Border-Hopping with the Boers

"Don't let your kids walk alone down to the river behind the house. There might be crocodiles." I laughed inwardly at how strange it was to hear such a statement. It reminded me of South Africa's incredible diversity. Cities host huge malls selling iPads and iPhones, but rural areas host rivers with crocodiles.

Boer is Afrikaans for "farmer." Many of the Dutch settlers in South Africa were farmers, and many Boers still farm around the country. With some, it's more of a hobby than their main occupation, as in the case of our friends, whose farm we recently visited for a day.

A chameleon!

Another difference between Boer and American farms is that the Afrikaners just say "farm" to mean either a "game farm" or an agricultural farm. When I picture a farm, I picture cultivated fields growing green stuff, with a barn and some cows, etc. But many farms here look like completely untouched land. That's because they are game farms, or perhaps what we would call a ranch. Our friends had a game farm.

I thought their farm was near to Louis Trichardt, the closest town to our village (a half hour away). Actually their farm bordered Zimbabwe! We drove to Musina, the border town, and then drove east for another hour, an almost 3-hour drive in total.

Grilling wors in the outdoors.

After a dinner of "boerewors" (farmer's sausage), salad, and "crisps" (chips), the two older boys got to go on a "night drive" with their dad and the farmer, while I stayed back with the littles. Afrikaners make amazing salads. You might think a salad usually has a lettuce base; but a salad here can mean any vegetable combination with some sort of dressing (and that's usually straight flavored vinegar, not some fancy concoction). In the past I would have turned my nose up at a salad with cooked peas, corn, and tiny tomatoes in a grape vinegar dressing; but I have learned that Afrikaners have a magic touch when it comes to salads. No matter how unthinkable the combination might be to you, just trust that it'll be good.

I later read the label on the vinegar bottle. It read, "Great for salads, pickling, and marinades." Unfortunately, it performed the middle description on my stomach. My stomach felt pickled all night. I finally drifted off to sleep in an air-conditioned room. (Back home "across the mountain," I'd been cuddling up under thick blankets to stave off the approaching winter cold.) Here near the border it was noticeably warmer.

The biggest millipede I've ever seen.

The following morning we ate a stout, homemade Boer breakfast and took a drive around the farm with our hosts. Their farm borders two major rivers in our province, the Nzhelele (which they confidently mispronounced with no pretensions at trying to pronounce it the African way--another humorous mark of the stereotypical Afrikaner--not so PC) and the Limpopo River, which our province is named for, and which delineates the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and between South Africa and Mozambique.

"We're going to the dam first," they informed us. I'm picturing a governmentally-built affair and was shocked to hear that they built it! We affectionately coined an acronym for this Boer spirit--ACF: Afrikaner Confidence Factor. They have such a can-do "Make-a-Plan" (a common phrase) spirit that they will often give you tidbits of dogmatic advice or information that leave your head whirling with incredulity.

So we put our own protective filter on their unscreened confidence--the ACF. If they had told me on my hypothetical farm to just build my own dam, I would have laughed it off as extraordinary overconfidence. Yeah, right! Like you could build your own dam. But I saw it with my own eyes. And my son fell in it with his own feet. *glare* We were amazed and pleased to know such resourceful, able people. And if you express amazement, they will act like it's nothing. "It took about 1,000 bags of cement," they inform us.

The homemade dam. Colin is already wearing his jacket after his trip-and-drip. He didn't fall off the dam wall, but down by the pipes.

We also visited the little "houseboat" they built themselves. They are used to swimming in that river. Although crocs can be a danger, they weren't plentiful in the Nzhelele; until some months ago a crocodile farm upstream flooded due to lots of rain this year. About 5,000 crocs just swam right out of their farm and now inhabit the rivers. The farm only recovered some hundreds of them.

Our friend took his rifle everywhere with him. He hoped to shoot a buck for meat to sell (they tell me they don't shoot the females here), as well as a large crocodile the workers had sighted several times sunning itself in front of a water pump. We didn't see any crocs, but I had trouble sleeping Tuesday night because of my imagination running away with me. Most of you know we have our own crocodile history with our teammate being attacked several years ago.

The homemade dam allows more water for their game; they had several varieties of deer--impala, nyala, kudu, eland--and giraffe. When the giraffe gets old (about 15 years old), it loses its teeth. When all the teeth are gone, it starves to death. So before that happens, the Boers, for about $1,500, give the pleasure of shooting game and having a stuffed giraffe's head on his study wall to a foreign hunter. This is the kind of elite hunting common in Europe. Americans should be thankful for their sportsmen culture and freedom to hunt, as we discovered recently when watching this documentary (free online for a limited time).

As we drove around the farm, I asked the Mrs. why her husband had mentioned the night before needing to make their presence known on the farm. She told me of two more real dangers than crocs that they regularly face.

• Poachers: the farm has many acres and little surveillance. When they tried to set up a camera to see what was happening, it was stolen. Poachers come in and kill the deer. Sometimes they find the animals tied with a wire around its neck to a tree, choked to death. Sometimes there is no sign. Animals are simply missing, decreasing in number.
• Smugglers: "Drugs?" I asked. Yes, drugs, but it's usually cigarettes, which are highly taxed here. If they can smuggle them across the border, the taxes are avoided; and they can get way more profit. Once they saw four vehicles full of men cutting across their property which they knew were either the poachers or smugglers, but they were only two people with one rifle between them, and so didn't attempt to stop them.

I knew how many Zimbabweans had fled into South Africa in the past decade because of their dictatorial, mad president who impoverished Zimbabwe, making it the third poorest country in the world at the time, and how many were in our village a few hours away. I wondered if they had seen several crossing through their land. They confirmed that there were many. Even their current workers sneaked across the border a few years ago, fording the crocodile-infested rivers with their few belongings on their heads and coming through the easily accessed fences on their farm.

"Wasn't there a border patrol?" I wondered. They chuckled. No. There were occasional police watching the borders; but they can't be everywhere, and worse than that, they are so corrupt that they let anyone go with a bribe. The border patrol is no help to the Boers with Zimbabweans crossing the farm illegally, whether poachers, smugglers, or refugees.

This we did next ourselves! We had traversed the farm, noticing game (our friend tried to hunt a few, but didn't get any good shots), huge yellow and black spiders hanging in webs across the dirt-track road, and losing my son's shirt which Seth had placed on top of the truck to dry from his earlier accidental dip in the dam, finally arriving at the Limpopo River which forms the other border to their farm. We turned onto a track that followed the border fence.

Border-hopping.

There was a small strip of "no-man's land" between South Africa's mesh wire fence and Zimbabwe's. The Limpopo was just beyond the Zimbabwean fence. At first the border fence was a decent fence with barbed wire on top; but it quickly deteriorated as we drove, until we came to a place with no fence at all. Two gates, one in each country's fence, were both open with no pretense at all at keeping anything from passing between one and the other. This is where many people border-hop without needing the proper papers. We ourselves walked right through and visited the Limpopo River.

It was deserted, but our friend told us that on the weekends it is full of people fishing and...border-hopping. It was beautiful and a little bit thrilling to be able to visit such a historic landmark without needing to go through the happiness-destroying process of having passports stamped. We skipped rocks for a bit, snapped a picture, and headed back to the farm.

Limpopo River

Don't mess with Mom!

The evidence!

On the way back to the farmhouse, Seth got the chance to shoot the rifle at an empty water bottle. He hit it several times. They asked if I wanted a turn. I'd only ever shot at a Christian camp once or twice. The rifle had scopes on the top, but it was a heavy piece of work. I accidentally touched the tip, still hot from Seth's firing. They threw another water bottle closer than Seth's had been. It took me a bit to focus through the scopes, but the scopes and cross-hairs made it easy to sight the target. I shot twice and made two holes in my bottle! They said I could be a sniper, but I demurred that if the target were moving, that would make a difference. :)

Swinging on vines.

There are several disadvantages to being a missionary kid, Seth and I discussed on the way home, but there are certain pleasing advantages as well. I was glad for the children to see normal use of a firearm, the great rivers of our area, wild game, and gain a broader international knowledge of how our world works today, with some of the interesting challenges to running a farm on the border of South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Where Thieves Break Through and Steal

Lessons from a Thief

Since being robbed three weeks ago, I have been pondering the effects of a break-in on my spiritual and emotional state. Here are some missionary musings of mine:

The Danger of Danger

Besides the obvious physical danger that danger poses, it can also tempt your spirit to worry and fear, and secondly to discouragement, the latter being perhaps more dangerous than the first. After some of the adrenaline from the first rush of fear has subsided, discouragement creeps in to trap you in the Slough of Despond.

Maybe I should mention cynicism here as well, because when a missionary is discouraged, it is easy to be cynical about the people--all the people--around him. Whatever growth may exist in the handful of believers is easy to overlook, and the culture's faults all magnified. David said in his haste, "All men are liars." And a missionary in his discouragement may make similar negative universal statements.

"These people always... never..."
"This is impossible. A church will never happen here."
"No one is trustworthy."

Of course we know these statements aren't completely true or fair; and in our meeker moments we remember to close our mouths when angry, because a man who can control his spirit is better than he who conquers cities.

So that's the lesson I learned from danger--that we must remember to submit to God who allowed it, and not to "charge God foolishly." That we must not forget all of the blessings of growth and the work God is doing in some people's hearts, just because of personal attacks.

Evangelizing Thieves

Which brings me to my next point. Some have mentioned that maybe God will use this to bring the thief (our neighbor) to the Lord. That sounds great, doesn't it? I also long to see miraculous conversions--a well-known drunk turning sober, and the like. I know God can do that!

Unfortunately in this specific case, the above encouragement on seeing this boy enter the Kingdom was our consolation several years ago when he stole from us. We did attempt to evangelize him, and he came to church for a while, and we even baptized him! (Which if you know Seth, is saying something.)

He eventually quit church, however, and is no longer a church member. So while trying not to be complete wet blankets and unbelieving in God's ability to save, we're not getting our hopes up too high, lest we battle even more discouragement over this boy.

So the lesson learned here--well, one lesson that we've learned is to be even slower to baptize children and teens until we are sure that they have committed to following Christ.

Why Africa Is Poor

I have so much to say on this subject that I will try to do the opposite and keep it short. We lost money in the valuables the thief took and to install "burglar bars" afterwards. We lost a lot of time as well.

But we are not the only ones being robbed. Several church members and neighbors have been robbed, not once, but a number of times in their lifetimes. While it may not touch us as seriously because of our savings account, think what it means to a poor person who saved for a long time to buy a personal computer and cannot replace it easily.

One reason Africa is poor is high crime rates. Obviously there is so much more interconnected than that point alone, and certainly more reasons why there is poverty, but it is devastating to people already struggling with finances to have someone take the little they have--and then not have the money to either replace it or to buy the security to prevent the next occurrence.

Treasure on Earth

We love things too much. I was reminded of that when I read The Sermon on the Mount shortly after the break-in.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Missionaries may sometimes excuse their materialism by remembering what they left behind, and thinking that it's okay to hold tight to the things they brought over with them--their consolation. But it's not. Our heart cannot be in things! Does the extent of our frustration when we have to go without a luxury or convenience communicate how much we treasured that thing?

It's almost as if I can hear Jesus saying, "Don't you get it? Those things are temporary. It's obvious that that's why you shouldn't love them! They can be stolen. They can get old and break. They will pass, so why would you set your heart on them?"

We are pilgrims looking for a city. Let's travel light and not burden ourselves, or rather, our hearts, with extra lovely treasures. Tools? Those are nice. But each in its place...with its correct priority.

In heaven, our treasures will never fade or be stolen. That is a beautiful thought to someone who's been robbed. That means that those treasures must be leagues better than the treasures here below! My "wanter" must be broken, for me to value things so highly here below that are useless toys from the Dollar Tree in comparison to the treasures that can be stored up in heaven.

The Generosity of God's People

What makes me want to fall on my knees in humility and gratitude, though, is when American Christians sympathize and give to replace our things. This has been done already. Did we love our things too much? If so, no word of judgment from them.

In the middle of our discouragement over the depravity of some people, Christians reminded us of God's grace and gave us just a glimpse again of the love and beauty that will one day be constantly present in God's eternal Kingdom. Thank you. It eliminates much fear and discouragement to know that we have friends like you.

Gratitude

Having gone through these different stages of learning from our robbery, there are so many things to be thankful for.

Our children were safe.
We were safe.
They did not take more.
We have the money to secure our house better.
We were born as Americans.

What we love most cannot be touched, and what we love next most wasn't touched.

But best of all...well, I'll simply quote Matthew Henry after he was robbed:

“Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”