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Glimmers of Hope: Memoir of a VSO in Zambia by Mark Burke

May9

Glimmer is right. Mr. Burke, who served as a math teacher in a rural Zambian school for boys from 2004 to 2006, under the auspices of the VSO (a British something like the American Peace Corps?), left Zambia disillusioned and rather disgusted with the “wastefulness and inefficiencies” that were “trapping Zambia in self-fulfilling, perpetual stagnation.”

“I had been sceptical of religion beforehand and my experiences in Africa had cemented my poor opinion of Christianity in particular. Christianity was paraded endlessly in Zambia, but I often reflected that I never really met anyone there who I would consider genuinely Christian, most especially those in the employ of the church.”

Perhaps Mr. Burke is right, and all Zambian Christians are hypocrites and materialistic, selfish beggars. Or perhaps he found what he expected to find in the Christians of Zambia.

“In the context of Zambia I came to see Christianity not just as harmless nonsense but as positively dangerous. It encouraged irrational thinking and opposed the development of Reason. I had always had this view of religion, but now saw it brutally in action in a poverty-stricken country.”

He attributes almost all aspects of Zambian behavior and culture that he does not like and finds backward and unreasonable to “a lack of critical faculties encouraged by the sheepish following of religion.” It’s the Enlightenment versus the Age of Faith, Frederick the Great versus Bach, debate all over again.

I could not escape the impression that Mr. Burke came to Zambia hostile to Christianity, and he found in Zambian culture reasons to support his hostility. I’m sure that were I to go to Zambia I would find problems within the Zambian church and in the practice of Christianity in that country, but since I am a committed Christian I would see issues and aberrations that needed to be fixed rather than an entire belief system that needed to be jettisoned in favor of a devotion to Reason and Western common sense.

If Christianity is a foundational part of Zambian culture at this point in history, wouldn’t it make sense for even secular aid workers and others who want to help Zambians pull themselves out of poverty and stagnation and ignorance to work with the prevailing culture and help them to live up to the tenets of their faith rather than criticize the people for their Christian “obsession” in the first place? Should outsiders really damn the Christian message itself for not living up to whatever secular heights of Reason the author wants the Zambian people to scale? If your preconceived attitude is that Christianity is equivalent to superstition, then you will find evidence to support that notion wherever you go. Because of my underlying, entirely reasonable, preconceptions, I find Reason itself to be an inadequate god, and I believe that persons in the helping professions need a foundation that is stronger than secularism to provide strength and purpose over the long haul.

I thought this book was informative in regard to the problems in Zambia, but short on answers and quite lacking in a genuine empathy for the Zambian people. Unfortunately, Mr. Burke comes away from his “missions” experience discouraged and dominated by compassion fatigue. He does mention some of those “glimmers of hope”, one or two aid programs that he thinks might be somewhat effective, but the main themes of the memoir consist of disillusionment and disappointment.

Elisabeth Elliot wrote a fiction book after completing her work with the Quechua people in Ecuador in which she meditates on the inability of missionaries to effect change in a culture and on the unfathomable ways of God. The book is called No Graven Image, and it should be required reading for missionaries and other Christian aid workers. In the story, Margaret Sparhawk goes to South America to work with the Quichua (just as Elliot did). While there her most basic assumptions about God and about the effectiveness of missions work are challenged. The difference between Ms. Sparhawk’s fictional experience and Mr. Burke’s real-life experience is that even though the fictional missionary finds out that God does not always “bless” the work, it is the calling and the service lived out before Him that matter.

Again, Mr. Burke has some valid questions about Christianity as it is lived out in the context of Zambian culture and to tell the truth, as it is lived out many times in the U.S. and in other places. It is true that atheists are sometimes more compassionate and more honest than those who claim to follow Jesus. But I could wish that Mr. Burke would have looked a little more carefully in Zambia and elsewhere in his life experience to acknowledge that not all Christians are hypocrites and not all of the consequences of a Christian worldview are negative.

More Books for Zambia

Apr25

Back in January, I went public with a project I called Books for Zambia, an effort to collect books to place in the library of Kazembe Orphanage in Zambia. We collected a few books and sent them back to Zambia with Amy Morrow and her family in February when they were here in Houston for a brief visit. Amy and her husband Tom are the founders and directors of Kazembe Orphanage. Thank you to those of you who contributed books to send to Zambia back in January.

Now a small group from my church is planning a trip to Kazembe for the month of July, and I would like to send more books with them.

If you would be interested in helping with this project by providing any of the books (new, or used in good condition), please email me (sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom) for more information. You can order any of the books from Amazon and have them sent to me. Or if you have one or more of the books on the wishlist in good condition or have your own source, just email me the titles of the books you would like to contribute, and I will give you my address to send them. Right now the plan is for a group from my church to go to Zambia in July and take the books that we have gathered with them.

Purchasing children’s books in Zambia is quite expensive, and the selection is limited. There are seventeen twenty-one children at the Kazembe orphanage now, ranging in age from infants to five years old. The plan is for the children to stay at the orphanage until they are grown, receive an education, and become a force for good and progress in Zambia. You can read more at this post on Amy’s blog. You would be welcome to post information about Books for Zambia or about Kazembe Orphanage on your blog or website. I can vouch for both the financial need of the orphanage and for the fiscal responsibility of the Morrows in spending your money wisely to care for these children.

More information on Kazembe Orphanage:
Kazembe Orphanage official website
Kazembe Orphanage on Facebook
Amy’s blog, Amy’s Assorted Adventures.
Videos of the orphanage at vimeo
Twitter page for Kazembe Orphanage
Please consider donating a book or two during the month of May.

The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness by Delia and Mark Owens

Jan24

Epic is right. Mark and Delia Owens first went to Africa in 1974 to study lion behavior in the Kalahari Desert. They lived in the desert for seven years and wrote a book about their experiences, Cry of the Kalahari. The couple then returned to the U.S. to complete their graduate work and then attempted to return to their work in Botswana. However, when the government of Botswana declared them persona non grata, they were forced to look for another place to carry on their vocation in wildlife management and conservation. North Luangwa National Park in Zambia and the preservation of the endangered elephant population there became their mission.

Mission, obsession, calling—all these words are somewhat inadequate to describe the dedication with which Mark Owens in particular approaches the task of protecting the elephants from poachers who are slaughtering the elephants for the meat and for the ivory trade. Mr. Owens literally endangers his own life while trying every trick, weapon, and argument in the book to stop the poachers. He flies daily (and nightly) “missions” to find the poachers. He begs and encourages and bribes the native Zambian game guards to do their jobs and arrest the poachers, without much success. He sends letters of appeal and sends radio messages to anyone he thinks might help. And all the while, the elephants are being killed at the rate of several thousand per year.

Finally, in October 1989, seventy-six nations vote to list the African elephant as an endangered species and to forbid trade in ivory and all other elephant parts. This action along with the Owens’ work in confronting poachers and educating Zambian villagers about the value of wildlife in attracting tourism dollars is instrumental in slowing to a near-halt the poaching of elephants on a large-scale basis.

Of course, after reading an entire book about the anti-poaching efferts of Delia and Mark Owens, I had to see what the couple is doing now and what the status of the elephants in North Luangwa is now. The Owens have returned to the U.S., but their conservation and education project in North Luangwa continues under the auspices of Zambian Hammer Simwinga and the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation. The Owens have most recently been working on grizzly bear conservation in North Idaho. The elephant population in North Luangwa is said to be slowly increasing.

I’m not really an animal person. While I think it is a worthwhile goal to save endangered species, such as the African elephant, it’s not a cause I feel called to give my life to. Still, I am interested in Africa, and particularly in Zambia this year, so I found the adventures of Mark and Delia Owens fascinating.