Think Thank Thunk

The glory of God is man fully alive.                 St. Irenaeus

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Location: Aztec, New Mexico, United States

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Tonga Crew




These are the guys we worked with to build the service buildings for their community.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Very Sad! Pray for Zimbabwe

People in the countryside can barely feed themselves as crops fail for the sixth successive year.

By Obert Gadzi in Kwekwe (AR No.57, 21-Mar-06)

The food situation in rural areas of the county is so dire that people are clamoring for something to eat and schools are appealing for help for hungry children, according to leading aid agencies.

The warnings of mass hunger come as members of the governing elite who’ve taken over commercial farms are reprimanded for using their land as “weekend picnic venues”.

Southern Africa's food security warning organization, FSEWS, said Zimbabwe will bring in from the fields only 600,000 tonnes of maize, ordinary people's staple food, during the impending harvest season against the average annual consumption of 1.8 million tonnes.

Steady, soaking rains have robbed Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe of drought as his standard excuse for nose-diving agricultural production - this being the sixth successive year of crop failure. Until six years ago, agricultural exports to the rest of the region and to the European Community were the country's leading foreign exchange earners.

FSEWS, the Food Security Early Warning System of the Southern African Development Community, said Zimbabwe will have to import 1.4 million tonnes of maize, 200,000 tonnes of wheat, 40,000 tonnes of sorghum and 6,000 tonnes of rice in coming months in order to avert widespread starvation-related deaths.

The minimum cost of such imports for a country that is fundamentally broke - suffering from an official inflation of 800 per cent and only limited foreign exchange reserves - will be at least 350 million US dollars for the maize alone.

In February, the Zimbabwe government struggled to raise 9 million US dollars to pay the International Monetary Fund and thus avoid becoming the first country since Czechoslovakia 52 years ago to be expelled from the world's most important lending institution. The country must find another 120 million US dollars to service IMF payment arrears in the next few months.

Zimbabwe now has the dubious distinction of having what the United Nations has called the fastest-shrinking economy, the highest inflation and the weakest currency in the world - coupled with systematic human rights abuses and the collapse of the rule of law.

"The food situation is grave," said Barbara Shenstone, CARE International's country director in Zimbabwe. "There just isn't food in the rural areas. People are clamoring for food everywhere. Schools are asking for help for hungry children. Most of the vulnerable are eating less than one meal a day."

Zvikomborero, a 33-year-old firewood vendor whose home in the Harare suburb of Mbare was destroyed last year in Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Filth), presented as an urban renewal scheme, said, "My children are now eating out of a garbage dump. We are washing potato skins and eating them. We are starving. You can say we are dead."

Mugabe's ZANU PF government's notorious Fast Track Land Reform Programme, which when it began in 2000 involved the mass invasion of commercial farms by so-called veterans of the 1970s liberation war and landless peasants, marked also the beginning of the agricultural industry's collapse.

After more than 4,000 commercial farmers were driven from their properties, the initial invaders were themselves pushed from the farms, which were redistributed to members of President Mugabe's family, government ministers, top ZANU PF party officials, senior army, air force and police officials, and compliant judges and journalists.

Few of the "new farmers" are producing crops. In a rare admission of government failure, Deputy Agriculture Minister Sylvester Nguni said they lacked the skills to produce on what he called a "commercial or even subsistence level".

The lack of foreign exchange means there are also drastic scarcities of vital seeds, fertilizer, herbicides and chemicals. There are also fuel shortages and frequent electricity power cuts. A dire situation is made worse by the fact that banks are unwilling to make loans to the new farmers because they have no title deeds to the usurped land.

They rarely have any other collateral to repay loans. Neither do they have the capacity to repay loans nor, in the culture of lawlessness promoted by Mugabe, do they have the will to do so.

Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono criticised new farmers from among the governing elite for using their land only as "weekend picnic venues". He also reprimanded some for using government agricultural loans - as opposed to commercial bank loans - to buy luxury sports utility vehicles for private use and profiteering, by selling subsidised petrol available to them at black market prices.

Consequently, the once flourishing commercial farms are now dismal sights, overgrown with weeds and bush. Where planting has taken place - currently on only about an estimated ten per cent of this farmland - the crops are miserably stunted.

No one bothers to supervise what is happening because the agricultural support infrastructure is collapsing, and, at government level, factions are either too busy fighting each other over who gets the next farm or politicising the whole issue.

The mechanics of food distribution in the country have also contributed to hunger among an estimated five to 6.5 million people of the 11.5 million population. Fuel shortages, now a permanent feature of Zimbabwe's problems, have hampered the delivery of food to needy areas.

When fuel is available, the ZANU PF government politicises food distribution. Areas perceived to be strongholds of the opposition are denied access to food aid as political punishment. Food is thus used as both the carrot and the stick, leaving millions hungry and prompting the outspoken Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, to observe, "They [ZANU PF] would rather kill people for the sake of power. You can see what kind of people we are dealing with here, murderers. President Mugabe is a very, very evil man. The sooner the Good Lord takes him from us the better."

Dydimus Mutasa, Mugabe's right-hand man and Minister of National Security and Land, has notoriously shrugged his shoulders at Zimbabwe's high death rate from AIDS and hunger-related illnesses, saying, "We would be better off with only six million people … We don't want all these extra people."

International food aid is seemingly abused on a widespread basis. Government distribution agents, through whom international agencies are compelled to distribute supplies, tightly control to whom it is given. Local government officials, youth militias, village chiefs and other affiliates of ZANU PF tightly control donor-feeding schemes: they make sure that food goes to communities who proclaim loyalty to ZANU PF, and consequently millions of needy people go hungry. Many donor agencies have withdrawn or been pushed out as a result of these pressures.

Government officials deny the seriousness of the food situation. Both Mugabe and Mutasa constantly assert that the country has adequate food reserves. Denying that Zimbabweans needed international help, Mugabe said, "We are not hungry. Why foist this food on us? We don't want to be choked. We have enough."

Corruption by high-ranking senior government officials and politicians has worsened the food crisis. Politicians who enjoy political protection from prosecution have looted scarce supplies from the Grain Marketing Board, the sole official grain procurement and distribution agency, to sell on the black market and smuggle to neighbouring countries.

Last year, the president’s nephew Leo Mugabe, a ZANU PF parliamentary deputy, was arrested when he attempted to smuggle 30 tonnes of wheat flour out of the country. He was later freed and all charges were dropped.

Obert Gadzi is the pseudonym of an IWPR contributor in Zimbabwe.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Children are Guests?

My wife Brenda found an interesting devotional by Henri Nouwen. He makes the assertion that true hospitality can only happen in the house of a couple that loves and supports each other. He says, “When we enter a home and feel warmly welcomed, we will soon realize that the love among those who live in that home is what makes that welcome possible.” Guests will always be uncomfortable in a house where the husband and wife are sniping at each other.

He goes on to say that children are guests in their parent’s home. Children come and will inevitably (almost) go. They will feel comfortable in their parent’s home as long as they realize the parents love each other and the parent’s relationship with each other has a higher priority than the parent’s relationship with their children.

The children know that their home will stand the test of time and is one in which they can feel safe. We’ve all heard the quotes from psychologists that say that children will do well if they know their parents love and are committed to each other. Nouwen says it another way. I like Nouwen’s perspective and believe it is true.

Friday, March 10, 2006

True Faced

Our small group is going through a study called "True Faced".

At the core of True Faced is the concept that we all live in one of two 'rooms', the room of 'Good Intentions' or the room of 'Grace'.

In the room of good intentions, we do the best we can and find that is never enough, ultimately overwhelming, and we have to hide behind a mask to be accepted by others and especially by ourselves.

We enter the room of grace by the door of humility, trusting that God has provided himself and others with all we need to live. There are no prerequisites; we are accepted because of who we are in Jesus Christ. There is no ‘action plan’; God is going to work out our salvation / sanctification on his timetable with us.

It appears that in the meantime we are to simply enjoy God and life. The question I’m asking is this: What the role of leadership is in the ‘Room of Grace’ if we are to simply accept that:
• We are loved and accepted as we are because of who we are
• We are to wait on God to do his work in us in his time and by his strength
• We are to accept and love everyone else in the room on the same terms

Any thoughts?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

A Prayer for Zimbabwe

A Prayer for Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is dying Lord
The supply of medicine is limited and old
AIDS and other diseases are resistant to the drugs
The wheat is gone and there is no bread
The corn is gone and there is no corn meal mush
My brothers are hungry
My sisters weep for their children
A mother poisons hers trying to feed them
Another drowns hers in despair

Greed is killing people
Violence is eminent
Politicians are quarreling
Inflation is approaching 1000%
The government printed multiple trillions of dollars
The price of bread up 350% last week and electricity 750%
I know what I would do if I were you Lord
But Zimbabwe needs your infinitely wise solutions
Zimbabwe needs your solutions Lord