Kidunda: A Trip to the Interior

‘Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land’
Proverb 25:25

Last week I helped out with the annual Missions Event of the Morogoro Diocese by helping to transport an evangelism team out into the farther reaches of our diocese region. Rotating annually among five districts of the Morogoro Diocese, this year’s event was held at the very remote village of Kidunda in what is called the Ngerengere District.

Our caravan included three vehicles: a small pickup and two large Toyota Landcruisers. The pickup was loaded and then heaped with various supplies and instruments for the choir. The LandCruisers were full of Tanzanian pastors, evangelists, choir members, and had luggage racks piled high with suitcases, more supplies, as well as second-hand items for distribution to the villagers.

The journey to Kidunda was a trip into the interior of rural Tanzania. With 12 passengers in my own vehicle, we set out (very slowly at times) over unmaintained roads of deep sand and even
deeper chasms. After just two hours of driving we found ourselves in a very different world. We passed people on the road (adults as well as many children) busy with their daily routine of pushing bicycles laden with jugs of water back to their villages. Many of them, we learned, pushed their heavy loads for several miles each day, over the same difficult terrain, especially during this on-setting dry season.

As we drove through the various villages along the way, the villagers looked up from their activities greeting us with enthusiastic waves. Children laughed and came running to chase after us, delighted to see visitors in their remote world.

Pulling into the village of Kidunda--our destination--just after dusk, the first thing we noticed was a striking starkness of life without electricity: without sound (except for the hushed conversation of people when you listened closely toward the houses)… and without light (making for a night sky which was absolutely brilliant—awash with the stars of the southern hemisphere). Unbeknownst to many of us, 50 kilometers outside of Kidunda we had also lost cell phone coverage which added to the sense of remoteness. (This was a first for me here in Tanzania—a country with a surprisingly expansive cell phone infrastructure)

In the morning, the official works of evangelism began according to an established protocol. It began with a visit to the village governor in order to gain his blessing for the visits to the people of his village with the message of the gospel. The governor graciously welcomed our team to give aid to his people and to proclaim the Christian message.

The next day, the team broke out into groups to visit homes with songs and prayers, and in order to invite people to worship. The culminating event was a grand worship, where the choir sang and danced, the pastors preached, and the goods we had collected from Morogoro were distributed to villagers who needed them. Festivities lasted late into the evening, when the team showed films ranging from education films about HIV/Aids as well as films depicting the Biblical story of Jesus.

During our stay we ate with our hands (which is a new skill we have acquired since coming to Tanzania) either ugali or rice with beans and cooked cabbage.
While most of the pastors and evangelists slept on mats or in the vehicles, I was invited for the first time to stay in a traditional Tanzanian mud and dung house—the home of Mzee Aron, one of the eight elders of the Church there at Kidunda. Repeatedly, the Tanzanian pastors explained to me that, “this is African evangelism,” referring to the leaving behind of the comforts of which we are accustomed in order to share our selves, our
time and most importantly our life-changing faith
with people who live in the remotest of wildernesses.

At the end of the journey we were tired—deeply tired—but it was a good tired from which I was strangely refreshed. I pray that we may all continue to seek such a “good tired” and that we might find refreshment in the lives we’ve been given.