Journey home

We are now safely back in the UK, after a wonderful journey by train from Zambia to Tanzania. It was a great way to see more of both countries – and it is amazing how fast time goes when you can just sit and watch the world go by! We’ve uploaded a few photo’s to our flickr pages – which are also inserted as a slide show below. Looking forward to settling into UK life once our heads and bodies recover from the journey!

See the photo’s in full on our flickr pages.

MCZ Copperbelt launch

Micah Challenge Zambia is now embarking on a series of provincial launches across the country, and this week saw the Copperbelt provincial launch take place in Kitwe. We were joined by Joel Edwards of the EA UK and Andy Clasper of Micah Challenge UK, as well as the District Commissioner for Kitwe representing the Minister for the Copperbelt. The national media covered the story, but dwelt more on what the Minister ’said’ even though he wasn’t even there in person… but any coverage is better than none!

We’ve uploaded a few photo’s that you can see on our flickr pages.

Crucial connection

Hooray! Polly has finished her dissertation. The past three months have seen Polly busy researching and writing her long put off dissertation, which is part of her Masters in Education for Sustainability. She has been looking at aspects of participation and what is locally relevant with an eye to helping community projects empower local people. She battled with power cuts and a laptop that broke halfway through… but still managed to finish by the deadline… all ready to email it on Monday…. but when it came to email it, for the first time ever, we experienced a (temporary) breakdown of internet services in Ndola! Not just at the office but every internet café in town could not get online. But nothing could dampen her spirits… the hard slog is over!

Easter e-card – New Life*

As I was thinking about Easter… the pain and suffering of the events of Holy week as Jesus was condemned to death – and then the new life we celebrate in the resurrection of Jesus – I reflected on what that ‘new life’ really means… and so I thought of Alex in the photo above.

I met Alex last week – he lives in a rural part of north western Zambia and is HIV+. He has known great suffering. Having discovered he was HIV+ 8 years ago… he was condemned to death… but then four years ago he was able to start taking Anti-Retroviral drugs that would transform his life…

Alex knows what new life is… he lives and breathes it every new day.

This Easter may you know the joy of new life

Matt & Polly

If you can’t see the image above clearly – click here.

Photo: Alex is happy for us to identify him as HIV+ and is pictured here holding his Anti-Retroviral drugs. He is married with one daughter and lives in a rural community where health facilities are still very limited – he is the chairperson for the constituency committee for action on HIV created at a Jubilee Centre led workshop last week. The words are those of Jesus from John 10:10.

 

Photos: Mufumbwe trip

We’ve been quiet for a while – things have been busy. Last week I visited the Northwestern province of Zambia (8 hours drive from Ndola) for a HIV/AIDS leadership building workshop being run by Jubilee Centre. I was helping film the workshop which brought together the local councillors and other political leaders, as well as church and NGO leaders to draw up an action plan for helping fight stigma and discrimination and strengthen the local battle against HIV in the constituency. It was an amazing trip – and brilliant to see more of the diverse landscape of Zambia – I have uploaded a few photo’s to give you a taste. Visit our Flickr pages (slideshow) to see them all.

The rains keep coming

You’ve probably heard about the flooding in Mozambique, we are also having severe problems caused by the same rains and rivers. At Jubilee Centre we have estimated that there are probably around 200,000 displaced people in the country at the moment – yet for some reason it isn’t mentioned in the media locally or internationally. In one of the townships we work in around 200 of the mud brick houses have collapsed, meaning over 1,000 people are homeless. There is no drainage so nowhere for the water to go, and no foundations to hold the houses up.

Yesterday I spent the day meeting with a group of women and visiting the long-term sick, but by the time we came to leave, the road had been washed away. My colleague, Martha was bravely driving but we skidded and got stuck. I managed to work out how to put our decrepit vehicle in four wheel drive and drove praying that we wouldn’t slip into the deep gullies that had appeared. Meanwhile Martha was helpfully shouting ‘left a bit, right a bit’ from outside the vehicle! My heart was pounding so hard when we reached a bit that looked impossible to me, but everyone just said to give it some welly – people pay good money to do this sort of thing at home! But we managed and it certainly gives you a sense of achievement. I didn’t stop to take a photo of the non existent road – but we have uploaded a few photo’s of the day into our Community Faces photo set on our Flickr pages.

Maize patch update

Having planted our maize patch along with everyone else back in December, I’d been getting worried about why our maize looked different to everyone else’s. Admittedly we used ‘village maize’ seeds that our landlady in Lusaka had given us, rather than using the more common imported hybrid variety, but that didn’t seem to explain the difference. All the other maize around us had flowers, or tassels, growing out of them with cobs starting to show… ours was tassel-less.

But then at the weekend tassels suddenly appeared! On closer inspection we found a Chameleon climbing up the maize – so perhaps you need a Chameleon to visit your maize to bring tassels?

Later on, whilst inspecting our healthy looking pumpkins, I noticed our new friend heading down his hole in our veg patch – presumably off to deliver some tassels to other worried maize farmers.

You can see all the photo’s on our Zambian life flickr set.

BTW: Zambians are terrified of Chameleons – not sure why but everyone shrieks and runs a mile if they see one of the little fella’s. Apparently cats are feared too – which would explain why there are no cats anywhere and the rats thrive!

Christmas card 2006

“For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

May you know the joy and peace of Christ this Christmas

Matt & Polly

The photo: This alternative image of a baby is real and human – the childs hand reaching out in vulnerability, showing the frailty and reality of birth. A far cry from your usual Christmas image of the birth of Jesus – but at Christmas we celebrate the moment when Jesus was born when he willingly experienced what we experience in all our vulnerability, so that he could meet us where we are in our journey.

The photo was taken in India by Joke – a friend of our friend Rachel Dodd.

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Wait…

Like a growing nunber of people, over recent years Polly and I have been curious about Celtic Christian traditions (which we have blogged about before – Daily Prayers) and found their practice really helpful.

Celtic Saints traditionally started their period of advent a full forty days before Christmas – which is today – matching the 40 days of fasting and prayer they observed before Easter.

So what better day to share this alternative advent image that I came across recently by Ben Bell.

New Photo Sets

We have uploaded two new sets of photographs on our Flickr photo pages.

The first set is called Matt and Polly’s Zambian life (or view it as a slideshow) – with photo’s of our new home. * If you have a flickr account and are down as friends and family in our contacts make sure you log in – if you aren’t down as our friends and family and want to be let us know! *

The second set is called Community Faces (or view it as a slideshow) – a growing set of photo’s that celebrate the people and environment of the communities we work with.