Broadway Baptist Church

Summer Travellers 2008

World Challenge 2008

Lorna East spent July in Botswana and Zambia with 15 other girls and two teachers from her school, and a leader from World Challenge. The month was split into four sections – acclimatisation, the trek, project phase and rest and relaxation. Lorna tells us about her trip:

On the 28^th June, we set off from school for Heathrow to catch an 11 hour flight to Johannesburg. Our first stop in Botswana was the capital city, Gaborone, where we spent the first two nights preparing for the acclimatisation stage in the Kalahari Desert.

After settling in we were picked up the next morning by a large cattle truck and piled our bags in. After about five hours along a bumpy dirt track, we were covered in dust. The desert took ‘wild camping’ to a new level since it really was wild. Whilst in the desert, the Bushmen taught us many interesting things, such as how to make string out of Aloe Vera plants and which berries are poisonous and which were edible. Luckily I managed to avoid eating the poisonous ones!

In the desert the food was rationed, for example a lunch would be two crackers and a biscuit. However the Bushmen did catch us a deer to eat, and tried to catch a mongoose by poking a large stick down a hole, only to find it was a poisonous snake and we were forced to run. To see the daily lives of the Bushmen was truly amazing.

Then there was the trek… an experience I will never forget. We trekked through the Tswapong Hills which was not a pleasant experience but I can only look back and laugh. The fact that we had a 20kg rucksack on our back and also our daysack on our front was harder than I could possibly have imagined.

The third day of the trek was very long since our guide was not too aware of his whereabouts and 11 ½ hours later we were still trekking with our guide saying “only 5 more minutes” – 2 hours later we were still walking. So we pitched up our tents on a random patch of grass.

The next two days’ walking were pleasantly short and before we knew it, we were at our guide’s house where his wife had cooked us tea. The thought of food that we did not have to cook ourselves was so good that we all filled our plates with food – beef stew, spinach, beans and maize – and something that we could not quite work out - it tasted chewy, a bit like animal skin, and we were delightfully informed that it was tripe.

The following day, we arrived in Ratholo where we were due to begin the project phase. The greeting was really cool – a bit like some yodelling African. The councillor arrived and then we were assigned the tasks of painting the local orphanage and a block of toilets for OAPs on pension day. I was assigned to the orphanage project and this involved clearing the area where we found lizards, scorpions and a dead snake.

Mural We painted a mural for which we decided on a jungle theme. This was so much fun - using gloss paint and standing on tyres to reach higher. Luckily there were no Health and Safety precautions there! When we finished, the councillor brought some of the local orphans to meet us. We had the opportunity to give them our gifts and in return they sang us a local song. Sadly our rendition of ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’ was not as good. Lorna and friends

So we left the village of Ratholo as honorary members and embarked on our rest and relaxation phase, which involved travelling through the actual Okavango Delta in a huge truck. I saw many animals including, giraffes, warthogs, elephants, hippos, lions and water buffalo. These animals were amazing to see in the wild. The next stop was in Kasane which is known as the entrance to the Chobe National Park. We got a sunset river cruise which allowed us to be so close (5m from a crocodile) to the animals as they came down to drink.

We travelled in Zambia along the 700m border with Botswana on a passenger ferry, and our final stop was in Livingstone. Seeing Victoria Falls is just plain wonderful! We flew back from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

I would like to thank everyone who supported me in this amazing adventure.

Reflections on Ecuador 2008

John and Sue Millard spent five weeks in Ecuador this summer helping with the work of the BMS and touring around the country. Here are some of their reflections on this visit:

Occasionally, very occasionally, you have an experience that turns something you know into something you feel, when knowledge turns into understanding and appreciation. I know that God created a wonderful and beautiful world, but I don’t think I realised just how amazing it is. Some of the things we saw in Ecuador were remarkable, not just in their size, shape, or colour, but in their sheer diversity. As I sift through the memories of Ecuador I remember the drive up the mountains, through the cloud, and then above it, where the mountain peaks appeared like islands in the sea; and when those clouds moved on, the patchwork of fields and houses covering valleys and slopes. I remember Mount Chimborazo in all its snow-clad majesty towering above the lush green foothills of the Andes. I remember mile upon mile of forest stretching as far as the eye could see as we flew across the Amazon basin. I recall our astonishment at the humpback whale leaping out of the sea a few yards from our boat, at the endearing presence of the blue-footed booby and its neighbour the red-throated frigate bird, while up above soared the wide-winged brown hawk. We didn’t just see these things: in some weird and wonderful way we experienced them.

Ecuador is not only diverse in its landscape: it has several different climates, some as unpredictable as the British one; and it is peopled by races of many different origins and appearances. In places we felt like giants looking over the heads of the small, brightly dressed natives of the Sierra; in others we mingled in the crowd (albeit slightly paler versions).

But the welcomes we received were not diverse: we experienced a welcome from so many. Its expression was, however, diverse: a kiss or a handshake as a greeting; a lift to a place of interest; a conversation about who we were and what we did; a meal bought for us in a restaurant; a curiousness about our appearance and of the pictures we showed around the bus; an attempt to talk to us in English; a lunch given to guests in circumstances of poverty that were difficult to comprehend.

We observed poverty but we can’t say we experienced it. We puzzled over what it was (although most of the time it was quite obvious), what had caused it, what should be done about it. We failed to understand what roll of what particular set of dice had caused us to be born in plenty while the same dice had left so many of God’s beloved people with just enough to feed themselves but not much more. And so we wrestled to understand the role of Christian mission in such a place. Surely the answer to poverty is to supply funds, to generate work, to challenge systems and structures of an unjust society, to free people from the shackles of want and despair.

Everyone will have their own answers to those questions: this is good, as long as they lead to action. Peter and Vicky Butchers have been asked by the church in Ecuador to plant a church in a poor area of Guayaquil. This is not an avoidance of the issue of poverty: it meets the challenge head on. The poor of Vergeles have few traditions (being recent arrivals to the city), are ignored by the rest of the populace, and are therefore trapped in their suburb, are so downtrodden that they lack confidence to push their way out, and are so wary of their neighbours that they don’t call each other by name.

What would Jesus do? In his lifetime he spent a long time with the poor and oppressed. He listened to them. He talked to them. He made them feel loved and wanted so that they felt human again. He told them how to relate to each other, and how to be a loving, caring community - a community centred on God. We observed Peter and Vicky as they tried to do what Jesus did.

And this is another abiding memory of our time in Ecuador: a clear vision held by two ordinary people of what God wants them to do and a deep commitment to doing it. They sold many of their possessions and took their four young children to a strange country; they eat , sleep and breathe the needs and concerns of the people in their care; they work ceaselessly to 'build community'.

Were we changed by our experience? We were humbled through the privilege of being able to travel, seeing new things, and being welcomed in the way we were. We have been challenged in our views on poverty and mission. We still have many things to think about. But only time will tell if there is an answer to the question.

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