2019

When evacuated from Zaire, we had a place to go, the ancient farmhouse in which we lived every time we came back for furloughs from Zaire. We first came to live in New York when Ellen’s brother shot himself in the foot and I got his farm job. All the work we did together as a family has made it a special home with lots of memories.

Kwanzaa was invented recently and somehow has become equated with a religious celebration of Christmas. It is far from that! Kwanza is a Swahili word for first. Siku ya Kwanza celebrations in Zaire was focused on Kaikpo, not on the birth of Jesus Christ.

The miracle of evacuating safely all the missionaries who fled from Zaire through Rethy had to be God’s doing. The small grass airstrip at Araa handled more traffic in a few hours than it ever has, in all the rest of the time since it was created. In the tiny details, that worked out so marvelously, He cared for as well, showing His love for us and our family.

The need to evacuate fleeing missionaries and their children, using the Ara airstrip, was known by God before the jealous Alure chief even decided he wanted one. God no doubt prompted the ideas on what we needed to do to be prepared. He even prepared the mud hole the rebel army under Laurent Kabila couldn’t pass through, until He stopped the rain.

The second house we lived in at Rethy was a delightful modification of the dormitory where I had lived as a child. My former dorm parent was the designer and loved building a special place for us with an upstairs. We moved two more times, to nearby apartments on Dorm Hill before we were forced to evacuate, leaving all our belongs behind.

Two very different men, Silavano and Mbikpa, had very different houses and very different values. I knew both of them, one had nothing, the other had become richer than any other man in the Rethy area. The shrewd business man amassed a vast amount of riches, yet God would call him a fool. The wise worker feared the Lord and received wisdom.

Every culture, certainly those in the part of Africa where I grew up, uses materials that are locally available to build their houses. Where even nails don’t exist a long-lasting house can be built that offers shelter from the elements, a place to live, and to raise a family. The skills are passed down to the next generation. Who taught the birds how to build a nest?

Climbing to the top of Mount Aboro was a special activity when I was a child at boarding school in the Congo. I wanted to share the same experience with the children for whom I was now responsible, as their dorm parent. The outing proved to be quite different from what I had planned, ending with a spectacular display of a mountain fire against the horizon that night.

I helped destroy a couple forests and started a forest fire while I was at Rethy, yet those were very special places to me when I was living there. Humans have an impact on the environment, sometimes considered positive, but more often seen to be destroying what can never be restored. God has given us responsibility to have dominion over what He created. He made it all green again.

For whom was the Koda hydroelectric plant built on the side of the escarpment? Is destroying a community spring in a valley marsh, in order to sink a well in the muck, a desirable service to the community? People definitely need water to live and liked it pumped up the hill to the hospital, however who needed the electricity, for what? What is built does not last unless God builds it.