Dear Friends,

It's a hot muggy evening and work still remains. Tomorrow a USAID team is bringing the deputy director for Africa to Vanga and Lusekele. They want to show the results of USAID funding in Congo. The Vanga area has the distinction of hosting projects in three sectors: health, education and agriculture/economic development. Apparently it seemed like an ideal place to get a global picture of programs in one very small area.

Our palm project started with some USAID funds. The manioc program was subsidized by USAID for four years. I think Lusekele gave extraordinary value for the amount of money spent. The palm project was launched with about $10,000 for seeds and 2 motorcycles and a few thousand dollars more from churches in North America. After five years, over 700 families have a total of about 500 acres of small oil palm plantations. The first palms are already producing some oil. Farmers will begin paying back loans starting later this year, freeing up capital for reinvestment. The program will continue.

The manioc program started with 5,500 meters of cuttings from disease-resistant manioc. In 5 years the program has distributed nearly a million meters of cuttings, on the books. Plus some of the cuttings produced we distributed and multiplied again by farmers not directly part of the program. About 8,800 farm families have benefited directly from the project all for approximately $20,000 - $30,000, a third of which paid farmers for cuttings. Less than four dollars per family over four years introducing a change that could increase family manioc production 2 times over.

Earlier in the week, Philo, Philippe and I went north to Mikwi to talk with the people who have taken over one of the major colonial-era palm oil operations.
Of course the two plantations (2500 acres altogether) produce only a trickle of palm oil from 50-year-old trees. But the Domaine Bakali people are talking about replacing the old palms with new hybrid palms and refurbishing the oil extraction factory. We wanted to hear their ideas on how the palm oil sector in the central Kwilu region should develop. A second major question is how small industrial-scale operations like theirs and small-scale farmers can work together for the benefit of both. And finally I wanted to see what the chances are of promoting together region-wide investment in re-establishing oil palm production based with a balance of small-scale producers and commercial producers. It turns out that the Domaine Bakali people are very interested.

They can benefit from our experience with imported oil palms during the last five years and together we may be able to work toward extraction operations that assure the highest quality oil possible from even small plantations. Right now we're dreaming -- perhaps 5,000 acres of rehabilitated palm plantations and a further 2,500 acres of small-holder plantations.

Two weeks ago, Lusekele participated in a farmers' fair. It was a hastily organized affair by a marketing project, but it gave the staff a chance to display Lusekele's successes. The big hit was the whole manioc plant with five or six giant tubers. At the end of the fair, one of the chiefs couldn't resist breaking off all the cuttings and making off with them so that his wife could plant them in her fields. Lusekele had a beautiful display of palm nuts, oil, cowpea and peanut seed, pineapples, oranges, jam and a half-dozen food dishes with various forms of luku made from light flour from the new manioc "chips".

Next week Timothe and I will be in Kinshasa to think about the near future with our Presbyterian supporters (a fortuitous link that I will have to explain
sometime.) This past year in particular their contribution to Lusekele's program has been a key factor in continuing to improve the manioc and palm programs. Next Wednesday and Thursday we will explore together if the directions God is leading us to pursue coincide or not. If they do, how can we be most effective and efficient in pursuing them?

So tomorrow Lusekele will thank the US government for help over the past 5 years. But it will also be an opportunity to share our Christian vision of a transformed world where hunger is banished, sufficiency and security are the norm, and a deep concern for God's creation is natural outcome of obedience to the Creator Himself. While aid money has been useful over the years, the real gains in Lusekele's work have been won by the sacrificial effort of my colleagues here and the continued dedication of Christian partners like you.

Our e-mail service is down as I write this. (In fact you will only get this once MAF gets the system going again.) So I haven't heard if Miriam and Rose made it back to Kin after their trip to the Bateke Plateau nor how it went if they did get back. They still have another training trip set for Bas-Congo, may even be there now, before settling in Kinshasa around March 11 or 12th. Miriam and I plan to fly back to Vanga on March 13.

Even if none of us really has any power to bestow grace on another, we can intercede with God to lavish His grace on all in need. May God's grace rain on you, fill you to overflowing and through your lives bless those around you.

Ed