Wednesday, July 29, 2009

29 July Ndola, Zambia Ricoffy, Bemba and Anthills...

Hello all! The planet trek (cue music...) that started at noon on Sunday ended well on Tues in Ndola, Zambia... I'm here! Train to LAX, flight to New York, then Johannesberg South Africa, then to Ndola Zambia... all the luggage made it fine, got my visa without a hitch and customs inspection was smooth.

I was able to sleep on the plane (NY to Johannesberg was 18 hours), got settled into the SOHIP guest house in Ndola Tues afternoon, which is on a secure compound with the well-drilling rigs and the cement block-making factory (hand-made, each one!). The Zambian staff are awesome, and are makiing sure I'm a part of the team.

SOOO... without a skip for jetlag, I was in worship with the staff at 0800... awesome, the staff lifting their voices in song in Bemba (the regional language that most people here speak... English is official, but Bemba is the heart language), then everyone off totheir days! I went out with the Hygiene team to plug into 5 communties they are lining up Hygiene Committies in schools... so we spent the day bumping down cow paths to remote villages with no electricity and hand-pump water wells. What a great start to connecting with the team here in Zambia!

I used to laugh at the crazy anthills the San Diego Zoo have around their little Africa exhibits... well! Let me tell you! They don't come close to the 25-40 foot hills all across the plains! I guess my idea of 'anthill' will be permanently tweaked...

Physically, fighting a bit of fatigue, the anti-malarials are not fun on the stomach... but I'm doing OK... there's this wierd product called Ricoffy, a mix of coffee and chicory in instant form... not bad...

The next few days will be a continued settle-in ( I still need to exchange some dollars into Kwachas, about 1 US to 5,100 Kwachas) and connecting with the existing Health-Hygiene-Sanitation team with SHIP. I should be able to get a couple of spaces on the internet during the week here in the office... slooooooooooooow connection....

Prayer requests: totally get the body into this time-zone, fine-tune my ears to the accents and learn some basic Bembab greetings, begin to see the width and breadth of the health-related work here...

blessings,

Chris

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