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2009-06-02 issue:

Indonesian, Zimbabweans swap stories

Nine young adults serve with Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network.

by Ferne Burkhardt

Print Article

God created people that are different and blessed them in different places in the world … but we need to work together to make our world a better place,” says Passionate Ncube, a Zimbabwean spending a year in Indonesia. It is his first time living outside his own country.

Passionate is one of nine international young adults who are volunteering in another country for one year through YAMEN! (Young Anabaptist Mennonite Exchange Network), a joint program of Mennonite World Conference (MWC) and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).




Six of the nine current YAMEN! participants are pictured in Akron, Pa. In front, from left, are Fairchild Dube, Passionate Ncube and Erika Suhartono. In back, from left, are Ntuthuko Ndlovu, Yunarso Rosandono and Sithabile Ndlovu. MCC/MWC photo.

The program is designed for single young adults aged 18 to 30, primarily but not exclusively in the global South. Participants are committed Christians, active in and supported by their church and ready to serve and build church-to-church relationships within the Anabaptist family.

This year, two YAMEN! participants from Zimbabwe are serving in Indonesia, and one YAMEN! participant from Indonesia is serving in Zimbabwe. The three have met to explain cultural differences and provide support for each other in hard times.

Yunarso Rosandono, from Indonesia, noted that when he arrived in Zimbabwe “things were difficult … there were no food commodities in the shops and there were queues everywhere.” A teachers’ strike kept a school closed where he had been assigned to teach.

“As a citizen, I can say that Zimbabwe is passing through a phase, but the problem is that we have stayed long in that phase,” says Ntuthuko Ndlovu, from Zimbabwe, who is serving with YAMEN! in Indonesia.

Yunarso is teaching at Magwegwe Primary School and at the Brethren in Christ Lobengula Preschool, and he also works as a pastoral assistant. Ntuthuko says his training and experience with English as a second language helps him in teaching English in a Mennonite theological college in Indonesia.

Passionate helps with the daily activities of the Mennonite church in Srumpung Gunung in Central Java and works with youth in the community. He had done volunteer teaching in Zimbabwe when the country’s economic and political crisis left schools without teachers.

In Indonesia, he teaches English in an orphanage and in junior and preschools with mostly Muslim students.

“Not all Muslim people are radical,” says Passionate. “That has been a major view for me that changed. … The Muslims I have met in Indonesia are very good people.” He has also discovered that American people “are completely different than [the stereotypes] in the movies.”

He and Ntuthuko relate to Americans and Canadians who are in Indonesia under Serving and Learning Together, an MCC program for young adults from Canada and the United States.
Ntuthuko was surprised to find people in Indonesia who have never seen a black person. “Some people ask to feel my hair,” he says. An Indonesian villager who had never before met an African said, “He is like my own son.”

Yunarso says he is learning about African theology, Zimbabwean culture and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A mother and baby who were HIV positive attended a course he taught and inspired him. Because he has gained new insights on the pandemic he would like to stay beyond his current term in Zimbabwe so he can help educate people about HIV/AIDS, perhaps in a different program since YAMEN! service is limited to one year.

Six other young adults will also complete a one-year term of service with YAMEN! in July. Erika Suhartono, from Indonesia, is serving in Mennonite church music programs in Recife, Brazil. Fairchild Dube, from Zimbabwe, is serving in a youth program in Tanzania, and Sithabile Ndlovu, also from Zimbabwe, is serving with Centro Menno Programs in Bolivia.

Maritza Masavi Hurtado, from Bolivia, is serving at a Christian school for the deaf in Nicaragua. Ana Julia Lopez, from Nicaragua, is serving in Mennonite church youth programs in Mexico. Osée Tshiwape from the Democratic Republic of Congo is serving at the Korea Anabaptist Centre in South Korea.

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