India, Nagaland - Morning Gathering Reflection at ARI

Network e-Bulletin, April 2020, No. 5

Message from Zacivolu Rhakho Dozo (Acivo)

2009 Graduate / 2009 Training Assistant

Acivo has been on staff at ARI for the last seven years, as the coordinator of FEAST (Food Education and Sustainable Table). We used to call this meal service. She completed her service in March of this year but has been unable to return home due to the travel restrictions caused by Coronavirus containment measures.

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Acivo with some of the day's harvest

Acivo's Morning Gathering Sharing

My Morning Gathering today is very different from what I was planning. I was going to use more technology and, of course, have it inside the Chapel. Then I ended up in an open space like this with nature around and I believe this happened for a much better reason.

I am a graduate of the year 2000. My name is Acivo. I am from Nagaland State in Northeast India. My all-time favorite hobby is observing plants of all kinds around me and designing things using my imagination. I do this with flowers and vegetables in my gardens, in decorating, and in cooking. This hobby gives me the opportunity to reflect on myself as one creature created by God, for which I appreciate the existence of myself and the existence of everything else in most miraculous ways.

I believe that God was very creative when He created the whole universe and everything in it. He put everything in order, and everything exists for a purpose!

Many years ago, my family was still living in the village. We always had food at home and I immensely enjoyed my childhood life in the village. As I grew up, I went to another town to study and I saw that school education was something that I fancied most. That was in the late 80s to early 90s.

With the realization that our village needed educated persons, I thought of starting it with my siblings’ families and that’s how my own empowerment as a girl child started and which led me to move my family to Dimapur city where we live now. The biggest thing that I learned from the time we moved to the city until today is FOOD, which comes before anything else. This is exactly the reverse idea of my thinking in those days.

Now, as the whole world is facing COVID-19 challenges, thousands are fighting their battle with this virus, and the world has lost so many precious lives.

In India, on March 24, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a 3-week total lockdown for all 1.3 billion Indians. With four hours’ notice he announced that no one could leave home for 21 days. One reporter commented that it was the most severe step taken anywhere in the war against the coronavirus. Additionally, the report stated that thousands of people emigrated out of major Indian cities, as they became jobless after the lockdown. An estimated 139 million migrant workers from the countryside work in India's cities and towns. With factories and workplaces shut down, they were left with no livelihood. The media started to capture long processions of migrant workers walking miles to go back to their native villages, often with families and young children on shoulders.

In a small state like Nagaland in northeast India, people have their own battles to fight. One of the most vulnerable places in Nagaland is Dimapur city with a population of more than 380,000. It has poor medical facilities, a lack of food supplies, and many migrant workers, both from outside Nagaland, as well as the Nagas who migrate from the villages for labor work or petty businesses.

These things concern me so much. But narrowing down to the most rural places in my community, there is my native village, called Khutsokhuno, and neighboring villages. These could be called the most vulnerable groups of people, specifically when it comes to medical facilities. It’s really zero!

Despite my husband’s constant encouragement not to be panicked, I continued to do so, from the time India announced the first coronavirus patient. Then last week I started to divert my attention to food-sovereignty as I thought about ARI’s self-sufficiency for my paper writing.

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Acivo and her husband, Dozo

As I continue sharing my reflection this morning, I don’t mean to undermine any values or any lifestyles or any backgrounds or any environments, but I want to mention how I was able to deepen the value of rural life for my own people back home.

When I look at my community, as I mentioned earlier, it is undeniable that we still lack a lot of modern and sophisticated facilities. To fight with this disastrous virus there is almost no chance for people in the rural areas to survive. It still scares me when I put things in this negative perspective.

But it has been a great relief for me to think about my people being in the most rural place, breathing clean air, drinking uncontaminated water, eating chemical free food, and staying far away from the crowded places. Yes, it’s true they are also under lockdown with the rest of India, but they still go to fields and spend their days in wide open spaces, literally being with the nature. It is the most blissful life to live in a depressing moment like this.

In fact, even if they are locked down for a much longer period of time, they don’t need to worry about food which is the foremost essential thing that human beings need. But of course, my prayer for them is that the virus will not reach them.

When I compare my family members in the cities and towns with my family members in the villages; in the towns and cities they worry about two things - coronavirus and food; in the villages they worry about one thing - coronavirus. I feel this is a huge difference that we can understand.

By virtue of my given responsibility as FEAST Coordinator, I am confident to say that I had rich experiences in taking care of people’s health or helping people to maintain good health by using ARI’s produce for the last 7 years. Food, which plays the most important part in the ARI training program holds the best place in everybody’s heart, I believe.

In Koinonia, two clear things I emphasized were to show gratefulness to people who grow it and to give appreciation to people who cook it. Also, in the last 7 years, on many occasions I used food to treat people when they were sick physically or when they had problems which disturbed them mentally, psychologically, or emotionally, or when they were tired and stressed.

The value of the ARI training program is rooting itself deeper and deeper as the world faces more challenges every moment. The need of ARI servant leadership is getting bigger and bigger as the people long for true leadership in this world. I think we must put more effort in producing political leadership. At one point, I was thinking, I wish ARI could recruit our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. If he were an ARI graduate, he would have led his team to study the lockdown pros and cons, putting migrant workers’ situations in the priority, and given enough time to the citizens to prepare themselves. Also, if all the Chief Ministers and Cabinet Ministers of Nagaland were ARI graduates, then our state would have modern medical equipment to be able to protect our people in times like this.

Then, how do I live out my faith as a Christian? If I say, “I thank you God for some didn’t wake up this morning, but I am still alive; some don’t have food, but I eat three meals a day; some don’t have shelter but I have a house; some do not have land but I have; some are sick but I am healthy,” what will God say to me when I meet Him on my final day!?

I believe we cannot just sit back and say to our people, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” without action.

As a graduate I am going back to head the organization which was my Sending Body when I was a participant here. I have deepened my commitment to walk with my people at the grassroots.

There are many things to be done. But the most exciting thing for me is to be with people in the villages, motivating them and continuing to educate them about the value of rural life and how important it is to grow our own food, which is the most precious thing that no wealth in this wide world can buy!

Thank you, ARI. I am always proud to be its graduate and I will continue to live out its Mission Statement to brighten any corner of the world God places me in until He calls me home.