Shaka Baba

 Heidi Baker very often says Shaka Baba. She says it before, during, and after speaking. I believe it means "stay with the Father".

This kitten lives on the base.

He chases feet.

These boys are playing catch the feet with him.

They were gentle with him.

He's a fierce kitten.

He catches little birds.

 His name is Shaka Baba.

Girls ceremony and Village Visit

    In Mozambique all the youth go through a coming of age ceremony. Different tribes do the ceremony differently and kids go through the ceremony at different ages depending on gender and tribe. It is hard to find out what actually happens at these ceremonies but people at Iris have been learning all they can for years. They realized that not all that happens during a ceremony is good. The village elders that lead the ceremony take the child away for several days and are alone with them.

    The ceremony is very important. Girls cannot marry unless they go through the ceremony and if they can't marry they are basically outcasts. Iris wanted to be able to do a redemptive form of the ceremony for the girls on the base. They put a lot of work and time into learning about it, preparing to do one themselves. They did two ceremonies; one as a redemptive ceremony for the older girls who had already gone through a village ceremony, and one for the younger girls who had never had a chance to go through ceremony.

   They tried to make it as close to the village ceremony as they could in hopes that the village people will accept that the girls went through a proper ceremony. They took the girls away for a week and when they brought them back they dressed them up in beautiful new dresses and presented them at church as women. They sang and danced for us and we prayed for them. They finished by sharing heart touching powerful testimonies of how their lives were changed. 

     Particularly powerful was the sharing of how for the first time in their lives they felt like they were beautiful and could be loved for who they were.                                    

Village visit

One Saturday my housemate was invited to a young mans house and she could not go alone so I agreed to go with her. I had gone on several visits to different kids houses and really enjoyed the experience. As we prepared to go we realized that two other women and one of the guys wanted to come with us, and that we would be going to two houses not just one. Last minute changes were normal so we didn't mind and headed out around 9 am. Memona decided to come with us as well.

We got to the first house fairly quickly and sat down to meet the family. The young man we were visiting knew a little English, enough to introduce us to his family and show us around his house. We asked if his family went to church and were told that they did. We asked if we could pray for him and his family and he said yes. So we prayed for them and then took some photo's before saying we needed to leave. This is the only time photos were taken on this trip.

    We started out towards the other guys house but stopped to buy some mangoes. As some of us were waiting for those buying mangoes we saw a man who had a hurt eye so we went over to him and asked if we could pray for him. He said we could so we asked him to wait until our whole group was there and then we prayed for him. He wasn't healed but seemed touched that we would want to pray for him.

As we continued on we cut through the market which was fun but greatly slowed us down and we stopped again, this time to buy little bags of frozen yogurt. It was a super hot day and we did not have any water so the yogurt was amazing. We continued on and after a little bit we asked the guy how much farther it was to his house. He pointed at a distant hill and said he lived at the top of it. At first we wondered if he was joking then we considered just heading back, but decided we were at least half way there so we might as well keep going. We just kept moving and it actually didn't seem to take that long.

We had a good visit with his family and got to meet his mother and sister both of who are Muslim. We shared as much as we could with them and asked if we could pray for them. They seemed hesitant but agreed that we could pray for them. After praying we needed to head back.

We decided to keep heading away from the base towards where we thought one of the main roads would be located and got lucky. We found the road right away and one of the first trucks stopped and agreed to give us a ride. We made it back on base just before one and in time for lunch.

Baptism and Widows Drop

               The first Sunday I was in Pemba they had a baptism. 

               The whole church headed down to the beach after the service. 

     Can you find me in this one? (below)   I am walking with a boy in an orange shirt.

                There was quite a crowd.

         Everyone wants to talk to Heidi after church so it took her awhile to get there.

                It was a long wait until everyone got there.

                Heidi finally arrived.

 

It looked like a lot of people went to get baptized but it was hard to tell because a lot of people went out with them to pray for them.

           At least 50, maybe 100 people waded out into the Indian ocean. 

         The rest of us who stayed on shore worshiped to the sound of drums.

 I joined a group of young men and women who had made a circle around the drummers and started dancing. I didn't know the words to any of the songs which were in Makua but they were mostly very repetitive and easy to learn. As the people came out of the water in small groups the people on shore gathered to welcome and pray over them again. It took two hours from beginning to end and was a great celebration. Kids swam and shouted and danced and we worshiped and danced the whole time. We sang and danced the whole way back to church stretching out into a long line as we walked. 

Visiting the village widows.

Everyone got a chance to do what they call a Widows drop. If you are a widow in Mozambique the only way to make money is by prostitution. So these widows work for Iris Ministries either making jewelry, or in the sewing school making capalonas and bags, or making beds. Iris doesn't pay wages because the money rarely gets spent on the children or food and sometimes is stolen, so they work in exchange for a certain amount of rice and beans every week, and sometimes for clothes.

The widows drop is for the purpose of having us students learn about how the widows live and to help them. In exchange for letting us stay with them for a few days Iris gives them a box of food and a bed. The students can then sleep on the bed when we stay with them. We go in pairs and first meet at the church to help divide the food into boxes. At that time we are given all the rules and the widows are given them also. The rules are that there are no men allowed in the house at all while we are there. Sometimes a widow has lied and is not a widow at all so a husband may be there, or she may have remarried. They give us a cell phone and we are to call if there is a man in the house. The widows are not to ask for our things or any money and we are not allowed give them anything. They are getting food and a bed for having us. We are going to their homes to learn to cook and do chores. We are to follow the mama as they call them and she is to have us cook and do laundry. We are not there to evangelize in the village, unless the mama wants to. 

Here they are loading the beds onto the truck to go on widow drops.

 

   We were dropped off in a village with the food and bed at a tiny little mud hut with no electricity or running water and couldn't get the bed in through the door. It was such a small house and even the window was a tiny, about a foot square. We tried and tried to get the bed in but there was no way to get it in. 

   This is the mama we stayed with.

                This is her house.

     The mama told us to leave it outside and she gave us dinner which was sheema and chicken. It is a great honor to be given chicken because it is rare for them to have meat. Some guys came over and tried to put the bed in the house and they couldn't do it either. We got distracted playing with the children and turned back around to see they had gotten the bed in somehow. 

    This is the little bed we shared for the two nights we were there. We didn't get a lot of sleep. The bed wasn't that comfortable and the net touched us so misquotes would bite us.

    While we hung up our mosquito net a bunch of kids and two other mamas had come over. We tried to play with them. Some were afraid of us and babies screamed when they saw us. Two little kids caught another kid, covered his eyes, set him in front of us and uncovered his eyes. He shrieked and ran and we never saw him again. 

    Here they are holding up a baby who is screaming about seeing us.  I am behind the baby so at least she wasn't screaming about me.

     The women wanted us to play cards. We didn't know how to play but it didn't seem to bother them. It was really boring playing a game we didn't know how to play and it got so dark we couldn't see our cards. Then they wanted us to dance while they sang. We danced for while and tried to teach the kids a song but they didn't really get it.

 

     Then we played a game where they same a song and people danced in lines but we were bad at dancing. Then they wanted to play duck, duck, goose and tried a game like red rover but that wasn't a good idea. Then we went to a neighbors house where they had an old black and white television and we sat down for about 15 minutes watching TV we couldn't understand. We asked to go back to go to bed and they said OK. We went to latrine where there were rats. We brushed our teeth in the shower in the latrine which is just a rock you stand on (because the floor is sand) and a bucket of water.

    We went to bed but the mama called us back out because she wanted to tell us her story. It was hard because she didn't speak English or Portuguese but Makua. From what we could tell she had a husband and three children. Two of the kids died when they were little, then her husband and last child died recently. We prayed for her and she tried to ask us about our families and we went to bed.

The mom got up at 4am but we slept until 6am. The mom was sitting with some kids and we just sat with them and then had really good porridge for breakfast. Then all the people came back from the night before and wanted us to dance again and play cards again. We tried to play hand clapping games the kids taught us. We played some more duck duck goose and then sat in the shade and had a nap. 

  About an hour later when we woke up everyone had left and we got out our journals and tried to get the kids to come over but they wouldn't then Kristen got out her camera and took pictures and showed them a video on it which they loved. She tried to get them to teach her Makua and I painted their nails and the mamas nails. 

Then we had lunch and were getting bored when someone yelled acoonya-acoonya! which means whitey- whitey. We looked up and saw the other group had come to visit in this village was coming to our house. They only stayed about 10 minutes but a little later our mama took us to their house. They had a nice big courtyard with a hair salon in it and older girls that knew English. They showed us how to use Cassava root to make sheema and braided our hair. We went back to our mamas house for dinner and went to bed. 

     In the morning we ate breakfast, did laundry played with kids. 

    The other group came down the road so we packed up and headed out but we met another lady who led us all off so we ended up walking through the village not knowing where we were going. We ended up in a little church. We didn't know what was going on ; there were ladies in there singing. It was a baby dedication. They got a bucket of water and washed a baby and dressed it in new clothes. Then went outside and danced with the baby held upside down by it's leg. The baby didn't cry and no one seemed to see this as unusual. They set the mama and baby down and put capalona in front of her for people to give her things on. We gave a little money we had with us. They went out of the yard and danced in front of some men and the men also came and gave some money. And then they served huge buckets of white thick liquid and we were worried it had alcohol in it but they gave it to the children so we knew it was not alcohol. It was sour and we didn't like it but they loved it and all guzzled it down and filled bottles to take home with them. They had more music and dancing, then moms walked us back to the base.