Developing the ministry training center required that we move our base of operations from Wedza/Marondera back to Harare. We had been living on the hospitality of others for several years now. The Stockhill house had at least given us some privacy, but now we would give that up to find a rental property two hours away in Harare. We were spending less and less time at their farm, but left our few possessions there as we made overnight trips to Harare to work on the school and search for a rental.
The property market in Harare was extremely tight in 1985. No new suburban housing had been built in decades. The housing available due to “white flight” after independence was gobbled up by expatriate business opportunists and newly-enriched African government functionaries. The removal of restrictive housing laws meant that there was a severe housing shortage in premium areas.
We finally found a nice one-bedroom “furnished” apartment in Avondale, right across from the East German embassy and close to our favorite bakery. The Avondale bakery had the best bread in Harare. People would queue-up an hour before they opened to purchase their “French” bread loaves. There was a severe shortage of white flour. The government subsidized the cost of white and brown bread. You could get a half-loaf for 43 Z cents. But, no one really wanted the tasteless brown bread. Avondale and every other bakery in town would sell out of white bread by 9:00 am.
Our new apartment needed to be refurbished, so we would still need to commute from the farm for a month. Victor was staying in one of the spare bedrooms at the Stockhill farmhouse as he was supposed to be ministering to the farmhands and their families. We found out later that he really didn’t have effective communication skills with rural farm workers. He had grown up in Harare and had never been to the rural area before! In addition, he didn’t seem to be interested in getting his hands dirty in befriending the workers, nor was he comfortable visiting them in their residential quarters. Pegi and I enjoyed sitting around a wood fire sipping tea from metal cups and eating mealies (corn on the cob) that had been roasted by leaning them against the glowing embers. It seems that Victor spent his days by himself in his bedroom reading.
So, nothing was being accomplished on the Stockhill farm and there was another problem we noticed. Opening the door to the clothes cupboard in our bedroom upon return from three days in Harare, there was the distinct smell of woodsmoke on some of our clothes! It seems that Victor was not satisfied with his room and the hospitality provided him. He had been borrowing some of our clothes without asking!
The feeling of privacy and security that we had enjoyed for such a short time was now violated. It is strange how defiled you feel when someone has rifled through your belongings!
I asked Victor if he had maybe borrowed some of our clothes without asking and he denied it. I didn’t want to make a big deal about this, but I knew it was important for him to own up to his actions. If we couldn’t trust him to respect a few earthly possessions, how could we entrust him with the responsibility of ministering to God’s people? He continued to deny any wrongdoing. Later that day, one of the leaders among the farm workers approached me to say that they didn’t trust Victor and that they had seen him wearing my wind-breaker around the farm while we were gone.
Addressing this matter with Victor a final time, he admitted to having “borrowed” some things. Since it was time for us to pack things up in Marondera, we advised him that we would leave the next morning for Harare. He should pack up his belongings and we would give him a ride to his mother’s house.
The next morning as we were loading the car, I noticed a white bed sheet hanging out of Victor’s suitcase. We didn’t own our beds, pillows or sheets. These had been furnished along with the house by Di and Ivan. As Victor tried to quickly hide the overstuffed suitcase in the trunk of our car, it spilled open revealing four sets of bed linen that he had liberated! We had invited a thief into our home! Worse, we had introduced him as a man of God to minister to the new believers on the Stockhill farm!
The ride back to Harare was solemn. After dropping Victor, we drove to the office of our landlord to get the keys to our new apartment. On arrival we discovered that the previous tenants had overstayed their lease and had pretty much trashed the place! They had apparently decided not to pay the electric bill and had started using a kerosene cooker to prepare meals. The result was that the normally neutral white walls and ceilings were black with soot. Kerosene cookers were a common appliance in the rural areas and high-density suburbs where electricity was not always available. They were not designed for use indoors as aside from the black soot, they produced noxious fumes. In addition, the mattress on the king-sized bed needed to fumigated and the cloth-covered sofa had to be dry-cleaned! Many Zimbabweans were ill-equipped for transition from the social and technological changes that came with independence. Unsurprisingly, some of our white Zimbabwean “friends” were quick to cite such occurrences as “to be expected” of black Zimbabweans. It was therefore with some satisfaction that we watched the same “cultural” critics as they found themselves totally at a loss with the introduction of microcomputers into their lifestyles! Sure, many rural black Zimbabweans weren’t ready for modern appliances. Neither were white Zimbabweans ready for the computer age.
It was going to take another three weeks before we could move in. It hadn’t occurred to them to advise us of this by phone or mail. So, emotionally exhausted from our crisis with Victor and towing a trailer packed with all our worldly belongs, we found ourselves once again seeking the hospitality of others for a few weeks while we waited for the apartment to be renovated.
Well, at least we were back in Harare and could begun to restructure our affairs. At last we would have the missing component for our ministry—a school to train workers for the field. No longer would we have to rely on unproven and unprepared “self-appointed” ministry workers such as Victor or embittered veterans such as Morgan. We could engage and develop the young men and women that the work required. Or so we thought!
