The History of Iris

Upon arriving in Mozambique, the Bakers – along with a small team of Iris staff from England and South Africa – were offered charge of the Chihango center, a previously government-run children’s center forty minutes from the capital of Maputo. Conditions were bleak. Over thirty years of warfare within the nation’s borders left an enormous population of orphans, with countless others living in extreme poverty. Government aid was nearly nonexistent. At Chihango – which represented the government’s best effort to care for homeless children – food was scarce, living quarters stark and medical care all but absent. The most “incorrigible” children from street gangs were often brought there as a last resort. Physical and sexual abuse were common. A very large proportion of the children were infected with STDs. Thievery was to be expected, especially from the officials in charge. Efforts at education were insignificant.

On one of Heidi’s first visits to the children’s center, she gave away an open bag of potato chips from her truck window as she prepared to leave. This began a miniature riot. Children instantly attacked one another, tearing at the bag. They bit and clawed in the dust for the last of the chips. In the mostly empty buildings, roofs had collapsed onto bare concrete floors. Chihango displayed all the most terrible realities of the developing world, but Iris had also found what it had sought, a place where it could make the greatest possible difference in the day-to-day lives of those who had lived as the unwanted.

God provided more than enough food, every day – which at times required various miracles of finance, unsolicited aid from strangers and occasionally of supernatural multiplication.

Upon Iris’s takeover of the center, there were about eighty children resident. Conditions began to improve quickly. A local church was planted. The spiritual response from the children and many in the community was enormously enthusiastic. Dilapidated buildings began to be renovated. God provided more than enough food, every day – which at times required various miracles of finance, unsolicited aid from strangers and occasionally of supernatural multiplication. The Iris staff began to take in more children from the streets, and after a year there were three hundred twenty at Chihango. Despite story after story of extreme neglect, most of the children began to show a remarkable joy in short order. They worshiped and prayed with all their hearts. Many were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to manifest healings, visions and many other spiritual gifts.

While all these things occurred, witch doctors often chanted curses around bonfires at the property’s edges at night, and the echoing sounds of AK47 fire, both far and near, were heard daily. Electricity was sporadic, and maintaining access to clean drinking water was difficult. Many thousands of dollars worth of goods were stolen over the passing months. Bureaucrats obstructed paperwork in an attempt to acquire bribes. Corrupt police and displaced ex-soldiers stopped vehicles constantly, extorting bribes for trivial or invented violations. Burglars broke into the property repeatedly. The staff at Iris underwent many muggings, and some were supernaturally rescued from lethal threats. These were relatively small difficulties compared to what was coming.

As Iris was to discover, the former administrators of the Chihango center had been removed unwillingly from their post. Prior to the U.N.-mediated ceasefire and elections in the early nineties, Mozambique’s government had been Marxist, and elements of the old paradigm – explicitly anti-religious, and insisting on centralized control – still survived among a few officials. The former administrators had met with some of these middling officials and convinced them to try to oust Iris, despite previous agreements.

One day men came to the center with legal documents mandating that Iris cease all of its religious activities, as well as any “unauthorized” distributions of food, clothing and medicine. Two days were given for all Iris staff to vacate the center, should these conditions not be accepted. Any property remaining after that time would be confiscated. Heidi was informed that she personally could not re-enter the property. It was also said around the community that a contract had been put out to kill her (for twenty U.S. dollars).

The former administrators, knowing that Iris would have to refuse these demands, were already positioned to resume control of the center – along with the many improvements that had been made in their absence. No one could say what would happen to the now greatly increased population of children who would be left without foreign resources and subject to greedy, corrupt guardians. With no other options, the Bakers and the rest of Iris’s staff were forced to pack and move out immediately. They left exhausted and in great anguish. The children were immediately forbidden to pray or sing any of the worship songs they had learned. Many more of the activities they had enjoyed came to a sudden stop. They missed their friends at Iris, the long-term staff and the short-term visitors. They greatly missed Papa Rolland and Mama Aida. So when they next entered the big dining room, which had also been used as for church meetings on Sundays, they simply began to sing praise and worship songs at the top of their lungs. They were beaten and chastised for this, but in the end they absolutely refused to accept the changes. They would take their chances on the streets rather than live under such rules.

One by one at first, and later in groups, almost all of them left Chihango and began to hitchhike and even walk the many hot miles back to the city. Since arriving in Mozambique, the Bakers had been renting a small, single-story house in Maputo, where relatively stable power and access to the post office and other government buildings made for a workable administrative center. Staying there now, uncertain of their future in Mozambique, the Bakers suddenly found themselves surrounded by a swelling crowd of children who wanted to stay with them and worship God, no matter what. There was no space for so many, but it was unthinkable to turn them away. Dozens began to camp at the house, cheek-to-jowl out into the little concrete yard under tarps, and their numbers were growing fast. Iris’s people began scrambling to find some sort of emergency location for the children to stay. Two small Christian missions heard about what had happened, and volunteered to keep groups of children in some of their unused buildings for up to three months. Their offer came just in time. Everyone who had fled from Chihango found shelter, by a slim margin.

At one point during the week after this exodus, with more than fifty children still packed in at the Baker’s house, food had run begun to run low. Nelda, a friend from the U.S. embassy, came to visit the Bakers, bringing a pot of chili for the immediate family. “I have a big family,” Heidi replied. Nelda protested that she had only brought enough for the Bakers, but Heidi gave thanks for the food and immediately began serving it to the encamped kids. The pot, brought to feed four, was not empty until everyone had eaten!

The situation continued to appear desperate for some time, but as the three months were coming to an end, Iris was donated undeveloped land in the neaby town of Machava by sympathetic officials. Some old army tents – and one big circus tent – were provided, and practically overnight a new village of children sprang up where a week before there had been only grass and trees. It was even more basic than Chihango had been, but it would do for the time being – and the children were overjoyed. Iris’s little community had prayed long and hard for water, both in spirit and in the natural. Very soon, a new well was dug at Machava, yielding fresh, clean water. Iris now had an abundance of both kinds of water.