Another Chiili Trip

Communication and transportation are our constant challenges on the mission field. Seldom a day goes by when we don’t face a problem with one or the other. And then sometimes we end up in a huge snarl of communication and transportation problems that have to be sorted out. That’s exactly what happened last week when we were trying to get Brian Siakuba to his assigned school for student teaching practice.

Brian is one of our finest students. He smart, he’s spiritually minded, and he’s a hard worker. He came to us months ago and asked us to help him find a place to do his student teaching where he could also work with a local congregation. We immediately thought of Chiili, a remote village where David and Rodgers planted a congregation in May of 2006. We had promised the headmistress there that we would try to send her some student teachers this year. Brian, a math major, was willing to go, and he recruited another of our best students, Auditor, an English major, to go to Chiili with him.

In April as the two of them left for the break, we told them a little bit about Chiili. Until a few years ago, Chiili was part of the Kafue Game Park. It is a tiny village of a few houses, a school, and a handful of tiny shops. There are no motorized vehicles there, and the nearest public transportation—a flatbed truck—comes twice a week and stops at a village 10 kilometers away. To get to Chiili you have to walk the rest of the way. We told Brian and Auditor we would have to take them up there, along with bedding and all the food and supplies they would need for the three-month term. Since Brian and Auditor live in rural villages, we had no good way of communicating with them during the break. We went ahead and set May 3 as the date for making the four-hour trip from Namwianga to Chiili. We agreed that the two of them would meet us at Namwianga.

As the day drew near, I went shopping for the things they would need: two mattresses, four blankets, two kerosene lamps, 25 pounds of rice, a huge sack of dried fish, instant milk, 10 pounds of sugar, 5 gallons of cooking oil, 5 pounds of salt, coffee, and charcoal.

We found out on May 2 that there was no diesel for sale in Kalomo, so we postponed the trip until May 4 so we would have time to go to Choma for fuel. Brian called us, and we told him of the change in plans. He agreed to get in touch with Auditor. The next day was May 3, and we expected to see Auditor arrive. Brian continued to try to contact him with no success. Finally he asked around in Kalomo and found that Auditor’s father had died on May 1. Auditor would not be coming any time soon.

We left early on the morning of May 4 for the grueling trip to Chiili. Rodgers Namuswa served as our bio-GPS and navigated for us. It’s hard to describe how bad the roads are on the way to Chiili. Some sections are full of potholes. Some sections of the road have been washed away, and the vehicle must detour off on the side to get around. The last part of the journey was over pasture roads that sometimes had grass three-feet high in between the two tracks. After four hours of this torture we pulled into the school grounds of Chiili.

The surprises began. Jane, the headmistress we knew and loved, had been transferred to another school. The new headmaster was in Livingstone. The deputy headmastser was in Livingstone. Cliff, the young teacher we knew, was in Livingstone. We had arrived on Friday, and they were expected to return to Chiili on Sunday. No other teachers were around. Our greeters were three teachers’ wives and a dozen or so children.

The deputy headmaster’s wife produced a key to the living quarters where Brian would be staying. The tiny room was only about six feet wide and ten feet long and was stacked from floor to ceiling with metal beds and mattresses for the boarding students. The women and children pitched in with us and quickly helped move the beds and mattresses next door into the boarding room. As we talked with them, we found out that the congregation had scheduled a three-day meeting to begin that night, and they were expecting us to stay and be the featured speakers. We had not even informed anyone we were coming, so we aren’t sure how that rumor got started.

Then they began asking about the medical mission. It seems they thought that Chiili was one of the sites for a clinic in July. Each of the three times we have visited Chiili in the past we have explained to them that we do not choose sites for the clinics. We have also told them that their roads are too bad for the medical mission vehicles. We had even told them that the sites for 2007 had already been selected many months ago. They had obviously not gotten the message and were disappointed when we told them we were returning to Namwianga that day and that there would be no medical mission in Chiili this year.

We got Brian’s few possessions unloaded into his tiny room. I can only imagine the thoughts going through his head as we prepared to leave him alone in this remote village. We assured him that we would send Auditor to join him if we were able to contact him and that we would return at the end of the term to take him home. We gathered everyone for a prayer of blessing for Brian and his time in Chiili. And then we headed back to Namwianga, marveling once again at the challenges of transportation and communication in the African bush.