EBC Choir Conference 2009

Evangelical Bible Church Choir conference 2009. If someone came to Africa for just one week wanting a complete cultural experience and stories to tell for years, this is where you would find it. Wild! Six days of intensity, so here is an attempt at a blog entry.

Although the conference was only 6 days, the preparation began well in advance. In the midst of sheer busyness, full days, our evenings leading up to the conference where spent practicing new songs with the choir. These lasted on average 5 hours and consisted of us trying desperately to get the songs and moves into our non-Namibian heads. One of the big emphasis at practice was to perfect the “competition song“. Every year a song is written and the lyrics sent to every church in EBC and then it is up to the individual churches to come up with the tune and the choreography, and then at they compete for the title. A week before conference they decide that I should be selected to the final 16 for the competition. The whole church was overly excited about this as I would be the first “chindele” in all of EBC history to perform in the competition. Really it just meant they were sure that they were going to win because of me!

Conference: This year the conference was held in a town called Katima which is the most North East town of Namibia bordering Zambia. It is about a 6 hour drive through the Caprivi Strip, full of wild animals like Elephants, Lions, Hippos and so on (can’t believe it has become almost normal to see such amazing creatures on the side of the road). There were about a thousand people at the conference from all over Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. We all stayed right on the church property in a village close to town. There were some structures built for each group to have a changing area but sleeping (minus the few of us that brought tents) for the majority meant a blanket on the dirt ground. Toilets consisted of a little structure for people to “bathe” and to pee. Number 2 meant finding bush, but due to the recent floodings in the rainy season, bush was hard to access…

Schedule: Our first morning was a bit of a surprise as we awoke at 6 am to hear the host choir singing there hearts out in unison! Better than any alarm clock I’ve ever had, the only struggle is that no matter how good they sounded 6 o’clock always came way too quickly after singing until 2 am only few hours earlier…every day! The first session would always begin around 7 am and somehow Daryl, Nicole and myself always managed to hide in our tent until the session ended at 8! There wasn’t much sleep to be had as the speakers blasted the local language but it was better than having to face the world that early!
Breakfast was a couple pieces of bread and margarine…we had our own secret supply of apples and granola bars to help complete the meal. After breakfast it was usually our choir that “called people to the service” with singing and dancing for about 45 minutes. Next was the morning session lead by an amazing Pastor from Zambia who we grew to love and respect as the week continued. A genuine and solid believer with a heart on fire for the Lord, what a treat.
Lunch and dinner was the local porridge with some sort of meat. Our group slaughtered 2 goats during the week and that got us through most of the meals as they eat everything (some parts more edible than others)…but they proudly kept the heads on display for all to see. Under the blaring sun, you can imagine the odour at the end of the week!
Afternoons had a session and then sport. Boys played soccer as the girls cheered and played Net Ball, the first time I have played sports in a skirt (in fact it’s the first trip I have been on where I couldn’t even pack pants!). By the evening session, everyone was struggling to stay awake from sleep deprivation, until the session was over and the keyboard kicked it into gear from 9 until 2am!!!

Celebrity status: We thought it was bad in Rundu… Apparently there have not been a lot of white people attending this conference in the past so the fact that there were 3 of us was, well, exciting for them. It didn’t Nicole and I long before we began calling each other Britney and Paris. At first we were hesitating, but by the end we just had to embrace the status and have fun with it. Photos shoots with random strangers was normal after an introduction of “I need to show my mom that I was with a “chindele”!” People yelling “chindele” all day in our face is always hard to know how to react to that. The biggest source of entertainment was when it came time for Nicole and I to sing with the church. The climax was on the last night when the competition occurred (strangely it seemed no other church considered it to be as big a deal as our congregation!), and then later when for one of our last songs I lead the song on microphone in the local language. It was hit and a week later still is as anyone who sees me will break out into the song!

After the fact we feel we went through Africa boot camp. One of my lines I used a lot this past week was “I will never pretend to understand this culture!”. We laughed so much my abbs hurt, we made fools of ourselves, learned lots, strengthened relationships, had some meaningful conversations, and then at the end shed some tears as it would be the last time I would see the majority of my dear friends.

to see more pictures go to:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=78600&id=518018255&l=5c6b774f58

A Slower Pace

We have definitely experienced a completely different pace to different activities while here in Rundu. African cultures are generally “event orientated” versus “time orientated”, which means something begins when there are enough people to participate in the event and ends whenever it is felt that the event is completed. This has driven us to distraction many times, especially the idea of “rewarding the latecomers”: if someone shows up 2 hours after an event starts, there is usually a complete interruption including a full recap of what has happened so far, and no apology is ever proffered or expected. On the other hand, we have also enjoyed the sometimes slower pace of life, a chance to “smell some roses”.

Here is a short list of some things which go slower in Rundu:

1. An empty taxi: there is an expression “Rundu slow” which we have coined to refer to a taxi driving 10kms/hour on the main streets, looking for anyone to collect.
2. Line-ups (especially in government buildings): people are used to waiting in lines for hours or even days for such things as withdrawing money from the bank or paying a water bill. Sabrina has often been in a line at the Home Affairs Office for 4 hours, only to be told when she reaches the front of the line attempting to register an orphan that she is in the wrong line (even though the day before it was the correct line). And the process starts from scratch again.
3. Greetings: We have observed routine greetings which take a minute or so as acquaintances inquire about the previous nights sleep, the family, any news, their health, etc. Then, the person takes two or three steps and meets the next person to repeat the performance.
4. Church services: the average church service we have endured while here in Rundu/Kaisosi is around 4 hours, with our personal record being 7.5 hours (with no break).

The one thing that has seemed to go by extremely fast has been our year here: we are still in shock that we are coming to the end, it feels like we arrived only a couple months ago.

Blankets, Bibles, and a Feast

Our time at the OVC Project is now officially over, but we went out with a bang. This past Friday we threw a fun going-away party (for ourselves) as the project was shutting down for the May school break and we are preparing to get on the plane to leave Namibia.

In the beginning our plans were modest, but as the day got closer, things got better and better. As we kept brainstorming new ways to bless the kids, more and more ideas kept coming and God made cool provisions so it all worked out.

Originally, we decided that we had to have the right food for the farewell party. We had had such a great time at the OVC Christmas party, we decided a similar menu (chicken, rice, potatoes, soft-drinks) was a must. As we found out from previous experience, this kind of spread is a once-per-year (or less) luxury, so many, many people (even if not officially invited) show up for the food.

Then, we started getting creative. Nicole and Tricia (the AIM short-termers from Kentucky) thought it would be awesome to use some of their supporter’s funds to give some sort of english book to each of the kids: books are such a rare treasure, and almost no-one in the village has even one. The next idea was “What if we could find English children’s bibles to give to each of the kids?” A couple of phone calls to a well-connected friend in Windhoek later, and we had 200 kids bibles at our disposal for a bargain of a price.

Next, we knew that as winter was coming that very few kids have sufficient bedding, let alone mattresses or bed-frames or stuff we take for granted. The idea of purchasing a blanket for each kid with money from our supporters really excited us. Sabrina went to a local department store here called PEP, chatted with the manager and explained what we were trying to do, and asked if there was any sort of deal or assistance the store could provide. She kept being given contact numbers of more and more senior managers in the PEP chain, and after dozens of phone calls and faxed letters later, we were stunned early last week to hear that PEP had decided to donate all 180 blankets, one per kid! We were amazed and excited to see how God was using local business to also show the orphans that they are valuable.

We had requested in advance “special project” money from our supporters so as to pay for the blankets: when we found out that that money was still at our disposal, we knew we could have a lot of fun. We ended up purchasing school books, crayons and pencil crayons, pens, erasers, soap, toothpaste, and toothbrushes, as well as giving the kids some sweets that had been sent from North America.


As you can imagine (or maybe you can’t), arranging all these details takes a lot of work, so we were exhaustedly excited by the time the Friday rolled around. The day went off without a hitch. After many, many speeches of thanks (speech-making here is sacrosanct) we were able to feed the OVCs first, then the rest of the crowd (300 or more), and then we were able to individually give each of the kids their gift. We were touched by the sincere expressions of gratitude, and were glad that we could do something for these amazing kids whom we have fallen in love with.