The rains have come! It rained hard for several hours yesterday and today. The boys were so excited that they went out to play in the rain. I’m sure that is fun for them but I hope the novelty of that wears off because it is a huge mess! This morning Peter and I worked in the garden for several hours. The soil was perfect after finally having rain and it was actually enjoyable. We’ve never known the joy of watching your honeydew plants get big and seeing the sweet corn shoot up. Who knows if we will actually get any fruit or vegetable from these plants or if they will get drowned by the rains that are coming. But in the meantime, it is exciting to see things growing and beginning to flower.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
We decided to stay home and have our own family worship this morning while we try to research which other churches we want to try before deciding on one. The boys got out their African drums and played along with the worship songs. We then talked about the fruit of the spirit and what each one meant. We drew a big tree and then colored fruit and wrote love, joy, peace, patience, etc. on the fruit. When we talked about which fruit we wanted the Lord to build in us, Brendan said he wanted peace so that he could be a peacemaker between his friends. Earlier this morning we had a conversation about how Naila is turning Brendan against Gideon because she doesn’t like him. Brendan is put in a difficult position and likes both but Naila won’t play with him if he is friends with Gideon. We were touched that Brendan asked God to give him peace, not just for himself but so that he could give it to his friends. Then later, during our prayer time, we spent time praying for people we knew. The boys really engaged in this prayer and kept wanting to name people they wanted God to bless. We moved on to praying for places in the world that needed God’s touch. Jason prayed for Kawagi (his way of saying Hawaii) and for the volcanoes there. Brendan prayed for Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo and for the fighting taking place in those regions. He also wanted to pray for Iraq. Then he said, “And I pray for all the people who are suffering and I hope they can persevere.” Very moving. After a wonderful time of family worship, it is tempting to think that we can just do this for the next three years but we know we need to be part of a local body of believers. We will keep looking.
Jason lost his first tooth!
(For some reason this was the only picture that would load)
Jason lost his first tooth! Both Brendan and Jason lost their first tooth at age 4 1/2. We noticed that it was loose a few weeks ago but I thought it would be awhile before it came out. Today it was quite loose because he keeps playing with it with his tongue. He wanted Peter to pull it out but Peter couldn’t. A few minutes later, Jason had the tooth in his hand. This shows his character: obsessive (he sticks with something when it is on his mind), not afraid of pain or blood, and very proud of his own accomplishment. You should have seen him beaming! He immediately went to fetch the tooth box that Lauran Bethell gave us when Brendan lost his first tooth. It is a special wooden box made in Poland that has a picture of a tooth on it. Jason was very eager to add his tooth to the collection.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Peter stood in line at the bank for two hours but he finally came home with ATM cards. They aren’t activated, however, and he will have to go back to stand in line for that too. He was directed to one line where he stood for 45 minutes only to find out that it was the wrong one. Not fun.
The boys are back in school and Jason’s Upper Nursery is busy practicing for their Christmas nativity. Jason tells us daily that he is a king and that he brings myrrh. It is a bit of a trial to show interest each and every time but he is excited when we ask what he brings to baby Jesus and he gets to answer, “Myrrh.” Alistair (whom Jason calls Alistuh, in his good British accent) gets to bring Frankenstein. How cool is that?
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
I have been invited to co-teach a two week course entitled “Counseling and Trauma Healing” at the end of November. I will be teaching it with Jimmy, Peter’s boss. This is a new course so we need to develop it ourselves. I went into my meeting with Jimmy thinking it would be more like a guest lecture type of thing and that I would only commit myself to 2-3 days of the two weeks. I had also heard that he had a few other people lined up to help out. In the course of our meeting, I discovered that it was just the two of us and that he thought I could help teach most days. By the end of our meeting I was committed to a bit less than half of the load; more than what I anticipated but less than what Jimmy assumed. When I told this to Peter, he said, “Welcome to my life these last two months!”
I am looking forward to teaching the course and learning more about this area in the process. I have a lot of hours to cover so I am busy researching, putting together notes, forming handouts, and trying to come up with exercises or small group discussions so that I am not lecturing the entire time. I also know that if I put in the work now, when I am asked to teach this again, which is probable in the course of the next three years, I will have much of it prepared.
We discovered that Carmen is a Settlers of Catan addict (a game we also like to play). So now we can play Settlers in the evening after the kids go to bed. We taught the game to Adrian, a delightful dairy farmer from Cornwall in England. For some of you, that may conjure up an image. Carmen is vivacious and hilarious and animated. Put that next to Adrian who kind of reminds me of the farmer in the movie “Babe” and it is quite comical. Adrian communicates a lot with a raised eyebrow and slight smile. When he is through with his turn, he gently passes the dice and says, “Go on.” We are thrilled that we can have game nights! Jenny came over the other evening and we played Mexican Train Dominoes with her, which was lovely as well. We haven’t gotten to know Mic very well yet, our resident “pagan” from Sweden (as he calls himself). His family is here visiting currently. I am so thankful for our little muzungu community here at MEF. It is so diverse and pleasant.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Brendan and Jason attended their first school birthday party this afternoon. Brendan’s classmate, Garikai, invited the whole class and then some for his party. The invitation said to bring their costumes and I was informed enough to know this did not mean a Halloween costume but a swim costume. The boys spent the afternoon playing in the pool and jumping in the bounce house that was rented for the event. There were piles and piles of food and gift bags for the kids to take home. I talked with another mother from Uzbekistan and enjoyed talking about the former Soviet Union and conditions in Russia and Ukraine. It felt like another part of my life was allowed out. I also spent time talking with Georgi, the mom of one of Brendan’s school friends. We met Georgi in Shoprite last week and she told us she was a doctor and if we ever had any questions, we should just call her. So when Carmen was got malaria last week, we called her with a few questions and learned a lot of important information. Georgi is from Australia but has been in Africa for over a decade and in Kitwe for about seven years. She offered to give us a lift home since she lives out our direction. The party ended abruptly with the rains that usually come in the late afternoon. We ran to her vehicle and all piled in. The boys have been begging for a playdate with school friends but honestly, it has been hard to connect with other moms there. Georgi is one of the first who has really talked with me. Her son, Patric, is very sweet and he and Brendan play together nicely. But now we have a playdate scheduled for Friday and Brendan is bouncing off the walls!
Thursday, November 1, 2007
I was craving hamburgers so we invited Carmen over to enjoy them with us. We are planning on celebrating American Thanksgiving at the end of the month (an excuse for a get-together) so today we started a “Thankful” chain to prepare us for the event. Every night, after dinner, we write what we are thankful for on a piece of paper and connect it to the chain. We are anxious to see how long it will get by the time we celebrate Thanksgiving. Tonight, several of us wrote we were thankful for the hamburgers because they were so YUMMY!
Friday, November 2, 2007
So we had our playdate with Patric this afternoon. Georgi picked us up in her giant 4x4 and took us out to her farm on the Kafue River. Her house is amazing and the garden stunning. The house is a converted stable so all the rooms open onto a long open veranda. The boys were busy all afternoon: jumping on the trampoline, swinging, playing in the sandbox, riding bikes. Jemma is three and a sweetheart and amazingly, she and Jason played well together. I enjoyed relaxing with Georgi on the veranda and hearing her story. She studied bush medicine because she wanted to work with the aboriginal peoples of Australia. After a few years, she took off backpacking around the world and ended up in Africa. She absolutely loved it so she took a job working in the refugee camps in Burundi. She got to know a Mennonite working in the hospital there and she says that I remind her of that friend. Since then, she worked in almost every country south of the Sahara as a doctor. Her partner is a geologist working with the mines and makes good money, but is only home every second or third weekend because he is stationed four hours away. She is not interested in religion but thinks it is important to help others. She says that her friends say she is more Christian than other Christians they know. She is a voracious reader and offered me any book out of her library. I came home with three books I am eager to begin reading. We went for a walk down to the Kafue River but not too close to it since there are hippos and crocodiles in it. There are a cluster of five houses there with Georgi’s house farther away from the river. The house that was on the river had a long sloping yard that apparently is cut in half when the river rises. Georgi showed us the big indentations in the grass that are from the hippos when they come up at night to graze on the grass. Crazy.
The boys had a great time but the meltdown came later in the evening. Brendan was sad that he doesn’t have all the things that Patric has. Even though Patric will let him borrow his millions of DVDs it wasn’t the same. Then Brendan started to worry that his school friends won’t like him because he doesn’t have all the stuff they have. This is going to be hard for him. We are so wealthy compared to those around us, but have little compared to his school friends.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Today was a day of feeling out of place. I took the minibus to the market because I needed a few things for the Mexican Fiesta we are having tomorrow night at our house. (Carmen heard I was making burritos and wanted to learn how to make tortillas. We ended up turning it into a party and now Scott, Jenny, and Adrian will be joining us too!) Anyway, while I was sitting on the minibus, waiting for it to fill up so that it could leave, a man put a box of fruit next to me on the seat. I didn’t even know what kind of fruit it was as I had never seen it before. The man said to me, “Lela, lela!” I didn’t know what that meant but soon everyone on the mini-bus was laughing. He kept saying it and so I asked the man next to me what it meant but he just laughed and wouldn’t tell me. (When I told Peggy about it she said they were telling me that I should hold that box of fruit on my lap.) In addition, the bus went to a different section of the market and dropped me off in an unknown place so I was completely disoriented. I knew the fruit and vegetable section had to be close, and there were men all around me asking me if I wanted a taxi, that I just took off walking. I finally asked another man where I needed to go and he said I was lost. Two corners later and I was oriented again. But wait, there’s more. I bought what I needed at the market, having successfully negotiated the price down for the big watermelon I purchased, and was walking toward Shoprite to get the rest of what I needed. All of a sudden, there was a man right in front of me that was walking slowly and there were men all around me. The one behind me reached down for my bags and I yelled, “NO! NO! NO!” He looked surprised and I hurried off. I then realized that he was just offering to help me carry my bags but the situation of being squeezed on all sides made me panic and assume the worst. Not like him taking my apples and tomatoes would be the worst thing. So I overreacted. I was so embarrassed. Zambians are so kind and friendly, generally, that I really can assume the best. But the interactions of the morning probably affected the way I read the situation.
Peter spent the morning helping put a tarp on the roof of a house in one of the compounds. It is for a friend of Jenny’s and with the rains, her roof is leaking. So Jenny bought a huge tarp and then enlisted the help of Scott, Adrian and Peter to help her tie it down. They were successful!
Georgi had told us about “can’t miss” event that was happening tonight at the Polo Grounds. Apparently it is THE event of the year and since hardly anything happens in Kitwe, we thought we should take advantage of the opportunity. Bounce houses, food, fireworks; a BIG event. The tickets were pricey but we figured it is only once a year and we should go for it. Our taxi driver had no clue where the Polo Grounds were and sometimes I think that is so ridiculous because Kitwe is not large at all and he has been a taxi driver for a long time, you’d think he’d know where things were. Plus, he had his son along who is less than two years old. We discovered that his little boy had been with him all day. I offered to hold him on my lap since the car was full and of course there was no carseat and I was worried for his safety. But I may have been the first white woman he had seen and he was scared. Joe just plopped him on the console between him and Peter and took off. The poor boy was so tired that he kept flopping forward. I finally just took him and held him and he was asleep so quick it didn’t occur to him to be scared. Once we finally found the place, Brendan immediately found a few school friends and he was off. Jason went to the bounce houses (which was not included in the tickets) and also found a few friends. Brendan’s first comment was, “Why aren’t there any black people here?” There actually were black people but they were the ones taking tickets and serving the food (also very expensive and not included in the ticket). I tried to make eye contact with a few people and say hello but everyone was in their groups and most were not people I had seen before. Eventually Georgi invited us over to her table so we moved over there but then she and her partner were not to be seen the rest of the evening. Peter chatted with an interesting guy but with the loud music, I was not able to hear the conversation. The afternoon rains came and we all took shelter under a tent for a bit. We were told the fireworks would start at 19:00 but they didn’t start until 20:00, after they burned an effigy (huge scaffolding with dummies dressed in clothing that went up in flames). We were told that the event commemorated the attempted bombing of Parliament and the punishment of the perpetrators. Jolly good. It was all so colonial and awful and we were so out of place. While waiting for the fireworks, they were selling these glow in the dark things. We had already blown almost a third of our monthly personal allowance and the boys didn’t want to spend their own money on it but the other kids were all buying them. And not just one, but six or seven or ten or more. It was outrageous. Someone gave Jason one and then we felt we had to buy one for Brendan so he could have one too. When the fireworks finally started, they were very nice but our boys didn’t think they were so cool. They were tired and it was loud and they wanted to go home. We waited over 45 minutes for our taxi driver to come, which is really not necessary in this small town. So . . . I’m thinking we will not mark this event on our calendar next year.
It was late by the time we got home and Peter was ready for bed. Carmen had taught Scott how to play Settlers and they wanted to come over but the game was running long. I ended up joining Carmen, Scott and Adrian at Carmen’s place and let Peter get some sleep. After feeling so displaced all day, I wanted to be among friends. I don’t know where I am going to fit in here. I get laughed at on the mini-bus with Zambians, the rich ex-pat mining community is definitely not where I feel comfortable, but I also don’t see myself with the tight-knit conservative home-schooling missionary crowd either. Perhaps it will feel different when the students come back to MEF and we become more involved here. It made me very thankful once again for the MEF Muzungus. So Carmen beat us all in a game of Settlers and I relaxed in their good company.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Last week I asked the principal of Lechwe, Ms. Lager, if she could tell me about any of the churches in town where some of the other Lechwe families attended. She admitted she knew nothing about churches here, which I am finding to be the case with the majority of white folks here, but she said she would look into it. I think she probably asked her Zambian secretary because she came back with a Presbyterian church and Anglican church and their start times. I asked Cobert, our new school taxi driver (since I was fed up with Joe being late or not showing up) if he knew where it was. He was pretty sure he knew where St. Andrew’s Presbyterian church was. So this morning he came late to pick us up (unusual for him) and then we drove all around trying to find this church. Turns out he didn’t really know. This is not a big city, people! We finally found the place half an hour after the service had begun. Not a big deal in this culture, but if we are trying to get a sense for what the church is like, it helps to be there for most of it. Turns out we got plenty of time in the service because it was a special service that included a guest choir and a harvest offering so it went three hours instead of the normal two. There was no children’s program so the boys were with us the whole time. In the middle of the sermon, I sent the boys outside for a change of pace and scenery. By the time the service ended, we were anxious to get back to our taxi since he had been waiting there a long time. All of these factors made it a little crazy, for Peter especially.
Despite these negative things . . . I LOVED THIS CHURCH! The whole time I was telling myself not to like it because there was no kids program and there is no way my kids will go there if they have to sit there the entire time. But the church was alive! The music was fabulous and everyone seemed engaged and participating. They had a time of giving testimonies and an Indian woman stood up to share. The comment by the worship leader was telling. He said it would be great if everyone was willing to share every Sunday like this sister did. I sensed that it could border on annoying if this woman shared every Sunday but they loved and accepted her anyway. Even though the minister wore a robe and they processed in, the rest was very informal. The music was spectacular with a blend of Bemba choruses and hymns. The preaching was OK and only 45 minutes long instead of an hour and a half. They have cell groups that people are encouraged to be a part of. We even discovered that Reverend Daka, the director of MEF, attends there. That was a pleasant surprise. Women were serving as deacons and women could help take offering and pray aloud. Such a change from some of the other churches we visited. There was one other white man that was present and one Indian family. After the service, the visitors stood next to the minister and the entire congregation shook our hands. My guess is that there are about 80 people or so, with a lovely family feel. I talked briefly with the minister and asked if they have a Sunday School program. They do! His wife usually teaches but she is in the States and will return this week. The do simple Bible stories and then also allow time for the children to play on the playground. As I was hurrying to the taxi, two women stopped me and wanted to greet me. I told them briefly that we were looking for a church home for the next three years and they both eagerly said, “Please choose us! Be part of our church family!” As I looked around during worship, many people smiled at me or nodded and I finally had the feeling that I could be part of this church. I felt that I would be welcomed into the family, and that it wouldn’t matter that I was white, and that I could attend Bible studies with the other women and be a part of the community. This was huge, especially after feeling so out of place in other circles lately. We’ll see if Peter and the boys will choose this church as well after attending on a regular Sunday with Sunday School included. I certainly hope so because this is definitely my choice.
Sunday evening we had our Mexican Fiesta! Carmen and Adrian came over early to help make tortillas. Actually, Adrian didn’t intend to make tortillas but we made him anyway. Though he looked a little scared, he turned out to be a skilled flipper. We all discovered that it is not easy to make round tortillas. Carmen made one the shape of Texas. Once again, Adrian surprised us all by turning out a very nice round tortilla. He was as surprised as any of us. While we were waiting for the others, the boys made maracas out of paper plates and beans. When Scott arrived, he showed us how to dance the salsa and Brendan attempted it with Carmen. We didn’t make Carmen wear her clerical collar but she did have to lead us in a Spanish prayer that we repeated after her. Once we started eating, Adrian and I lost count of the number of times that Carmen said, “This is SOOO good!” and “Cheryl, you’re the best!” It is avocado season so we even had guacamole. No salsa since it costs about $10 for a jar at Shoprite and I couldn’t find cilantro at the market. Soon my cilantro will grow and I will have it anytime I want. It was splendid. Brendan made a comment about burritos and what Jason likes to do with it that had Scott and Jenny laughing terribly hard. After dinner we went onto the veranda and lit the sparklers that the boys received last night at the fireworks but hadn’t lit then because we didn’t have a lighter. Back inside to write thankful chains and then the boys were off to bed. After big slices of chocolate cake, the adults played a game of Bohnanza before Jenny and Adrian chose to head home. Scott and Carmen stayed on for a game of Settlers. It was a very nice Mexican Fiesta, I must say. Ole!
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Remember, Remember,
the fifth of November.
Google "Guy Fawkes"
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