After 3 days of voyage, we finally arrived at Nacala, Mozambique. The sea got rough before2 hours before we reached Nacala. I lied on the floor in the main lounge which is the middle part of the ship. Before long, I found more and more people joining me. We got there at 5pm.
‘To Teach and Testify’ was the theme for this port. Mozambique was occupied by Portugal for over three hundred years. The country gained independent in the 80’s and was governed by the Marxist government which was all out against the church. Only about 15 years ago, the government started to open up to freedom of religion. Very few people speak English as the main language in this country was Portuguese and the local dialect. As most churches are very young, therefore the theme was chosen for this port. It would be a challenge to all of us because of the language barrier, but the language that would reach them would be the love of God.
1July 2005
First day in Nacala was my free day according to my schedule. I got better from the sea sickness as the ship is now berthed at the port. No waves, no movements, it was just beautiful. After our group meeting, I went to the E-day notice board to find out what I would be doing on the next day. E-day is one of the jargon that we use on the ship, it is the day when members of the ship’s company gets an assignment to go out and meet the locals and do some community work. The ship normally sends out few teams a day. Doulos consists of 350 volunteers from over 40 different countries. When you are working on Doulos, you get 5 working days a week on your assigned department, 1 ministry day, i.e. E-day and 1 free day.
When I looked at the notice board, I found my name on one of the team. And I have to be ready to meet the team leader at 9:00am. I did not have much time to get ready for this. The work we’ll be doing on that day was practical work, which means it would be very physical. I would need a lot of water. Being new to the ship, I went around and to look for a water bottle and I couldn’t find anything. Finally, I’ve decided to go without it, silly mistake. I packed my lunch for the day as instructed by the notice as our schedule was going to be very long. The second part of the E-day was that we will be going to show Jesus film in a village 45 minutes away from the port. No dinner will be provided, so I have to pack dinner too.
The team met our team leader, Peter who’s a very tall guy and has been nick named by people as Tiny. Our task was to dig a 4m x 4m x 3m reservoir for a missionary centre near the port. It was hard work as there was no machine to help us and everything had to be done manually. After day one, we managed to dig 1.25m deep. During that time, I managed to drink water brought by the team leader and the host provided lunch as well. It looked like there would be another 2 to 3 days of work before the project can be completed. We cleaned up after 4pm and got on to our van and headed to the village to show the Jesus film.
When we got there, it was close to 5pm and started to get darker. We were followed by the kids in the village everywhere we went. They were so curious to see foreigners in their village especially an Asian. Few of us have to distract the kids so that the crew can set up the projector and the screen. We bounced the flash at the kids and they went wild and ran around to follow us. It was fun!
After showing the film, we packed up our equipment to the van. The pastor showed us to a mud hut to serve us some dinner. I was immediately humbled by the food they served; soft drinks and chicken, simple and cheap according to Australian standard but extremely expensive to the Mozambican locals.
We went "home" tired but very satisfied.
No comments:
Post a Comment