Containers, Part 1

Containers shipped from the US provide many of the supplies that are critical to ministries at Namwianga. These containers are the size of railroad boxcars. At least one is shipped from Abilene to supply the medicines and foodstuffs for the annual medical mission. Usually another one or two containers come over in the course of a year filled with other supplies for the clinic, schools, and other departments.

Each container moves by truck from Abilene to a port on the Gulf of Mexico. Then it sails by ship to a port in either South Africa or Tanzania. There the container must clear customs and then be loaded onto a truck for its final journey to Namwianga. Every border crossing requires another customs clearance. This odyssey usually takes about two months and is often filled with bureaucratic red tape and complications.

That was certainly the case this year. The container (hereafter referred to as Container 1) for the medical mission was shipped out of Abilene in January bound for the port of Durban in South Africa. A second container (Container 2) with miscellaneous items was shipped a month later and scheduled to enter Africa at the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.

When neither container had arrived by May, the quest to locate and get them moving began. Ellie Hamby in Abilene, an agent in Houston, and mission superintendent George Phiri all began sending e-mails and making phone calls. Of special importance was Container 1 since it held the supplies for the medical mission in July. It also had most of the food that was to be used for a separate effort, the Northreach Medical Mission scheduled for June 1-12. Eventually the container was found to be sitting in a shipyard in Durban where it had been since mid-March awaiting clearance by customs. Containers are allowed only a few days for this process, so now a fee of $2000 in storage charges was levied. The Mission was not technically responsible for the delay, but there was no way to get the container moving without making the payment, so the money was sent. Still the container sat.

Northreach Medical Mission gave up on the container arriving in time for them and began buying up other foodstuffs and making alternate plans. Phone calls and e-mails kept flying with repeated assurances coming from an agent in Lusaka that the container was about to move. Each time the claims turned out to be false.

On Sunday night, the directors of the Zambia Medical Mission met to formulate Plan B. They decided that if Container 1 does not arrive by June 19, the medicines for the mission will have to be purchased in the US and shipped by air to Zambia at a cost of over $50,000. They put out a plea for everyone to pray for Container 1 to get moving. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic we had already been praying about the issue. David and Robby Banda, the Mission’s financial officer, had started to work on the containers. They began using the internet to locate officials and offices in the chain of responsibility, and they started making phone calls. They were working on both containers: trying to locate Container 1 and get it moving and also making sure that Container 2 was able to clear customs in Dar es Salaam and at the Zambian border.

The logjam seemed to break loose this week as both containers cleared customs in their respective ports and began the journey by truck to Namwianga.

Container 2 has now arrived, pulling into Namwianga on Friday morning at 10:00--one down, one to go. Although we feel very hopeful at this point about Container 1, we won’t be able to celebrate until it arrives and we have the medicines we need here at Namwianga. Please keep this in your prayers!