Mozambique blog 11

Yesterday, as some of our students would say, we were biz. Portuguese seems easily to lose the ends of words: greetings in the latter part of the day are usually heard as boa tard and boa noit without the final e. So at Khovo we are often told that our students have been too biz to come to the lesson; and knowing that we too are biz people make frequent offers of coff to see us through the day.

Apart from working on this Sunday’s service, yesterday we had a session with Ernesto looking at how to develop prayer partnerships with our Synod, and also were part of the lunchtime celebrations to mark the opening of the Sewing Project – which I will write up separately for the main part of the website. But for Hillian and me the main event was our final English lesson.

We’ve been offering these lessons for less than five weeks – one group in the morning and one in the afternoon.  So the perfect attender (and I think there may be just one or two) will not have spent much more than twenty hours with us: hardly doing more than scraping the surface. All our students have been workers at Khovo, the Church HQ, or somehow or other attached to it, and they have ranged in age from early twenties up to sixty. Everyone has had some English already – but needless to say (and a challenge to the teachers) these have been very much mixed ability classes.

When I began (a few days before Hillian joined me) the first shock was the formality of the setting, which was matched by the students’ expectations. The small classroom was set out with desks – those very old fashioned ones with chairs attached, so that there was absolutely no chance of moving the furniture round and sitting in a circle. Not that they would have wanted that. When I started the lesson by trying what I hopefully imagined was the Berlitz method of direct conversation, I was shouted down: everything was to be written in chalk on the blackboard!

But somehow we have slotted into the system. We’ve gone through the auxiliary verbs, to be and to have and all the rest of them ad nauseam.  I love doing the past simple of “to have” and saying to them “Isn’t English easy?” We’ve struggled over the days of the week: Portugal seems to have been the most Christian of nations, dismissing all heathen gods from its calendar, with the result that between domingo and sabado come days 2 to 6. We’ve tried to explain that though this may make it difficult for the students to learn a set of names, it is also difficult for the teachers to have to count up on their fingers to work out just what day it is in Portuguese.

Somehow, despite the rows of desks and the chalk and the blackboard, not to mention the sheer impossibility of the subject, we’ve had a lot of fun together. I’m not sure how much this is a different experience for our students, but I suspect we are really supposed to sit on a chair behind the teacher’s table rather than walk around the room and sit on the desks and generally make fools of ourselves acting some of the concepts out. I hope it’s been a refreshing experience for them all: at any rate, with a few exceptions they’ve continued to come. They’ve struggled with irregular verbs and inconsistent pronunciation and our inadequate explanations of when to use the perfect tense rather than the past simple. They may not have been as diligent as they could have been in working at it between lessons: but who am I to talk? I sort of worked my way halfway through Learn Portuguese in 13 Weeks, and yet haven’t dared to speak a word beyond “Estou bem, obrigado.”

And yesterday we were more than a little touched by the things said at the “Bye-bye session” – by the traditional gifts of kapulanas, and by the solemn assurances that they would follow Hillian’s advice and speak a little English to each other every day. Practise, practise, practise!

For people in Mozambique, of course, there is a real pressure to learn English which is much greater than our need while here to speak Portuguese. They are painfully aware that their country is effectively a Portuguese speaking island set in a sea of English: every surrounding nation has a British imperial history, all the way from South Africa up to Tanzania; and English is the unifying language spoken right across Southern Africa. Significantly Mozambique was the first nation that had not been part of the Empire to join the Commonwealth. In this post-colonial age, it is clear where it needs to belong.

But things are not easy for people like our students. Here in Maputo everyone speaks Portuguese, but that is far from being the case across the country. So there is need to reinforce Portuguese as the nation’s own unifying language, before ever turning to another European tongue. Most families speak local languages, such as Ronga or Shangana, at home; and it is only on starting school that children study Portuguese seriously, so that it becomes the language in which their whole education is offered. So by the time they are of secondary school age they will have had to become fluent in two languages before ever tackling English. It’s become clear to us that, not surprisingly, the quality of English teaching in schools can vary considerably; but even the best is not likely to bring the pupil to fluency before school days are over. No surprise then that there are English language schools all over the city. And the pastor who told me that he is taking English language lessons with a view to studying theology at a higher level is no doubt typical of people in all sorts of professions.

So we sadly said Goodbye to our students yesterday with all these thoughts in mind. They know that they need English, but they are realistic enough to know that they are not all going to reach the level of competence that they might wish. I would have liked to have done more to help them – but we did what we could in the time that we had. I hope that they will remember us as fondly as we will them.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 10

I’ve never properly found out how the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique got its name.  Bearing in mind that its roots go back to the Swiss Mission (the 125^th anniversary of its work will be commemorated in 2012), we might have expected this French-speaking organisation to have given birth to a Church that wore the epithet Reformed, rather than Presbyterian. When I’ve asked in the past about this, I’ve been given the answer that it may just be to do with the proximity of English-speaking missionaries in the late 19^th century whose work in South African will have overlapped with the Swiss. But I also wonder if the Founding Fathers may have cottoned on to the fact that the Portuguese word reformado also means retired – perhaps not quite the way you want to describe a Church that seeks to become a force in the land. (But I guess it makes me reformado squared.)

Today I’ve been asking just how Presbyterian the IPM really is. I don’t have any ecclesiological reference books at hand, but the Wikipedia article on Presbyterian polity seems to me to have the right idea when it contrasts its subject with the Congregational way, and makes the point that “authority in the presbyterian polity flows both from the top down (as higher assemblies exercise limited but important authority over individual congregations, e.g. only the presbytery can ordain ministers, install pastors, and start up, close, and approve relocating a congregation) and from the bottom up (e.g. the moderator and officers are not appointed from above but are rather elected by and from among the members of the assembly).” Many of us would be wary of this top and bottom language, but we would still expect constraints on any local church that chooses to go its own way.

We were taken this morning on a Synod Pastoral Visit to Moamba, near the South African border. The church there, which is literally the wrong side of the tracks, has been struggling since the 1920s: it can’t afford to pay for a minister, and indeed has nowhere to house a minister, so the only ministry it receives is from a poor pastor who lives 50 Km away and makes his living through secular employment. His commitment is strictly Sundays-only. Your heart goes out to such people – and wonderfully they remain faithful and full of hope. All of which is being  expressed now in their plans to build a new church.

We crossed the tracks just as the train for Johannesburg drew in – but all the coming and going was on the side we had left. Another ten minutes’ walk through a very poor area brought us to a large open space, which our hosts proudly told us was all theirs. On one edge was a half built house which hardly looked the work of professional builders, while over the far side was the poor corrugated iron building that is hardly fit to function as a place of worship. Next to it were the foundation blocks of what is being designed as a substantial building. And with the visit, I should add, came an invitation to return and lay the foundation stone on November 6^th!

My heart sank at the sight of it all, because over my visits to Mozambique I have seen so many half-and-less-built buildings. A Church that knows its Bible well seems never to have reflected on Luke 14.28. Shouldn’t its people first sit down and calculate what they are capable of? Time and time again work is begun on projects for which there is no budget, no intention of ever using competent and professional labour, and which will use up all the resources that might have otherwise gone towards, for instance, costs of ministry and evangelism. All of this is being decided by local congregations, who leave no prospect of any kind of national strategy for development and mission.

Talking with the Synod visitors afterwards I sensed a degree of frustration on their part – and maybe bemusement that Presbyterian polity should have led to such a situation. They cited instances of building projects that have taken 15 or 20 years – and I suspect know of others that have simply no hope of completion. Yet on the other hand, who can disparage the faith of those who laugh at impossibilities, and cry it will be done? I don’t think I’ll be around Moamba on November 6^th, and I can’t help feeling sceptical about the whole project, but I’d love to think that one day someone from Northern Synod will attend the grand opening of its new Presbyterian Church!

_________________

Crossing back I got into trouble (or at least got my Mozambican minders in trouble) by pointing my camera at the station. Apparently special permission is needed. But the story of the footbridge is worth retelling. It carefully crosses from the central platform to the right (Portuguese colonialist) side of the tracks – but there is no footbridge crossing to the side we had been walking through. People there didn’t really count as people. “About as bad as apartheid South Africa?” I suggested.  My hosts agreed – there was little to choose between them.

John Durell

Mozambique Blog 9

Never mind the stereotypes – the truth of the matter is that most things do work in Mozambique, or at least here in Maputo. While we’ve been here the few power cuts have scarcely lasted a minute. The expresso machine may have been broken in the café in the park, but they rustled up a surprisingly acceptable alternative. True you will often find taps from which no water seems to run – but once the householder is able to install the right system of storage tanks and pumps that problem can be overcome.

Of course there is the terrible problem of transport – one of the chief problems of the country, I guess. Just look at the crowds waiting for buses in the rush-hour, or look at the traffic jams that witness to the fact that the increasing level of car ownership is hardly getting anyone anywhere more quickly, and it may seem that my assessment is over-generous. But by and large things do work.

So I was more than a little disappointed when we moved into the guest house to find that for all the promise of free wifi I was unable to get on-line. What’s more, despite my gentle protestations, no one appeared to be doing anything to resolve the situation. But so what? – we’re in Mozambique. However, it seems that I was wrong. Suddenly, this weekend, I’m back on-line without any trips to the internet café. Someone was trying to get it fixed after all – and in the end they succeeded.

So for the first time in the nearly six weeks I’ve been here, I could start a proper blog – real stream of consciousness stuff rather than the considered and pre-prepared pieces I’ve been putting up every few days. But I think it’s too late now. However, for anyone who’s followed me so far, here’s a brief account of what’s been going on over the past few days.

Last weekend was dominated by the news that the projected visit by Mozambican young people to Northern Synod is off: once again the High Commission has refused visas, and frustratingly the applications went in so late that there is no time for any kind of appeal. So now we are wondering how we can learn from what has happened and find ways of getting a better result in the future.

So far as Hillian and I were concerned, the big event was the launch of the English language service, which I wrote about later in the week – but also we should record the fact that we had a little holiday. Our friend Inãcio came to Maputo looking for us, and after the Sunday afternoon service whisked us back to Xai-Xai in Gaza province for a couple of days. Inãcio was one of the first visitors to our synod back in 2004 – some may remember him as the guy who was videoing everything. When our group visited Mozambique a few weeks later we spent time in Xai-Xai, and were royally entertained by Inãcio and Estrela one evening – and ever since then they have been waiting for us to return.

We had a great time with them – and even though they were both busy working, they arranged a programme for us which managed to be both relaxing and instructive. It was good too to meet up with Meg Robb, halfway through her stint with Pastor Rosa at the Betlehem church – and Inãcio’s programme gave Meg opportunity to see more of the area than she might otherwise have done. So as well as enjoying lunch together on Xai-Xai beach and mooching round the central market (larger and yet more colourful than Maputo’s), we learned a good deal about the education system through a visit to an FE College equivalent, and had a fascinating insight into Mozambique’s provision of labour for the South African mines from Inãcio’s own boss.

It all went by too quickly, but duty beckoned – and Wednesday morning we were back in the classroom with our students. Now our final week lies before us, and somehow we are going to have to try to answer our students’ questions about the conditional tense, and how you know whether to use a simple past or the perfect, not to mention the other impossible things they will probably dream up in the next few days.

And then there is “our” final English language service next Sunday: and what will happen after that? Will the pastors on the ground pick it up and run with it? Doubting whether they will would, I suppose, betray a colonialist attitude, so I’m going to say “Of course the service will continue.” Remember, things do work in Mozambique.

John Durell