"Now You Are Tongas"

Well, it has been quite some time and for that I am sorry! We are having some Internet difficulties and so that is partly to blame but we have been so busy lately! I was flipping through my journal today and realized I have written 34 pages since my last blog update! Since it covers so much time, I will try to hit the highlights over the past two and a half weeks. The title for this post is courtesy of our African language professor. He gets so tickled at our accents and how we say certain Tonga words, but every now and then, after we've repeated one enough, he will grin and say "Now you are Tongas". :)

September 21: We left at 6:00 this morning and didn’t get back until 7:30. We went to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls! The roads were AWFUL!!! They are under construction, but to make matters worse, there was one section where we were driving on these awful roads while the beautiful smooth pavement was right next to us! Once inside the gate, a small group of us hiked down to the “boiling pot” of the falls. It is so named this because when you look out it looks like it is a boiling pot. We stuck our feet in and the water felt wonderful! We hiked back up and over to see the falls which were BEAUTIFUL even in dry season! However, I can only imagine how stunning they are during rainy season!!! We ate brick oven pizza and chocolate milkshakes at a little restaurant called Funky Munky!

September 22-24 were relatively “normal” days (if there is such a thing here in Africa) :) filled with classes and clinic

September 25: Besides being my Grandma Marcille’s birthday, it also rained for the first time! It was just a few sprinkles at first, but then it rained pretty heavy (for September in Africa at least!). Dinner was quite chilly (I don’t know if I’ve told this part or not, but we eat al of our meals and have all of our classes outside on the veranda). So this cooler weather was very welcomed by all of us!

September 26: The chief came and spoke to us this morning. There were these pesky birds yelling at each other right behind us and he was very soft spoken so it was a bit difficult to fully understand everything, but it was still interesting. We learned about his chiefdom and its culture including funeral rites (chiefs are buried sitting up on a throne), traditional ceremonies (including rain ceremonies, but as a result of Westernization most of these have died), and different types of love/marriage (arranged by the parents, arranged by the couple, and eloping). That night, our neighbor’s house caught on fire (he had a thatched roof). It was a horrifying sight! And very frustrating because we were told when some of our students went to help, there was nothing we could do except watch it die out. The flames were HUGE! Nobody was hurt and he was able to get all of his belongings out. He is now living with his uncle.

September 27: We went by and checked on the house on Sunday after church and it is surprisingly intact because the walls were mud bricks...they don’t frame their houses with wood. After church, I watched Hotel Rwanda (it was the first time I’d seen it). Wow! It’s very hard to fathom that was only 15 years ago and that the rest of the world just stood by and did absolutely nothing to help.

September 28: A normal day of class in the morning and clinic in the afternoon.

September 29: Today we traveled to Choma to a special school there called St. Mulumba. This school is 24 years old, has grades 1-7, and has 210 students (106 are deaf, 39 are blind, and 65 and mentally handicapped). It is also a boarding school. They have a 99-100% pass rate on their Grade 7 exams and these students take the same tests everyone else does! In addition to academic training, they receive vocational training in gardening, basket weaving, and leather making for example. Oh what a splendid day and what joy we found in these students!!!

September 30: Ms. Bingham and I took our first group of students to a nearby hospital today at Zimba. The students were busy observing in different areas and so the two of us spent our afternoon rounding in the wards. The male ward had probably 20 beds in one long hallway (two rows of ten almost all full). The female ward was very similar. The pediatric ward had probably 10 beds but was only about half way full. There was a maternity ward that had one or two patients in it. For all of my nursing friends...there was ONE nurse for two wards!!!! She was very busy and because of this the families do all of the bedside care (feeding, bathing, toileting, etc). There was this one little girl who had been there for over a month after breaking her femur! She was about 13 I would say. Ms. Bingham took her some Crayons and paper the next day and she drew such beautiful pictures. It was a very stark contrast to the XBoxes that are found in each room at ACH...

October 1: It’s Thursday so I went on Outreach again today!!! Ross and four students also came along. This is always an exciting day because the students give their first shots!

October 2: This was my second trip to Zimba (Ms. Bingham’s third...she took a group on October 1 while I was with a group on Outreach). It was neat to see what a difference some crayons and paper made to the children’s ward! :) I realize that HIPPA is not really as predominant here as it is back home, but I still try to provide privacy for these patients and not reveal too many of their stories because they are people, but there was a new man today in the men’s ward who had horrible gangrene of his foot. It was the worse open sore I have ever seen. The smell was awful and probably the only way to “fix” this would be to amputate his foot. I could not help but think of when Jesus healed people. As we were walking around talking to them he asked if there was anything we could do to help his foot. It’s probably hard without the mental image that is forever burned in my mind, but can you imagine what it must have been like to be one of Jesus’ disciples and witness such a miracle?!?!

October 3: Today we took a field trip out to Sinazongwe (from where we are we made a backwards kinda sideways C...if that makes sense). We had been invited to a dilwe (or funeral...it was a memorial service...his body was not there) of a very respected man in the village there. Every July 29 through August 3 there is a festival called Lwiindi. (A little history: There were villages in this valley along the Zambezi River. They decided to build a dam for hydroelectric power. When they built the dam it formed Lake Kariba, which is apparently one of the biggest man-made lakes in the world. Also when the lake formed the shrines for these people’s ancestors were covered. Lwiindi is a festival held in honor of these shrines and as a prayer for rain.) This man happened to die right before Lwiindi and so this event was a bit of a combination of Lwiindi and his dilwe. It was very interesting. There were prayers for rain, songs of mourning, and then some songs of public rebuke about people in the village. I have very mixed emotions about this experience. While I do greatly appreciate the cultural experience of being with the people in what one of our African professors described as “untainted (meaning by Westerners) Tonga culture” I hope what our presence there didn’t reflect negatively the name of Christ. We went to the lake for lunch and there I had an “I’m really in Africa” moment...in the trees across from where we were having our picnic were dozens of monkeys! :)

October 4-today have been “normal” days of church and class. We found out today that one of the babies at the Havens went back to be with her family in the village. She’s about three. It’s going to be an adjustment for everyone and is a very bittersweet experience. Keep her in your prayers :)

We leave tomorrow for our nine day trip to Northern Zambia. We leave early tomorrow morning (6:30) on the yellow school bus and drive about seven hours to a place called Fringilla. We will spend the night there and leave about the same time on Thursday morning to travel all day to our final destination of Mumena. We will spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with a missionary team there learning from them and worshipping with village churches. On Monday we leave Mumena for Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust at Chingola. This is a refuge where chimpanzee orphans are rescued and cared for! If you Google it, they have a decent website of information :) We stay there until Wednesday when we travel back to Fringilla for the night. Thursday we travel into Lusaka for some shopping. We will stay until around lunch and then be back to Namwianga in time for dinner. We are all really looking forward to this trip and your prayers for our safety will be greatly appreciated as we travel! I would also like to make a special prayer request: I have really been having problems with being carsick on our longer bus rides and am a little nervous about this long trip. I’d appreciate your prayers for my health as we travel especially! Thanks!

As always, thank you so much for the continued prayers! It's Because of Him!