Trust

So yesterday I (Matt) travelled to the Kinga language area up in the hills to meet with a group of pastors to begin plans for more transition literacy teacher training in their area. We travelled to the town of Bulongwa along the most direct, and very high, road from Mbeya. You may remember this road from our blog in January (‘Journeys in Mud’) where we wrote about the same journey but in the rainy season and about how we got stuck multiple times! The road tops out at just short of 10,000ft and really is a beautiful drive. This time however we are over 4 months into the dry season and everywhere is dust – a very different scene indeed.

The meeting went well. I gave an introduction to literacy work, our partnership officer spoke about our cluster project as a whole and the importance of church unity, Msafiri (our literacy office colleague) spoke about transitional literacy (the main purpose of our trip) and Katherine introduced the Scripture Use department and the work they’re involved in. It was a good information sharing time with about 20 pastors (or representatives) from more than 5 different denominations.

After the meeting however, as the sun was rapidly heading towards the horizon, we had to make the journey back to Mbeya, 2 hours on a good day with lots of climbing and descending along the way. It was all going fine until part way along we come to a halt with steam rising from the bonet. Yes we are in a LandRover, and yes it felt like déjà vu (see our blog from February about getting stuck overnight in a coal mine – ‘Jungle Trekking’!)! This time however we have a driver and it is his responsibility! After removing the pressure and confirming that its not a big problem we relax for a moment (thinking “we’ll be home soon”), until it hits us… now we need to refill the whole water system and we are on a 9,000ft high ridge in the middle of the dry season (I kid you not – the dust was 2 inches deep!) on a road that is very infrequently travelled! Where on earth can we get 20+ litres of water from?

Obviously normally this is the time to pull out the phone and call for help. They might take a few hours to get to us but at least then we can get back. But since this wasn’t our responsibility we left it in the capable hands of our driver/mechanic who started wandering down the road in search of some source of water. Then, over the sound of the engine I hear a deep rumble – either I’m very hungry or I can hear something coming. I stop and listen and there it is again. Again it’s at these kind of times that I’m likely to say something silly like “hey, I can hear God. He’s coming to help, just round the corner”. But no sooner had I thought these words then round the corner does come God, in the shape of a big blue bowser (a tanker used for supplying water)! Amazing! God does know our needs at all times.

The truck stops, they supply us with all the water we need (including 2 extra bottles in case we get any more problems along the way) and off we go. This kind of action demonstrates wonderfully one of the things I love about Tanzania – everyone will help everyone. Life is so hard here, things go wrong all the time in difficult situations, that people need each other. People know that next time it might be them needing help and they are happy to help each other. It’s a lovely thing. Now the reason, you may be asking, for that bowser to be on that road at that time is because they are currently fixing it up. It’s been a terrible road for a long time and they are now working hard to improve it. I was happy enough to see this improvement on the way there… I was doubly happy to benefit from it in an indirect way on the return journey!

And that is how it happened – I tell you no word of a lie. To prove it here is a picture of said bowser with our car. Remarkable. Only in Africa.


This is just one more example of why we never take travelling in Africa lightly. Many places we travel to are very remote and breaking down on the way can be very difficult. Please continue to pray for us and our colleagues as we travel around with our work. Thanks.