August 13, 2003

Greetings in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Zambia is the middle of the southern part of Africa, a nation of 10 million souls. Lusaka is a city of about 3 million. There are modern buildings, fast food restaurants, and internet shops, like the one I am writing from now. But modern lifestyle is not for everyone. The latest Zambian phone book is only about 2cm thick- note that we are talking about the NATIONAL phone book, including cell numbers, and the pages were not tightly packed. There are few if any street lights downtown, so driving presents an unfamiliar spectacle of streets lined with petty vendors and hawkers in the darkness between city buildings, with scattered bits of dim illumination from store signs and headlights. Everywhere there are people with tables and stands set up, with just a couple of different things for sale. In classic third world style, there are walls around many residences and businesses, topped with razor wire or broken bottle glass. The deep ditches are filled with plastic bags and other garbage.

There are 73 African tongues in Zambia, but the Africans here seem to have long ago reconciled themselves to the use of English as a universal language. I suspect that English enables the Africans to communicate with a much higher proportion of the population than any one of their own languages would, and much more so beyond these borders, so embracing the colonial language is pragmatically wise. However, to many English is still a second language, and among their clan they converse in their mother tongue, rather similar to how many people from Ontario’s Reformed churches prefer to converse in Dutch or Fries. Speaking of which, the pastor here has pronounced the resolution to the debate about heaven’s language. He said, “In heaven, there will be no Canadian or American, but only Chichewa.”

Our field director left myself and another trainnee here in Lusaka in the care of a local pastor. He is looking forward to giving us a real African training experience, living with an African family in an African city. We are learning a lot about the life of Africa’s poor masses, because he lives in the heart of a squatter town. White people are not one in a thousand in downtown Lusaka, and much less in the surrounding squatter towns, but the people are friendly, never threatening. My buddy and I attract a lot of attention. “Muzungas! Muzungas!” the children exclaim. We reckoned that they were all the more amused to see us riding cargo class in the back of a pick-up truck, while a black man rode up front as a passenger. Since many of the people make something in the range of $5-10 a day, and since we obviously much better off, and since white men stick out like sore thumbs in the slums, I reckon we are obvious targets for theives. We trust in God, who orders all things for His glory.

The squatter town is a maze of single level concrete block dwellings, with precious little plant life of any sort to cheer up the dismal dreariness of it all. Like most of the surrounding dwellings, the house we are staying in has asbestos roof sheeting (structural asbestos products were banned decades ago in America as highly carcinogenic). There is electricity and a TV, but water has to be fetched from a communal water station a few yards outside the compound’s high walls, which are crowned with shards of glass. Yesterday morning the power was out; we later discovered that the cause was some nocturnal theives who had removed a span of conducting cable between two poles outside.

Just over a decade ago, Zambia emerged from 3 decades of 1 party socialist rule, under Kenneth Kaunda’s UNIP party. Under Kaunda, Zambia took great strides backwards from where the British had left it at independence in 1964. The roads and the economy went to pieces. The pastor whom we are staying with bought his house for 500 Kwacha in 1975. Today that will buy you a modest tomato, or half of a large one. The largest bills are 10,000K, worth about $2.98Cdn. But the roads and the economy are improving now. Since 1991 they have had democrary, and the first democratic President declared Zambia a Christian nation, and over half the people are Christian. Christian slogans on taxis and shops are common. There is a lot of missionary activity. But Christian education is of a very low standard here in Zambia. The youth sing very beautifully, but few know the basic stories of the Bible. Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) has a large presence here, but from what I have seen, it is not furthering sound Biblical knowledge either. Since Christianity in Zambia is very basic, it has had limited social impact. 1 in 5 Zambians has HIV/AIDS, and over 700,000 have already died from the disease. Public health billboards about AIDS are common, humanist ones advocating safe promiscuity, and Christian ones advocating chastity. Without disobedience to the seventh commandment, this epidemic would not have happened.

Please pray for Zambia, that the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ would continue to grow here, and to dig deep into the life of the nation. God be with you all.

In Christ,
Lawren M. Guldemond
Frontline Fellowship

"As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is worth living; but O, how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end!" -David Brainerd