ fill you all.
In Christ,
Diane Wonnenberg
The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 44
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