Life in the Village

Last Thursday afternoon, we headed to the village to learn about how they work and what their daily life looks like.  It was about a 45 minute drive and most of it was on a narrow, bumpy dirt road.  Our bus was bouncing all over the place...slightly terrifying.  

We got to the village and it just looked so picturesque and African-like.  We were greeted by so many friendly Zambians who were all super excited to meet us!  They had chairs, benches and logs all set up for us to sit down together.  They were very hospitable!

We first got a tour of the whole village.  These are the chicken coops!

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This is the cow pasture

And these are all the cows!  

This is a mortar and pestle looking thing that they use to crush nuts and roasted corn kernels

 

And there were lots of dogs!  I was happy about this.

They were cute but kinda skittish!

This is the wheel they use to grind up corn.  The corn meal is then used to make nshima...which is a staple food for Zambians! (it is pretty much tasteless...and sits like a brick in your stomach for hours)

Notice the solar panels on the top of this house!

Of course there was a lot of playing with children that went on!  We brought a frisbee and they loved it!

After our tour, we walked about a half a mile to their gardens.

These are two of the men in the village.  It is very common for people of the same sex to hold hands here!

Beautiful gardens!  There was corn, cabbage, and so much more but I really can't remember right now!

This is how they water the gardens each day.  They have a small man-made pond and have this pump type device that you stand on to pump water through the hose!  It was pretty cool.  Kind of like a step-machine at the gym....only way more functional!

This is the other end of the hose.  It is very dry here so they have to water the gardens several times a day. 

I took a turn at pumping.  It wasn't too difficult but would be a very monotonous task!

This tree was absolutely beautiful!

This was a sweet little 2 month old baby.

 

We later walked about a 1/4 mile to the water pump to collect water.

This cutie held my hand the entire way!

We all took a turn pumping water and filling our buckets!

This is how they carry EVERYTHING here.  I will never understand how they keep it balanced!

We all took turns carrying the water on our heads but could only do it while holding on tightly!

It doesn't look that difficult but holy crap...these women must have very strong necks because it was heavy!

I have so much respect for these women and children who walk to that well about 5 times a day to collect water for their whole village.  This water is used for cooking, drinking, washing, and bathing.  Amazing.

This is our bus driver, Lavmo.  He is the one brave enough to drive on those crazy roads with our huge bus!

 

This little girl was extremely sweet and also very ticklish!

 Our group with a bunch of the people from the village!

It was such a wonderful day!  Definitely one of my favorite things we have done so far.  It is amazing how much they trust in God and rely on Him to provide for their needs.  They are amazing people!

Zimba

This post is to give you a little taste of what our life looked like while we were in Zimba!  We were there for two weeks (Sept. 14-28)  It is about a one hour drive from Choma.  It actually took us two hours to get there because our bus had two flat tires on the way there.  Of course our driver just took a quick look at them and we just kept on moving. 

5 of the 16 of us stayed at a different house than everyone else.  (along with Bud and Judy)  I was really disappointed at first because we were down the road from everyone else, but we quickly realized we kind of had it made at our house!  Not only did we have air conditioning, but we had nice, big rooms with our own bathrooms! (Disclaimer: the air conditioning didn't work half the time and the power goes out daily...so we weren't living it up all the time!)

This is the front of the IVV (International Vision Volunteers) house that the 5 of us stayed in.  We also had our classes in the living room.

Jamaica and I shared a room in the IVV house.  I loved it!

 

The spiders really weren't too bad in Zimba but there was one on the ceiling right above my bed so we had to kill it!  And by we I mean Jamaica killed it. :)  

This is the main mission compound everyone else stayed on.  It was less than a five minute walk down the road.  It gets dark around 6:30 so those of us who stayed to hang out at this house in the evenings had to walk back with the guard .  I wish I had a picture of him...he was the nicest guy!  We got to know him pretty well on those short walks each night. :)

This is the living room in the main house.  Our cook, Gertrude, was amazing and she made Sarah a cake for her birthday!

 

One of our Saturday night activities was movie night...we watched Hitch!  Love that movie.

This is Jock-the adorable little dog that lives on the compound.  He was a little timid at first but warmed right up!  It was so nice to have a dog to play with and pet!

 

This is Pongo ("goat" in Tonga) or some called him Pippin.  He was a gift to the Mission from Gretchen and Ryan!  Gretchen and Ryan were both doctors in their third year of residency.  They were in Zambia for a total of three weeks!  We really liked working with them at the hospital.

Pongo and Jock obviously became the best of friends.  Except when Pongo decided to take off running and drug Jock around the yard.  (it was hilarious)

We had chapel at 8am every weekday morning.  It is for any hospital workers/patients.  The benches were always packed!

 

Zimba is a super small town so the hospital was literally a two minute walk from our house!

 

This is one of the nurses at the hospital.  This is their typical uniform

Male Ward

Casualty is the Emergency Room.  We didn't really have any major emergencies come in while we were here.

The delivery room!

The beautiful tree again!

This is a poster hanging up in one of the Wards.  I think I cracked for about five minutes!  They have many posters hanging up that are equally funny! 

We had a slow afternoon and decided to go find the library.  This was right behind the hospital!

There were tons of nursing books there.  Chrissy really wanted to check this book out.

 

This is the textbook for one of the classes we are taking here!  Except it's the 1989 version. 

This is the market in Zimba.  It was very small but we spent a lot of time here!

 There have been several Veterinary Shops in the markets so I finally stopped and asked some questions.  The lady who came in was really confused by what I was asking so I didn't learn much!

 

This is the inside of the Vet Shop.  The only thing I could figure out is that people have to come to the shop to get the meds.  I have no clue if the vet actually goes out and sees the animals or not!

 This sweet lady's name is Grace.  She helped hem some of my chitenges!  There are lots of seamstresses at the markets and we have been putting many of them to work making bags, aprons, dresses, etc.

Tons of chitenges! There are so many cool patterns.

 

These are the people who stayed in the IVV House. 

 

We decided to lock Bud and Judy in the gate. (this was their idea...haaha)

We also added another member to our group while in Zimba!  Carla Lovett is a professor who is here for 3 weeks to teach African History.  She is a professor from Wheaton College but is with her family in Kenya for this fall semester.  She been a great addition to our group!

While in Zimba, we began our obsession with watching Lost.  They had the first season at the Mission so we began watching an episode every night.  Selinda..the missionary on the compound, let us borrow it for the rest of our trip so we can finish the season!  I have seen the show before but it is still very addicting!  We also play a lot of euchre in the evenings.

God has truly been blessing us on this trip.  We have had our fair share of conflict and issues but He is faithful and we are doing well! I would greatly appreciate continued prayer for our team!