“Just an ‘Ordinary’ Week in Zambia”

There has been a lot going on since last week, but much of it is the typical routine for us here. I went with the two students assigned to the village outreach last Thursday. This time we were an hour or more out into the bush. We took a Zambian “band” with us, consisting of a horn, drums, and dancers. They entertained the mothers and children as they waited, with health teaching via song and dance. It was really fun to watch, and a great teaching method as far as the Tonga people are concerned. In the first village we set up in a one-room hut and the babies were a constant stream! After everyone was weighed from the hanging scale, we vaccinated against measles, polio, and tuberculosis (which children in the US are not given). The students did great, and I taught them how to give intradermal injections for the BCG (the TB vaccine). In a corner of the hut there was a midwife who examined the pregnant women of the village, and listened to the fetal heart beat with a fetoscope. We immunized for probably two hours straight, until the team left for the next village. A man stopped me on the way to the car, and in broken English explained that his daughter was sick. He said she had been having trouble walking with her right leg for the past month. He had taken her to the local clinic, and they referred her to Namwianga, but he did not have transportation. When he heard there would be “white people” at their village that day, he hiked her in on his back so that we could examine her. It was hard to tell much about her, especially since she was scared to death of me (he said she had never seen a white person before) but we connected him with a ride to the clinic a few days later.

Things went similarly at the second location, except there were even more people because it was a less remote place, held at the village school house. After another couple of hours giving shots, the crowd began to disperse and several of the village women brought big bowls of food for us to eat before heading back to the clinic. We had large communal bowls of nshima (starchy corn-base that is rolled into balls and dipped in everything else) and steamed rape. This was really messy to eat with our hands, and the greens were crunchy at times. When we finished eating and carried the bowls out into the light to wash our hands, we saw the source of the “crunchiness”-kapenta (small fish heads. We would have rather not made that discovery, because it made it more difficult to keep the meal down afterwards.

Friday the choir sang in chapel, and there were 12 or so of us who sang with them. With the exception of “It Is Well With My Soul” the rest of the songs were in Tonga or Bimba, and we had to pick them up on the rehearsal days by hearing them, since they do not have sheet music, etc available to them. We mouthed a few lines here and there, but all in all I think we did pretty well, and we were well-received for having sung with the Zambians.

Saturday was a full day. We left after breakfast for a “field trip” to an agriculture school a few kilometers from Kalomo. It is owned and run by a German couple who first taught at the school in Namwianga until they saw the need for teaching sustainable agriculture as a way for Zambians to feed their families through farming and also make a living. Even though I don’t understand a lot about the soil and how farming works, it was really interesting, and it is a great ministry opportunity as well.

After lunch all the girls left for Janipher’s “kitchen party” at the pavilion across from the Haven (her adoptive parents’ house). It was definitely a cultural experience, to say the least. As the women arrived, the gifts were placed on a cloth spread in the center of the pavilion. Everyone took seats in the folding chairs or on chitanges spread around the circle. The party began with two old women beating drums and girls taking turns dancing for the crowd. Unfortunately, one of the dancers works at the clinic, and knew me, so she pulled me out of the crowd to dance with her. I actually received clapping from the Zambian women, but I’m pretty sure the girls in our group enjoyed it more, haha. After about an hour, a chorus of the bride’s friends and family led her and another woman into the circle, covered by a cloth, and sat them down on a mat next to the gifts. They sang and danced around her until the groom and his family came to present gifts to her. He uncovered the feet of the two women, and had to guess which one was his bride. They exchanged gifts, though as is custom, neither of them smiled (they are supposed to be sad for leaving their families). The groom left and the rest of the party ensued. The matron of honor led songs and the women danced with Janipher’s gifts above their heads, displaying them for the crowd. Janipher kept her head down and her face unchanged the whole time, as if everyone was having a good time but her. As the gifts were picked up, the gift-givers were called up to unwrap and present it to her and show her how to use it. We got her a set of dishes, so we had to kneel in front of her, open it, and take each piece out of the box, explaining what she would use the plates and bowls for, etc. We then encircled her and sang a song in Tonga while the crowd clapped. After the gifts were presented (complete with chickens and a rooster), the dancing continued as the food was served. Two cows had been butchered, pounds of rice and curry had been cooked, and the traditional cornmeal drink was made by the barrel. There were 400 women invited, so the amount of food did not disappoint. We all agreed to try the traditional drink, but really we just ended up wasting a lot of what tasted like uncooked grits floating in sour milk (actually that’s pretty much what it is). When we left the party, we had been there four hours.

We stayed at the Johnson for church on Sunday (on the mission) and we had our arms full of children from the Haven that the Aunties had brought. Dillon (the Daggett’s son) had a birthday Sunday so we celebrated with him that afternoon, and walked back to church Sunday night after handmade tortillas and guacamole for dinner. I walked with two other girls to church, and when passed a tree near the Johnson, our flashlights revealed a cobra. One of the girls screamed and started to run, while I yelled at her to keep her light on the snake so we could actually see it! We yelled “snake” at two boys who were nearby, and one of them finally picked up a brick and unconcernedly walked over to kill it. On the way back, some others in our group killed a black mamba. I’m hoping the sighting of four snakes is enough for us this trip!

Yesterday Ba Janice and I took six students to Zimba hospital, a Wesleyan mission hospital about an hour away. There is a husband and wife team from America who both work as doctors at the hospital (Family Practice and Pulmonology respectively). The hospital is more equipped for surgery than Namwianga, so we set the students up to rotate through the Major Theatre (OR) and on rounds with the Jones’. I did teaching with the students on two natural births, and we weighed and examined the babies afterwards. We consulted on a man with stage IV AIDS and Kaposi’s Sarcoma with a hemoglobin of 2.6 and still talking to us-unbelievable. All in all I think it was a really good hands-on experience for everyone.

Regular day today, village outreach tomorrow, and we leave Friday morning for Livingstone and our weekend safari in Botswana. We have all been looking forward to this trip since the beginning, so it will be a nice break from the mission weekend activities. Tori and LeAnne (the PA students) leave a week from tomorrow, and we will be sad to feel like a part of the group is going with them. It will make the house a lot emptier too, leaving only the Blacks and Ba Janice and I in our place. Almost lunch time here, then on to rounds at the Haven.