St. John’s School, Friern Barnet linked with Esperanca Berta School, Zove

This article was written for St. John’s School, to explain the picture of Zove.

Esperanca Berta School, Zove started after November 26th, 1998.  It is now twinned with St. John’s School, Friern Barnet.

In 1998 Mozambique and Angola were twinned with the Diocese of London, and Friern Barnet immediately asked for a twin parish, and were given the parish of St. George, Beira.

In November Berta Sengulane, the wife Bishop Dinis Sengulane, Bishop of Lebombo, the diocese in the south of Mozambique, was travelling with her husband and two of their four children, Teofilo, 18 and Bruno, 14, and three visitors from London, including one from Friern Barnet, Elizabeth Tucker, to a Mothers Union conference at Beira organised by the vicar, Father Isaias Andrice. 

Berta Sengulane had just led the singing of Morning Prayer in the Landrover when it overturned twice and she was thrown through the windscreen and, as the Bishop says, ‘Entered eternity.’ 

In August 1999 Bishop Dinis returned to the place of the accident, which is now called Zove, but where at the time of the accident there was open country. At a service at the place, attended by members of his and Berta’s families and many others, he said he wanted the place to be a place of hope, with a cross central to it where Berta had lain, and a health centre and a church.

In May 2000 when Bishop Dinis and Father Isaias visited Friern Barnet they brought videos of the events of August 1999, and of a visit Father Isaias had made to the place just before he came.  This shows the health centre being constructed, and the foundations and beginning of the church.  During this video can be heard the sound of children’s voices of the local children who were in a makeshift ‘school’.  Their teacher was teaching them Portuguese, the official language of the country.  They were sitting on tree trunks, but they did have some exercise books and a blackboard!

In November 2001 Bishop Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, went to open the church of St. Mary and the Esperanca Berta Health Centre. The makeshift school building by then was twice as big, and Bishop Richard laid the foundation stone of the Esperanca Berta School.  It is a building with two large classrooms, and there is an office for the Head and a store room for books and exercise books.

The children come from many miles distant, walking each way each day.

There is also a large well at Zove, in constant use by the local people who come from long distances to it.

Members of the Friern Barnet church, John, David and Frances Philpott, visited Zove in 2005, Father Paul in 2008, and in November 2008 Father Paul and Elizabeth Tucker went to Beira and Zove for the celebrations commemorating Berta for the 10th anniversary of the accident. Father Isaias had arranged a large Mothers Union Conference there, with visitors form all over Mozambique and Angola and many also from Zimbabwe.  For the Esperance Berta School, Father Paul took large posters with paintings showing the Lord’s Prayer in Portuguese, prepared by St. John’s School.  Elizabeth took them maps, given by a member of the congregation, of Mozambique and the southern part of Africa.  She also bought for them footballs, bought to support the local economy in a supermarket.  Father Isaias insisted that only one should be given to the Esperanca Berta School and kept the rest to give to other schools in his area, which do not have the building that the Esperanca Berta School has.

A huge white cross marks the place where Berta lay.  From it two arms of a Victory V go in raised paths, the right path of the V leading to the Esperanca Berta Health Centre, while the left path of the V leads to St. Mary’s church.  In the cross are large stones from the place where a few days before the accident Berta had preached about the sower, and in that place there is now a congregation, established a few months after the accident.  The cross now also holds, in cement prepared for it by Father Isaias, a tiny piece of the glass of the windscreen of the Landrover.  This had been given by Elizabeth to Bishop Dinis in 2005 when he was at the British Museum putting on display a Tree of Life made by Mozambican artists from guns handed in after the Civil war in exchange for tools given by Christian Aid.  When she arrived at Zove in 2008, Bishop Dinis held this piece of glass up and said that Elizabeth had come back to see it as she had taken it to England in her face after the accident.  Before they made their farewells on the day after the celebrations for Berta, the Bishop asked Elizabeth to put this tiny piece of glass in the cross. 

All these amazing links between Friern Barnet and Zove are commemorated in the painting of Zove, completed by Elizabeth and her sister Margaret Young in the summer of 2011, after Bishop Dinis had visited St. John’s School and talked about the need to be peacemakers.  ‘Are you for peace?’ he asked.  ‘Yes, we are’, was the reply.

All strength to the link between St. John’s School, Friern Barnet and the Esperanca Berta School, Zove.