Zambian Adventures

Hello there! 

Term at school finished on friday and no one died, hoorah! I sadly said good bye to my grade threes and from now I have my final week ahead of me before setting off homeward bound (in a tiny six seater plane… Did I mention that?! Exciting eh!). I am glad to no longer be teacher, I had no voice left and went a little loopy at the end of it all. That’s quite enough of playing grown up jobs for a while, back to the eight-hour-week student life soon!

This weekend I had the privilege of going on safari in the Kafue national park. As the second biggest national park in the world, it’s one of the greatest unspoiled, untouched wildernesses on our planet. It’s entirely cut off from the rest of the world, a great expanse of remote and untamed isolation, only our camp manager had a satellite phone which made it feel very ‘jurassic park’ to me!

We stayed in a tent/lodge overlooking the Kafue river which is home to a large family of hippos. These lovely creatures did not fail to wake me up every night with their calls, which sound like a really loud, deep laugh, and their splashing… Except for the last night when the elephants took over and tore trees down to eat for a couple of hours - very noisy! We also had lions come through camp each night, though I did not actually see them I heard them roaring, which would suddenly make the piece of canvas between me and the wild seem very inadequate, we’d see their paw prints each morning. Our tent had a gorgeous outdoor shower, where I discovered how thrilling stripping off with the cool breeze whipping round you and diving under the water, heated by a small log fire, can be. Having a view of the river was excellent for spotting the bird life for which Kafue is renowned, I particularly enjoyed watching the resident fish eagle. We also saw puku, impala and loads of other kinds of antelopey things, warthogs, monkeys and baboons etc. We ate game too!
Highlight of the weekend was watching the hippos surface and submerge themselves without making a sound or a ripple, two twitching, pink ears then two eyes would appear in the water, within a blink they would be gone without trace. Sometimes five or six of them would synchronise this act, very cute! … I guess watching the elephants move across the plains on one of the game drives was a highlight too!
Lowlight of the weekend was discovering the true meaning of the saying ‘ants in your pants’, one evening a large number of these creepy crawlies travelled up my joggy bottoms (past my highly fashionable sock/sandal combo - very à la mode in the bush I’ll have you know) and all took a nibble of my thighs which does make you do quite a funny dance involving lots of wiggling and leg slapping concluded with the grand finale of having to throw the trousers on the floor and run away. Spectacular.

This week I am doing all sorts around Mukinge, trying to make myself useful. I shall be helping prepare the school for it’s next term after their holidays, I’m going out to an orphanage which is currently being built, I also hope to do a bit more hiking to enjoy my last few days of being in the area.
I have been struggling with anxiety attacks again recently so if you wanted to pray for me, this area would be appreciated - thanks :)

Hello Britons! I trust it is suitably damp and cold for you this summer season and eagerly await hearing how you have attempted your beach trips and picnics regardless. I would particularly like to hear from anyone undertaking such activities in Wales… My family’s enthusiasm for holidays in that small, soggy country has never failed to puzzle me. I’ve many fond memories of standing drenched in a field, trying to comprehend my fathers shouted instructions about how to assemble the tent!

I’m afraid I am retracting a statement I made a couple of weeks ago and reaffirming my preceding stance that I will never become a teacher. Delightful as these little darlings are, I am not cut out for dragging small humans - kicking and screaming - into ‘enlightenment’. One of my pupils is called Innocent. HA! Gets me every time. I had to stop myself from mimicking one of their complaints (missss, he stole my pencil) in a baby voice yesterday, for some reason I just don’t think it brings out the best in me.

Nonetheless, for now it is my joy to impart my knowledge and wisdom onto these young’uns knowing I am not going to be doing this forever. When I was at primary school it was ‘cool’ to be allowed to write on the board and now I can scribble all over it to my hearts content! I also get kicks out of setting homework, giving detentions and shouting (whilst showering the front row in spit as I was once forced to endure) about how disappointed I am with their behavior… Nah, I’m probably a bit soft on them to be honest, but they all have big brown eyes y’see - what can you do?

Mysteriously, though in the middle of the bush with limited access to the usual amounts of internet, phones or television, I am more globally aware here than I am back home. SIM is an international organisation so I guess I spend a lot of time with people from all over the world thus am more informed about their various countries’ happenings. Yet I believe it has more to do with Jan, my host. Jan is fabulous - she is advanced in her years and uses this to her advantage. She can, for example, loudly make what some may consider cheeky or rude comments and totally get away with it. She is one of those people who make the world a better place by simply being there… And also by the copious amounts of cake she produces.

At 1900 each night she turns on the BBC World News. If you have not listened, it has quite a foreboding theme tune (the kind you’d expect to introduce a report on alien invasion). To make it even more exciting the lack of radio coverage here means I can barely make out what the reporter is saying, frequently causing me to question whether we really have been visited by the small green men. It is impossible to make out the broadcast on account of the high pitched squealing noise the decrepit thing makes. The station also seems to compete with a local Rastafarian radio so the news is set to the faint sounds of ‘Is this love, is this love that I’m feeling…’ or something similar; makes for an interesting half hour! Jan determinedly waggles the receiver in many directions throughout the whole thing to make sure we get the best quality. I shall miss this routine, and Jan, very much. I must thank her for humbling me to be more conscious of current events on Earth. It’s occasionally healthy to remind myself that my small uni room in Plymouth is not the centre of the universe (contrary to popular belief… JEMMA).

I shall bid you farewell ‘til next time. My post shall be late next week as I am going to spend a few days creeping around the deep, dark, African bush trying to observe large, wild creatures with fangs or tusks in their natural habitats, aka on safari. TTFN.

To live in Zambia is to engage in the constant battle against red feet. Each evening I scrub them til they are a raw, but more natural, pink and each day they are stained a rusty colour by the dust once more. It could drive you insane… I am trying to chill out and embrace the fact I may have flip flop marks until I leave! I think I now understand why Jesus talks about washing his feet so often in the Bible, I reckon it must have frustrated him too. At least if I take no other deeply profound wisdom from this time in Zambia, I will have gained a shared empathy with Jesus about our dusty feet issues.

We had a football match between our school and another local basic school this week. A girls game, in which we won - WOO! And a boys one which was a draw. Each time we scored all the kids would run screaming onto the pitch. As part of the crowd control team I spent most of the time chasing ecstatic small children back to their seats… Which, may I add, is easier said than done! They have a tendency to split and change direction unpredictably much like herding a flock of crazed sheep.

It’s been cheering to see the children on the ward improve in health as I’ve dropped by at various points this week. Some who were not able to move from their beds are now up and whizzing round (causing havoc) on wheel chairs and crutches! We have been finger painting, colouring, making pipe-cleaner bangles and, more recently, fashioning lion masks out of cardboard and coloured card. The activities seem to fascinate them so much that they will collect their meals, store them away in their bedside cabinets and come back to continue - must be good!

I am attending a church here called Kyakabuka… Or it might be Kya Ku Buka… Hmm. Anyway, this effectively demonstrates my point, the sermons are translated but apart from that the rest of the service is in Kikaonde which is the local tribal language. There is normally about an hour of worship to begin with consisting of choruses, which I clap along to enthusiastically, or hymns in Kikaonde which I stumble through holding the songbook very close to my face and hoping no one notices my mispronunciations! The music made from their voices, the clapping and african drums is incredible and quite thrilling to be part of.

Thanks for prayers and supportive messages, your contact keeps me in touch with what is going on back home and is really encouraging. Please remember to lift up my grade three class at school in these final two weeks of term as we do exams, reports and general end of term madness! It’s all a bit hectic… I’ve figured as long as no one dies whilst I’m in charge it will be a success!

Hello! A late update I’m afraid, it’s all a little hectic!
It’s been a month since I arrived and I have never seen a plane, nor any fume trails in the sky… I think there are basically three flights a week for arriving or leaving Zambia, despite it being four times as large as the UK! I have also not seen rain since I arrived, it’s currently the dry/cold season; everything I own now has a thin layer of red dust! Though in the sun it’s quite hot, at night I need 5 blankets and a hot water bottle! 

Everyday there has been a power cut, these are normally during the day however they sometimes happen in the dark so we have candlelit dinners! For us it’s a mild inconvenience, but for the hospital it causes problems particularly if they are in theatre or delivering babies resulting in surgery by torchlight! Well… Not quite there’s a generator nowadays. 

As I have previously mentioned I am taking a teacher’s place at the school for the final two weeks as she is returning to America. It’s great fun however exhausting, I do feel like the biggest blagger of all time as I’m not a teacher, the other teachers have done training and have a few years experience! AGHHH! I am slowly losing my voice from constantly telling children to sit down or stop talking.

We run a new believers class after school once a week for kids who want to learn more about Jesus. We teach them memory verses and the basics about the christian faith. Though there are a lot of Christians around here, witchcraft is very prominent in these rural areas and a huge part of the village culture (thankfully not so much around Mukinge) which can mean though people believe in Jesus it’s hard to separate from the cultural traditions involving this. It’s great that we have the freedom to talk so openly about Jesus in school and can give the kids a clear idea of what it means to follow him (hopefully!) as well as giving these extra classes to those who have expressed a real interest.

I also am going onto one of the Paediatric wards at the hospital to play with the children staying there. These kids are quite different from the ones I see at school who, in comparison to the UK’s kids have very little and live basic lifestyles, are quite well off in contrast to the children in hospital. Some couldn’t leave their beds, some were in wheelchairs or on crutches and none of them spoke English! Despite the odds we had a fun couple of hours finger painting and colouring with crayons. A smile is international and there were lots of these which made it so worth it… Needless to say there was paint everywhere!

So… Some exciting news: we have 12 chicks… 9 black, 3 are yellow! Gorgeous little fluffy dollops of deliciousness. I like to catch the brave ones who stray from their mother and give them cuddles. There is also a 5ft monitor lizard in our garden, Shiloh tends to chase it off though. And whilst we’re on wildlife, I’ve had a lot of fun with the monkeys recently. They’ve been tapping on the windows and spotted me in my bedroom, they sat watching me and leaping around when I moved. They also imitate you if you jump up and down! Great fun! I also currently have a purring kitten on my lap trying to scratch his head on the corner of my laptop, it’s quite hard to type!

Thanks for following :) see you soon!

My last weekend ended with a trip to one of the local secondary schools where we sat in on one of their assemblies in which some choirs were performing. The singing was amazing, there were many hallelujahs and clapping… And huge bats which live in the roof & swooped down over the crowd :D

This week I was asked to take a class through some long division, I was pretty chill about agreeing to this thinking I could do that easy - they’re eight year olds after all. Much to my embarrassment I completely failed to remember any of the techniques, timetables or basic mathematical rules. Without the practice I have become a little rusty! It became a case of me learning how to work out the problems then, under the pretense of checking the kids had used the right method, I’d be working it out as I marked them… Funny!

I’ve spent a lot of time with the aforementioned Charlton, who seems to flourish when you can give him individual attention. He’s a fab kid with a cheeky grin and lovely attitude; he frequently tells his classmates off for having bad manners! It’s been very worthwhile to see him progress so much in his reading, he is still eager to be at my side in our assemblies! Most of the kids are transfixed by our hands, arms and hair; none of them seem to have hair on their forearms so they like to stroke ours! The girls don’t believe my nails are real either, so one minute they’ll be holding my hand smiling sweetly up at me and the next they will be bending my nails back trying to snap them off - it really hurts!

Today I’m quite tired following a two hour long escapade with a very large spider in the middle of the night. I spied the hairy, black creature at about 3.15 am on my ceiling, unable to sleep knowing it’s presence, I watched it for about an hour as it moved about. You may think I’m being pathetic but SERIOUSLY these are pretty monstrous spiders. I eventually decided it had to go, the tall ceilings meant I couldn’t catch it so I found ‘Doom Spray’. Please note it was the middle of the night, a desperate situation, if there had been some other way I would have taken it. Anyway, sending the beast to its doom took a lot of strategic balancing and bravery, then a hot water bottle and a cuppa to recover from the trauma.

Living at Mukinge brings a brilliant blend of cultures and experiences. On our team we have a Canadian, a New Zealander, an Indian, a Malaysian and countless Americans coming and going. Their countries and reasons for being here on mission make them fascinating people to spend time with. We have some people from South Carolina at the moment who were trying to teach us the southern drawl yesterday - think I’m getting pretty good ;) I’m hopefully going to have the opportunity to shadow one of the doctors in theatre to watch some surgery… Should be interesting!

This coming week I am taking on more responsibility for the grade threes, their current teacher leaves in two weeks time; at the moment we are sharing as I get to know the ropes. There is a lot I need to grasp quickly, it’s like a crash course in teaching, so your prayers would be appreciated for this! There are 20 pupils in the class, we have the support of two Zambian classroom assistants too. I have always said I wouldn’t become a teacher, however I think this is one the most rewarding and engaging tasks I’ve ever done, I love it… 

See you soon! 

This was the week of the school concert, which the kids I am working with had been building up to for a long time. It was an absolute success, many parents came, the kids sang in tune and performed beautifully! I manned the snack stall afterwards which was a bit manic as I have not grasped the different currency yet. I resorted to giving people their change in slices of cake… Pretty chaotic!

We are now on half term, so on Thursday we embarked on a road trip to the nearest city. This is a two hour drive on dusty roads, trying to avoid potholes and goats! I managed to renew my work visa for my second month here after waiting around for several hours and getting passport photos taken on the side of the road, all a little crazy! We also squeezed in a visit to the supermarket where I got some strawberry jam… Such luxury! 

I am still taken by surprise by how colourful this country is, the red dust creates the most exquisite pinks and oranges out of every sunset. We lose power quite often in Kasempa, which gives the most fantastic opportunity to see the stars here without any light pollution - it’s astonishing how many can be seen!

Though this place is incredibly exciting, breathtakingly beautiful & full of awe-inspiring people, it is also my worst nightmare!

Let me tell you why… For those of you who know me well, you will have seen or experienced some of my weaknesses :) I am a big worrier, I can be very anxious or panicky and most of the time for entirely irrational reasons. When in those situations there is very little that can be done to console me. So for me this time in Zambia is entirely out of my comfort zone. We all have different things which scare us, and many aspects of my trip feature the things which shake me to the core…

I hate injections; I had to have 8 jabs to come here. I hate flying; I flew and will fly back by myself on a 10 hour flight. I hate taking drugs; everyday I need to take malaria tablets. I am a hypochondriac (hearing about a disease usually leads to me believing I have it- not only that, but also imagining the symptoms to the point where I can start displaying them… Yes I am weird); yet I’m at a hospital surrounded by medics who like to discuss every illness under the sun :P I know many of them are unfounded worries, however these are some of my foibles :)

When at home and facing any of these fears I will often turn to lean on my family or friends. This can be easily done due of the wonders of technology, comfort is often just a phone call away. However, here I have to walk to the hospital (which to me is a place where diseases, drugs & injections unite) to get internet… If I’m lucky. Calling home or nipping to a friends is not an option. In addition, it is a foreign country, culture & I don’t really know anyone.

The reason I tell you all this is to say how amazing it is that I am here, and this is entirely due to God. Though these may seem like small challenges to some, for me these are the things which make me uneasy and I would avoid at all costs. In my weaknesses God is being strong. Through being here there is no way out other than by trusting God entirely for my comfort & strength each day… And I think it’s a little miracle!

Now I’ve been here for a couple of weeks I am becoming increasingly more relaxed, hopefully as I adjust more opportunities will arise to further immerse myself in what is going on here without me freaking out at every corner :D

Hello Engerlahnd!

It’s been about week since I left the shiny terminals of Heathrow & arrived at the shed in Lusaka. After an exciting journey across half of Zambia, through a game park, I am now at Mukinge (you say it: Moo-King-Ee) where I shall be for the next couple of months. The internet it appalling, and when it does work the electricity then cuts out… I do get onto facebook quite often, so that’s probably the best way to contact me :)

Mukinge is a small village in the area of Kasempa in Western Zambia. It consists mainly of a campus in which there is a hospital, two schools and some residential areas (and thankfully one tiny shop which sells tasty cakes). I live in the compound with one of the nurses and am working in the basic school, which is the equivalent of one of our primary schools. The hospital and school are staffed by a ministry called SIM. The long-term vision is that one day the school and hospital shall be run entirely by Zambians and there will no longer be any need for the missionaries. This is the main hospital for an area the size of Wales - as you can imagine it is much needed.The school aims to provide a higher quality of education for children in this area.

I started school this week and for the first month will be acting as a classroom assistant. For the second month I shall be teaching one of the grades. The kids are a sweet and cheeky bunch. There are 84 pupils at the school, split into 5 grades. This week they have been practicing for their school concert. Watching them sing and recite memory verses has brought lots of giggles, they aren’t the most attentive group of kids, but could get away with anything because of their cute factor. I am loving getting to know them, I very much enjoy being fought over and cuddled constantly - however I am sure this will wear of soon when I have to actually teach! There is this kid called Charlton who always wants to fetch me a chair for assembly, he is so sweet, he will get really cross if anyone else tries to! Then he sits next to me and lays his head on my lap… SO CUTE!

Life in Mukinge is strikingly different to life back home, I am slowly getting used to it… Y’know… Boiling all water before you drink it, malaria tablets, carrying a torch at night so you don’t step on snakes! We eat mostly fresh produce from the area: cabbage, avocado, chicken, sweet potato and banana’s. It is winter here at the moment so the days are short, it get’s light at 6am and dark at 6pm and I know you probably won’t believe me - as I am in Africa - but it gets very chilly in the mornings! I have yet to meet the local monkeys as I live with a dog, Shiloh, who likes to chase them off her territory, for now I am getting used to the lizards and tropical insects!

Today I went to the local market about a 40 min walk from Mukinge. I was able to buy a Kisapi (piece of material women wrap around like a skirt as showing knee/thigh is a bit of a taboo), and a tiny bar of Dairy Milk … Yey! I also saw various pieces of cow appear and be auctioned off as it was cut up, seemingly the hooves and the head are the most desirable cuts of meat around here. Each night I come home and am pretty impressed by the tan I have picked up during the day, unfortunately I then get in the bath and realise it is all dust from the roads… Shame! I have also become very fond of a baby chameleon who is one of the missionaries’ pets, Crawley is about half the size of a finger and very lovable.

I shall try to update this about once a week & fill you in on life out here in the bush! As many of you know I adore photography & am getting some fantastic shots, the internet so far can’t seem to cope with me uploading them… I shall keep trying. Thanks for all the lovely messages of support and prayer I have received… I miss you all very much!