Last week we went into quite a bit of detail on how it is possible to build a mud and wattle hut using only local materials.  The building code, of course, was nowhere written down, nor were any inspections required before the women were allowed to plaster the walls.  Actually, there must have been some sort of building permit, because the local chiefs existed and the builder of the house was known, all before the building site was cleared.  This “permit” was recorded only in the minds of the village elders. Decisions were made as the hut was being built.  The one to live in the hut was more important than the building.

The door of the hut did require boards, nails, hinges and some kind of a latch, possibly a sliding bolt, to keep it closed.  The primary reason to be able to latch the door was to keep the owner’s animals out so they wouldn’t enter and help themselves to the food stored inside. 

Locking the door wasn’t much of a priority unless it was known that you had lots of stuff.  Marko said it was best that no one know, that we had given him some used clothes for his children; so he took the bundle home at night.  He maintained that no one should be “juu, juu, or chini, chini,” literally, up, up, or down, down.  He wanted things to be all the same, “sawa, sawa.”  Marko was one of the dorm workers and received a wage for his work, though he also planted all the gardens he could with his wife and family.

Silavano’s remark that Mbikpa couldn’t sleep well, because he was so rich, was certainly true.  Mbikpa lived in a brick house with cement floors, having solid well-fitting doors that could be locked.  He had a house at each of his business locations in Kwandruma: his hotel, his coffee factory, his wholesale store with the brothel behind it, and also at his business in Kisangani and his country farm. 

He also had a wife at each location, two in Kwandruma that I knew.  His first faithful wife still cared for Mbikpa’s small duka, went to the local CECA church and, as first wife, was still respected.  The young light skinned woman, possibly his current favorite, apparently used a skin lightening cosmetic cream that caused sunburn-like patches on her face.  I have no idea how many children he had.

He had guards who were on duty every night.  He slept behind locked doors in one of his brick houses.

He had made himself rich by his shrewd, hard work, using his fleet of vehicles including several model 2624 Mercedes Benz, 25 ton trucks.  He took advantage of the exchange rates when he accepted goods for export and delayed settling accounts on return.  Unfortunately, he also took advantage of any who gave him goods to transport and sell for them.  He would pay a little at a time and encourage them to take the overpriced goods he bought back with him, instead of waiting for money.

Imagine having the monopoly on the marketing of locally grown Arabica coffee, in the highlands of Zaire, near Kwandruma.  The coffee beans were certain to develop and needed to be processed and sold in order to help the owner feed his family.  Mbikpa supplied the bags to be filled and had workmen and trucks to come pick up the coffee.  Using some old government pricing sheets, he set the price, in Zaires, for the bags of hulled, sun dried, hand sorted, coffee beans, and recorded the quantities in his book. 

With the promise of payment on his return, since he had to sell the beans in Uganda, there was the possibility of immense profit with 25-tons to sell.  The exported coffee was sold for US dollars in Kampala.  Some of the hard currency was converted to Uganda Shillings at rates negotiated with the merchants, and the truck filled with goods to bring back to Zaire.  The demand for the hard currency in Uganda was so high that Mbikpa also had the option of buying a truck if he could find the right seller.  By delaying payment for the coffee already sold, the exchange rate also worked to his advantage increasing his profits by as much as 20% if the US dollar was taken as the reference.  Mbikpa became rich, had guards and strong doors but couldn’t sleep as peacefully as Silavano.  Mbikpa’s god was money.

Silavano lived in a thatched roof house built in much the same way as the mud and wattle hut we talked about, but his house was larger and had four exterior walls with a thatched hip roof.  He and his wife had four boys and there were a number of small rooms, with beds, around the larger furnished room where he could eat or sit and talk with his visitors.  The cook house was out back, as were the kinguku to store grain, the house for his chickens, and a place for his goats to find shelter.  Since they had no girls, his sons also helped their mother in carrying water up from the valley and doing other women’s tasks, like helping with the firewood supply.  The boys obeyed their dad and there was harmony in the home.  Silavano’s priority was to honor God, and serve Him.  Though he was employed at the Dorm, he was far from rich, but he slept well.  His door was never locked.

When Ellen and I first arrived at Rethy, Silavano was the foreman of the workmen.  Ted Crossman and Silavano were close friends, working out the daily tasks for the men after the workmen’s devotions.  Silavano read a selection from a Swahili translation of the Daily Light, shared some thoughts and the men prayed together before starting work. 

Ted loved to build, and had re-built Rethy Academy, after so much had been destroyed during the conflict following Congo’s independence in 1960.  He was the Dorm Supervisor and had a dedicated team of workmen, including masons, carpenters, painters, and general workers who made all run smoothly.  He also supervised the herd of cattle the dorm needed to provide milk and meat for the children.  His wife was the cateress and the accountant.  Together they provided a home for the grades seven through nine boarding students plus their own children.  They were the ones Ellen and I looked up to, for practical training and insight, as we learned what we needed to do, to care for our responsibilities.  We were in the intermediate dorm, with 23 grades four to six children, and I taught math and science at the Academy.

Shortly after we arrived at Rethy, with a commitment to work there as long as God desired, Ted wanted to build a family apartment for us.  It would be in the center of the big old dorm where I had grown up.  He loved the challenge of designing and building, incorporating original ideas that had never been tried.  The apartment had two bay windows, two large round pillars and a second story for which we would make room by literally jacking up the roof.  The design for the upstairs cement floor, and the beams to support the upstairs walls and roof, were designed by Ted, though Earl Dix was asked to come and check it out.  He said, “Just run her.”  And we did.

When we were building the apartment Silavano worked with a crew of four, hauling bricks from what was left of a plantation house destroyed during the Simba Rebellion.  He drove the dorm truck and helped load and unload the used bricks that were found mingled with the rubble.  He worked with the same crew to cut firewood in the dorm forest and bring it back to the dorm, to cut into short lengths with the tractor and big circular buzz saw.  He was also involved when trimming the roadside banks and cleaning out the ditches.  Silavano had learned many skills which he did willingly.  He and the workmen also butchered the animals that were cut up for the dorm meals.  He cut up every bit of the cow not used in the kitchen, including the intestines, to make exact piles for each workman to take home.  I don’t recall any expression of dissatisfaction in his decisions. 

Silavono was wise and understood the missionaries with whom he worked.  He started working for missionaries as a teenager when I was just four-years-old.  He informed me that he remembered that, even at that age, I always had my “children’s work.”  He called it “kazi ya watoto.”  He must have recalled that when my mother called me in for supper, I never came right away.  Shooting at Wagtails with my special little bow and arrow, and sneaking up, to try one more time, was more urgent than supper.  He knew that because he was first employed to help my parents in their house, when they were working at the Rethy hospital.  He may have been sent to find me.

There were several tribes among the workmen, the Lendu, the Alure, and the tribe the local people called the “Wafulajembe”.  He also learned how to interact with a variety of missionaries, missionary kids, and the children of settlers, and rich Zairois business men.  He was wise and knew his Bible well.  He was an elder in the CECA Rethy church for many years, ever dependable and faithful.

I remember the advice Silavano gave Ted Crossman on the night Ted found out that Jimmy Pinkerton was missing from the dorm.  Ellen and I were awakened by Ted’s knock on our front door.  All the kids in our dorm were asleep.  He wanted me to come with him as we went to see if we could find Jim. 

I joined him on that rather cold moon-lit night.  I didn’t know what to do, but followed him as we went to look for Silavano.  It was usually thought that the “Muzungu” was the wisest, an attitude encouraged by the Belgian settlers, but we sought Silavano’s wisdom that night in Zaire. 

We went down the road towards the dip.  The purple flowers of the Jacaranda trees on either side of the road were just a lighter shade of grey in the moonlight.  The road had sharply defined scattered shadows from the bright moon which was high in the sky by that time of night.  We cut through the cow pasture to take a short-cut to Silavano’s house which was on the left side of the road on the way to Bwa and the Dorm forest. 

The door wasn’t locked but we waited outside after knocking.  He replied almost immediately and assured us that he was coming.  He turned his flashlight off as soon as he got outside.  He and Ted talked quite a bit and I heard the word, Mungu, fairly often.  My Swahili was improving but I missed the details, though it was obvious their focus was on God.  We took the lower road and headed out towards Kwandruma.

The main road was deserted.  I think Silavano was looking for someone who would trust him and give accurate information if they had anything to share about seeing a tall child of the missionaries out on the road that night.  He would ask them in Kilendu and they might recognize his voice.  If Ted was to ask someone, in Swahili, the same question, they would probably not answer, but just ride by quickly on their bicycle.

I can’t recall how many people we found to ask about our missing boy or how long we were out there, but we were happy that all the older girls were in the dorm.  Jim knew Bangala, so could communicate with any man he met traveling by bicycle as they knew both the trade languages in addition to Alure.  The hard working Lendu were often taking their farm products, by bicycle, to distant market places to get better prices.  Since Jim was a ninth grade boy we knew he should be safe.  Why he left the dorm so late at night I never found out, maybe he just felt like taking a long walk in the moonlight.  We didn’t find him.

When we headed up the hill back to Rethy the moon was no longer directly overhead, but was still bright enough to light the road beneath the tall eucalyptus trees on either side.  At the dip, Silavano said he would take the short-cut across the field back home. 

He assured us, “We just need to let God bring him back.  He would come back.”  Jimmy did.

Silavano probably didn’t lock his door when he got home.  The man living in that humble thatched roof hut, faithfully served his God.

Mbikpa’s money-god failed him.  He died rich, from AIDS, even though the doctors in Kenya assured him that changing all his blood, for new blood, would make him better. 

Only the blood of Jesus, bled out for us, has any power to give life as we repent and follow Him, our risen Lord.