Contrasting Hearts

After two weeks, it was time to head back to Harare.  We needed to hear back from Felix with regard to his commitment.  Whatever his decision, we had to make some sort of arrangements to continue the work in Wedza and especially at Matsine.

We couldn’t catch up with Felix, so I left him a letter assuring him of our love, and trusting him to make the right decisions as to his future in ministry.  While at his apartment, we ran into Charles Wekwete who had first introduced us to Felix.  Charles informed us that his fiancee, Needmore, was leaving for a five-year program of studies in Kiev, which was still part of the USSR in 1984.  We were concerned for her since the Soviet Union was not sympathetic to Christianity or any other religious faith.  Needmore wrote us regularly during her time in Kiev.  It was difficult, but she managed to hold on to her faith in spite of the pressure.  When she returned to Zimbabwe, she had outgrown Charles and they broke up.  We saw Charles again in Houston in 1987 just after Abi was born.  He visited us again in Louisville in 1989.  Today, he has a cleaning business in Nashville.

The next morning, we drove to Marondera stopping by to see Vic and Sherrie Stockhill at their ranch before going on to Lushington, but Dave and Jen were there visiting.  Vic’s brother Ivan shared ownership of the ranch.  Ivan and Di Stockhill had offered for us to move into their ranch house as Vic and Sherrie were planning to return to Australia.  

The Terrorized Heart

Vic was emblematic of many white Rhodesians who never could reconcile with the idea of black majority rule.  I remember several Bible studies that I led in which he was quickly angered whenever the subject of “loving one another” or treating all people respectfully came up.  During one study I had made a point about believing the best of people rather than focusing on their weaknesses.  I thought Vic was going to explode.  Of all the people I met who had stayed in Zimbabwe after Rhodesia, he was the most uncomfortable with the changes after white minority rule.  

I think we sometimes have to admit that there are things that impact us so deeply that we can never get over them.  Many religions, and Christianity in particular, often insist that we forgive.  While that is a noble goal, we sometimes trivialize the severity and depth of certain events.  Vic was fluent in Shona, spending years working side-by-side with African farmhands.  He wasn’t at the university or frequenting elite intellectual circles.  He was a rancher who engaged in daily sweaty labor with rural farmhands who were very different from him.  They were from two different worlds.  Their shared experience was in wrangling cows, harvesting feed, maintaining fences and outbuildings and except for the last few years, it had been in the midst of a horrible civil conflict.  

Vic and the African workers he knew lived in a hot zone. The Rhodesian Security Forces ruled the day.  Terrorist “freedom fighters” ruled the night.  Anyone who got caught in the crossfire died.  For Vic, the issue was simple.  What was best for the Africans was benevolent white supremacy.  He used all his resources to help the families of the workers on his ranch.  But, these simple farmhands weren’t ready to “run things” just because there was a black government.  His experience showed him that it would take decades, maybe generations for farmhands to become businessmen.  His every interaction with the unreasonable and arbitrary new regime caused his frustration to mount.  And Vic, like many other Rhodesians had seen things that revealed a sinister and often violent temperament in these rural people. Appropriately, he was frightened for himself and his family.  A single election in 1980 didn’t change the character of a people overnight.  Vic was terrorized by the circumstances.  And, he just hadn’t been able to get over it.  You can’t blame him.  It was a terrifying time for whites and blacks.  Not everyone is able to adjust.  I don’t think Vic was a racist.  I think he had PTSD.  It wouldn’t be until after the Gulf War of 1991 that anyone began to talk about the stresses of war and what it does to someone.

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We thanked Ivan and Di for the offer of the house, explaining that we were going to relocate in Kariba for a while to let things settle down and so that we would not imperil the ongoing work.  We would end up staying at the Stockhill farm the following year after all.  

Dave, Jen and Norman were not “thrilled” that we were leaving.  Nevertheless, they saw the sense in our new plans.  I think Dave and Jen also knew that our presence was complicating things as fewer and fewer white farmers were finding the Zimbabwe government helpful.  The attention we were drawing was negatively impacting them, although they would never admit that.  They had dedicated their lives to the spread of the gospel in Zimbabwe at considerable personal expense and with very real physical risks.  

The Loving Heart

During the war, Lushington was a security-fenced compound.  Their two children were an hour away at a boarding school in Marondera and only home on weekends.  The dirt road for the last few miles to Lushington and the single strip of tarmac to Marondera was subject to landmines and ambushes.  [See “Farm Life in a War Zone” for a description of my first encounter with Dave at Lushington.]

Since independence, Dave’s dairy farm struggled from week to week.  Diesel, parts for farm equipment, feed and all necessary components for dairy farming were in short supply and costly.  The banks were unwilling to take risk on an industry with both health and price regulations from an increasingly arbitrary and unreasonable government. In addition, aside from the responsibility that Dave had to pay, house and subsidize the 70 people who lived and worked on his farm, Workers’ Committees strictly controlled hiring and firing.  This was not a free-enterprise zone.  Instead, the government continually pressured white farmers to leave.  Farmers like Vic were only too happy to sell out and leave.  Nevertheless, even if you could get a decent price for your farm, you couldn’t take it anything with you when leaving Zimbabwe.  You got Zimbabwe dollars that were not eligible for exchange with any other currency.  About all you could take with you was furniture and your personal car.  This as not a new situation.  It was simply the continuation of currency regulations enacted during the white Rhodesian Smith government.  Zimbabwe, like Rhodesia before it, had very limited foreign exchange reserves.

But financial considerations didn’t impact Dave and Jen’s plans.  They had moved themselves from a prosperous life in South Africa to that farm in the mid-70s to be servants of the Lord.  Their motivation was to spread the gospel.  Just because the government had changed from white to black and the economy from free to managed, their mission and vision had not changed.

Jen on "our corner in Chicago - 2012

I often disagreed with Dave questioning his reasoning and judgement.  We had some heated discussions from time to time, both of us being strong willed.  The one thing you could never question was Dave’s heart.  Dave and Jen were the most loving, kind-hearted, giving people I have ever met. They sacrificed the entire livelihood, relationship with their children, grandchildren, siblings and parents to stay on that farm in Zimbabwe until the very end.  They took in dozens of strays such as Pegi and me, provided for preachers like Norman, built churches brick by brick with their own hands and always stuck a few hundred dollars in an envelope whenever someone left the farm.

I don’t think many have ever recognized what they did, nor has anyone publicly thanked them for their sacrifice.  Today, they are living with their daughter’s family in Australia, having been forced off the farm and out of Zimbabwe by an unforgiving bureaucracy and a devastated economy.  Both in their 70s, Jen still works two jobs as Dave’s health has declined.  Jen visited us in Chicago this last year.  Same Jen--still full of love.  She is now back in Australia with Dave.  Hopefully someone there will read this chapter and give them both a hug for Pegi and me.

  

Next:  Too Much Mutton!