Malawi
Our time in Africa began in Mzuzu, Malawi where team Geronima was living in the home of a woman that we called Momma Chris with her two daughters, Moozie (12) and Jane (24), and Jane’s son Isaac (3). The seven of us shared two bedrooms, and were spread out amongst three double beds. We used squatty potties and took bucket showers. There wasn’t running water in the house, but we did have electricity and a TV that played English-subbed-over Spanish and Indian soap operas all hours of the day. Those were pretty great. They cooked all of our meals for us, and we all really enjoyed the food. Lots of chicken, rice and greens. Maybe too much rice, though… We aimed to work out at least once a day in hopes of countering the carb intake…
Our ministry in Mzuzu was evangelism. We’re partnered with Harvesters International Ministry, and each day we took a van ride (a VERY bumpy van ride) into a village and preached the Gospel. I have zero experience with preaching, so this was a huge stretch for me.
However, after about one week we had a situation with our contact and AIM decided it best to relocate us for the remainder of the month. Our team was reassigned to the Nkhata Bay area where we stayed at a hostel called the Butterfly Space. Here, we lived in our tents for the remainder of the month and volunteered in the Butterfly Space’s nearby preschool during the week.
I actually really enjoyed working in the preschool! It was a wonderful chance to love on some cute babies and get my joy tank full. I took my nice camera to school a couple days and got some really cute shots of the kiddos. I think I’ll dedicate another blog post to sharing those photos.
We had a really great time living at the hostel. We got to know several of the staff pretty well and got to love on them some as well as meet some cool people from around the world. Also… we were right on Malawi Lake so we went swimming pretty much every day after ministry. It was super great. I had a nice tan that month. Hostel living was sweeeeet.
Zambia
Our hosts in Lusaka were wonderful, and they took such good care of us. It was definitely a good month for team Geronima. We stayed with Pastor Peter, his wife Beatrice and their 6 daughters. They had a nice home equipped with electricity and running water. All 7 members of our team slept in the same room on mattresses in the floor. It was like a sleepover every night. Surprisingly, we all got along super well this month despite being in each other’s space 24/7.
So our host founded Destiny School about 10 years ago, and our team worked in the classrooms this month! We typically taught from about 8-4 and then we’d do Bible Studies in the evenings for the Youth Group or Adult Groups. I taught the 5th grade classroom this month! On Saturdays we’d walk around the villages and preach, encourage and pray for the people we’d encounter there. Sundays were spent in church where one or two of us would preach or share a testimony.
We spent our final week in Zambia in the Copperbelt. Here, we stayed with another Pastor in his family’s home. They were much poorer than our contact, so we got to experience squatty potties, bucket showers and no running water for the whole week. The family was super sweet, though, which made our time there more comfortable. We worked in the school there for a few days and also did door-to-door in the villages as well as encouraging the leadership in the local church with testimonies and encouraging messages.
Africa was a great experience, but it was also very hard for me. We were pretty objectified, and that got a little bit overwhelming as time went on, especially when things escalated from just words to aggressive physical contact. I still haven’t mastered the squatty potty, and I opted to wash my hair less instead of allowing the bucket shower to convince me that I needed to cut all my hair off. (Ha. Don’t judge. This is the World Race. Dry shampoo does wonders.) Neither Malawian nor Zambian culture favored promptness, and sometimes I felt like we sat around waiting for things to start just as long as we spent doing actual ministry… So that was sort of frustrating at times.
But those two months in Africa put me out of my comfort zone in almost every way – physically, spiritually, preferentially. But that’s the thing… some things are simply preferred. Africa was a time for me to step outside of that and experience some new things in some new ways. And I’m grateful for that.
