Botswana Diary 4

           Moroka is a small rather nondescript village northeast of Francistown, just off the main road to Bulawayo, and only a few miles from the Zimbabwean border.  Most houses are modest, small rectangular buildings with metal or tile roofs, with dirt yards swept clean.  Some are the traditional round dwellings, thatched, with smooth painted walls.  Mrs. Lydia Maleho, the lay leader of the small congregation here, has both.

            She isn’t home, but her grandson, named Witness, is.  “I will take you to her,” he offers.  “May I let the cattle out first?”  Polite.  Rev. Callender, of course, assents.  Witness frees them from their overnight pen, and they wander on off.

            The congregation meets in Mrs. Maleho’s small living room, but a church building is on its way up.  Witness takes us there first, where we see the cinderblock walls of what will be St. Alban’s Church standing on a large plot, awaiting a roof, among other things.  The Diocese of Newcastle, which has a companion link with Botswana, has offered to help complete the work.

            We return to our van, head back to the narrow tarmac, then turn left onto a dirt track next to a small shop named “Why Not Fresh Vegetables.”  It’s closed.  No doubt that’s why not.

            Mrs. Maleho is at her farm, several miles along the twisting track.  Finally we come to a gate, consisting of huge thorny branches.  Witness hops out and pulls them aside.  We drive a short way, then park and walk.  We can see her in the distance.

            She brightens up when she sees us.  No doubt part of that is genuine hospitality, but I can also imagine she happily envisions a ride back to her home as well. 

She’s been gleaning the remnants of her harvest, sorghum mainly, but some rather sad-looking sweet potatoes too.  “Like Ruth,” Rev. Callender says.

            We lug the bags back to the van and climb in.  Her dog, who has accompanied her, looks up.  “He’ll find his way back,” she tells me, but the dog has already gauged that in me he has a potential ally.  He has big eyes.  “Surely we can make room for him,” I say.  I hear a sigh.  Witness lifts him up into the van, and he settles nicely between the seats.

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            Saturday is our day for the lay leaders’ workshop in the north of the diocese, similar to what we have already done in Gaborone.  Actually there are two parallel workshops, one for church wardens, the other for lay leaders.  We all gather together at St. Patrick’s, in the town center, and I do a meditation on 1 Corinthians 12.  Then it’s tea time.

Afterwards we split up, and the lay leaders and Fr. Amanze and I head to the rectory, where I have been staying, to meet in the living room.  We have been expecting, at the most, about 20, but 38 of us crowd inside.  No one complains.

We hear many of the same things about what kind of training they need, but not all are the same.  Two women say that they want someone to “teach us how to pray.”

Unfortunately I never find the chance to learn what in particular they have in mind, but several of us talk about it later.  One thought is that ingrained in them is a deep respect for liturgy in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, so they can read prayers from the prayer book but have a hard time spontaneously getting wound up the way they surely have heard their pentecostal neighbors do.  “Teach us how to pray.”

I hope someday someone will value their appeal and come, holding up for them and others the richness and diversity of prayer, in our tradition and in the church universal.

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            At lunch on St. Patrick’s grounds I spot a young man sporting a Carolina sweatshirt.  Oteng Montwedi is his name.  A part of the youth delegation that visited North Carolina some months ago, he wears it proudly.  We take pictures.

Two days later he comes to my house to see me off as I return to Gaborone.

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            As the sun is setting, a bunch of us are standing outside a small office at a very imposing gate, waiting for our passes to be issued so we can enter Orapa.  A large sign gives the company name, Debswana, a combination of the historic diamond conglomerate DeBeers and Botswana.  Underneath it says, “You are entering a Precious Stones Protected Area,” and it goes on to warn that we must have a pass and are subject to search.

            I fantasize that Orapa’s diamonds may be the solution to the Diocese of Botswana’s stewardship problems.

            We have driven the 125 miles or so from Francistown to be present at the consecration of land given for the building of a church, suitably planned for Pentecost tomorrow.  Bishop Mwamba has flown up from “Gabs,” as folk here shorten Gaborone, on the company plane.

            Soon I am seated beside him in the living room of a Debswana guest house.  He leans over and says, “I wonder if you might preach tomorrow?”  That’s not quite as bad as when I visited one of my former seminary students in his Nairobi parish, and as we were walking down the aisle in the processional, he suggested that I should preach.  But close.  It’s been a long day.

            We are enjoying a glass of wine at the time, and I am looking forward to another.  Instead I say “yes,” and I take my leave to make some sermon notes.

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            The Pentecost service, held in a schoolroom, is over, and some 30 or 40 of us - many from Francistown have come in solidarity - head over to the new plot, in Letlhakane, a nearby town where mahy who work in the mines live. 
            The property is already fenced, and Bishop Mwamba moves from one corner of the plot to another, marking the sign of the cross in the ground, and censing the area, and offering prayers – from the American Book of Common Prayer that Bishop Curry gave him on his first visit.  We sing “The Church’s One Foundation” as we go along.

            The Orapa congregation has three trees to plant, and Bishop Mwamba does the first two.  Then they turn to me.  “The third should be a ‘North Carolina’ tree,” someone says.

            I begin digging and strike rocks but no diamonds.  It’s an orange tree.  The task done, a young man comes over and waters it.

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