DME to perform "Zambia Home"

The Drama Ministries Ensemble of Northwestern College will perform “Zambia Home” in four area venues in April: DeWitt Theatre Arts Center, Northwestern College, on April 12 at 4 p.m.; First Reformed Church, Sioux Center, on April 14 at 6:30 p.m.; First Reformed Church, Sheldon, on April 21 at 9:30 a.m.; and Immanuel Christian Reformed Church, Orange City, on April 21 at 6 p.m.

The theatre company recently performed the original worship drama during their spring break tour to the East Coast. The shows are free, and community members are invited.

“Zambia Home” is the third of a trilogy of plays by Northwestern theatre professor Jeff Barker that follow the career and dramatize the spiritual insights of Sioux Center resident Arlene Schuiteman, a nurse missionary to the Sudan, Ethiopia and Zambia.

While in Zambia during the 1970s and ’80s, Schuiteman witnessed the devastating consequences of malaria and AIDS in Africa. She describes the wailing from grief over the many deaths—especially among children—as a constant background sound.

Over the course of a decade, Schuiteman worked with renowned physicians Dr. Phil Thuma—who established the Macha Malaria Research Institute, which has helped to nearly eradicate malaria in that region—and Dr. John Spurrier, who has devoted his medical career to fighting AIDS in Zambia. Schuiteman became one of the leading nurse educators for the nation before retiring to Iowa in 1988.

Northwestern’s theatre company has performed across the U.S. and in Japan and Ethiopia.