Only One More Month...

We jumped right back into the swing of things of class, clinic, and Haven time after our trip to Northern Zambia. I don’t feel there is a whole lot of interesting things that have happened so this will be much shorter than my normal blog posts.

On Friday October 23, our language teacher’s wife and daughter came for a cooking class! She brought three live chickens that our students killed, plucked, and cooked for dinner. We also drank the staple drink called cibwantu. They also call it sweet beer, but there was nothing alcoholic about it. If left for very long, though, we are told it will ferment. It is maize that is soaked in water and then filtered over and over to get the dirt particles out. This is water/maize particle mixture is heated over a fire and then roots that have also been soaking in water are added to it. So in our cup was this chunky maize particle stuff and whitish liquid. The Zambians love it, but it is obviously an acquired taste because I did not. It sort of reminded me of watery down milk with cornbread in it (but I actually like cornbread in my milk...so it’s different)

This past Saturday (October 24) was Zambian Independence Day. Ms. Bingham woke me up around 6:45 because one of the midwives from the clinic had called to let us know there was a woman in labor. She dropped five of the students who were awake and me off at the clinic. This was very exciting and very different from the American birth I had seen in nursing school. The biggest difference was that she had absolutely nothing for pain...not even Tylenol and she did not make a sound! These women are stronger than I can even imagine being! The baby was a healthy boy weighing almost seven pounds. As soon as the mom was finished delivering she got up from the delivery table and two women came in and helped her shower. She got in bed while one of the women helped clean the delivery room. The midwife said on average the moms stay at the clinic for six hours before walking home. The men rarely if ever come for the delivery.

We leave tomorrow after lunch for a weekend trip to Livingstone and Botswana. I will be riding elephants on Friday and we will go on safari in Botswana on Saturday. We will come back on Sunday for our last two weeks here at Namwianga. It is so hard for me to believe, but exactly a month from today we will land in Memphis! I can’t believe how quickly time is passing! As always, thank you for the prayers!