This month we arrived in Chipata, Zambia (near the border of Malawi), where our ministry was focused on door-to-door evangelism, sports and children’s ministry, visiting clinics and encouraging/praying over the sick and hurting, and leading church services. The past three weeks, our team has the privilege of visiting the tribes of Madzimoyo and Mtengulini, along with the city of Chipata.
Zambia Highlights:
1. I’m currently rockin’ a sweet farmer’s TAN with a reverse sock (feet) tan.
2. For TRANSPORTATION, there never seems to be enough seats, meaning packs on packs on packs and people on people on people.
3. Night two in Chipata, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a giant COCKROACH crawling around on my feet inside my sleeping bag liner…talk about worst nightmare!
4. After avoiding the actual killing process, I PLUCKED A CHICKEN for the first time to assist with the next night’s dinner preparations…and strangely enough, this brought so much joy to my day!!!
5. My TENT has truly become my bedroom, my last leg of comfort, retreat, personal space, and cleanliness (probably one of my most treasured items here in Africa).
6. The headman and men of the village performed their traditional warrior TRIBAL DANCE for us, which is reserved for honored guests…wow. I will never forget that.
7. We had a couple BAT friends in our Madzimoyo house with us. (Also, a teammate of mine had probably an even worse “worst nightmare” situation: a bat flew up out of the cement hole at her while she was crouching over the squatting potty hole in the middle of the night!)
8. Everywhere we walk looks like a postcard. It was so peaceful and beautiful – I couldn’t run away from God’s CREATION even if I tried.
9. For some reason, we always choose the worst times to do LAUNDRY – we are not the best at predicting rain vs. intense heat/sun like the locals, so often times my clothes take forever to dry.
10. I am actually enjoying the FOOD here. They often make what they call “soup” to pour over the meal, which is a tasty tomato, onion, and oil combination. I am not used to eating all of the starches (rice, potatoes, nshima all day every day), but it was fun learning to make lunch one day! (Also…mangoes!)
11. We got to attend a Zambian WEDDING! Three words describe this experience: Loud, chaos, and DANCING, DANCING, DANCING!
12. One day the river FLOODED, preventing us from going in town to visit the clinic… another lesson on flexibility.
13. In our attempts to learn some of the LANGUAGE here (they speak Ynanga), there were some funny mishaps. We were practicing “Mulungu akarninanu,” meaning “God be with you.” Somehow after saying this over and over, we accidently changed the words to “Muzungu akarinane” meaning “White man be with me.” Yes, everyone got a kick out of that one!
14. I have lived in several different locations in Africa now, and as far as choice of toilet goes, can you guess the order of my preference?
1. DIRT HOLE = winner (no flies, no smell, strangely enough the best)
2. City toilet = okay (no toilet seat, cockroaches, flies)
3. Cement hole = horror story (strange and small oval shape, flies, flies, flies during the day…every type of wild insect party, plus bats at night)
