Chapter 16

Arrival in Zimbabwe

     They started to wake us up about 5:00AM (whatever time zone we were finally in) to get cleaned up and have breakfast before landing. During breakfast they played a number of videos advertising safari’s, lodging, car rentals and that kind of stuff so we were all primed and ready for Africa. We landed in Harare about 6:30AM Wednesday morning, and I went into customs. The customs agents got a little laugh seeing some of the essentials that I brought on my trip. One of the bags had a large amount of packaged crackers and cheese, crackers and peanut butter - you know,  snack stuff.  Hey, I’m going to darkest Africa.  If they tried to feed me fried ants or other African delicacies I was going to try them to be polite, but I sure wasn’t going to make a meal of them. Apparently, the customs agents had seen this before and knew what was going on in my mind so that gave them a good chuckle. This was not Africa as portrayed in the movies. But I did have problems getting though customs.

    Now, Bro. Ron told me that I would be met by Bro. Jeremiah when I arrived at the airport and that he would have made arrangements for my lodgings. When the customs agents asked me where I would be staying, I didn’t have the answer. I told him the pastor of our church in Zimbabwe would have made the arrangements. When the customs agent then asked the name of the church I couldn’t tell him that, either. Since we are not a denomination and each of our churches is sovereign unto themselves, they have different names, i.e. Evening Light Fellowship, Cloverdale Bibleway, etc. I must have looked pretty stupid to this guy so I told him that the pastor, Bro. Jeremiah, was probably waiting outside of the customs area and he would know all of these answers. He said, okay go out and get him and bring him back there. I went out to the main terminal area and guess what?  That’s right, no Bro. Jeremiah. Now what was I going to do? I walked around for a couple of minutes looking everywhere but he wasn’t there! Well, Bro. Ron warned me about this. I went back into the customs area and told the agent that the pastor wasn’t there so he told me to continue to wait for him in the main terminal area and they would keep all of my bags, passport, tools etc. etc.

    So I waited, and waited . . . and waited. After about an hour the customs agent came and got me and told me that they were closing until the late afternoon. They gave me all my stuff and told me that they hoped he came to get me and off they went. I hoped he would come as well!  I went and changed some money into Zimbabwe dollars (Z$) just in case I needed to take a cab someplace and sat down to pray. Here I was 18,000 miles from home, I knew only one person and I didn’t know how to reach him, I had a whole mountain load of baggage that I couldn’t carry by myself, and I was stuck at an airport that was in the process of closing down until the next flight. I knew that I had to stay at the airport because if I left, there would be little if any chance of us making contact. (Why worry when you can pray?) Finally, two hours late,  Bro. Jeremiah arrives. Boy, was I glad to see him! We loaded everything into his vehicle and off we went to his house. I met his wife, secretary, their domestic (house girl) and his kids.

    I probably need to pause here because I don’t want to give a false impression. Labor is extremely cheap in Zimbabwe and unemployment is pretty high. Many of the people, including those who are not very well off, have one or more domestics living and working for them. They do the cleaning, cooking, gardening and often times look after the children as well. This may sound extravagant by our standards but they have very, very few modern appliances. I never saw a dishwasher in Zimbabwe and only one washer but no dryer. While there were many telephones, it was not unusual for private individuals to wait years for a phone line. I know of one case where a house was sold and the telephone line was sold with the house! Anyway,   my point is that it is very humbling to see what Americans take for granted, yet most of what we have are considered  luxuries in many other parts of the world.

    After having a little lunch with Bro. Jeremiah we left to go to my hotel. Apparently one of the other brothers in the church was supposed to have made my hotel reservations, but something was fouled up, so . . . no reservations. As the desk clerk searched in vain for the reservations,  an English lady showed up at the head of the stairs . . . clothed only in a wraparound towel. She complained very loudly that she had been waiting for over an hour for hot water and she wanted to know when she was going to get it!  Well,  she sure got everyone’s attention, but she didn’t get any hot water and I didn’t get a room at that hotel. We drove around and finally got a room at a pretty nice hotel in downtown Harare. I was to wait there, stretch out and relax for awhile until later that afternoon when Bro. Jeremiah would be by to pick me up so we could start work on the sound system.

    He picked me up about 5:00PM and we drove to the church. Harare Christian Fellowship is located out of downtown Harare in the suburbs. The area has lots of green areas interspersed with smaller areas of factories and high density housing (more on that later). Probably the thing that most readily caught my attention was the hundreds of people by the side of the road. Most were walking, waiting for a bus or trying to get a taxi. I will try to explain about their taxi’s. All of the vehicles there are Japanese or European.  Imagine a Toyota mini van with 20 people in it. I’m not kidding, it is common place to have that many people packed into one of these small minivans. It is also very common to have eight to ten people stuffed into a small car. A mini pickup might have ten to twelve people in them! Most of them have a little sign plastered on the back calling them Emergency Taxi. I never did find out what the emergency was but there were scores of these emergency taxis everywhere we went. There were also these huge busses everywhere we went, belching black clouds of smoke that would have environmentalists running for their picket signs here in the US.  But,  realistically,  what else can they do? This is a third world country trying to make do with what they have. Many poor people just barely stay alive. As I said, a pretty humbling experience.

    We arrived at Harare Christian Fellowship which is a large complex of buildings. It has approximately 1200 members and they have built a two story church to seat them all. As I understand it when I say they built it, I mean just that. The members of the church built this building themselves. There is also a combination washroom and pastor's office building and,   off to the back of the property,  there is a kitchen/tape library/bungalow building. I got to meet another pastor, Brother Paul Tafirenyika,  who has two smaller churches, one in Victoria Falls and one in Hwange. He invited me to visit them before I left. There were about 15 people at the church and I soon found out they just wanted to meet me and help with the sound system installation.

    True to my nature,  I promptly forgot most of their names,  although one of them did stand out, Brother Simplicio Shamba. What a wonderful, sweet man he is. Bro. Shamba is a big bear of a man but is so very humble. Like most of the blacks in Zimbabwe he is quick to smile and has a marvelous sense of humor. A laugh with Bro. Shamba is around the corner just waiting to erupt. He was to become my closest friend in Zimbabwe and I owe him much that I can never repay. He had taken much of his personal vacation time off just to drive me around Zimbabwe.

    All of us worked until about 8:30 in the evening Wednesday night installing the sound system.  Afterwards about five of us went to the Miekles Hotel in downtown Harare to have dinner. Since it was relatively late,  there was only one dining room open and what a disappointment that was. The hotel, and this dining room in particular, were elegant but very stifling to conversation and fellowship. The menu offered only three or four items and they mentioned that portions would be small so that you could finish all 7 courses. The portions were small and there was no trouble finishing all 7 courses. However,   they probably should have had another 5-6 courses to fill you up. To me, the atmosphere of the hotel seemed to spoil our time of fellowship,  although maybe it was because we were strangers and still getting used to each other.

    The next morning, Thursday, I got up pretty early and walked up and down the street that my hotel was on. There was this old black gentleman who was the doorman at my hotel and he and I got into a conversation about what I was doing in Zimbabwe, how did I like it, etc. etc. There are two predominate languages in Zimbabwe; English and Shona, a native language. I resolved to try to learn some Shona so that I could at least be polite to the people in their own language. Thank you, Good Morning, God Bless You are all things that should be communicated in someone’s own language. Fortunately,  this doorman was a willing teacher and I soon picked up enough to help me break the ice with many of the people I met.

    Bro. Shamba picked me up and off we went looking for some parts for the sound system. We were looking for some DI boxes, small converters that allow you to plug some electronic musical instruments into a sound mixing board. They are somewhat specialized but not uncommon.  However, they were impossible to find in Zimbabwe. I ended up phoning my wife in America to buy them and ship them to us, but more on that later.

    As we scoured Harare for these DI boxes we walked to many of the places where we expected to find the units. Although the city was beautiful,  with many parks and attractive buildings, there was another side that I had not expected to see. In most of the working class sections of the city there were many beggars on the street looking for money. The majority of the ones that I saw were women and children. It was not uncommon to see a blind women tapping on a tambourine and singing while her children looked around ready to jump at the first offered coin. They seemed to be in the most pitiful condition and it broke my heart to watch how they had to scrape to stay alive. There is a song that has always meant a lot to me called, Bless the Beasts and the Children. I really had trouble going to sleep that night. The images of those women and children were burned into my soul and I will never forget them. One only has to remember those sights and you will never again gripe about standing in line at a McDonalds for a hamburger or complaining if your food is cold in a restaurant.

    Bro. Shamba and I looked all over town, but to no avail. We still had lots to work on so we went back to the church. We worked until about 9:00PM and again went to dinner with some of the brothers. Bro. Jeremiah came along with Bro. Peter Mataka, a pastor from the town of Kariba, Bro. Caleb Nyoni, who later was to become a pastor in another distant town and of course Bro. Shamba and I. We went to the same hotel although,  fortunately,  they had a different dining room open which was much more comfortable and a lot less of a formal atmosphere. By this time I was getting fairly comfortable with the brothers and they seemed to like me so we had lots to talk about. One rather curious incident happened that rather startled me and I would like to share it with you.

    Usually when we sat down I would sit at the head of the table. Not so much by choice but rather,  it seemed easier to talk to everyone with me at the head so we could see each other. When the waiter came up we were all gabbing away and he asked me what I would like to drink. I told him and off he went to get my drink. In the back of my mind I noticed that he didn’t ask any of the other brothers (all black) at the table what they wanted. He came back with my drink and proceeded to take everyone else’s drink order. We had a pleasant meal and when it came time for the bill he brought it right to me. Now,  believe me when I say that I fully expected to pay for these meals. I suspected that the brothers were not really able to afford to pay for these get-togethers without it really pinching their finances. Since a full meal for 8-10 of us would only cost about $40.00 US, it really didn’t bother me to pay for everyone.

    When the waiter brought me the check Bro. Jeremiah started speaking to him rather harshly in the Shona language. Shortly thereafter another man, the manager, showed up and their conversation continued,   still in Shona. Bro. Jeremiah asked me for the check and I politely declined, as I said I fully expected to pay for the meal. Bro. Jeremiah insisted, saying that if I didn’t,  the waiter would probably be fired! Needless to say I handed over the check and Bro. Jeremiah paid for the meal. As we walked outside I asked what had been going on. After some coaxing he explained to me about the waiter having a white man’s complex, always deferring to the white man at the table. That was one of two racial incidents that I witnessed in Zimbabwe.

    The next day, Friday, we again drove around town, picked up parts and pretty much finished installing the sound system. There were still a couple of outstanding items that I had had to have Linda send us from the US, but the major part of the installation was finished. I’m not sure what happened that evening,  although I’m sure that I was home early because the next morning, early, a couple of us were traveling with Bro. Jeremiah to a church dedication in the town of Mashvingo.

    It was about a three hour trip with myself,  Bro. Jeremiah, Bro. Peter Mataka from Kariba and another brother, whom I can’t remember, all having a wonderful time together. We talked a little about everything,  mainly comparing life in our respective countries. I really started to like Bro. Peter Mataka.

    When we arrived in Mashvingo there was well over two hundred people at the dedication. Most of them were from the church itself,  although there were still about 50 visiting people from as far away as South Africa. Most of the visitors were pastors,  so the when the service started the front platform was pretty well packed. I sat in the rear of the church so my getting up and down to take video pictures wouldn’t disturb anyone else. There was only one other person who was white and he was sitting on the platform. You can imagine my shock when he got up to speak and he was introduced as Brother Peter Chandler from England, the man I had tried so hard to meet when I went through London.

    Anyway there were two services that day - one starting at 11:00AM,  which went until about 2:00PM,   and then another that started at 4:00PM and was supposed to end at about 8:00PM. In between,  most of the visitors went to Bro. Elijah Bhandu’s for an outdoor luncheon. I found out later that the women had been up cooking since 3:30AM that morning getting ready for this luncheon. I finally got to visit with Bro. Peter Chandler and we both commented how wonderful it was that the Lord allowed us to meet, five thousand miles from where we expected.

    The next service began and I was pretty disappointed in the people who were running the sound system. They apparently went to the school that thought louder is better. As a consequence it was so loud that most of the words were unintelligible. Bro. Elijah invited each of the pastors to get up and greet the people and he asked them to keep their comments to 5-10 minutes each. I was very disappointed that the majority of the people spoke for better than 30 minutes each with one speaking for over an hour. As a consequence,  the service lasted until after 10:00 PM. We still had a three hour trip back to Harare and Bro. Jeremiah asked me if I would drive back. I felt so bad declining but I was extremely nervous with the thought of driving in Zimbabwe on the left-hand side of the road. Remember,  this was a British crown colony and they continued to drive opposite to the side that we are used to driving on. I know he had to preach the next day but the responsibility was too unnerving to consider, at night, over unfamiliar, heavily traveled roads.