Mozambique Blog 7

Amalia has just graduated, and proudly possesses a diploma in Planning and Business Management from the city’s university. She is the eldest of five children – the only girl among them; and we know enough about how IPM ministers are paid to realise that her parents must have made considerable sacrifices for her to have reached this stage.

Just a couple hours after Hillian arrived in Maputo on Saturday, we found ourselves as honoured guests at the wonderful gathering of family and friends called to celebrate Amalia’s achievement. It was an amazing mixture of praise, prayer and partying – with delicious food piled high on plates, and constant invitations to get up and help yourself to more.

Relying on ad hoc interpreters you are liable to miss the nuances, but it was impossible not to be moved by the obvious love between daughter and parents, and the gratitude and pride that marked their relationship. Whether an only daughter among boys would do as well in every family I don’t know, but here it was pretty clear that there were no gender considerations to hold Amalia back. Yet seeing the scale of the celebrations, it was hard not to wonder what challenges were being set for the younger brothers, and how equal their opportunities might turn out to be.

Several people have spoken to me about families lately. Generally they have been perplexed that we don’t seem to have families, or at least don’t want to come together as families. Our nuclear family pattern must seem strange and remote to people who, when you ask them about their family, don’t immediately tell you about wife and children,  but begin with possibly deceased parents, and then work their way through brother and sisters and wider affiliations. “Why don’t you get together as we do?” they’ve asked me, and feebly I’ve responded that we do sometimes, perhaps at times like Christmas or birthday, without going on to admit that in many cases such get-togethers are seen as occasions to instil dread, and best avoided at all costs. On Saturday, with all the singing and dancing, it was impossible to imagine that there could be anyone present who really didn’t want to be.

Another contrast with our big family gatherings, and I’m thinking particularly of weddings, was the confidence and indeed loquaciousness of all who had speaking parts. Admittedly I don’t have the Portuguese to judge the quality of the speeches, but I can testify that they all went without stumbling and hesitation – and with no apparent fear of using a radio mike that sent the speaker’s voice echoing half way across the city. Not many notes in sight either – and certainly no one glued to them. The prayers and the neighbouring pastor’s address as well as father’s wise words offered as he presented their daughter with a Bible all emphasised that these were celebrations offered in the context of the life of the Church – and it’s pretty clear that the IPM is a Church that helps its young people to develop confidence, both in the faith and in their own abilities.

Amalia has a well-earned diploma, but she is looking for work in a country where graduates have just the same problems finding work as ours do in the UK. But I understand that she already has the promise of an interview – and from watching and listening to her last Saturday, I sense that she may well have what it takes to show that those five years’ work were all worth the effort.

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Synod readers following our comings and goings may note that our hosts have been busy doing the airport run in recent days. Hillian arrived on Saturday, two days after Meg Robb, who was immediately driven to Xai-Xai in Gaza province for her leg of the exchange with Pastor Rosa. We hope that Rosa will be working with Meg in the East Cleveland group for a few weeks in September and October. Then on Monday Matthew left, after four weeks in and around Khovo – not to mention a few days in Chimoio with a young people’s group. Plenty to tell FURY members when he next meets up with them.

Hillian and I are now working in tandem on our conversational English classes for people working at Khovo, and plans are unfolding (a little belatedly for my taste) for a weekly English language service at the Khovo church: launch date this Sunday, August 7^th. Can anyone email me a stack of English hymn books??

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 6

One of the more animated moments of the synod meeting (now two weeks ago) came when the ministries committee presented their report. That the report had not reached delegates on time did not get things off to a good start – but the real excitement came with a throw-away line in the next-to-last paragraph to the effect that pastors’ wives would no longer be accepted for training for ministry.

The reasons offered for this seemingly harsh decision were pragmatic. The IPM is a small church, and it is difficult to place husband and wife teams so as to provide a real pastoral opportunity for both. But if one translator’s account of the quite short debate was accurate, there were some less nuanced things being said from the floor: are some women only looking to train because their friends have done so? A dissenting elder statesman of the church told me later that the right way would have been to agree to deal with each case on its merits, but synod seemed to want to lay the law down in a more definite and excluding manner.

I know of three married couples in the IPM ministry – out of some 50 or 60 working ministers. So the decision to go with the report seems a strange way to build up the ministry that the Church clearly needs if it is to expand as it hopes. However, one delegate who spoke to one of our guest colleagues assured him that the decision was what the women really wanted. A male voice, needless to say, and commenting on a debate where no women were heard. Despite the preponderance of women in the Sunday congregations, it’s men who make the decisions; and looking at the list of members of the Synod Council, it’s ordained men at that. I wonder who the ministries committee consulted as they drew up their report?

Over the past week I have been busy at Khovo setting up English lessons – and wishing I had more experience at this sort of thing. My intention of focusing on conversation has been hijacked by my students’ common desire to have everything written down: I come back from each lesson covered in chalk dust…. Education is taken extremely seriously in this country, and it seems that methods are pretty traditional. I hadn’t envisaged students sitting in rows at desks in front of a blackboard – but that’s how the little classroom is set out, and there’s little to be done about it.

In these mixed ability groups, it’s no surprise that the students with the better grounding in English are generally male. But the keenness and enthusiasm that some of the women, both young and older, have for learning are so striking, that I cannot believe that the Church will be able to hold them all back as it seems sometimes still to be doing.

One of the most vocal members of the class told us all the other afternoon “I have a dream to go to England and study at university”. She could not believe me when I told her how many universities there are in England, compared with the three state institutions in Mozambique – though there are several private ones as well. Needless to say, when I told her how much it costs students to go to university she began to revise her dream. But I think she and her colleagues will still have dreams, and show a personal determination to make things change. As that happens, I just hope that the Church does not get left behind.

John Durell