Friends of Mizoram

Mautam in Mizoram

February 10th, 2009

I recently returned from a six week trip to the Christian state of Mizoram in North East India, it was my seventh visit to this unique community.

Just a bit of background – on January 14th 1894 two Welsh missionaries arrived in Mizoram and began what has proved to be the most successful missionary endeavour he world has ever seen. By 1976 every adult member of the Mizo was a baptized Christian. I have tried to analyze why this has happened and have come to the conclusion that God had prepared these people for many years before the missionaries arrived and desires to use Mizoram as a witness of Christian living for the world.

I believe there were four major factors that contributed to rapid growth of Christianity in this remote area:

1. The close knit clan village system where the conversion of the chief could lead to the conversion of a whole village.

2. The Mizo tribe were the largest tribe in all of North East Indian with a common language.

3. Mizo culture had a concept of a perfect man and Jesus Christ met all of the criteria attributed to this man.

4. The religion was animist and their entire life was dedicated to appeasing the demons, who they felt ruled every aspect of life. When the missionaries arrived and defied the demons and demon worship and were not destroyed by the demons, the practical Mizos realized that there was a strength in this new religion that was vastly superior to what they were practicing.

When I first visited Mizoram in 1996 I felt I had found paradise – they had a simple faith that was beautiful. I produced a video on that first visit called, “Mizoram, God’s Chosen Jewel” and that indeed is what I had experienced. At that time almost all Mizos were eking out a living with subsistence farming and to a large extent equally poor. Since then much has changed and each time I go back I see more of the evil things of the world creeping in.

I believe Satan will do anything to spoil this Christian witness and he has used television and greed to taint the Christian heritage. Mizoram’s time zone is 13.5 hours ahead of Vancouver – this means that our middle of the night television is available live in the middle to the day. If you want to know just how bad that is turn on any of our stations a 2:00am any morning. What we export throughout the 10-40 window is downright disgusting. In 1996 I saw no corruption, greed or moral decline. It grieves me to see all of these in Mizo society today.

However Mizoram can still boast of no starvation, no homeless, no beggars and almost 100% literacy and the fact that almost 80% of the population attends church at least once a week. While I have come to the conclusion Mizoram is not as good as I found it 12 years ago it is still hands down the best community in the world!


Kyle Jackson and Stuart Spani with 7200 meals from Fraser Valley Gleaners as they leave for India
Approximately every fifty years this area experiences a unique famine and this is the year. This is caused when a certain bamboo, which covers most of Mizoram plus parts of Myanmar, Bangladesh, Manipur, Assam and Tripura, blooms and then dies. With this blooming comes a devastating plague of rats. Once these rats have consumed the bamboo seeds they move in mass and eat everything in sight. In many areas up to 97% of the crops have been destroyed. Knowing this was coming the Government thought the famine could be averted by harvesting the bamboo around the villages and farms and by offering a bounty on rat tails. This has proved to be fruitless – while hundred’s of thousands of rats were destroyed they reproduced in the millions and overwhelmed all efforts to control them.

This trip three small teams of Canadians have attempted to use media to bring this unique famine, which covers a defined area for a defined period of time, to the attention of the world and to explore both short term and long term solutions. Two teams traveled to remote villages by jeep, boat and foot to distribute much needed food and ascertain ongoing needs and to explore ways of meeting those needs.

Our conclusions were that in Mizoram alone almost 400 villages are suffering – while we found no actual starvation we did find signs of deteriorating health due to malnutrition. We also found that the entire day is taken up with finding food to eat today. They are foraging up to 5 km into the jungle to find wild yams and green vegetation to eat. The next few weeks are the season where next years crops need to be planted, there is an acute shortage of seeds and of the time and energy to plant. This planting is critical or the effect of Mautam will extend for another year.

We are working on several solutions to meet the immediate needs. We have challenged to city churches in Mizoram to each take responsibility for one village, to send someone to that village to find the needs and then to muster the resources to meet those needs. Global Youth Network (www.gyn.org) is collecting moneys in Canada to help these churches buy and distribute food that is available in other parts of Mizoram and surrounding areas.

Fraser Valley Gleaners in Abbotsford are teaming up with World Vision and with Mizo churches and organizations to deliver 1,000,000 meals of dehydrated vegetables to the needy villages. This is ideal food especially for the monsoon season that is about to begin. Transportation to remote villages is precarious during the dry season. During the wet season many, many villages are accessible only by foot. This light weight dehydrated food is ideal as one person can carry over 1000 meals on his or her back. When a package, weighing only 1.5 kg is combined with 25 litres of water it will feed 100 people a meal. A forty foot container will leave Abbotsford next week.

The third team worked with local farmers to help them switch from temporary slash and burn farming to sustainable farming. This sustainable farming goes under the acronym of SALT, which stands for Sloped Agricultural Land Technology to learn ore about this google “fertilizer tree”. Where this farming method has been used in southern Mizoram for several years agricultural production has increased three-fold. Our team combined with SALT farmers to train and help local farmers set up a demonstration farm. In one week 35 farmers committed to adopted this method of farming.

The long term answer to Mautam and other crop failures is more efficient farming methods and vermin proof food storage. We feel that much progress has been made toward this end.

He has produced a number of documentaries about Mizoram, and was instrumental in supplying food during the Mautam crisis of 2008.