Esther's Unexpected Visitor in the Egg Box

It was Sunday evening when Esther headed out of the house with her torch going across the Kipushya Mission station to the evening Missionary Fellowship In her spontaneous way she had felt lonely on her own. Her husband was away flying in Katanga Province of the Congo and all her children though little tots were at Missionary Boarding School at Sakeji in North West Zambia. She prayed in her heart, “Lord I need some reassuring sign that I am loved.” God showed her in an unexpected way.

Andy helps Dad building the Chicken Pen

 She suddenly decided to check the eggs in the chicken koop where there we three laying boxes built into the back of the moveable pen. When she opened the lid there were five eggs. She decided to get them when she returned home from the meeting.

After the meeting she went and got a bowl and came with her torch to collect the eggs. You always needed to carry a torch in the Congo as there were driver ants which proceeded in their millions with all the protection of their soldiers. Then there were black stinging soldier-ants which paraded in lines about 8 abreast whose sting was worse than a red-hot needle. Then there were the snakes and not very often but sometimes the big cats.

When she’d arrived at the pen she tucked her torch under her arm, lifted the lid and scooped up the eggs. Now surprisingly, there were only four. Around the box she went with her hand looking for the missing egg. Not there? So she switched on the torch and had a good look in the box. Now there was a snake in there with the egg just in its neck. It could not bite her because of the size of the egg. Esther grabbed her hand and cried out, “Oh..... thank-you Jesus!” She kept feeling her hand while being very appreciative of the expression of God’s Mercy and Love to her individually.

She quickly called David Emmet next door to come and help her. He had never killed a snake before but between them they decapitated THE SNAKE, EGG AND ALL.  Esther said they did such a good job on it it was cut to smithereens. (little pieces).

Even snakes cannot harm you when you are walking with the Lord.

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Amazing little plastic Pipe for the Blue Truck

I was taking the delegation of Pastors from East Kasai to the National Conference of the CPC (Communaute Pentecotiste du Congo). This involved travelling via the Kisapo Swamps 457 kilometres to Kamina and then down the Lubumbashi Road about 174  kilometres to the coal mining town of Luena.  Before we left I had deliberately checked my tools and spares as this truck was definitely not made for the boggy and sandy conditions of the Congolese bush. It had narrow tyres good for deliveries on bitumen roads of Europe but not Africa. It was also a petrol version. I saw a small 15cms length of clear plastic pipe and popped it into my tool box. I mused that it might come in handy. For what? I did not know.

As we travelled down towards Kamina in the ‘Blue’ truck we had several empty fuel drums as well as Pastors in the back of the three and a half ton Renault.

Pastor Ngoie Marcel had a large polyester coat which was excellent for the cold dry season nights in Katanga Province. He’d removed his coat and placed it on one of the drums up front of the rear tray. As we bounced along on the bush roads his coat had tumbled down between the front cab and the back tray right on to the exhaust system.

The next thing I knew was, the people in the back yelling and screaming to stop. They shouted that they were on fire. I pulled up quickly, raced around to where the fire was and found Ngoie’s coat on fire on the exhaust. I pulled it off and saw that it had burnt right through the fuel line. I plugged my finger over the line coming from the fuel tank and prayed that it would not explode in my face as I lay under the side of the truck. When things had had time to cool down I crawled out and then I remembered the piece of clear plastic pipe. Praise God for his Kindness!

We were kilometres from anywhere and at least two hundred kilometres from home at the Mission. Outback Congo has no garages nor even other vehicles for help. The roads are deserted for hundreds of kilometres. How would we ever have found a small piece of plastic pipe out in the outback of Africa.

There was only one solution; that small piece of pipe. When I tried, it fitted perfectly. How I praise the Lord for His kindness. I had never had a piece of plastic pipe like that in my tool box before nor since. It was a miracle, way out on the Savannah plains of the Congo. God sees our need before we even know it. He knows the details of our lives.

On the farm roads

The ‘Musungu’ Open-Air Preacher

After a difficult few days of Conference there was a huge open-air Sunday afternoon meeting where Eddie Rowlands preached in his second Congolese language Kiluba, on the the Text from Deuteronomy_30:19  “I call Heaven and earth to record today against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, so that both you and your seed may live.”

Well, Eddie told the story of his own brother who was a smoker and drinker who died early. I think it was about 49 years of age. Then he explained how He chose life in Jesus Christ and now he is well into his 70s and he has eternal life in him.

The consequences for our choices are tremendous. They are Eternal Life or Eternal (Death and separation from God Loved Ones and Friends). More than one hundred and thirty Africans ran to the front of the preacher in response to the call to commit their lives to Jesus Christ for His safe keeping.

Maybe there is someone who is reading this who needs to choose life in Jesus Christ today.Ask Him to forgive your sin and wash you clean from an evil conscience. He died for us all. He will do it!!<kenherschell@gmail.com>

The Roar of a Lion and the Jumping Monkeys.

Along the farm roads as we were homeward bound from Kamina to Kipushya again we stopped for a break and a cup of tea in the late afternoon. We intended to sleep at one of Belgian cattle farms en route.

 When we had just poured the cuppa and began to drink one of the Pastors yelled, “Get in the truck! Let’s go now. Hurry!!” I wondered what they were worried about. 

The next thing I saw was a huge black monkey bounding from tree to tree in such leaps it was intriguing to watch. They yelled that a lion was on the plains hunting and we soon started up and moved on into the night. We were not going to stop until we reached the farms that night.

God gives His Angels charge over us to protect us in all our ways. Psalms

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Andy Herschell at the Wheel.

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Under House Arrest in Central Congo

It was June 1967. The Democratic Republic of Congo aka DRC was in turmoil again. The South African and Rhodesian Mercenary Officers of the ANC, l’ Armee Nationale Congolaise, lead by Belgian Colonel Schramm, were taking over the country as the Central government had not paid them for six months. A detachment of Congolese soldiers from the Kabinda Army Barracks 125 kilometres to the west had been sent to keep their eyes on these Missionaries at Kipushya Mission.

Some years before when there had been a similar uprising a Portuguese Helicopter had landed on our Mission Strip to refuel as it was escaping to Angola far in the west. The ANC somehow had rumours that our Mission was in contact with the Mercenaries via Mission radio. So we had our HF two-way radios confiscated. It made things very isolated at Kipushya Mission 457 kilometres to our next mission at Kamina. No contact with the outside world except by BBC Short-wave.

Because the whole country was coming to a standstill, our Mission leaders decided that all families with children should be evacuated to Zambia across the border to the south of Katanga. David Womersley and Joe Robinson arrived from Katanga across the River ferry which separated Katanga from the East Kasai where we lived. They had come to check on their missionaries and to take the Rowlands family and others back with them.

However when these two white men arrived unexpectedly at the Mission late one evening the leader of the ANC detachment was not happy. Next morning he had the Two Missionary leaders along with Eddie Rowlands from Kipushya Mission go with them to the Commandant at the Kabinda Barracks. They had now some answering to do. Why had they come over from Katanga the rebel province to the south?

 David Womersley said it was the scariest day of his life as they were interrogated and threatened by the officers at Kabinda 125 km to the West of our Mission.

They arrived back late at night and the air was tense. They wanted all of us to leave with them the very next day. Joan Rhodes who had been at Kipushya for twenty years asked if she could stay to run the Hospital, Maternity and Dispensary. As a young twenty-five year old I volunteered to stay with her as I was now the Head teacher (Directeur) of the Secondary School at the Mission. Joan was like a mother to me and her experience and understanding of the Africans was renown. Finally the Mission leaders agreed on the understanding that Eddie gets the Mission Land Rover repaired as it had a broken swivel-pin housing on the left front wheel. This had cracked while carrying these marauding soldiers as they looted and stole food and animals from the local villagers.

The Mission leaders left next morning early with Heather Rowlands, and her young ones, Paul, Alison and David. It was arranged that after the truck was fixed I would take Eddie to the Kitengie Railway siding to catch the next train south to Kamina. They ran intermittently down into Katanga from the North.

So here was Joan and I on the Mission Station and we kept on with the work: Joan with the medical and me with the Secondary School.  I think that the transportation of these soldiers ceased as we no longer had the fuel and eventually as Joan was carrying soil for making adobe bricks, the back tail shaft snapped. Now we had no vehicle at all operational. This was a blessing in disguise. We eventually ran out of flour so Joan sent a workman on a bike via a shortcut 85km to Kabinda to get us flour and the mail.

Joan said to me, the young inexperienced missionary, you come and eat your meals at my house and we will share houseboys and food supplies. From July to November we just puddle along holding the fort listening to the BBC and waiting to see what would happen. It was during this time that I wrote to Esther to say that when she was accepted by the Mission CEM, to announce our engagement as the mail was very spasmodic and unreliable taking three to six months to arrive in Aussieland. Finally I found out that I was engaged to be married six weeks after it happened.

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One Night in a Forest in Central Congo

I loved driving through the night bringing supplies to Kipushya Mission in the East Kasai Province of the Democratic republic of Congo. We had a diesel Forward Control Land Rover which just purred along in the cool night air. I was returning from Kamina where our headquarters mission was situated. The first one hundred Kilometres was swampy then sandy country which gave way to thick forest as we neared Kabongo on the rail line north to Kabalo and Kongolo.

It was about 11pm and I need to go into the bush to relieve myself. So I stopped the truck. Left the lights on and climbed out not going very far from the vehicle. There was no one around. Or so I thought.

Just as I climbed back in and closed the door ready to start the engine there was a huge roar at the side door nearest me. It was some big cat for sure. I quickly slide the LR window shut as well as the back sliding window at the back of the cab. Wow what was that? I decided that I needed to escape out of there as soon as I could. I didn’t want this huge animal up on the back of the truck trying to get at me in the cabin.

 I hit the starter and quickly had the truck rolling again. The further I got from the Kabongo forest the more my adrenaline levels went down. I kept driving through the night and eventually arrived back at the Mission 457 kilometres later in the mid morning.

One year later my Dad and Mum were visiting us in the Congo. It was 1974. We had driven to Kamina down the ‘farm roads’ via Kisapo swamps and now Dad and I were driving back during the night up the other road via Kabongo.  We had planned to sleep out once we were tired enough, as we had our camp beds that we could use beside the Land Rover. As we neared Kabongo and the forested area I told Dad what had happened about the same time at night last year. I asked him if he wanted to stop or keep going. He said “Let's go on for a bit longer.” Wise move? We were both very tired but we pushed on north for another two hours.

I told Dad of sleeping under mosquito nets on the side of the road with Eddie Rowlands once, when on this brilliant moonlit night we could hear a group of African coming along making a huge noise. We could hear them for a long time before they eventually arrived at the truck. They came right up to our Mosquito nets and said, “Ah Basungu!” In other words only silly ‘white people’ would sleep out in the bush. Why not go into the village and be protected?

Dad and I passed through a small section of bush and then parked on the side of the road. It was about 1am. in the morning. We pulled out the safari camp beds from the back and set them up close to the vehicle. We made ourselves comfortable in our sleeping bags and then tried to sleep. We still had more than three hundred kilometres to go to reach home.

After one hour I quietly said,” Dad, are you still awake?” He said, “Yes”. I must have scared him to much with my stories. He was listening for every crack of a twig.

Next thing I knew was that He was snoring. About 4 am a huge eight ton Toyota Truck fully loaded with produce and people went by within three metres of Dad’s head and he didn’t even hear it.

Next morning He said to me, “I have all the goodies for a really good meal at lunch time. Find a good spot and we will light a fire and have a feed of fillet steak, onions and tomatoes etc. There was no convenient picnic area when it was dinner time so we just stopped on the side of the rough road out on the savannah grass plains. Dad made a fire with whatever we could find. I said to Dad we can’t just fiddle around as we needed to cross the Mani Ferry over the large Lomami River by sundown. As you guessed it we didn’t reach the ferry on time so we slept the second night with the Bush animals on the Bank of the Lomami River. Maybe with the Hippos or Crocs or Moma [huge grassland pythons 10-20 feet long] this time.

Next morning we made it home and slept the sleep of the just that night in our own home at Kipushya Mission.

A mission Plane Lost in Bad Weather Central Congo

Bush Pilot Lost In Central Congo

I had been flying to the North East of our Mission to Kasongo over the large Lualaba [or Congo] River. I had asked Andrew Ramsey with a UK PPL if he would like to fly from the right hand seat on our return from Kasongo. About half an hour into the one and a half hour flight a radio message came from Ed Psalm that the Methodist pilot was lost trying to fly from Kananga to Bukavu in very bad weather. He was to the north of us and had been trying to penetrate a huge Equatorial  storm system.

I said that I would land at Lubao and wait till he came into range as he was equipped with a direction finder that worked of the VHF Frequency transmission of the approaching aircraft  .

Andrew was hesitant to try to land our Cessna 206 9Q-CPA in a crosswind on an unfamiliar strip so I did from the right hand seat. The approach to landing was between the government buildings of Lubao so I did a combination crab/sideslip approach. We arrived but the final stall was a little high.

Mission Cessna 206 9Q-CPA

After about ten minutes I called to see if the other Aircraft was in range as the VHF transmissions work on line of sight, i.e. directly from transmitter to receiver. He soon picked up my call and got his bearing from there and recognised that he was about twenty minutes to the north of me. Dennis was in completely unfamiliar territory and when I suggested he fly directly into Kipushya Mission he declined saying that from this direction and late in the afternoon he would not find it. He said he would make contact then follow me in.

We took-off from Lubao when he was nearly five minutes away and then waited till he had us in sight before heading home. It was just a 45 minute flight. They stayed the night with his four Peace Corp Passengers. They were not happy as they had wished to get to see their friends for Christmas.

The Methodist pilot had used up a lot of his fuel trying to penetrate the very heavy rain. It was so heavy that it had stripped the paint from the propeller and also along the leading edge of the wings and struts of the Cessna. he would go into the heavy rain and then have to back out as it was so heavy.They were lucky to be alive.

They borrowed some fuel from us then headed back to Kananga to refuel and try again another day. They did finally reach Bukavu even if they were late. Never be in such a hurry that you actually risk your life. This is especially true in Central Africa where mostly things don’t go exactly to plan.

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Two Nights of Horrors.

It was my first year in the Congo, 1967. The dry season had just begun and as a young single I was asked to accompany an older Missionary the 457kms to the next mission. It was planned that they do repairs on this ageing Land Rover. The tyres and inner tubes were perishing and the isolated mission needed a fit and serviceable vehicle.

We left Kipushya Mission in the early morning before crossing the large Lomami River on the pontoon ferry made from four dugout canoes. We were making good progress for the first one hundred Kilometres. Then the woes began.

 We had eleven punctures in the next fifty Kilometres. Trying to take off Land Rover tyres of the  rims with only a sledge-hammer and tyre - levers takes quite some effort for anyone who has tried it. Finally at mid-night this fit young Aussie was cactus. I said to my senior missionary, I’m going to take rest in the back of the LR. I was soon sound asleep. Then I suddenly woke at 4am to hear this 60+year old missionary still belting tyres and thought that I must be a weakling or something. There was no way that I was going out there in the moonlight to try to repair these dud tyres.  They could wait until after daylight. I was still recovering from the previous day.

 Luckily, Eddie Rowland was bringing another vehicle the next day which was newer and in better condition. They were following to make sure that we got through.

Crossing the Lomami River on the 4 dugout canoes

They caught up with us still belting and pumping up tyres with a hand pump at about 10 am. We had cover about 150 kms but had not yet reached the Railway line at Kitengie.

So after getting at least four tyres road worthy we decided to try to get the ‘limping wonder’ to the Railway at Kitengie then to go on in the other Forward Control. The tyres held up in the cool morning and we left the vehicle in the hands of a Christian Commercant [Trader].

The second day we travel through to Kamina. It was still another three hundred Kilometres to go. I remember as if it was a blurr sitting on the corrugated floor of the Land rover ,no seat, bouncing along rather glad we were moving and not just sitting there trying to repair punctures.

We finally reached Kamina Ville at 8pm. They had been waiting for us. We were filthy and covered with dust; tired after two days on the road. What a beautiful meal was prepared by Mrs Womersley Snr. We even had serviettes and place mats. What a contrast to two days with our sandwiches on the road. We still hadn’t had a bath so we ate as we were.

AS we sat at this beautifully arranged meal table, suddenly the elder missionary who had worked all night the night before, went straight back over the back of his chair with a seizure. Joan, the mission nurse, yelled for someone to run quickly and get the local Belgian Doctor. He arrived post-haste and gave him an injection. Eddie returned all the way to Kipushya the next day and then returned again to Kamina with his wife. They went to Harare Zimbabwe to have medical checks where it was found that He had very high blood pressure which had caused the seizure.

Lessons from the road Kipushya Mission to Kamina Ville 457kms.

1.    When you are tired it means you should, ‘take a break’, especially after 60 years of age.

2.    Don’t let the vehicle you are responsible for, deteriorate mechanically even with the tyres or something could happen really fast.

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More Adventures with God in Outback Africa 2

The Cat Attack in our Bedroom at 3am.

It was at Kipushya Mission,  Kasai Orientale, D.R. Congo about 1976.  Esther and I were sound asleep in our huge room like mosquito net. The cat had a hole in the side door where it could go out and in when it liked. Our long haired grey points male Siamese was a bit of a wuss.

Without any forewarning there was a huge cat fight right under our bed. The terrifying  noise quickly woke us from our stupor and I started to scream and try to chase them out. Remember that in the middle of the Congo we only had electricity for a couple of hours each night. Otherwise we had candles, Aladdin Lamps and torches. So I screamed to Esther while standing up on the bed in the darkness  caught up in the huge net, with heart racing, “ GET the TORCH!” Esther bent down to pick up the torch on the floor beside the bed. You couldn’t  believe it. She knocked over the torch and the batteries all spilled out under the bed.

By this time the noise had subsided and we untangled ourselves in the darkness from the net as our pulse rate was starting to come back to normal. We eventually found all the batteries for our torch and went to see the damage to our cat. He didn’t seem to be any more the worst for the fight, but we had lost five years off our life span and were now suffering from post traumatic stress disorders.

Next morning our missionary nurse neighbour, Joan Bond, inquired, “Did you hear that poor goat suffering last night?”

Esther replied, “No, that was Ken trying to chase a cat”.

“No”, she insisted, “it was a poor goat and I went looking for it but could not find it”. Sometimes they had fallen down the open pit toilets on the hospital compound.

Esther explained but Joan just couldn’t believe what she was being told. Apparently I had made more noise than the cats and woken the neighbours nearby.

The Attacker was a big male cat which belonged to our senior missionaries across the Mission station. I warned them that if their cat EVER set foot in our house again I would be forced to take stern measures.

You guessed it. Just two weeks latter there was another battle of the males and I rushed quickly to the hole in the door and pushed a rolled - up piece of carpet in the hole to block the escape. Then I went looking for the culprit. He had attacked our cat sitting on a bag causing it to defecate all over the big bag of rice. I chased him into the bathroom and locked the door.

When the house-help, Y’Eshiba, arrived at 6am I said  in passing, “There is an animal in the bathroom  please could you get rid of it for me.” We never saw the intruder again. Africans like fresh meat.

Twenty year later while saying in the senior missionary’s home in the UK I confessed. Nothing was ever said and thus endeth the lesson about allowing strange cats into your house at night.

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It nearly blew his head off.

It nearly blew His head Off.
One day a band of men arrived at our mission hospital carrying a hunting net strung over two poles with a man lying in the makeshift stretcher. They had been carrying him for two days looking for help.
Their villages had been holding the yearly hunt in the Savannah grasslands.
Now it was dry season when the grass was about three metres tall and dry as tinder. They would start a burn about a five kilometres square and run along behind the flames on the scorched ground sometimes with sandals made from old car-tyres to protect their feet.
This man was hunting with his home made blunderbuss gun. It had a barrel made from a tie-rod of a Land rover and a locally made cocking piece and trigger system from the local blacksmith.
They packed the barrel with gunpowder then raffia, then centre metre and a half sections of old bike axes then more raffia. The fuse is a small cap made from matches which is struck by the hammer.
Well this unfortunate had the back end of the barrel explode in his face as he lined up an antelope. It had blown his jaw completely off one side of his face leaving a gaping hole followed by many flies.

As we were not equipped to deal with such a massive operation as this I was asked to transport him to the Kabinda Government Hospital. It was five hours over a bone shaking road with the patient on a foam mattress in the back of the Forward Control Land rover. We arrived about 11pm at the hospital and the night wards man said to put him on an ancient trolley. He was sleeping with all sorts of gurgling noses coming from him. They said we'll see to him in the morning. He's been two days on the road already so he'll last till morning. They didn't have any electricity anyway nor a surgeon present.
Life is very fragile in many countries and local doctors, nurses and midwives have to tackle huge medical and surgical challenges with very little help.
Thank God for the faithful who put their lives on the line and do such a wonderful job. In Memory of Tabo Joan Bond who delivered our first two children in the African outback