Coffee and A Real Life Secret Garden
While drinking my coffee early this morning, my husband forwarded me a video that his brother, T, sent to him at some point during the night. (They are eight hours ahead of us back home in Mozambique, so we often wake up to updates.) As soon as I pressed the play button, I was greeted with the familiar dazzling and sunny landscape of our village in Manhangane (pronounced “mawn-yawn-gone-ee”).
This video was an especially welcome escape this morning from the dreary and cold weather that met my gaze as I peeked out the window in our living room here in the southeastern part of the U.S. While we are currently transitioning from fall to winter, complete with colder weather and shorter days, on the other side of the world our family and friends are experiencing a balmy tropical paradise in the midst of their summertime. (But to be fair, even their “winter time” is still a tropical paradise.)
In the footage, my brother-in-law swept the camera of his phone across the terrain, capturing the raw essence of the landscape in each deliberate scan of our land. What had previously been an impassable tangle of brush and thick undergrowth suddenly revealed a lovely sanctuary from the harsh Mozambican sun and elements.
Just five months ago, with machetes in hand and a toddler strapped to my back, we had struggled to survey the land by foot due to the unforgiving thistles and briars that seemed to snatch at our clothes and flesh with every step.
In sharp contrast to that memory, the images that I viewed on my phone this morning were reminiscent of a secret garden that I had once read about as a child. I smiled as I watched the video and listened to T’s narration as he now joyfully presented us with a land that had been gently and carefully cultivated into our own little piece of Heaven.
As I watched my brother-in-law point out the fruit trees that they had discovered once the land had been cleared, especially the large mango tree ripe with the heavy fruit, I couldn’t help but think that I was looking at our very own Promised Land.
Our Current Home
To provide some context to those who may just now be joining in on our journey, my husband and I are currently living between our home here in my homeland of Kentucky and his homeland of Mozambique. Our vision is to eventually have a home and ministry in Mozambique, while also maintaining our home here in the U.S. where my family resides.
We were able to procure a small piece of land during our visit back home to Manhangane this past summer, thanks to the Lord giving us favor and working behind the scenes on our behalf. Our prayer is to build a home for us there in the village before we return next summer.
People (both here in the U.S. and in Mozambique) are often surprised to discover that our current home in the village is a house built in the traditional fashion out of local materials, such as strong branches, clay, cement, rocks, bricks, etc. My mother-in-law built the majority of the house by herself with her own two hands while we were here in the U.S.
Typically an enduring and reliable abode, these types of homes have been used for generations in southeastern Mozambique to effectively protect the people from the weather and elements. However, our village saw an exceptionally high amount of rainfall during the rainy season, and our home, unfortunately, could not withstand the torrential rains back in the spring.
Right before we arrived this past June, my mother-in-law said she had to rebuild a portion of our home that had partially collapsed due to the heavy rains. Obviously, we do not want our family to have the burden of rebuilding our home each time the weather changes, so we knew we had to do something differently.
People (only Americans this time) are also typically interested to learn that our current home in the village does not have running water or electricity. While we recognize that these are inessential conveniences in the big scheme of things, you need to understand that my husband and I are not the only ones in this narrative. We also have a two-year-old son (and prayerfully more children in the future) that we must consider when making decisions about our lifestyle.
Our son went on his first intercontinental journey with us this past June. While he was definitely living his best life the majority of the time simply being outside playing with his cousins, there were some instances where modern amenities would have been extremely helpful as he transitioned into his new environment.
In the beginning, he had a difficult time adjusting to the fact that we were not going to be “going home” to our house in Kentucky each night, which resulted in many a meltdown and tears (…for him, too). I love our life there and how different it is from what we live like here in the U.S., but quickly realized this summer that something as simple as a bathtub would have helped to provide a small, but familiar, comfort of home that he was used to. Or when he and I contracted cholera, it would have been nice to have an indoor bathroom nearby instead of having to run (or crawl - and I’m talking about myself here) back and forth to the outdoor toilet.
Having grown up without any of these modern conveniences for the vast majority of his life, my husband is keenly aware that all of these items are luxuries. However, in order to keep things as “normal” and familiar as possible for our son as we travel back and forth between the two continents, we decided that electricity and indoor plumbing would be a necessity for our particular family moving forward.
And before you decide that these things are surely just the demands of a spoiled American, you should know that my Mozambican husband had become well-accustomed to these amenities while living in the city a few years before he met me, haha.
In no way am I simply trying to re-create or transplant our American lifestyle in another land where the culture is so rich with its own traditions and style of living. Simply put, my husband and I decided a long time that ago that we wanted to create our own flavor of life by blending our two cultures wherever we may find ourselves. If that means finding a way to install some solar powered air conditioning in the middle of the African bush, then so be it.
It Truly Takes A Village
Unable to organize all of the details of the land in the midst of everything else we had to accomplish during our short three week visit this past June, it was only after we had returned to the U.S. that we were finally able to contract my brother-in-law T, along with other family members and local villagers, to clean off the land.
Faced with a daunting task even in the best of situations, those whom we had hired to carry out the job were met with another layer of difficulty due to the fact that they were equipped with only basic landscaping tools such as machetes, shovels, and a wheelbarrow.
No bulldozers, tractors, trucks, or large equipment aided in the formidable undertaking, simply because there are none readily available in our remote area. However, this is simply a part of the lifestyle in our area, so they were not nearly as concerned about it as we were back here in the U.S.
Because we are trying to establish a life here in the U.S. and in Mozambique on our meager salaries, we knew there was no way that we could afford to pay a professional landscaping company from Maputo to come out to our village and help.
And even if we could have paid - which short of a miracle, we simply could not - there was no feasible way for us to coordinate the level of organization and communication it would take to convince someone to bring their precious equipment and travel the treacherous dirt road along the 4+ hour journey from the city to our village.
Thankfully, true community is still held in the highest regard in Manhangane. On top of that, there is a scarcity of job opportunities in our village, so there was no shortage of people who were willing to join in the endeavor.
I was amazed at how quickly and efficiently they were able to clear out the land. I apologize that the only photos I currently have of the “after” are pretty blurry, but I wanted to give you a glimpse below of the work they did.
Next Steps
Now that the land has been mostly cleared, the next immediate step is to finalize the agreement with the local leader of our village, which involves getting paperwork signed. There is no local library or business with any kind of technology in our village, so we are currently trying to navigate how to get the paperwork completed with only cell phones as a means to scan, print, sign, and resend the documentation.
After that, we will have to begin searching for builders to construct a home, which will be constructed from cinder blocks, for us complete with indoor plumbing and solar electricity. While our family there in the village is eager to help and has gone out of their way to assist us in any way possible, organizing even the simplest of feats from 9,000 miles away is not easy, let alone something of this magnitude and permanence.
An eight hour time difference combined with trying to describe our vision to others with just words over the phone, often leads to miscommunications and stressful situations for all parties involved. Add to that the challenge of trying to navigate traditional cultural expectations of land negotiations with nothing more than a verbal agreement and handshake in the moment has definitely led to angst…well, at least for this individual raised in the Western-hemisphere.
In full transparency, the control freak within me is having to actively die to self each day. I recently came to the realization that at some point I had foolishly, albeit subconsciously, convinced myself that a signed document concerning the purchase of our land would provide more security than simply placing my faith in receiving the favor and protection of the very God who created this land so many thousands of years ago. When viewed from that perspective, it all seems kind of silly, doesn’t it?
This particular step in our journey, like so many other steps along the way, is an object lesson in what it means to actively practice my faith and trust in Papa God. And I must admit that I am still learning how to gracefully do this with the help of Jesus Christ.
In closing, we want to give God all of the honor and glory for all that He has done so far! We serve a mighty God and we know that we are called to dream big in order that we may fully rely on Him. As our pastor recently reminded us, if we could do it all on our own, then there would be no need for God.
We are overwhelmed that the Lord looked beyond our many shortcomings and failures to entrust us with this mission, and we humbly accept the journey that He is taking us on while holding tightly to His hand the whole way. We invite you to please pray with us over these next steps and that God’s perfect will would be done in all things.
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I pray that the Lord blesses your greatly and that you always look to Him as your personal guide as we all continue to travel between two worlds. 🤎