Traveling North!!

Well, it's been a busy couple weeks finishing things up in Marion. It was great to have time with family and friends!! I was able to visit Kirsten on the way north and enjoyed spending time with both her little girls - Vienna (2 yrs) and Anthia (2 months). Here are Kirsten and I in front of her Christmas tree!!

I broke up my trip north by staying with Carla (she was our history prof in Zambia). It was great fun to meet her family and catch up a little on her life! We ate at a FABULOUS Thai place... it was hard to believe, but it had been nearly four months since I'd eaten those flavors! Delish!!:):) Thanks Ladies for a great weekend!!
So then I drove the rest of the way up to Wisconsin on Monday, and by evening when I got to my parents it was a GLORIOUS 6 degrees Fahrenheit!! That's a serious drop from the 120's not so very long ago!! Thankfully my blood is slowly getting thicker!!:)

I did have a couple interesting moments on the way - one of them involved a beautiful male pheasant posing in the middle of the interstate!! I had a truck next to me at the time so couldn't avoid hitting it. Feathers flew!! Thankfully my CRV seems to have come through unscathed! If it had been on a side road I'd probably at least have TRIED to go back and pick it up. :) Mom is good at cooking pheasant!! Welcome to WISCONSIN!! It IS good to be back with my parents! Great conversations and lots of hot tea!!

Last week pics...

While in Livingstone we visited a small game park... the first time I got to see Giraffe's in the wild!! LOVED THEM!!:):)

Here's a picture of the deep fried termitets... I ate one of those!! It was actually yummy:), with it's crunchy buttery taste. Mind you, they had taken the wings off them... but it still took a while to get all the legs out from between my teeth:):):).

The last sunday I wore a traditional Zambian dress... with head scarf. Here's Lauren posing with me:)...

Here are some of the kids from our last trip out to villages...

It's good to be back in the US safely. I'm at my brother's home right now... enjoyed fixing my own breakfast! Looking forward to going grocery shoping later this morning, and then spending the next couple days with family and friends!! Happy Thanksgiving all!!

Last few days in Zambia!!

Hello! I've tried multiple times to upload photo's, but without success... so I thought I'd write a quick note and promise to upload pics once I'm back in the US next week!

We've had a busy last couple weeks with saying many goodbyes. The students baked various goodies to take with cards to the many places around Choma and Zimba where they had their clinical experiences. We also served a tea to the WHIZ staff and prepared a meal for the team who have been taking care of us at the guest house all these weeks. The many friendships we've developed will be the most valuable thing we take with us from our time here in Zambia!

Since Thursday evening, we've been here in Livingstone. Friday (yesterday) we visited the local game park - saw zebra, giraffe, buffalo, impala, bush buck, crocodile, monkeys, some stranded fish (after flooding the night before) and all kinds of birds! My favorites were the giraffe!!

We also visited Victoria Falls. Stunning!! This was definitely the moment where I missed my time in Zimbabwe the most - the river is much deeper on the Zim side and so in the present dryer season, there is not much water on the Zambia side. Amazing, regardless... and a tad intimidating for those with any fear of heights!!! BUT we didn't get soaked by the mist like we could see happening on the Zim side. It was really neat to be back there again!! God gave us sunshine between the clouds and we got to see the rainbows in the mist at the bottom of the falls!! Cool pics:)!!!

We have a few more things on our schedule with some down time as well. Our flight home will start Monday. I'm looking forward to being with family in Indiana for Thanksgiving!!! Where will you be for Thanksgiving?? Any good traditions you'll be upholding??

Where does YOUR water come from??

This week, we visited a few villagers and were able to see where they get their water from. This first photo is of an open well, with a bucket that can be lowered down to fill with water. This is close to one family's home, but a longer walk for many who live multiple km away!

Alissa took a turn at carrying a bucket full of water. It was a rather long walk, on a sandy road! What a challenge!!

This was one of the local women filling up the bucket... imagine trying to do that when pregnant!! This hole was about a foot deep. They said that it would fill about 3 buckets, then took about an hour to refill!

Carrying water back up the hill from the creek...

Filling our buckets up at the creek!

It was a big reminder of all that we take for granted... clean water in bottles IN THE FRIDGE, or coming out of the tap! Safe "instant" water - a privilege or a right??

It's rained a couple times over the past week. The bugs are out in full force... flying termites, misquitoes, etc. Six of the group have already battled malaria over the past 5 weeks, we are praying that this influx of mosquitoes does not cause any others to fall ill!!

We've started to say our Goodbye's. The tears have begun to flow. It is hard to believe we're leaving Choma this coming Thursday and then starting our flight back to the US the following Monday! The students are working hard to finish all their papers and projects!!

Village life III

Well, we spent the day out in the village today. These photo's are actually from other villages than the ones we were in today, but Internet has not let me upload photo's the multiple times I have tried over the past week. Sadly I got my first real sunburn... it was a cloudy day and I didn't manage to put sunscreen on before we left... and lo and behold, the African sun is not so gentle on my skin!! Hopefully a few coats of aloe will help most of it turn into "tan"...:)

Back to the more important part of the day... we visited families that are caring for orphans, and others where the children would be considered "vulnerable" due to poverty, illness or similar issues. One the one hand, it is exciting to see what communities are doing to support and provide for those in their midst who are in need, and yet the harsh realities of their needs are deeply humbling. God keeps reminding me how deeply blessed I am on so many levels!! I pray I never loose sight of this - but will always remember to pray for children like Yolanda (one of the girls we met today) and for the families who are caring for them! At a couple of the homes, we walked with them to where they get water - one a creek a 3-4 min walk down a hill, and another an open well a 6-8 min walk away. Each time, the students helped fill buckets with water and then took turns carrying the full buckets back to the homes.

The photo below is of a "soccer ball" we found at another home earlier this semester ... it's a bundle of plastic bags. Carla (pictured below) proceeded to kick this same ball around with one of the young boys for a little while.

People's homes in the village are made up of small "compounds" - though they do not have fences around them in rural areas, they are a collection of small buildings. Usually the largest building has a roof and is where people sleep. There is often a cooking hut, storage huts of various kinds as well as toilets off to one side. Today we saw similar storage areas to the one pictured below. We also saw a dish rack similar to ones I saw in Sierra Leone and even a solar panel lying in the sun next to one of the homes.

The chickens have these really cool little huts that are up on stilts, with tall ladders attached.

Like this:
This is another photo of the colorful chetenges we see most women wearing.

The 90 min drive, much of it on washboard dirt roads was a little bit of a challenge, but what a great experience! We have really been blessed with a real diversity of experiences and have been exposed to some of the extremes of culture and lifestyles seen in this part of Zambia!

It is hard to believe that we have only one more week here in Choma and will be back in the US in less than two weeks time!! I am grateful for God's continued faithfulness and blessings. We have seen His hand on our lives in truly remarkable ways!!

Village life II

Hello all! We've just gotten back to Choma from five days in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. It was a six hour drive north. It was a little of a culture shock for us all... seeing traffic lights for the first time in nearly eight weeks!!:) Also the first set of stairs since we walked off the plane (down those rolling stairs) to the tarmack in Livingstone in early September! I still need to upload the photo's from the last week, but here's a few from earlier visit's to a village.

The women can often be seen carrying a heavy load on their heads as well as a young child on their backs!

Chabbobboma Banana Plantation

Yesterday we traveled the three hour trip (two hours on dirt washboard roads, up and around mountains) to the edge of Lake Kariba where one of the churches has a banana plantation that they have been working together. It has tripled in size since they first opened it about six years ago, and is supporting the community - including orphans and others living with AIDS. We stopped partway there, for our first glimpse of Lake Kariba.

Keri, Alicia, Lisa and Lauren

Pam and Phil Leslie

Here are the most recently planted tree's, just starting to grow!

Once they flower, the bananas start to grow!

AND GROW!

And grow, until the tree needs help holding up all the fruit!!

They use sawdust around the base of the tree's, to help keep weeds from growing and as it decomposes, as compost as well!

We didn't see any banana spiders (BECKY!!!!), but we did see this cool chameleon!!

We ate a delicious lunch (cooked over open fire by the women of the village) - YUM YUM YUM - under this amazing tree. Here's Lauren and Meagan smiling away! We ate Nshima, green veggies stew and chicken! With our fingers of course! The photo below is of the whole tree - the trunk was just amazing though, the roots seem to grow down around the trunk and expand the trunk over time! It was under this tree that the women first greeted us - with singing and dancing as they shook each of our hands!

What an memorable day!!

Cuteness personified!!

Can you hear the giggle that accompanied that smile??

I still can!!

Community Health Education

This morning we went with a WHIZ Community Health worker to a local village area. We sat on benches under a big shade tree. It was neat for the students to have opportunities to share about various health education topics as well as learning about what things the women had already learned and put into practise. My favorite part was interacting with the children and mothers after the education time as they were preparing to eat lunch. Each week this group of mothers meets together with all their children under 5, for education and to eat a well balanced meal. In the photo below one of the girls, she is 26 months old, is eating Nshima (a cornmeal mush of sorts) with a sauce of Kapenta (small dried fish) and soy chunks.

Here's Estie getting help putting Patrick on her back. She's gotten to play with him a number of Sundays at church and enjoyed carrying him around on her back for a while this morning. They use the traditional piece of cloth, a chetenge, to tie their children on to their backs or sides. The women also use the same material for many other things, including as a wrap around skirt.

Hippo's!!!

It was really thrilling to see so many pods of hippo's! They are cute, in and out of the water:), but don't get too close!!

Their home!!

Ellie's!!!

What fun to see so many elephants so close up!! This picture is for Diane... the first time I saw African elephants in the wild, we mostly had butt shots... sot this was to remind me of that:) This view was acutally from the patio where we ate our meals, just a couple hours before we finished our vacay...

The only place we saw mother's with their young was inside the park. It was harder to get close because they would get nervous easily and start trumpeting.

This guy was wanting to eat some of the tree just by our vehicle, so he mossied on over with his elegant stride... when you have to take your camera out of zoom to see the whole elephant, he's getting a little TOO close!!:)

We saw lots of old dung piles, but this was especially fresh:).

This was my foot inside an ellie's foot print... on a sandbank in the middle of the Zambezi river... at sunset:).

They can drink up to 100 Liters in one sitting!!

These last photo's I took sitting on a boat or in a canoe!