I had a job! NCR computers confirmed that their chief personnel officer had returned from holiday and approved my immediate start as a programmer. Not only did this mean that our financial woes were over, as this job would provide a good salary and a company car, but that my residence permit was certain to be granted. After all, this had been the advice received from the Chief Immigration Officer’s daughter who had vetted me for the the NCR position.
My work would finish each day at 4:00 pm leaving weekends free to minister in the rural areas. The NCR job made Chisipite’s torturous pastor search path irrelevant. They were also considering a young local bible school graduate in some sort of ministry role with the white congregation. I wasn’t at all interested in having this young kid hanging around questioning my every move.
John B. was a somber and recently married novice in ministry. He had no practical or life experience and was what you would call a “legalist.” Legalist is a religious term applied to self-righteous, judgmental, self-appointed arbiters of all things Christian. Legalists hold to a literal interpretation of religious dogma, insisting that any deviation from their own understanding is heresy. John’s dour-faced, critical opinions voiced his disapproval at every opportunity. He did not care about the African congregation. He had the typical white Rhodesian attitude of racial superiority.
He and his sadsack wife took every opportunity to criticize Pegi and me. According to them, we were typically over-enthusiastic Americans. John, with the wisdom acquired in a six month bible school course, determined that we were American usurpers, spiritually suspect because we were “friendly” with people from Rhema. And, John would whisper, “You know they fellowship with charismatics! If Jeff is allowed to minister at Chisipite, he will bring in charismatic heresies.”
Well, he was right about one thing, we did fellowship with charismatics. We tried to befriend anyone who considered themselves followers of God. And with regard to Rhema, we loved their upbeat contemporary praise and worship. It was in the same style to which we had been drawn in Louisville and was the reason that we had become members of a “charismatic” formerly Southern Baptist church [66 — Listen to the Music and Follow It].
[Music has always had a strong impact on me. I have a special affinity for Classic Rock and play guitar in a Woodstock Era “cover” band, Rage Against Age. Just last week, Pegi bought me a poster that reads, “Music is what feelings sound like!” Praise and worship allows the worshipper to express feelings in ways that go way beyond simple words. For me, the melody is more important than the lyrics. In fact, my wife and daughter both tease me because I never ever hear the lyrics of a song. The melody and chordal arrangement always overpower the words for me.]
Colin Taylor, one of the three “deacons” responsible for governing the church, was the de facto youth pastor. On our first visit to his home, he had Pegi and me lead the youth group in some contemporary choruses that we had learned from our “charismatic” church experiences in the States. Colin, who himself played guitar and usually led the singing, liked this fresh approach over singing century-old hymns. On the following Sunday, I conducted the Sunday morning service. Pegi and I printed up sheets with the words to the choruses and led the adult congregation in praise and worship before my sermon.
It was as if someone had shined a floodlight on this tired white congregation. They sang with enthusiasm, joyfully pouring out their hearts to God. Fifteen years of bush war, a new African-led government, and the pressure of its Marxist agenda was temporarily moved aside in fifteen minutes of simple and heartfelt worship.
The only ones who did not seem to be enjoying themselves was one unhappy couple in the back, John and his wife. For the time being, they withdrew to their whispering. They would cause us as much heartburn as they could over the next six months.
Reporting to NCR for my first day of work, I spent some time with Personnel filling out the requisite employee forms. Most important was finalizing my application to Immigration for my residence permit. It was taken straight over to the Immigration Ministry for processing. After a short tour of the office, I was introduced to my desk, some co-workers and the computer system that needed my attention.
[Back in Louisville, I had written a suite of accounting and inventory software for the newly emerging IBM Personal Computer. There was very little in the way of packaged software for these “personal computers” in the early 80s, so I found a niche market creating customized software for small businesses.]
NCR had developed a personal microcomputer for bank tellers. It was programmed in BASIC using an approach very similar to the one that I had developed for the IBM PC. The person who had coded the program for the teller micros had left Zimbabwe for Great Britain soon after the transition to black majority rule. Consequently, my job was to maintain and expand the Teller PC’s functionality.
I spent my first day pouring over the instruction manual for the hardware. Tomorrow morning, I would print out the code and begin to trace out the various loops and conditional steps as well as the interface with the mainframe computer.
This first day was a very different experience for me. Not only was I in Africa, but I was working for a large corporation. I had always either run my own small business or worked in sales. I had never been a cog in corporate machinery. For me, this new job was pressure-free as I need not concern myself with sales, marketing, nor expense management. I could just come to work for eight hours each day and go home. This was easy!
We were staying at the Taylor’s home for a few weeks, and my first work day being a Wednesday, that meant another youth group meeting in the Taylor’s home after supper. Once again, we led the praise and worship, drawing even closer to the Taylor family and the young people from the congregation.
After the kids left, Colin asked if I would speak every other Sunday at Chisipite. I was only too happy to agree. He also forwarded a request from the African pastor to speak to the African Shona-speaking congregation on this coming Sunday afternoon between the morning and evening English-language services attended only by whites. And, of course, they wanted us to lead the praise and worship at all three Sunday services that week. For the African service, Felix agreed to come lead the Shona choruses that we had only just begun to learn. Felix would then be the interpreter for my message. Energized by all this good news, I got a good night’s sleep for my second day at NCR.
Thursday morning I went straight to my desk to begin my analysis of the programming of the teller microcomputer. I had not done much programming in BASIC, preferring instead to use a structured programming language. In those early days of microcomputer programming, nothing was documented. And since microcomputers had not yet found corporate acceptance, those who programmed them tended to be independent-minded and unschooled in standard protocols. Working on micros was an art rather than a science. And BASIC left everything up to the artist.
As a successor “artist,” I was totally dependent on documentation by the original programmer to unravel the mystery of his/her coding. In this situation, there was no documentation! That meant I had to unearth the meaning of every variable in every line of code. It was like trying to solve a crossword puzzle where the clue for 12-across was a nine letter word for “aspdgiuegoellke in the fernettenasabig” and no clue as to what “aspdgiuegoellke” or “fernettenasabig” were!
After a few hours of tracing out loops, I could see the basic patterns, but I was beginning to get a headache from the impossibility of the task before me. I asked my co-workers for documentation. They weren’t aware of any. I checked and rechecked the hardware manuals--no help there! I rifled through my desk and found a few notes that made even less sense than “aspdgiuegoellke in the fernettenasabig”!
Well, it was time for lunch--maybe nourishment would help me unearth the mystery. Returning from lunch, my manager asked me to stop by his office. He told me that Immigration had already replied and that they would not even consider my application unless I returned to the USA to file it! He handed me a check for two days work and told me that they had been ordered by Immigration not to continue my employment.
The sudden change of fortune surprised NCR and especially the daughter of the Immigration Chief. Apparently, he was now sharing his authority with a recently appointed member of the ruling ZANU-PF. The last thing this ZANU official wanted was to approve the application of a white foreigner. In his mind, I was stealing an opportunity from a Zimbabwean black. No matter that there was no black Zimbabwean who had the requisite training or experience to do the job--they sure didn’t want an American to get the job!
Actually, I was relieved. Even a steak at lunch had not alleviated the frustration of facing that mysterious code. I could not imagine the constant agony of trying to unravel someone else’s code for forty hours a week! I hadn’t come to Africa to be a programmer—I had come to Africa to serve the Lord. Felix was right—maybe I should actively pursue the position at Chisipite. Now, it seemed I had no choice.
I was confident that the congregation would choose me over John B. I had heard him speak on a Sunday evening--Oy, it was empty and boring. Pegi and I had led the congregation in worship, so they were primed for his message. It was, well, he didn’t really have a message. It was just a poorly crafted sermon that he had probably written for one of his bible school classes. The congregation had to be wakened from their stupor at the end. Sad, very sad indeed. They really did need us!
But what about this requirement that we return to the USA before applying for residency, even with a letter of employment?
