KINGS & PRINCESSES: ZAMBIA: Part 2

One of the important things to do if living or doing work in an African town/village (whatever) is to meet the chief, greet him, and ask for permission to work in his area. The men in our group had the opportunity to go and meet the head chief and the women had the opportunity to have the head chief's wife come to bush camp and have an interview with her.

The woman in the middle, in blue, is the chief's wife.

Our group asked her several questions and we got very short answers. However, she was shy and could not speak a lick of English. The woman on the far left would answer a lot of the questions for her actually. She was like her spokeswoman.

During the hour or two that she was there, we asked questions, sang songs for her, had a devotional, and one group even did a drama for her. While we were singing one of the songs though someone noticed a snake was crawling down the wall right behind where these women were sitting. It was kinda funny though because we all kept singing while Suzie ran and got Bart to come and kill the slithering creature!

I was able to capture a picture of Bart in the act of snake killing!

African culture is so very different than what you are used to in the states. We assume things about them and they assume a lot of things about us. One thing I found so interesting and true is how little the women in this culture know about their husbands. We asked the chief's wife how her husband was picked as chief and she explained that to us. However, the next question was what kind of job did her husband have before they were married and she had no clue! It is also very common in this setting for a husband to be gone from the home for days and the wife have no idea where he is. I thought it was crazy, but this is the norm for them.

After going into the small town several times on the back of the flat bed truck, our assignments changed once again. This time we got to go to surrounding villages in the area! We went to the village and asked some of the questions that we asked in the town and in the big city of Lusaka. We focused on life cycle questions: birth, maturity, marriage, and death. On one day we sat down with some women and I thought they were going to tell me their secrets! When a girl reaches maturity or it is time for her to be married she is taught by the elder women in the village the "secrets" she needs to know. The women we were talking with shooed all the young girls away from our circle and I thought I would get a little insight into their traditional teachings. However, they were very vague about what they teach a girl and gave no specifics. Oh, well.

This is a picture of the village Brad and I went to on our daily assignments.

Pretty cool door I loved in the village!

I handle smells pretty well....I am talking about stinky ones. However, in the village we went to they had mounds and mounds of rotting corn. Before it was ruined they had it ready to sell but an unexpected rain spoiled it all. It was the yuckiest smell...so thick smelling that it stuck in the back of your throat. ugh. I will never forget it. How sad that this much food was ruined!

The last 3 days of our time in bush camp we spent out in the villages with a national in their home/hut. Every family was put in different homes but some of us were in the same villages! We packed enough stuff to get us through 3 days and off we went! We stayed with our helper, Iwell, and his family. He was a pastor and his church was located right beside his house! He had 4 girls and 2 boys and a lot of different kind of animals that Macy and Mara had a blast playing with. If I thought my girls got dirty at bush camp, you should have seen them out in the village!

This is the family's home that we stayed at. On the far left you can see a small building that was the long drop room.

This is the house that we slept in for 3 nights. Our room was one of the 3 rooms that made up the house.

Village kids looking in at some of the family's animals....chickens, guinea pigs, bunnies, roosters....

When we arrived at the house we put our belongings in the room we were to sleep in. The room was bare except for 2 things: a reed mat to place our mattresses on and guess what.....AN OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD SHOE BOX!!!! I thought it was so neat to see one all the way out in the bush in Zambia! I wanted to open it up and see if anything was inside (hoping that I could find the person who sent it and let them see who got it) but I felt that that would be prying and decided a picture of the box was good enough!

After we set up our room we set out on a short walk to go to some meeting. I found out we were headed to a certain tree where women with children under the age of 5 met monthly. The women gather to weigh their children and a doctor comes and marks their weight on a growth chart that all the women have been given for their child. It was scary to see the charts. The family that we stayed with had 2 children under the age of 5 and both of their growth curves were dropping sharply.

The women standing in line waiting to weigh their babies.

The scale was like a grocery store scale. The woman to the right of me is holding the growth curve pamphlet in her hand.

After our little trip to the weighing tree we walked back to the house I found out I was getting to help Ida kill a chicken and prepare it for lunch. This is my second experience killing a chicken and I am not so sure if I am good at it yet!

Unfortunately after these pictures, my phone decided to die! I was disappointed because I did not even get a picture with the whole family that we stayed with! On the last full day in the village we all went to Iwell's church and all the Mzungu's (white people) gave their testimonies followed by a sermon from Brad that Iwell translated! It was great!

The next morning we all got up super early, walked our luggage to the paved road, and said goodbye to our new found friends! We had a great time in the village but we were all ready to GO AND STAY IN A HOTEL!

We arrived at a super cute place called Ibis Gardens late that afternoon! I headed straight to our little house and showered off the girls and took the most heavenly shower I have ever taken in my life! I like village life, but man I LOVE RUNNING WATER THAT IS HOT! Ibis was wonderful! It had a beautiful pool that the kids loved to swim in even though it was the temperature of the north pole. We also had a buffet to eat from every meal of the day and desserts too! We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and relaxed and fellowshipped more with all of our friends!