Winter

It started getting pretty cold here at the end of June/early July. It
is still hot in the afternoon, but too cold to sit outside in the
morning without a jacket, and it gets really cold at night because the
house is not as insulated as ours at home are. I have not gotten tan
at all really, which is weird because we are still really close to the
equator, and it gets really hot in the afternoons. Here are some
things we have been doing since I last posted:

International Trade Fair-- This is an event held in Ndola each year,
and school is cancelled for a few days for it. People come from
several different countries to sell goods, etc. It is like a state
fair, mostly of people selling things, with a few performances. My dad
would be really proud of some of the deals I got there--the price of
one thing I bought started at K60,000, and I bought it for K30,000
($6). It was a really fun day.

Communion--Since the Community of Christ is a church that only does
communion on the first Sunday of every month, we only got one chance
to have an African communion (we were travelling the first Sunday of
June, and leave to come home the first Sunday of August). It was
almost exactly like ours at home, but they just said one prayer for
both the bread and the grape juice instead of two separate prayers.

Surveys/Church activities--We are almost done with the community
surveys about orphan needs for one community. We had training at
another church on Friday, and will have a training at yet another
church this Tuesday, and possibly another one this Friday. At the
church, we are finally getting settled in and getting to do our own
programs. We did our first bible study this week, went on a house
visit with our pastor, had our first Young Peacemaker's Club
yesterday, and are leaving soon for a young adult activity. We are
trying to keep busy, but sometimes we can not do too much because the
kids have school and the adults have to go to work, so we have some
days where we have nothing to do.

Our time here has gone really fast so far. It is hard to believe we
only have 3 weeks left and the summer is almost over.

Review of the past week

We have done a few things since I last posted, starting with last
Saturday. We attended a youth day where the topic was marraige and how
to choose the right person to spend the rest of your life with. It was
a very long day, from about 10 until about 5 I think. Let's just say
they have a very different way of thinking about dating and marraige
here. On Sunday we went to church at our home congregation,
Chiwempala, and then in the afternoon we went to the other
congregation, Kasompe to train people to do the surveys for the orphan
program. There were a lot of people there (I counted 23 at the end),
and we really weren't expecting that many to be interested in helping
so that was good.

On Monday we stayed home and rested, and on Tuesday we walked into
town and back for groceries. We tried to call a taxi for the way back,
but the driver was not answering his phone, so we walked back with all
of our groceries. It is about a 35 minute walk each way. Tuesday
afternoon we went to the church for a young adult choir practice that
was supposed to start at 3:00. We were a bit late, but at about 3:50
when nobody else was still there, we left. Then, they ended up
practicing after all shortly after 4:00 I guess. Time is quite
different here because transportation is unreliable so nothing really
starts when it is supposed to. There also may have been some
miscommunication because some people thought the practice was supposed
to start at 3:30 anyway.

On Wednesday we went to Kasompe for a big seminar for this area of
Zambia church leaders. It was led by Bunda, an American, and two
English church members, and they talked about the We Share document.
We left our house at 7:45 in the morning and got back around 9:00 at
night. When we got back, there was no power. On Thursday, the outage
continued on until about 3:30 in the afternoon. We washed some laundry
by hand in the morning, and I caught up on my journaling and read
some. We then went to the church for bible study, but again nobody was
there. This was maybe supposed to start 30 minutes after we had
thought, and maybe the people were tired from the Wednesday seminar
and called it off. Today we walked into town again to print off
surveys and go to the store, and then explored near our home and went
to some really cool big rocks not far from our home.

Tomorrow we will go to Kasompe to have some volunteers survey the
community for orphan's needs, and Sunday we will go to church and then
go to a youth activity in the afternoon. I will not have internet for
about 10 days, as Catherine is going to Malawi for that time and
taking her computer with her. I will update you all in about a week
and a half. Enjoy the 4th! We plan to make an American meal for our
family here.

Random Updates

I have a lot of quick things to update you about right now.

Immigration--We went to immigration yesterday to get my stay extended,
but they refused to until it was the last possible day for an
extension, so we went back this morning and they gave me 30 more days.
We have to go back in a couple week's for Rachael's extension, and
then I will have to go for another extension in a month. It is so
silly.

Teacher Strike--The teachers of Zambia have been on strike for about a
month, and the kids began to riot on Tuesday. They tore down school
fences and walls, and broke windows. They have just been walking to
school every day to see if classes will start again. They were told
school should start again on Monday.

Schedule--We met with the pastors of the two congregations and set up
a schedule of activities for us every week. On Sundays we help teach
sunday school, lead a youth activity in the afternoon. Monday and
Tuesday we are free to work on the orphan program. Wednesday we lead a
bible study, Thursday we attend a bible study, and Saturday we attend
a youth group.

Finally in Chingola

After visiting Mansa (we drove through DR Congo on the way there, but went around on the way back), we arrived at our final destination Friday night. On Saturday we met with both of our congregations in Chingola, and went to one of them for the church service Sunday morning. It was definitely different than any other service I have been to, and I didn't get a complete translation of everything.

It is weird being one of very few white people here. We are getting a small dose of what it is like to be a celebrity or someone else who is always attracting attention. But, if people stare too long Catherine tells them to stop for us. I am slowly getting used to the attention that wasn't really there in South Africa or Botswana. I have also been getting used to the days here and I am able to sleep through most nights okay. We are exhausted by about 7:30 or so every night, but have been staying up until about 9:00 for the most part.

There are a lot of really good fruits and juices here, which I really like. I love fruit juice, especially when it is cheaper than pop. I am not sure if I will be able to post pictures because the internet connection is slow and not very reliable, but I will try.

There is a blog for all WSC volunteers at http://www.worldservicecorps.blogspot.com/ if you want to see what the people at the other sites are doing, and my partner's blog is at http://wsczambia2009.blogspot.com/ if you want to see a different perspective (she also writes a lot more than I do).

Ndola update

Yesterday we flew from Jo'burg to Ndola, Zambia. The airport in Ndola was really really small (not much bigger than the Blair airport). We went through customs and got our bags, and were met by Catherine (our host for the summer). The Mathews (parents of somebody Jac and Sherri know) also met us there and took us out to dinner later that night. We went to the hotel for awhile, then had to go back to the airport because they stamped our passports wrong. Turns out we have to go to a government office when we get to Chingola next week to get our stays extended (right now I can only stay until June 21). But that shouldn't be a problem to get fixed, especially with Catherine there to help us.

Today we tried to sort out some immigration problems, then went to visit one of our congregations just outside of Ndola. The people there were incredible and really wanting to help others. They just started surveying their neighborhood recently and have found that many
families are unable to afford school uniforms and supplies, so the kids are just playing all day instead of going to school. So, they started a school at the church and have two teachers for about 220 kids. They said 70 of the kids are orphans, and it sounded like the rest just can't afford school. The people of the church are giving a lot of their own money and time already, which is great to see. They call their school the Young Peace Makers Community school, and they do preschool, first, and second grade. We then walked to the house some of the church members as they had prepared a huge lunch for us. They were so generous and had all types of food for us to try. It was really hard for both Rachael and I to accept this generosity when we
know there is not an overly abundant amount of food in this area. The people of that church are doing a great job already, and are trying to help as many kids as they can.

Tomorrow we go to Luansha and then the next day we will drive to Mansa, then eventually go to Chingola where we will stay with Catherine and her sister the rest of the summer. Catherine is really nice and I am looking forward to staying with her and talking with her to learn more about African culture.

South Africa/Botswana update

Since I didn't have much time to write Wednesday morning, I will start from when we first got to South Africa. We experienced our first difficulty at the airport right after we landed, as we couldn't get the sink to work in the bathroom. I'm pretty sure they weren't turned on, but who knows. We got through customs around 8:00, and Jac and Sherri were waiting for us. We then went to our really cool B&B and went to sleep. We had a great breakfast Wednesday morning, and then took a seven hour bus ride to Gaborone, Botswana. We basically ate and went to bed once we got there.

 

On Thursday, I was a bit sick in the morning, but better the rest of the day. We went to visit two orphan programs. One was for children under six, and they all just came running up to us wanting hugs and high fives. It was a really good program there, and the people running it were great. We also went to a place that had a real orphanage as well as orphan outreach.

 

On Friday, we visited Flying Mission and then spent the afternoon at an after school program for orphans and vulnerable children ages 12-18. Some of them asked if Rachael and I were twins. Then we went back to the hotel and tried to get some sleep.

 

This morning we got up at 4:45 to catch our bus back to Jo'burg. We are at the same B&B as before, and we leave tomorrow morning to fly to Ndola, Zambia. We will spend about a week travelling around Zambia to meet with more people.

 

I have been getting more and more used to the time change this week, and am only up for about 2 hours each night, instead of 5 like the first night.

We're Here!

After a very long two days of travelling, we have arrived safely in South Africa. Our flight was Delta's first ever nonstop service to Johannesburg, and they had a ribbon cutting ceremony as well as their top pilot flying us. Then, the pilots went to go check the plane (a brand new 777), and found a mechanical problem so we were delayed about 2 hours. After a 15 hour flight, we finally landed in Africa. I couldn't really sleep last night because I am not used to the time here. I ended up waking up at 12:30 and was wide awake until about 5:30. We are leaving for Botswana later today for a few days, then back to South Africa to fly to Zambia!