cultures of corruption and change

The rickety passenger van is more than full.  We number 21 adults, 3 small children, a few sacks of corn, a cooler full of fish, and a few live chickens.  The windows are cracked open to keep the air moving.  Up ahead a traffic cop motions for the van to pull over and the cramped crowd lets out a collective sigh.  As we slow to a stop, the driver gets one of the people near him to surrender his fare.   

With the money squashed in his hand the driver greets the traffic cop who has already begun the litany of various offenses that have been committed and the fines this officer plans to apply.  Begging forgiveness, the driver gives the officer a "special" handshake.  And now that the transaction is complete, the bus is free again to amble down the road.

Since the recent sale of our vehicle, I've been using public transportation to get around outside of our town.  In the past three days, I've ridden in eight different vehicles, six 'chapas' (minivans) and two flatbed trucks, to get to and from a church conference and to make a trip to Pemba.   That is collectively more public transportation than in all my time in this country and it has been a good reminder of what our friends here experience all the time. 

Our status as foreigners reduces some of the pressures of corruption.  Traffic cops rarely push me for a 'gift' in order to continue on my journey, but out of the 5 or 6 times that the vehicle I was traveling in was stopped, only once was I sure that money had not changed hands.

Symptoms of corruption leak into every area of life.  School teachers will keep students who have completed all their assignments from passing a class unless they are given monetary or sexual favors.  Nurses have been known to delay treatment or withhold medicine.  Documents waiting certain stamps may be 'lost' and 'surprisingly difficult to find' without a financial incentive.

Now, I am not saying that everyone is corrupt.  I know people of high character in different levels of public service.  The government has made some steps towards improvement - they provide phone lines where you can denounce civil servants who ask for bribes.  But corruption is common enough, that our Mozambican friends expect it as a part of life.  I've also been put in situations so bathed in corruption, that there hasn't been any good way out.  It seeps into every crevice and affects daily decisions.   Corruption, in my mind, has to be one of the most destructive forces on a society.  It is a disease that is difficult to eradicate once it has infected a culture.    

A recent article in the Guardian looks at the competing financial realities of economic growth and corruption in our capital city of Maputo.  The author notes the contradictions of the way Mozambique's economy is booming with the discovery of oil and other national resources, alongside the fact that the 2013 Human Development Index ranks Mozambique as number 185 out of 187 countries.  That scale is "a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development - a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living."  Just for the sake of comparison, Haiti ranks 161.  In case you're curious, life expectancy in Mozambique is 50.7 years, Haiti is 62.4, and in the U.S. is 78.7.

So, while the country has some hopeful indicators of economic growth, many people don't expect to benefit from it any time soon and are still subject to the financial pinch of low level, local corruption.        

I've been thinking about corruption lately and why some societies seem to be effected by it more than others.  David Brooks' terrific book The Social Animal pointed me to a fascinating study.

Until 2002 diplomats in New York City could avoid parking fines.  Fisman and Miguel analyzed the data from 1700 consular personal and their families to see who took advantage of their immunity and who didn't.  They found that diplomats from countries that ranked high on the Transparency International corruption index piled up huge numbers of unpaid tickets, whereas diplomats from countries that ranked low on the index barely got any at all.  Between 1997 and 2002, diplomats from Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat.  Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Syria also had incredible numbers of violations.  Meanwhile diplomats from Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway and Canada had no violations at all.  Even thousands of miles away from home, diplomats still carried their domestic cultural norms inside their heads.  The results were not influenced by salary, age, or any other of the measured controls. (p. 154)

In that study, Mozambique's diplomats were ranked number 6.  During that same time frame, they averaged 112 parking violations per diplomat.    For a copy of "Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets" click here.

We may wish for an easy solution to corruption, but when a cultural characteristic like this is so pervasive, one that even its best educated members carry with them halfway around the world, there will be no quick fixes.

So, how should the people of God respond?  What hope can we have for real change?

Christians are called to model a different ethic.  As representatives of God's kingdom, their character should be marked by integrity and a desire to effectively live up to that title of public servants.  The church is still young especially up here in the northern part of the country and my hope is that our team's presence here can add even just a little more leverage to those within the system pushing the culture towards a healthier and holier way of functioning.

It will be slow.

It's not much in the face of such an imposing opponent.

But, maybe, just maybe, that salt, light and leaven will help do the trick.

May God bless Mozambique and give all of its people a vision of a society, a culture, free from corruption.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

(Special thanks to Kara Tobey for the picture of the chapa)

Between the Hyrax and the Hilux

Living and working here in rural Africa among the Makua-Metto people gives us a wide range of experiences among very different people.  As missionaries who’ve learned the language and culture we are accepted among people who live on less than a dollar a day, but as educated foreigners we are accepted among people whose net worth is much higher than our own, and we live in and navigate between these two different worlds. 

On Sunday, our family worshiped with a cluster of churches in the village of Omeringue - about 50 of us crowded under an awning of a mud house.  During worship, I sat on a rope bed next to a man named Zimbabwe.  I taught through the story from Mark 5 of Jesus’ healing of the Gerasene Demoniac in Makua, and then different church members shared the way that Jesus had changed their lives; Zimbabwe talked about how he and his wife removed all the magical amulets and demonic relics from their house.  After worship was over, everyone shared a meal of xima and hyrax.  Before Sunday our family had never seen, let alone eaten(!), a hyrax, which turns out is a little like a tailless, rock-dwelling beaver.  Everyone there got a tiny little piece of the meat with their sauce and xima, though Rachel wasn’t able to eat much because it took so long to get the meat off the tiny bones for the girls.  Our friends enjoyed explaining how they caught the hyraxes and showing off the one that they were drying in order to sell.

In contrast, on Tuesday I found myself in the air conditioned office of a bank manager here in Montepuez.  A wealthy Indian businessman, Api, had made the best offer on our Toyota Hilux pick-up truck and he was transferring money from his account to ours.  We talked in Portuguese about credit cards and trips outside of Mozambique, and, as he was fasting for Ramadan, we also talked about his pilgrimage to Mecca a few years back.  At one point a phone rang and he pulled 4 different cell phones out of his pocket until he found the right one.  In our conversations over the years he has always treated me as an equal even though we are in very, very different economic brackets.

Sometimes it can feel a little strange, like going back and forth between two worlds.  We could be drinking a cold coke on the beach in Pemba one day (having had to go for a business day to go to the bank and post office and immigration) and then the next day visiting a friend in a village who doesn’t have enough food to get through the month.  In the early years we wished these tensions would go away, but now we’ve accepted them as part of living in Africa as a foreigner, and we try to navigate the tensions with humility and generosity.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

P.S. - Update on our truck situation:  We are really thankful that we were able to sell our vehicle for a good price, and we are especially thankful for the Donelson and New Heritage churches and other individuals who’ve contributed to help us purchase a new vehicle!  To read more about why we’re purchasing a new truck, click here.  Lord willing, in a couple weeks, I will fly down to Mozambique’s capital city, pick up the new vehicle, get it outfitted in South Africa and drive it home.  Please keep all of us and that process in your prayers - it will be such a blessing to have a reliable vehicle again.  We still lack about $1900 to reach our fundraising goal, if you are willing to contribute please make checks out to “Donelson Church of Christ” with “Mozambique Truck Fund” in the note section and send them to: 2706 Old Lebanon Rd. Nashville, TN 37214

July 2013 Newsletter

Greetings from chilly South Africa!  We are posting this newsletter from a missionary guest house near White River, SA - Monday we flew from Pemba to Maputo, and Tuesday we crossed the border - we're here for dentist, doctor, and orthodontist visits, and of course we'll take a few vacation days while we're down here.  It is our 'winter' here in the southern hemisphere, and while it might be hard for you to believe (if you're sweating up there in the northern hemisphere), we are wearing jeans and jackets and putting hot water bottles between the sheets in the evenings. 

A little over a week ago we said our goodbyes and put this year's batch of interns onto the plane in Pemba.  The group of six arrived on May 22, and they did a great job handling all the new experiences, and we really enjoyed having them here.  They job-shadowed us through numerous village visits and studies, learned to speak some basic Makua-Metto, learned how to harvest and process rice and carry water on their heads and cook xima, and each of them spent a weekend with a Mozambican family without any other English speakers.  Our kids also loved being with the interns (how fun to have a new audience to entertain)!  The internship is an opportunity to give students interested in missions an experience of what serving as a missionary actually looks like on the ground.  To read more about the internship check out Alan's recent post, 'Stuff Interns Say' here.

The studies with the three different women's groups north of town are still going strong, though each group has a very different personality, which I'll describe:

The women in the Chipembe cluster have been following Jesus the longest, and there is a feeling of some maturity.  That church cluster has been growing and multiplying quite a bit, so there are a number of new women, which has doubled the group size.

 
 

In Newara, some days the babies are so fussy and the children so loud and some of the women aren't getting along with each other that I wonder why am I coming?  But then other days it seems like we are all on the same track and all hearing each other.
 
 



The new group in Nkororo is only 6 women, they are all so kind, though some are a little shy.  There is always at least that many of their neighbors sitting nearby while we study, and a sweet group of children, too.

Several churches here in Cabo Delgado have made a big push towards planting new churches and it seems like this year will see some real numerical growth.   These new church plants are starting without our direct involvement and it has been exciting to see the churches do this mostly on their own.  The church in Chipembe has been adding new people - lately it seems like every time we go up there, there is another baptism or a new person that has started worshiping with them, and it excites us to see the way that this church cluster has been engaging the community and dealing with complicated issues like witchcraft and demon possession.  A few weeks ago an older woman who had been very ill joined the church, and then, just a few days later, she passed away.  It was very encouraging to see the body of Christ join together to help with the funeral; Alan and three other church members spoke at the funeral and talked openly about the choice this woman made in choosing Jesus.  Funerals are a very important part of the culture and it was encouraging to hear community leaders speak highly of the way the church stepped in and cared for this family well.

More often than we would like, things in Africa do not go according to plan. A few weeks ago Alan went to Pemba with a to-do list of things that can only be accomplished in our provincial (state) capital.  Unfortunately, though, someone cut the fiber optic cable south of here and the internet was down for the northern half of the country, which meant that the bank was unable to make any transactions and therefore we couldn't get any of our personal or work fund money out that day.  Also, because of a change in the law, we have had to apply for Mozambican driver's licenses.  Unfortunately, Alan's still has not come in yet (after 6+ months in process) and with the internet down, there was no way to check on the computer to see why.  Then, the car inspection had to be postponed because one of the tail lights stopped working suddenly.  Alan then waited at the post office for over an hour for a customs guy to show up so he could clear a teammate's packages, but the customs official never arrived, so eventually they just let Alan take the packages anyway.  (In his planner, Alan wrote the word FAIL next to that day!)  Thankfully, though, the next week our teammate Chad was going to Pemba, and he was able to get the money out for us (the driver's license, though, is still MIA!)

Back to the internship - besides their experiences following us around this part of Mozambique, we also take the students to a neighboring area that could be a potential site for a new mission team.  They collect information on the demographics of a people group as well as looking at the practical logistics for foreigners to relocate to that area; this year Alan took the interns up north into Tanzania.  They spent three days with the team serving the Makonde people who has been in Africa for about 3 years now.  It was helpful for the interns to hear from a different team about their experiences getting over culture shock and what life is like for them at that stage of ministry.  Travis Trull and Alan led the interns on a survey of the Makua-Metto people there in Tanzania, and since Alan doesn't speak Swahili, he really enjoyed using his Makua with many people up there.  They learned a lot and tried to figure out what kind of ministry would best fit the Makua people of Tanzania.  Overall, it was a great trip, though the added drama of radiator problems on the trip home meant that Alan spent about 20 hours behind the wheel that day.  The girls and I were very glad to have him back home safely!

Sometimes our friendships here require us to do some unusual things.  Two weeks ago Alan got a frantic call from Germindo after dark; he had been returning from visiting a new church plant when he was forced off his new motorcycle by a couple of men with machetes.  On the phone he asked Alan to go by the police station and pick up an officer to help out immediately.  On the way to the site of the robbery, Alan would block the road and the police officer, carrying his assault rifle, would stop each motorcycle they came across to see if it belonged to Germindo.  They spent a couple hours looking and informing village leaders to be on the lookout for the motorcycle.  The next morning, we got a phone call from a church member who had been out searching since dawn and found the motorcycle stashed in the grass along the side of the road. Alan and Germindo drove out and brought the motorcycle back to Montepuez, though thankfully it was only a little dinged up and needed just a few minor repairs.

We recently made last-minute changes to our travel plans.  Our plan had been to drive down to South Africa for a medical/dental/orthodontist/car repair trip down to South Africa, but there have been several incidents of political violence in the Mozambican province of Sofala, which we would have had to drive through.  This is a good distance from us, but definitely something that we are watching closely.  That situation coupled with our recent car problems led us to decide to fly down to South Africa instead.  

We are so thankful for our friends who are fundraising to help us buy a new 4x4 truck.  Our truck is  10 years old and all the kilometers on bad African roads have made it start showing its age, requiring a lot of time and money in repairs.  If you are interested in helping or want to read more about the reasons why we are looking forward to having a new car, click here.

Our team is all over the map right now - the Smiths are on furlough in the US, and our teachers Rebekah and Kara are also in the States for a short time to visit family and friends.  So we have spent a lot of time with the Westerholms lately, including a LOT of little-girl sleepovers, which have been very fun.  But of course we're all super excited for our team to be full again in August and September when everyone returns home!

Thanks for keeping us and this ministry in your prayers; our main prayers right now are:

• For all parties to work toward peace in Mozambique
• Continued maturity for disciples and continued growth for the churches
• Safety during this trip to South Africa, also for our medical/dental/orthodontist needs to be simply met

Grace and Peace,

Rachel and Alan

stuff interns say

Well, our house has felt empty the last couple days.  This year's interns have

all thankfully arrived safe and sound back home.  They were great and we miss them already.

Since 2007, our team has hosted groups of college interns for six-week period each summer.  This year's group of six interns brings the total of interns our team has hosted up to 42!  That's hard to believe.  Most of them are students from Harding University.  They come here because they are interested in missions and while they are with us we give the interns three main tasks:

Be a learner.  "This is not a campaign and there are significant language and culture barriers.  So, we do not expect you to evangelize or disciple anyone, but we do expect that you will make friends and be a blessing and encouragement to those around you."

Participate. "Try to learn as much Portuguese and Makua as possible.  You will pick a topic you are interested in and work with your language tutor to write up a culture study.  Job-shadow the missionaries and jump in and participate in activities.  Help out in our homes when appropriate and see what missionary family life is like.  Spend three days bonding with a Mozambican family that we know and trust.  Give your full attention to the survey trip and take seriously the opportunity to explore a different people group or area.  Produce a report with the rest of your intern group on that experience to serve as a resource for future teams."

Spend time reflecting and processing.  "Carry your Bible and journal with you and reflect on what you are experiencing.  Think deeply about questions such as: 'Is God calling me to serve in cross-cultural missions?'  'Could I learn to share my faith with a person like this, in a situation like this?' and, 'Could I raise my family in a place like this?'.  Each week participate in an Intern Weekly Meeting led by one of the missionaries by participating in the discussions as you reflect as a group on the following topics: culture, language, wealth and poverty, development and animism."

Having interns is a lot of work but it is a joy for our team to share our lives with young people who are interested in missions.  We've realized that we probably spend more time with these interns than any one professor spends with them both in and out of the classroom.  We take that responsibility seriously and love getting the chance to disciple them in life and ministry.

Over the past few years, we've noticed more and more the things that interns consistently comment on from year to year.  So for your enjoyment, I have pasted below my list of stuff interns say.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

Stuff Interns Say:

1. "Check out the tan line on my feet from my Chaco sandals... no, wait... that's just dirt."

2. "Wow, look at that mountain over there, doesn't it look just like 'Pride Rock' from the Lion King."

3. "Isn't it amazing that none of us interns has gotten sick, yet?"  (this is immediately followed by half the group getting some kind of stomach bug)

4. "Now that I've survived bonding, I feel like I could do anything!"

5. "Do you know when the power will come back on?" (a question I have no answer for)

6. "Do you know how long this church service will last?" (another question I have no answer for)

7. "Do you know how long the internet will be out?" (ditto)

8. "Is there some place in town where I can buy peanut butter?"

9. "Salama." (the Makua-Metto greeting)

10. "One of my favorite things here is staying in your homes and seeing a Christian family in everyday life."

Story Warren and thinking about Independence Day

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Living overseas has shaped the way we think about... well... pretty much everything, and it has certainly shaped the way we think about patriotism and national identity.  In honor of Independence Day, I wrote some reflections on this topic for the Story Warren website. Please check out the post and poke around their website - they have some great resources for encouraging creativity in children.

Grace and Peace,
Alan