I fell in love with a guy whose background is very different to mine. He grew up in a large Baptist family that went to church together twice on Sundays. Both his parents each had 7 siblings. Most of his cousins lived locally and took part in or led youth groups during the week. You could say that the Church was their family center. Jan Franzon had read the Bible through and through and had also read most of what there is to read about God, the holy spirit and Jesus. But by the time he reached his teens he felt like he had been to a spiritual banquet and felt stuffed. His was far from the life of a third culture kid!
Jan met the task force that I grew up in in his twenties and fell in love with it. He felt that what he found here made it possible to put into practice all he had learnt in the Bible and at church. He met people whose lifestyle attracted him because their lives were fully engaged in putting theory into practice. They seemed to be practicing his ideals into every day. He discovered how the lofty words of the Bible, like those of the sermon on the mount where Jesus laid out the principles of how to live, could now become practical. These people distilled these truths into everyday living and strived to live absolutely honest, absolutely loving, absolutely pure and absolutely unselfish lives – every day – not just on Sundays. They also added a further dimension of Jesus’ teachings that is often forgotten. In the Bible it says that Jesus left his holy spirit to guide us. Jan discovered how this was more than reading the Bible. These people spent time listening daily for this guidance and when Jan tried it, he found new direction, purpose and joy in his life.
The spark of faith, love and joy in life were what my parents had found working with Buchman. This came alive when people grasped the vision. A life of discipline was simply a means of fulfilling the vision. But if that vision was lost the spark was lost and the direction, purpose or joy in life could become a yoke.
As a child I had been taught about those 4 guiding principles and how I too could listen for guidance. They were part of my life right from the start. They were part of that connection and love I had for Jesus too. They gave me a secure foundation that has been there all my life. But there were times when I struggled. I can remember how one of my cousins came to visit when I was 5. When he woke up in the morning he jumped out of bed and started playing. I had been taught to have a time of quiet first and although I remember how I questioned it inwardly, I didn’t question that I had to have my quiet time and pray first as I had been taught obedience. But there is a backside to this kind of discipline if it isn’t coupled with the vision and when learning how to think, not just to follow blindly.
When I first met Jan, I was amused by how he always questions the status quo as if it is his right to do so. I am a rebel heart and it was a joy for me to partner with a man who knew the importance of reviewing ‘the given’. Particularly in an organisation that frequently had a hard time in doing so. That this is even necessary in order to be able to evaluate, think, recreate or even create a new framework or structure that is my own. The person who has provided the greatest security and support in my life is my husband. It is with him that I have been free to reevaluate all I learnt growing up, to seek and discover how to become who I am purposed to be, free to think and to fully be my creative self.
You could say that Jan and I took up where my parents left off within the same organization. But this was now nearly 40 years after they were first inspired and the organization had changed significantly. It was no longer led by the initiator who was following his vision to remake the world morally and spiritually before and after World War II. They had been priviledged to experience the sculpting and training of a task force to fulfill that vision. It has since then had different leaders; lack of leaders; passed through different phases; changed its name; and spread worldwide. There have been many centers around the world, some are now longer. There is less focus on common tasks and more focus on projects. And although a lot of effort has been put into carrying the vision forward this has of course interpreted differently in different places.
The idealism and mobility of the work my parents started off in was become a lifestyle. When Buchman died a lot changed. He was followed by Peter Howard, a charismatic dynamic leader who sadly died too young. They were original thinkers and the international work changed to meet the times. Many of those who led in different capacities after that were more as followers. Conferences continued to be held, plays and musicals that transmitted the message continued to be created, The central message that if you want to change the world you need to start with yourself continued much as before. But through the years we put down roots and even though a common international focus and inspiration was maintained, the original life-changing spark was challenged. Roots provide strength but can also limit growth and movement. For many, family life became their framework and life experience. Still the spark has lived on through many generations.
I loved my varied traveling life, the friendships and connections and couldn’t conceive of marrying anyone who hadn’t been born into it. There would simply be too many hurdles to jump over or explain. Just the same, it was a release to me when I fell in love with a man who was new to this lifestyle! It was a mixed privilege to have been brought up in that ’rarified atmosphere’ so was this something I wanted for my future going forward? Was this something I wanted for our family life if we had children? I remember walking with my newly wedded husband one winter in HALMSTAD. We passed an area where all the houses were much the same. It was dark and snowy and all the houses were well-lit. In Sweden you don’t close out the dark with curtains and you could see all the families going about their evenings – enjoying a meal, watching TV – being together. The houses all looked the same but even if I personally prefer artistic originality I remember thinking: ‘I long to live somewhere like that!’ To belong to a place where I am more like all the others on the street! And yet the deepest thing in both our hearts at that time in our lives is that we wanted to be used to remake the world. That never changed.
After we married I moved to Sweden and we lived in a beautiful home which hundreds of people had clubbed together after World War II to buy as an embassy for the work of MRA in Stockholm. A wonderful place to live and bring up a family, on one of Stockholms islands, surrounded by woods and right on the water. At that time there were 26 people sharing this home and a lot of our time was taken up in taking care of the everyone who lived there. Buying the food, cooking the meals, cleaning, washing. Was this what we felt we were called to do as a couple and a family? We wanted to bring change in the world and the idea of 26 people living together and looking after eachother didn’t quite meet up to our hopes or ideals. During those years we attempted to bring about some structural changes that would have made it possible for several families to base there, but the elders living there were not ready for that kind of change and we didn’t feel that our job was to perpetuate the embassy lifestyle with over 20 others.
Both our children were born during the 3 years we lived in Stockholm. During this time we followed the civil war going on in what was then Rhodesia. We had several close friends who were now heavily involved in bringing a peaceful solution after many years of unrest. Added to that, four of Arthur’s siblings had settled in Zimbabwe and I had 60 close family members living there at the time. The time had come to start rebuilding the country that had been torn apart by war and we wanted to help. MRA had been given a farm in the middle of the country called Coolmoreen. After we expressed interest to come to Zimbabwe we were invited to bring our family and live there, help to run the farm and be part of building up this center for peace building.
Even though we had a calling to work in Zimbabwe I was afraid of taking our small children into what was still much like a war zone. At the bottom of all this was the deep-rooted fear of being out in the dark since the time in Oslo when a man tried to grab me in the dark on my way to see my grandfather. I am not a proficient Bible-reader, but one day as I struggled with our plans, I opened my Bible and the first thing I read was a verse that said something like: ”The safest place to be is where God wants you to be.” I didn’t write it down and never found it again but that sealed it for me and we started to book our journey.
They had a lack of cars at Coolmoreen and we decided to take a car with us! Over a hundred people contributed to the only new car that we ever driven. Our bright red Datsun Bluebird was shipped to Durban and we flew to Johannesburg where the children and I stayed with friends while Jan flew to Durban to pick up the car and our Zimbabwean adventure started with the long drive from Johannesburg to Zimbabwe. We were stopped by military on the way. They poked their machine guns into the car and asked us to hand over our papers at every check-point. The children were amazingly un-phased by this whole new world! This was early December 1980 and we drove past Harare and north to where my cousin David Strong farmed in the Horseshoe area north of Mvurwi. We spent our first Christmas in Zimbabwe with over 30 of my relatives on David’s tobacco farm. His family lived there in a complex of beautiful big rondavels. My aunts, many of our cousins and their families came to church and dinner on Christmas Day. It was an amazing experience to be welcomed by family, including my father’s sister Vi who had looked after me in my early years. It was hot and we ‘lived’ in their pool. Jan asked jokingly if we should change for dinner! It was no joke – we all changed for dinner!
After Christmas we took off south, visiting friends and family in Harare and then finally on to Gweru and Coolmoreen Farm which was to be our home for two years.
The farm was started by Nancy Brereton’s Irish father who had moved to Gweru as a police officer. She had recently given the farm to MRA to be used for reconciliation work and she lived in a cottage on the farm. She managed the vegetable garden with Timot who twice a week, piled his bicycle high with vegetables, fruit and eggs and delivered the orders on his way to town, where he sold the rest.
Peter and Jean Loch had come from their own farm in Kenya, to manage the farm. This involved caring for the cows, insemination, birthing calves, milking and selling milk to the milk board. They grew fields of pumpkins and white maize known in Zim as mealies. Every year the mealie stalks were cut and run through a chopping machine for days on end to be mixed with molasses in a huge silage pit, for the cows to eat the following year. One of the first things the Loch’s did was to build new housing with electricity and water for the workers and their families. When we came the next batch of houses was being built. The care of the hens, the incubators and the sale of day-old and week-old chicks was Jeans responsibility. She was a nurse and also ran a farm clinic twice daily for the workers and their famillies who lived on the farm, about 100 people altogether. The Lochs had brought their golden labradors Bodger and Simba with them.
We all ate our meals together with the Lochs and Nancy in the main house but we lived in smaller houses that lay nearby on the the farm property. The Lochs lived in a rondavel – a traditional round Zimbabwean house with a thatched roof. Nancy lived in the original farmhouse, little cottage she had grown up in. We were to live in a black painted building that had previously been the henhouse which lay between the rondavel and the main house, close to the incubator and chick house.
Our henhouse opened into a mini-kitchen with a small table, 4 chairs where we ate supper. There was also a kitchen sink where we brushed our teeth. A door opened into the larger room where there were four beds. I would lie on the floor while the children, who were 2 and 4, relaxed and fell asleep. After a week or so we were all covered in small itchy bites and one evening as I lay on the floor, I began to see lots of small insects jumping around! Fleas! The chickens’ fleas obviously ruled the roost so it was decided that we should move up to two small rooms in Nancy’s tiny cottage. We invested in pine bunk beds and after a serious debugging we moved in with Nancy and her two dogs Pooch and Rover. Nancy was an amazing original who we came to love and enjoy. It probably wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for her to take in the four of us but she never complained! She was a born gardener and taught us how to plant trees, grow bananas and pawpaws. We learnt that if you ever want to grow and eat your own pawpaw, both male and female plants are necessary. She would hold her ring on a thread above the tree to see if it was male or female which she could tell by seeing if it circled clockwise or anti-clockwise!
The Lochs had by now worked for two years without a break at Coolmoreen and two weeks after our arrival they told us that they had planned a 6-month sabatical to Britain! They were leaving the farm management to us but they suggested that they would invite Mike and Marguerite Horn to join us from South Africa to provide us with support. The Horns were retired seasoned farmed but as they didn’t arrive immediately we had to jump in at the deep end. We started by inviting ourselves to the parents of Kjersti’s classmates. Most of her classmates’ families were farmers in the area and we chose which type of farm to visit depending on the problems we were facing on ’our’ farm!
When you have children in Zimbabwe the eldest child’s name is prefaced by Mai or Ba. The ladies who worked in the home were MaiJudith and MaiPhebbe. It was wonderful how quickly all the workers on the farm accepted BaKjersti and MaiKjersti as their managers.
An insemination program had been introduced at Coolmoreen by a farmer from the US. The bulls must have been huge because the small Zimbabwean cows had a hard time giving birth! Jan and the MRA team in Gweru took off on reconciliation meetings around Zimbabwe and were away most weekends. The cows obviously didn’t know this because they gave birth every weekend without fail! I would get a knock on my door and Shepherd, the dairy manager, would ask me to come and help! I was alone with our children so we all trouped down to the dairy as if we knew what we were doing. Invariably it was a breach birth and Shepherd would say, “MaiKjersti – what shall we do?” and my response was always “What would you do if it was your cow?” And when he told me I would say, “Well then that’s what we will do!” We didn’t lose a single calf but when the Horns came they suggested we get an African bull and stop the insemination program!
We had our own little menagerie on the farm. Apart from all the stray cats and frogs, the Lochs dogs Bodger and Simba were lovingly taken care of by Kjersti and Joffe. There was a small orchard of citrus trees between the farm buildings and in season they would each pick a clementine when Jan and the children took the dogs for their evening walk round the farm.
Friends gave our children 2 rabbits and 2 lambs who they named Emily and Daniel after sheep in a favourite book. They never suceeded in producing any lambs but one day when we were looking around the area that we had fenced off for the rabbits Jan trod into what seemed like a hole – but was the underground warren where Mamma Rabbit had her first brood of baby rabbits Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. Our children didn’t have much in the way of toys and the baby rabbit became their favourites! Over time we supplied local children with endless numbers of pets and when we left the workers took over a profitable production.
Taking care of the workers in the clinic could at times be a real challenge. The workers and their children often caught colds wintertime and suffered occasionally from stomach ailments. There was a special measuring spoon with a tablespoon at one end and a teaspoon at the other. When someone had a stomach bug a quart sized cola bottle was filled with water, the measuriing spoon was used to add a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. They drank they were better to avoid dehydration.
One of the children had a severe burn that covered half of his lower leg. After 6 weeks of care it hardly looked like it was healing. I suspected that malnutrition could be one of the causes of many health problems on the farm including the slow healing, so I began to give this boy supper when I made our evening meal which he ate when he came to have his wound dressed at the clinic. Nancy suggesteed I wrap the wound in dock leaves (about 20 size of the dock leaves back home so each leaf more or less covered the wound!) and finally his leg began to heal.
I discovered that there were 3 companies selling nutritious food products in Zimbabwe. After calling around I found one that provided courses and was willing to come to Coolmoreen and hold classes for the farm workers. All the mothers on the farm attended the first day and tasted some of the products. The one that was most popular was Mahewu, a nutritious drink made from sorghum. This was an unfermented version of the Zimbabwean indigenous beer. It turned out that it cost a quarter of a cent per drink and the mothers went home, excited that they would be able to get this nutritious drink for their children. Next morning they were less happy when they returned for the second day of class. Their husbands had said no to Mahewu. They said that their money was for beer.
We decided to buy a sack of Mahewu for the children. Jan, Kjersti and Joffe mixed a bucket of drink every morning early and took it down to the worker’s village. The children all lined up to have their mug of Mahewu before leaving to walk the four kilometers to school. Previously they didn’t have anything to eat before school and untill the evening meal of green leafy vegetables, seldom meat. Just to see how their energy improved was enough to convince us that we needed to find a way of paying for Mahewu for the farm children. A preschool teacher in Sweden told about these children to the parents and children in her preschool. The children wanted to send drawings to the children on the farm and with their parents they saved up money for the children’s drink for 5 years!
It only took 6 months for us to see a noticeable improvement. The children’s runny noses, coughs and diarrhea decreased and the farm’s evening clinic was no longer needed. This ’aha’ experience gave me my first real practical insight into the role of nutrition in health. This was later confirmed when I discovered the implications on the spread of HIV and AIDS when I did my masters in clinical nutrition in 2005.
Despite my bilingual and nomadic life I had all my schooling in English and felt that having schooling in one language was important. Although Kjersti did her first school year in Zimbabwe we decided that we should return home to Sweden for her to start her education in swedish once she turned 7.
My father’s closest brother gave my parents a beautiful heavy gold clock as a wedding present. It may have been heavy but that clock went with us on all our journeys. In their turn, my parents gave us a symbolic clock when we were married and just as it was for my parents, whenever we unpacked that clock we were home! I longed for my children to have what I hadn’t had. A place to wake up to day after day and not simply a symbol of home – like the clock on the mantelpiece that I grew up with. Our Children are also third culture kids. The farm they grew up in is no longer there, nor are many of my relatives or the team we worked with. Our Swedish home base was Alnäs in Stockholm which had been home to Jan and me but one that our children barely remembered. We felt drawn to spreading our wings and working in another part of Sweden and yet it also felt important for us to create the family framework that our children needed moving forward and we invited my parents to move to Sweden and join us in Arvika, Värmland.
In Arvika we lived in a house that was just like all the others on the same street! My parents moved into the tiny top floor. But would we ever feel like others on the same street taking into account the world-wide network that we were still engaged in daily? Our normal life was still strange to others. We were still working what was known as full-time with MRA which in practice means working without any pay. We received a few regular gifts and occasional donations but that barely convered our cost of living. My parents had recently sold their home in England and they covered the downpayment on the house. We didn’t have a car but we used our bikes a lot and my parents were happy to loan us their car if needed. We had Swedish bostadsbidrag and barnbidrag to help pay for our rent and our children’s needs. Jans childhood friend from Halmstad, Jurgen, pastor at our local church did building jobs to make ends meet and he invited Jan joined him, making it possible for them to take on more jobs. It also made a huge difference to our economy!
Soon after we moved in to Madame Jeannes väg in Arvika I had dental work done. I wasn’t aware of any risks at the time and went ahead and did as the dentist suggested. One of the amalgam fillings that was put in when I was young had cracked and had to be removed. A plastic alternative filled the hole and to all intents and purposes the problem was solved. I had no idea at the time that the mercury can be absorbed during the drilling.
This was in the middle of winter and one evening when I was out shovelling snow I expereinced what can only be described as an explosion in my head. I knew immediately that something serious had happened and went inside. Jan was at an MRA meeting in Stockholm. The kids were home and I can remember bawling them out for nothing serious and then calling Jan, telling him he needed to come home. Something was seriously wrong. From that moment on I was hypersensitive to so many things – synthetic material, wool, mould but in fact I didn’t know exactly what. This was the beginning of 7 long years of what was later diagnosed as CFS/ME – probably caused by a multitude of things that I either had or had been exposed to: parasites (several), 2 serious viral infections (cytomegalovirus and cosackie virus), fungal infections (mouldy kitchen); toxicity (mercury and chemicals). I became extremely sensitive to most food and often had extreme stomach pain which took me to the ER time and time again. I was admitted to the hospital for a week of testing but was discharged by a doctor who, still unsure of the cause, said he didn’t see how he could help but would do what he could do as I got worse. Nothing that a 35 year old mother of young children wants to hear.
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