"A Weekend Away"

It has been a long, eventful week, but a great one. Bear with me-a lot has happened in a short time. Last Thursday was village outreach day with the clinic workers, me and two students, and Tori and LeAnne (the PAs). It was a dusty, bumpy drive into the bush, but a good turnout. Once all the injections had been given and the workers were organizing growth charts, the rest of us ventured out to hand out stickers Tori and I had taken for the kids. We would give the mothers a little sheet of them, and they would look at them blankly until we showed them how to peel them off and stick them on their hands or clothes. They would immediately begin laughing and smiling, and using the stickers on themselves as well, wanting us to take a picture and show them. After five minutes or so a crowd had gathered around us, but when we brought out the shiny stickers it became a mob! We started putting the stickers on people’s hands, arms, faces-whatever was closest. I could barely see my sheet of stickers for the hands in front of my face waiting for their turn. We have some pretty comical pictures from all of that, and I think that was possibly the most fun part of the day! I won’t forget to take stickers with me from now on.

Friday we left early in the morning for a two hour drive to Livingstone, where Victoria Falls is for our weekend trip. Livingstone isn’t a huge city, but because the falls are there it gets a lot of foreign money from tourist activity. A small group of us went extra early in the van so that the people rafting could catch their bus, so the rest of us had tea and toast on the deck of the Waterfront campsite where we stayed. It is on the Zambezi river, so we watched the boats and the crocodiles while we sat in the morning breeze. We stayed in two-person tents. There was enough room for two cots, a small table with a little lamp, and plenty of roaches and mosquitos. There was a communal bathhouse, but I’m not sure anyone braved the “shower” the whole time we were there. It was inescapably hot during the day but we shivered all night long-no happy medium. We had a breakfast buffet there every morning that was quite good. There were not enough tents available, so the rest of the adults stayed at a hotel in town (or maybe they just didn’t want to stay in the tents...:) ) and I became the medicine tent and head-counter of the students.

That first morning after our tea, Tori and I accompanied LeAnne to the Victoria Falls bridge so she could bungee jump. She paid, signed a waiver, and only then did we go to the spot where you actually jump. It is in “no man’s land” once you go through customs, technically leave Zambia, and cross the border line for Zimbabwe. The bridge connects the two countries over the Zambezi, with the falls in the background. It is supposedly the second highest bungee in the world (the first being in South Africa) at a 111 meter (350 some-odd feet) free fall. There is a zip line, bungee jump, and bridge swing option. The bungee consists of having your feet bound together and the rope attached there, while you lift your arms and sort of dive off the platform. The bridge swing is where there is a rope attached at your waist and you step off the platform feet first, free fall until you pass the rope in the air and it catches, and then swing back and forth out over the water. People who did all three said the bungee was fun, but the bridge swing was just terrifying. I’m pretty sure neither of them looked fun once you were inching out on the ledge about to jump. I was just glad I did not have the desire to do either one. LeAnne bungee jumped and Tori and I kept exclaiming how crazy she was and how proud we were of her. She soared out like a bird on her jump and said she felt like she was flying. For some insane reason, once I saw it I decided that I wanted to try it too and be able to say that I’d done it. Tori and I decided to do the tandem bridge swing, and I’m not sure I would’ve been able to jump if I’d tried to do it by myself. They harnessed us up first thing, but we ended up waiting that way for over an hour as others bungee jumped, so the anticipation and anxiety just kept building. By the time they took us out on the ledge and connected us to the rope, Tori could not even form complete sentences, and I kept asking the worker why we were doing it (I was not satisfied with his “because it’s fun” answer). When he pushed us out onto the platform (only a big enough space for the two of us to stand) I was shaking my head and saying “no”. We looked down at the churning waters sooo far below, and both almost lost it. He told us to “look to the horizon” and “take a deep breath or you’ll never be ready”, then counted down from 3 and somehow we stepped off. Somehow in our jump we leaned and ended up free falling backwards, speechlessly and soundlessly watching the cliffs rush past and waiting for the cord to catch. When it finally did (seemingly way too close to the water), I screamed because the harness tightened so abruptly. I still have bruises from that, and we were both sore the next day. Once we were swinging, we could actually appreciate the scenery, which was gorgeous. We even waved back up towards the bridge to our friends, and a few minutes later they had pulled us up and we were on solid ground again! I cannot explain the terrifying moment of walking out onto that platform, but it was worth it in the end. I guess I can say now that if my friend jumps off a bridge, I would do it too-sorry mom :). I was exhausted afterwards from all the adrenaline. We have great pictures, but nothing that quite does it justice.

Friday afternoon a few of us elected to go to “high tea” at the The Royal Livingstone hotel. What a stark contrast to the atmosphere at Namwianga. The hotel is sprawled out on a huge green hill with a massive pool, riverside detached deck, and chandeliers and swings hanging from the trees. It backs up to the Zambezi, and you can see the mist from Mosi o Tunya in the distance (the local name for Victoria Falls, meaning “the smoke that thunders”). The lobby and restaurant are open-air with towering ceilings and huge leaf-shaped fans. It costs the equivalent of $1000 per night to stay there. I cannot begin to name all the options we had for sweets, but there were two long tables with three-tiered servers, each with something different. There were tiny cups of pineapple mousse, individual creme brulee pots, lemon creme pie, eclairs, quiche, salmon sliders, and every kind of homemade cookie, muffin, and cake you can think of (and some you can’t, like nshima, the staple starch here). The attendant told us what everything was, but by the third or forth thing we stopped trying to remember, and just started trying it. We each got our individual pot of tea. I had the vanilla rose, but there were so many to choose from, including one called gun powder. At some point I looked around at all of us with our china cups, plates piled with sweets, and wide eyes and just started laughing. I said it felt like we had been eating grilled cheese and nshima on a porch for the past month and could not remember how to respond in a nice restaurant-which of course is exactly what has happened. It is difficult to reconcile that kind of experience to what we are seeing here in the villages every day. We can live here among people who have absolutely nothing but a thatch hut, a cooking pot, and the clothes on their back, and yet when we venture out we remember the disparity of all that we have and are able to afford in comparison.

Saturday was our safari excursion day-one of my absolute favorite things. We left Waterfront early and bussed to the border. We hopped into little motor boats and crossed the river into Botswana. Once we cleared customs, we divided into groups of nine and climbed into our open-air safari jeeps. We drove into Chobe National Park (after stepping on a chemical pad that cleaned our shoes and having the car sprayed down with insecticide) for the safari. It was the typical open-plain, rutted dirt road, baobab tree and bush natural African terrain, only untouched by civilization. The park is a huge area, and even at 3.5 hours we only saw a small portion of it. We saw so many animals, sometimes closer than we were really comfortable with! There were impala, hoards of elephant (the park is know for their wild elephant population), kudu, jungle birds, baboons, hyena, warthog, giraffe (!), iguana, and when we drove across the stretch of beach by the water there were water buffalo, hippos, and crocodiles. Although I am crazy about giraffe, I have to say the highlight of the safari was when our guide “B” told us he had been radioed about a leopard who had killed an impala and left in in a tree out in the bush. We left the group of vehicles and blazed a trail out into the middle of nowhere, searching for the dead prey. He identified the area it was in, and we drove loops around the trees until we spotted the impala hanging over a tall branch. B got really excited then, because he explained that the leopard would not go far from the prey until she decided to finish it off, and decided we would search the surrounding bushes for her. We were excited about the prospect, but as he drove up to the first thick bramble bush and began circling it slowly so close that the thorns were scraping against my arm, I started to lose my nerve about it being a bright idea. When we got to the third bush (and my arm was bleeding from the thorns catching it), we saw her peering out at us! I was trying to take pictures and not think about how a leopard was merely a foot from my face, and that there was no way we could get away fast enough if she decided to attack us. Thankfully she stayed where she was and just let us get great pictures.
Back on the trail, we saw what LeAnne referred to as the grand finale, with a giraffe, impala, and elephant all grazing together.

After lunch we got on a boat just big enough for our group, and went on a water safari between Botswana and Namibia. We would see animals grazing by the water, and sail right up to them to where we were almost on land next to them. We saw most of the same animals, with a lot more hippos and crocodiles. By the time we finished and reversed the border process, we were all wiped out, but still talking about everything we had seen.

Sunday we went to church in Livingstone, and received a warm welcome, along with a surprise invitation to sing some songs for them (which is no longer a surprise really since just about every congregation puts us on the spot for the same thing). We chose three Tonga songs and everyone went crazy, thinking we were fluent because we were “talented” enough to sing in their language. We missed class, but even so the service alone was over three hours. We sat crammed 12 to a 8 person unpadded bench trying not to focus on how hot and sweaty we were. What a morning! Lunch afterwards was at Steers, the closest version of fast food (not fast in any sense) here. They even had ice cream with chocolate sauce-everyone’s favorite part. Afterwards most of the group left for Namwianga, but those of us scheduled for elephant riding stayed an extra night. The ten of us were picked up by a van at Waterside and driven to some land close to Livingstone with rescued elephants they train and eventually transition back into the wild. It was two to an elephant, and we climbed into the “saddle” from a tall platform. Our guide walked in front of the elephants with a gun, in case he needed to scare off other animals. LeAnne and I rode Liwa, a 20 year old elephant whose baby trotted (do elephants trot?) along beside us eating branches the entire time. It was the middle of the afternoon and extremely hot, but a lot of fun. We crossed the Zambezi and stopped to let the guide take pictures of us in the water with our elephants. It was pretty uncomfortable, but worth it for the overall experience. We fed the elephants afterwards and watched the hippos and crocodiles on the bank while we ate snacks they provided. That night we went to the Arts Cafe, a restaurant with traditional African bands and local food. We ate nshima, kudu stew, kapenta, rice and curry, cabbage, rape, sunflower greens, fried worms (I couldn’t bring myself to try more than one) and hominy with a honey peanut butter sauce for dessert. It was a lot of fun.

Monday afternoon we drove back to Namwianga, and it was so good to be home! Three new babies came to the Haven while we were gone, and one more the day after we got back. They are all 5-6 days old with one set of twins who are really tiny. Two are on antiretrovirals for exposure to HIV from both parents. Without much time to recover, we left as a group Tuesday morning and drove 2.5 hours to Macha hospital, another mission hospital with a presiding pediatrician (Dr. Thuma) from John’s Hopkins. He has worked there for most of his adult life, and has essentially eradicated malaria in the area by targeting infected asymptomatic individuals in the village before the mosquitos can bite them and spread the disease. He is grant-funded to support other Hopkins doctors, professors, and students to spend time on the mission in the research lab with the mosquito farm and other projects. He has really done a lot of good there and it was very interesting to see.

Wednesday was the dreaded day that Tori and LeAnne left, and the mean age in my house rose a lot closer to 60 :). I spent the morning with them walking to the clinic and the Haven to tell everyone bye and play with the babies one last time. They left after lunch, and I started missing them before they had made it off the mission. I wasn’t sure what to expect in the beginning, but we became great friends these last six weeks and it definitely feels more empty without them. As I type this they are over the ocean somewhere on that unbelievably long flight back to the States.

There was no outreach yesterday, so I went with Ba Janice, Dr. Frank, and the Zambian “chaplain” Ba Rogers to Kalomo hospital to visit the wards. Kalomo hospital makes Namwianga look like a palace, though they are only a few kilometers apart. It is a tiny cramped building with dirty walls and small wards stuffed with beds. There was the pervasive smell of sickness that you just could not shake from your nostrils afterwards. We went through the three wards (children’s, women’s, men’s) talking and praying with the people there. We ended up as surprise speakers when Ba Rogers insisted that “the food of visitors always tastes better” and put us on the spot to speak encouraging words or a small lesson to each ward. The Zambians seemed to appreciate our feeble efforts anyway. There was a man who died in the ward while we were there, probably of AIDS by the look of him, and the wife and family began wailing loudly. We walked behind the hospital, stepping across the pits dug for trash, to the women’s shelter where families stay while they are waiting for their loved ones to get better. It is also where pregnant mothers wait as the get closer to labor. If possible, the conditions were even more dire. There were cinder blocks scattered in front with women knelt over their stained pots in the soot, warming rape or chibwantu for their children. We stepped into the dim one-room building and saw “beds” spread on every inch made of corn sacks and chitange fabric. Some of the women carried in cinder blocks still warm from the fire and set them up for us to sit on as they gathered around on the floor and we proceeded to sing. The flies were so thick I finally stopped swatting, and the lady next to me sat still while the bugs swarmed around open sores on her leg. I realize this sounds dramatic, but to me it was. I left with a feeling of helplessness, and Ba Janice and I discussed how once you see such conditions, God places it as a burden on your heart to give something of yourself back to ease some of the world’s suffering. I hope to get to go back several times while we are here.

Whew, that was lengthy. We are having an herbalist come speak to us tomorrow about traditional healing methods, and another village church excursion on Sunday. We leave Wednesday for our 8 day trip to northern Zambia, so there isn’t much time to settle down before leaving again! Wishing you all a wonderful Friday.