Conversations and Choices

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

My motto last year at this time was: Work while there is water. Here’s my new motto since I have water all the time now: Work while it is cool. By 8:30 this morning, I had cooked a whole pumpkin, made granola, pureed the pumpkin in my blender, had pumpkin bread in the oven, did three loads of laundry and hung it on the lines to dry, and washed two loads of dishes. Man, I love it when Peter takes the kids to school!

The rest of the morning wasn’t so productive. I went to Peter’s office hoping to use the internet but it was crawling at such a pace that it couldn’t even load a page. So then I walked over to an internet café located a bit farther away on campus. After nearly an hour of attempting to upload one picture to my blog, I gave up. At least my money wasn’t completely wasted because I eventually could look at emails.

Jason wasn’t too happy with me when I refused him a snack right before dinner. I heard him in the other room singing: Someone’s hungry, my Lord, Kum ba ya . . .

Saturday, September 13, 2008

I needed a lift after a depressing week. So I bought a bra. The mother of Brendan’s classmate sells bras at a monthly craft faire in town. It is a little embarrassing to be picking out various bras to try on while there are people milling about buying carved elephants and used DVDs and plants growing in plastic yogurt containers. But as Peter pointed out, sometimes you need a little extra support, and a new bra is certainly one way to get that.

In the afternoon, we gathered with other missionaries for our monthly missionary fellowship meeting. We worked together with Brenda and Jerry to organize it this time and our aim was to incorporate the children, of which there are many, instead of gearing it just toward the adults. We played dodgeball (I love that game!) and different water balloon games. Jerry led us in a few upbeat worship songs, instead of hymns from the 1950s, and it was wonderful to hear the kids singing their hearts out. Peter and I led the devotional time and divided the group into smaller groups. We looked at the Prodigal Son story and had the groups create a “snapshot” acting out part of the story and what the characters were feeling and experiencing at that moment in time. This was an exercise that we did at our regional retreat last year so we thought we would try it again. While it was good to introduce new ways of interacting with scripture instead of just listening to a sermon, Peter and I were a bit disappointed with how the exercise turned out. What emerged wasn’t terribly creative or profound but perhaps it is the exercise itself that stretched people. Who knows. The feedback that we received was that it was wonderful and so forth. I guess we will just accept that and trust that God works in mysterious ways.

Sunday, September14, 2008

THINGS I MISS . . . AND THE HIDDEN BENEFITS:
Watching a variety of movies through my parents’ subscription to Netflix . . . but we have been introduced to BBC TV series and dramas through our friend, Jenny (and we read a lot more).
Checking out books for the boys and I at the public library, especially for Brendan who devours books . . . but Brendan is learning to re-read books and I have friends who lend me a range of books that I may not have chosen myself.
Access to cheap Western food . . . but I am learning to make it myself (bread, beans, granola, applesauce, hummus, tortillas, salsa . . . and more).
Green parks with playgrounds . . . but the boys can entertain themselves in the dirt.
Thoughtful, creative spiritual formation for our kids . . . so we have to be more intentional in doing it ourselves and have all benefited from our family worship times and family Sunday School evenings.
Understanding how things work here . . . but I am learning to ask multiple questions to figure things out.
Palatable meat . . . but it is making us move towards becoming vegetarian.

And then there are things that I miss for which I have not yet found the hidden benefit:
Family and friends
Pasadena Mennonite Church
Other friends to consult with regarding parenting
Red peppers and strawberries

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

There are some days when I barely talk to anyone and then others when they day is full of different conversations. Today was one of those days that I interacted with a number of interesting people:
1. While walking around the track, I greeted a woman older than I who I have often seen but never really talked to before. We ended up chatting for the next 45 minutes as we walked. Her name is Fatima and she hails from Brazil. She is learning English and doing quite well, especially compared to my non-existent Portuguese or Spanish, which she also speaks. I learned that she used to be a professor of psychology in a university back home but her husband took a job with the mines so they moved here four years ago. She is an interesting woman and I was glad to have connected with her.
2. I ran into Brigitte, a friend from church and also the art teacher at Lechwe. I had seen that she coached some sports at Lechwe and I was curious about the girls volleyball team. I have been dreaming about playing volleyball quite frequently and the thought occurred to me that maybe I could volunteer to help the girls team. I didn’t know if it would be possible logistically speaking, but I thought it better to ask and satisfy my curiosity. Turns out that volleyball is not a big sport but there is a small team that meets on Thursday afternoons from 3-4 p.m. I have to take Brendan to school for mandatory House games during that same time so it would be easy to do both. Jason was going to play at Yobel’s house during that time anyway so it seems like it could be a possibility. I’ll check it out this week.
3. I finally met with Mr. Mwanachango about offering the training on African Indigenous Christian Counseling at Mindolo. With all the chaos this institution has experienced in the past 10 months, I was hesitant to broach the subject. But after getting such a positive response from the other two groups that I trained, I felt it was time to introduce the idea and see how it could be utilized at MEF. I left the materials with Mr. Mwanachango so he could look at them further but he seemed interested in the idea.
4. Off to St. Andrews church to have a conversation with Patricia about Sunday School issues. I arranged a meeting with her when I saw her last Sunday. She had invited her husband, the pastor, to join us and we talked together for an hour and a half. I want to be sensitive as a foreigner joining them but I also realize that I have ideas that could be helpful. When Reverend Chala returns from South Africa in two weeks, then we will return to the old format of having the children remain in the service until the sermon and then be dismissed. Hooray! I came up with a schedule indicating the lessons and themes I will teach from now until December. Hopefully, if I can develop a curriculum, then I can hand off the materials to someone else to teach and give me a break occasionally. I had to laugh when they asked me what we do with the babies in North America. I explained the concept of a nursery where the little ones played during the service. I also explained that parents, both the mothers and the fathers, would each take a turn volunteering in the nursery. With a laugh, they said that the fathers would never volunteer as that was women’s work. Yeah, I knew that but I thought I would still throw it out there! The most helpful thing for me was that Patricia realized it could be helpful for us to meet more often to check in and to plan together so that we are on the same page. Music to my ears. Things are looking up.
5. I had a lovely chat with Mrs. Lubamba, the head teacher and Brendan’s first teacher, while waiting for Brendan to get out of class. She is such a wonderful woman and I find it so easy to converse with her.
6. Brendan and Jason started an afternoon soccer training with a specialist coach at Lechwe. We have to pay a bit of extra money for the lessons but he is good and our boys need to be taught the fundamentals. They get a lot of practice playing in our front yard with Zambian boys who are much better than they, but it would be helpful for them to be coached a bit. While waiting for them to finish, I had a conversation with Siyamara (I have no idea how to spell her name). She is from Nicaragua, married to a Finnish man, usually resides in Finland, but is living here for two years with her family. Then SungSik Park, a Korean missionary, came over to visit for a bit as well.
By the time I told Peter about all these conversations, I was done talking for the day!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

I think we are moving in the direction of becoming vegetarian, perhaps semi-vegetarian. Partly this is due to the unpalatable nature of beef at Shoprite. There was a woman at school selling beef that looked and tasted normal, albeit expensive, but I haven’t seen her for almost two months. Chicken at Shoprite can be gray and slimy and our neighbors aren’t slaughtering their chickens for awhile. So out of necessity, we have been eating mostly vegetarian for the last several weeks anyway. I made lentil burgers the other night, and even though the recipe I used needs a bit of revision so that they don’t fall apart, Jason chowed down on it. He doesn’t like meat so won’t miss it at all. Brendan is a “carnivore” he says, but he doesn’t usually notice if there is no meat in the meal. Peter says I have been a closet vegetarian for years. And Peter is willing to make the change, especially with the history of heart attacks and strokes in his family.

In addition to the poor quality of meat here in Kitwe as well as the high cost, there are other reasons to make this lifestyle choice. After doing a bit of research on the internet, I discovered that choosing to eat less or no meat can make a significant impact on the environment and our health. Perhaps this is old news to many but I found the arguments persuasive.
1. Eating meat is bad for the environment: “In the U.S. every second, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce nearly 89,000 pounds of excrement, which is contaminated with the antibiotics and hormones that are pumped into these animals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the runoff from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.”
2. There is a link between eating meat and climate change: “Many leading environmental organizations, such as the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, are now establishing the link between eating meat and eco-disasters like climate change. According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.”
3. Eating meat wastes resources: “It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh. It's shockingly inefficient to feed plant foods to farmed animals and consume their flesh rather than eating the plant foods ourselves.”
4. Eating meat contributes to the global food shortage: “In the U.S., 70 percent of all grains, 80 percent of all agricultural land, half of all water resources, and one-third of all fossil fuels are used to raise animals for food.”
5. Eating meat is contributing to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest: “Eating animals destroys the rain forest. Most environmentalists are aware that the Amazon has been slashed and burned in order to create grazing space for cows. But perhaps an even greater threat is the destruction of rain forest in order to create land where feed is grown for factory-farmed animals in wealthy nations.”
6. Eating meat isn’t good for our health: “Some of the leading killers in America today, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, and strokes, are directly linked to meat-based diets. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America today, and it is caused by the build-up of cholesterol and saturated fat from animal products in our arteries.”

Although I can’t say that we are now vegetarian, it is a lifestyle choice that we are moving towards, panono panono (Bemba for little by little). Sometimes it isn’t feasible to be vegetarian here like when we are invited out and it would be offensive not to eat the chicken they prepared. But at home, I am going to do my best to cut back the amount of meat we eat and introduce more vegetarian dishes into our menu.

After I explained the reasons for cutting back on meat to the family, everyone was more than willing to give it a go. I made ratatouille for dinner tonight. I explained that this qualified as a vegetarian meal because there wasn’t really a rat involved. Both boys ate it without any complaints, and Brendan even had a second helping. I was really impressed.