PANYA BUKA
The light gentle September rain began to fall as the old pick-up trundled in to the drive way crunching on the gravel as it come to a stop to take me and a 10 year old boy to our new mountain home, 6,000 feet up on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa.
As I placed our belongings, 4 plastic bags of clothes and a word processor -into the covered truck, and asked Tom to climb into the back of the truck, I noticed the canvas showing on the back of the rear tyres. ‘Oh my goodness’, ‘is it safe to get in the car’ I thought, having newly arrived in the country, I could still recall the stringent UK driving rules, and allowing bald tyres on a vehicle was not one of them! How could this obviously un-roadworthy vehicle be allowed upon the road? This first observation was my first challenge, that things worked somewhat quite differently over here in Tanzania. Hesitantly, I sat in the front passenger seat and automatically looked for the seatbelt, there was none. As I sat next to the Pastor who had agreed to drive me and a 10 years old child plus a black south African ridged back dog up to a derelict building which was to be our new home 6,000 feet up on the foothills of Mountain Kilimanjaro Tanzania, East Africa. And for the umpteenth time wandered if I was doing the right thing. Six weeks earlier, Tom and I, had arrived in Tanzania, not knowing quite what was going to happen, but I just believed that I had to find out the truth for myself. ‘ Did God actually speak to me, and tell me to come over to Africa and take care of His orphaned children?’ Believing this was the case, I had made the decision to say ‘goodbye’ to my family, and with all my possessions sold or given away, I had boarded the airplane, I was on my way to check God out. What would happen if one actually followed the request of Jesus in the Bible, when he said in Mathew 19: v 21, ‘ Go sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.’ Was it actually possible to live without any wages coming in, no insurance cover, none of life’s little luxury, but totally dependent on God provide for all my needs or that of the many orphans l intended to help. I was now about to find out. With Tom and the 18-month South African ridged back puppy named, Sasha, who had been donated to me by a doctor from a local hospital, after he had failed to convince me that I should not be going to live in such a dangerous place especially on the mountain with a young child. He had insisted if he couldn’t change my mind not to go, then I had to take one of his dogs for protection. And now they were both seated in the rear of the truck, excitedly peering out as we moved off to live with our new neighbours on the mountain, the Chaggas.
The very slow journey on the wet roads took us through the town of Moshi and out into the Arusha road. Just before Kwasadala market we turned off onto a mud track road and started our climb up the steep mountain road. As we crawled forward, it was hard to see out the front windscreen, as the wiper on my side was not working, fortunately, the drivers side was. So I had time to contemplate what I had done. All the critical comments came flooding into my mind from my family and friends before I left. “ Are you crazy’’? “ are you out of your mind?’’ “ Don’t you know that mental hospitals are full of people who think that God has spoken to them?’’ ‘ Pick up the phone and cancel the flight’, this mad idea really takes the biscuit! And on and on the barrage of concern was expressed. But what I had previously experienced, from deep within, had made me have the courage to listen to my heart and not to the comments.
Jolted back from my reverie, I realised that my arm was feeling cold, the rain from the opened side window, had now seeped in through my coat, and I began to feel despondent. The mud mountain road appeared to becoming slippery as the crunch of gears from 2nd to 1st gear told the story of a vehicle which should be resisting in the grave yard for scrapped cars, but was now attempting this steep climb, with no tread on the rear tyre to grip the surface. Looking out of the side window I was able to take in the environment. Banana trees in abundance, with long stalks full of green bananas, an estate with hundreds of coffee trees, acres of maize waiting to be harvested all in long sentinel lines. This verdant mountain looks so lush and green, there must be plenty of water to be accessed here, supposedly from the snow and ice on mountain Kilimanjaro, quite unlike the plains which appeared dry with very little green grass, one wandered how the cows survived when you passed them by, with their bodies showing bones like coat racks. But this environment appeared to be quite different. I suddenly was aware of children shouting and screaming and instantly I moved closer to the window to see what all the noise was about. One child in a group, was holding something above his head, and swinging it around, and children were jumping up, as if to catch it. As the truck moved level I could now see what all the excitement was about, and I let out a shriek of horror. A child was swinging in his hand the biggest rat I have ever seen. Its very long tail must have been approx. 12” long; its body dimension another 6’’. Startled by my outburst, the driver looked away from his concentrated effort of driving and keeping the truck on the road, and just nodded his head and said “ Oh that’s a panya buka, a maize rat’’ and went back to his driving. They have rats as big as this one on the mountain? I knew Tanzania was famous for its National Wild Life Parks, and the discovery channel on TV was always showing the migration of the wildebeest, and tourists also came to climb this very challenging mountain, but with rats as big as a well fed cat! “Oh dear God what have I done?” Tom had now seen it, and I could hear him shouting something to me but it was inaudible, I also knew that this would be something he would be writing home to his friend about. I could just imagine the pending letter, “Wow” I have seen this gigantic-enormous-hugest-rat you ever seen, it must have been the length of twenty-six coca cola tins. I can’t wait to see how big the snakes and scorpions are! Trying to look at this incidence positively, I guess some good could come from it; at least his writing skills may improve. I settled back on the seat again trying to digest the ‘size issue of the rat, just then all engine power left the vehicle. The car had stalled and stopped. A look of grave concern came over the drivers face, as he applied the brakes. But all that the brakes did was to make the truck start to slide to the left, and we started to move backwards down the hill. Stunned, and realising what was happening I quickly opened the truck door and jumped out of the moving truck. I had to get Tom out of the back. Slipping and sliding on the mud, trying to hold the truck, whilst I looked around for some rocks to place under the tyres so the vehicle would stop. At the same time screaming to Tom to jump out of the truck, but it was all to late, gravity was having its way, and the vehicle continued moving slowly crab-like across the road to the approaching disaster which was waiting to happen as the truck would go over the edge of the road and down to the valley below. I watched helplessly as the inevitable was about to happen. I remembered snatches of Psalm 91 that Tom and I had prayed together before starting our journey to the mountain and our new life.
The prayer of protection. Psalm 9,1 verse 5
“ You should not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in the darkness, nor the destruction that comes at noonday. Verse 15] He shall call upon me, and I will answer him …… "
I watched the rear wheels of the truck going over the edge of the road. And time stood still. Then it was all over. The truck had hit some banana trees, which were screeching at the weight of the truck. I started to climb down the side of the bank, holding onto the truck to get to Tom. He quickly clambered from the truck, dragging the dog after him’ and climbed up the bank. The driver was out of the car and offered his hand to Tom to pull him up. I could now see people running up the road towards us, as I surveyed the scene of the two rear wheels, straddled over the edge, stuck in a group of banana trees, and I waited for the screeching crash of the vehicle into the valley. When it looked as if the trees would hold, men were now shouting and giving orders in this strange dialectic tongue of the Chagga language. I took hold of Tom’s hand, as he held the muddy rope with the dog at the end of it. And I stood in the middle of the road, the drizzling rain, wetting my hair, and I looked around me, and thought which way do I walk. Do I go down the mountain, catch a plane and go back home, or do I start the climb up the mountain to the center, and a new life with the many dangers that I would have to live with on a daily basis. Whilst men where pulling and pushing the vehicle back onto the road, I thanked God for His protection of Tom, and knew that in the future I would have to put my faith and trust solely on God’s ability to sort out any problem that I would have to face, and with that, we started the climb up to our new mountain home, and a new life.