Visit to Niassa from St Paul’s, Ealing

Rebecca Vander Meulen organised the programme for our Parish visit to the Nampula area where in five intensive days we saw the dynamic ‘Umoja’ (Umoja documents also available in Portuguese) or Church and Community Mobilisation work of the Adeptos, as they help local churches to work together with their community in addressing needs using their own resources. The impact of this work, also supported by Tearfund, in several communities and across the Nampula archdeaconry, was stunning.

The Archdeacon of Lurio, Daniel Ethuila drove our hired mini bus and the four of us (Revd Mark Melluish, Fiona Cole, Cathy Webber and I) travelled with Daniel, Rebecca, David Uaite, an assistant priest at Napipine in Nampula, and the Lurio Adeptos – Bonifacio (Murrupula), Rafael (Nampula), Muassite (Pemba), Regina (Nampula) and Florinda (Mocuba) plus David from Lichinga.  As we traversed the extraordinary landscape around Nampula (majestic inselbergs — island mountains like mini Ayers Rocks — dot the plain), we saw the huge range of the work, the distances involved and vision of the church in Lurio at a time when it is in the process of becoming a separate diocese. The decision on the multiplication process is expected in ACSA Synod in February 2013.

We spent time in Nampula, based at St John the Apostle and Evangelist at Napipine, receiving our induction from the Adeptos, twice eating lunch there, worshipping on Sunday and staying with the Churchwardens and Archdeacon Daniel. We saw the plans that the Nampula area has for the future –two plots of land –one for a Bishop’s house and Diocesan Centre and another for a new church and school in a newly expanding area of the city. We also travelled out from Nampula to much more rural areas where we saw umoja in action.

One day we visited Mecuburi, (where the church has its very own mini inselberg, as well as a carpenter priest – Fr Alberto) for breakfast, and then onto Muecate to be welcomed and led to the village centre by a team wearing and waving spotty capulanas. Under the bamboo shelter we heard from the community about their hopes and dreams and saw some lively drama. We also saw the church the Adeptos were building – a magnificent double bamboo structure which was to be infilled with stone and then plastered and roofed. After lunch some of the villagers showed us their homes and the steps they were taking to secure their livelihoods - from the building of enclosed elevated ‘warehouse’ stores , to rabbit keeping, using solar panels to run a small mobile phone charging business, cotton being grown as a cash crop and also cashew nut trees. We learnt that this unique tree has a distinctive fruit (we sampled this straight from the tree and later had the dried variety) which comes after the flower, that there is only one nut to each fruit and that these nuts are hard to open.  Please think of buying cashews from Mozambique this Christmas – Harry’s Nuts are one of the easiest ways of doing this. We also visited Rapele Church on our way home to Daniel and Adelia’s for dinner.

Our other main trip out of Nampula was to Murrupula, where David met his fellow seminarian from Ricatla, who is now Priest there. Most of the church community turned out to greet us and after breakfast with them we went onto visit two of their satellite churches. Namplia also marshalled the whole community from village chief and vice chief, to Catechist and Iman. Under the huge village tree we heard from the community about how they worked together to build their health centre to save people from having to walk 25 miles to Murrupula. Fiona, who is a practice nurse in London, was shown the medicine cabinet, the monthly medicine allocation supplied by the government, medication charts for malaria, the record books and a baby being weighed. The health post functions despite not being completely finished. Another Adeptos’ focus in Namplia is the use of fuel efficient stoves – we walked out to some people’s maschambas to see a demonstration of these. One man told us that he had previously had to go out gathering wood twice a day and since having the new stove (fashioned from clay and like a roman hypocaust) he only went out once a fortnight –‘Come unto me all who are heavy laden and I will give you (and the environment) rest’. Namaita was another vibrant community whose vivid drama, and exuberant dancing will never be forgotten! It was hard to leave Daniel, David and the Lurio Adeptos, who had not only arranged such a full programme for us but with whom we had great and wide ranging discussions as we drove. We covered holiness, servant ministry, worship, leadership and much more! 

Our final two days were in Lichinga with Bishop Mark and Helen, and also Rebecca and Peg, visiting Lichinga, Metangula, Chuanga and Messumba. This was a welcome opportunity to reflect together on our time in Nampula and to think about the future –a conversation that’s still going on.