This Saturday will be three weeks I have been in Zambia. It has been a whirlwind of experiences from funny moments such as children trying to wash the white off of my skin, to heart breaking moments that leave me thinking for hours. God has shown and taught me so much in the short time I have been here. I arrived in Lusaka, Zambia which is a two-hour drive from the OM Base in Kabwe. I stayed for a week and a half in Kabwe until I traveled up to Mpulungu. In Kabwe everyone was friendly and welcoming. During the time I was in Kabwe I had the opportunity to see all the different ministries they were involved in and interact a lot with the Zambian culture. One of the first cultural things I did was taking a mini bus into town to go to the market to buy chitengis. Now mini buses in Zambia and mini buses in the states are drastically different. In Zambia they are very run down vans that are completely falling apart inside and out. In a van that should only fit 8 people they have the incredible ability to fit 15 people or more plus whatever else that person is traveling with. It truly is a bonding experience. Zambians call white people muzungus. In almost every situation they do not mean it in a rude way but that is what they call you were ever you go. In the market you can haggle the price for what you are buying. Often they will try to give you a "muzungu price" for whatever you are trying to buy. At the market you can buy produce, food, clothes, and whatever else they can possibly sell. There I bought my chitengis which are the african fabric wraps that the women. Each chitengi costs about 10,000K. The exchange rate is $1 = 4,620K. It is very rare for a person to see a woman in pants or capris and never in shorts. Here you are thought of as a prostitute or whore if you wear shorts or show your knees. Even physical touch between a man and a woman in a romantic way such as handholding or an arm around the shoulder is extremely inappropriate. If a man and woman are seen holding hands those who see them will assume that they are sleeping together. But an interesting thing is that it is common for men to hold hands with each other while they walk down the street. This is one of the puzzling cultural things I have observed. One of the things that surprised me in Kabwe is that most of the shop owners are from India. In a lot of the shops they will have Muslim signs or posters. While I was in town I was the only white person there. It is very common for people to stare at white people.
The OM base in Kabwe has a lot of different Ministries. There are two ministries that touched my heart in very different ways: the schools and the hospital ministries. I had the opportunity to go see the new school at Makwati community and to see a more structured school where the teachers had gone through the teacher training course held at the OM base. At Makwati, the church and school are at the same place. The building is only poles and a metal roof. Each of the benches are made with stones at the ends and a wooden board they made on top to sit on. Trust me it is not easy to sit quietly and hold your balance when your knees come up high. These are the same seats they used for church when I attended. The Makwati school is nothing like I have seen before in my life. Zambian teaching methods and American are very different. It is a very new school that is still being structured. The school is not very large and is only for the younger kids. The kids there were precious. They would want to come stroke my skin, pinch it or touch my hair. The other school is very structured. There are numerous classes with many kids. All of the kids wear uniforms. The school day is broken into two parts- younger ones in the morning and then older ones in the afternoon. This is very common for school to be set up into two parts with the kids. There I was able to interact with the kids. We played games and talked with the kids which I loved. All the kids wanted to hold your hand and be next to you. Later on I learned that it is not normal for Zambian adults to play with kids so when we come to the school and are willing and wanting to spend time with them and show them love this is a big deal. One of the hardest things I am encountering here is the language difference. The number one language here is Bemba. It originated from the Congo. During the wars in the Congo many of the people have fled into Zambia. Zambia is one of the only countries to never be involved in or have a war. While I was at the school one of the teachers took me to a house that was nearby and told me about Zambian culture which was really interesting. The house is made of mud and straw for a roof. Twice a year they have to put a certain kind of mud in the house to make the floors hard. One thing that amazed me is that even though Zambians may not have much they do sweep a lot, organize and clean the best they can. The lady's home that we visited had old beat up pots that she had spent many hours scrubbing till they were shining again. As Americans we would have thrown them out long ago. We are too quick to get something new or better than what we already have. The other ministry was visiting the hospital. This was a completely different experience from visiting the schools. The hospital ministry truly broke my heart. The hospital that we visited was the largest hospital around. It is a German hospital that looked like a world war hospital out of a movie; very run down looking but kinda clean. OM does ministry there by praying for the people and talking with them. We were able to go into two wards with patients. Honestly I was so shocked by the way they do medicine and health treatment. I quickly became thankful for American hospitals (even the worst ones). I can't even start to describe some of the things I saw. There have been patients waiting in bed for weeks (yes... weeks) before a doctor will see them. There was a little boy who was about 4 years old that broke both legs the week before and still the doctors haven't seen him or anything. The x-rays were done but still the doctors had not seen them so they could set the legs. I prayed with a woman who's husband beat her so badly that she had internal bleeding and had to have surgery. You could see scars all over her face and body from previous and recent abuse. It was horrible. I could tell she was scared and ashamed. One of the patients that touched me was a young boy who looked about 13. He fell into hot coals back in October on his uncle's farm. His left leg melted from the calves to the under thighs and he had 3rd degree burns all over his right side of his body- all the way to his neck, covering his arm and hands. The only thing they had on him were wet (nasty) towels and that's it. No pain killers. It amazed me that he was there for so long and that's the best they can do. He looked like he was in so much pain. I couldn't even talk to him so he could understood me. I felt so bad. Everyone there had no pain killers, even the young ones. I can't even tell you how many people there were in so much pain. There were young children with bones sticking out waiting for the doctor to see them. The saddest thing is that there are about 68 doctors or more and four hundred patients in the hospital. In Zambia the nurses don't take care of the patients. It is the family's job to get them food, water, clean them, change them, or anything like that. It truly amazed me and saddened me that the Zambians are so patient that they will wait without complaining to see a doctor. No one there ever complained about the doctors not seeing them. In America we truly want everything right here, right now. We want things easy and pain free. I knew that our culture was like that but I never got an understanding of how self-centered our culture truly is. I could keep going on and on about what I saw at the hospital and how it broke my heart.
One of the cultural dishes I ate a lot of while in Kabwe was nshima. First you boil water, then you add the maize meal mix very slowly while mixing. If there are clumps you remove them. Then you let it boil for 13 min. After that you add more mix while stirring it. It was amazing how hard it was to turn. I tried turning it but failed quickly. Mama Lunga could do it so easily. I was so impressed. The nshima was the taken into the kitchen where you use a paddle to make brick looking things so you serve it for lunch or dinner with soup (for dipping). When you eat nshima you only use your hands. You pinch off some and squish it in your hand and make a kind of oval clump and then you dip it into the soup. This was actually really good. One of my favorites is when you have beans for the soup. Its really good. One of the most interesting things I have eaten are little fried fish (whole) called kapenta. They are really salty and fishy. You usually eat nshima with it.
For a while they had decided that I would travel with some other missionaries on the public bus through the night to Mpulungu but I was so thankful when I found out that they sent a van to come get us. The van ride to Mpulungu took about 14 hours. It was squished but I was so thankful to be squished with people I knew. Mpulungu is beautiful. Right now is the end of the rainy season so everything is still green. The town is set on a peninsula into the lake with a view of mountains and hills all around. The lake looks more like the ocean with islands not too far off. The home that I am staying in has about 12 missionaries from all over the world at this time. It does have running water for showers which are inside. Everyone here has been very welcoming and supportive. Where I am living and where the OM Lake Tanganyika base is are on separate sides of town. It takes about 20 min to walk from home to the base. It does give you a workout walking there due to the fact that there is a large hill right between them. Only the main road is paved but other than that it's dirt and rock. At the base there are the offices, orphan school, and jetty (boat dock). There is a lot of construction work going on there- apartments, girls' dorm, guys' dorm, and more classrooms. It's really exciting to have been in Mpulungu for about a week and half and to have seen how much has been done so far.
Since I have been here I have been able to start getting involved in the ministries that I will be involved with until I leave. One of the main ministries that I am excited to be working with is the Orphan School. There are 60 students that attend the school. All of them live with a guardian or someone. In Zambia when you are a orphan you are put almost into a third class kind of people. It is very looked down upon to be an orphan. Literally they can be treated as slaves by their guardians who may be a relative or someone else. Often the kids hardly get fed when they are at home and many of them are physically abused or worse. Each day at school they are given breakfast and lunch with school time in between. For the majority of them this is the only opportunity they have to eat, be educated and even loved. There is such an incredible need for these kids to be shown love. The Zambian school system has three terms rather then two like ours. Between each term there is a month off. Last week the kids finished their first term of the year and are on hoilday. Over the years OM has found that if they stop letting the kids come to school for a month the kids come back sick due to lack of nutrients or have very bad habits. Right now we are running a hoilday program for the kids which I have been involved in planning and leading every other day. The kids can come and eat breakfast and then have different fun activities to do such as bible story, arts and craft, swimming, and game time before they eat lunch and go home. We are planning on doing the program for two of the four weeks the kids are off. I have loved getting to know the kids. In the morning when we leave to walk to the base some of the kids meet us at the top of the hill so they can hold our hands and walk with us the rest of the way. Then when we leave some of them like to wait till we leave so they can walk us home. It's really sweet. They make me smile so much. I am truly amazed at how sweet they are even though they come from horrible home lives. Next week we are planning on having a movie and popcorn day as a surprise and then face painting on Friday. One of the girls' favorite things to do is play with my hair. They are so amazed by white people's hair. Last week I had a little girl ask me if I could get medicine for my freckles. She thought something was wrong with me because I had brown spots. It was so cute.
Another ministry I was able to do was feeding the people at the prison. In Zambia they do not feed or give water to the prisoners. Some of them are in there for small things, others big. When I visited there was a lady, with her two year old son, who was in prison. I had the chance to talk with her and pray with her. She told me that she was the second wife of a man and that she had insulted the first wife who reported her and sent her to prison. Wow!!! Literally by only insulting someone you can be in prison. Crime is really low in Zambia. Some of the men were in prison because of being out after the curfew hour. There are a lot of grey areas and contradictions in Zambian culture and laws. For example, child abuse, alcoholism, and polygamy are some of the biggest issues but hardly anything is done about it, while when you insult someone can end up in jail. If someone steals from you are allowed to beat the person up till almost nothing but if you insult him while doing it then you are going to jail. There is a lot of backward thinking I am slowly finding out.
Another one of the main ministries is the medical boat. Right now many people are working hard to get it ready for the ceremony on May 11th. I have gotten the opportunity to paint the slogan on the back of the boat. I am in the middle of painting it at this moment. It’s been interesting trying to sit on the back with the boat going side to side on the water and trying to paint in black on a white boat. This has also been a great opportunity to work on my arm tan.
"You can exist without it, but you cannot live without it". This is so true. I am asking myself the question what kind of Christian am I going to be? When you are at the bottom, don't know what to do, that is when the true you comes out. Being over here I believe that I am going to learn (through hard situations) how true that statement is.
I am realizing that I am more American in my Christianity than I have ever wanted to admit. This breaks my heart. I truly want to hear God speak to me and have a deep personal encounter with Him and have a true relationship with him. I am truly falling in love with Africa and the people that live here. They are so dear and there is such a great need for God's word and love to be shared and shown to them. My heart truly goes out to them. This last week has been one of the happiest times in my life and one of the most growing times in my life. I am learning so much about myself and God through being here. I know that there are a lot more challenges ahead of me.
