February 27 "Inswa Invasion"

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, as I would know as the eastern sun awoke me a few times before my alarm did. We again attended church at Bethel on campus. Wow, what amazing gifts God has blessed the choir with musically! I lost count of how many beautiful songs were heard them sing. All of the adult songs were sung in Nyanja or Bemba or Tonga or another similar dialect, but I did happen to ask one of the sem wives for the translation of the title of one, which happened to be about how we were following the right path to heaven. The children’s choir, newly uniformed in their Bethel children’s choir t-shirts from a generous donor at another congregation, sang a few songs for us, as well, including one in…English! It was a splendid rendition of “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” to a different melody. It’s been stuck in my head ever since! Both choirs move rhythmically to the songs; the whole experience is awesome. I love it! The part of the sermon that struck me was when the sem student who was preaching helped about helping the poor. Poverty is relative, and I applaud the fact that they still view helping those poorer than they as their mission. Once again, we greeted everyone in church in the reception line and chatted with many of our students after church. Mrs. A made us more maize for lunch—love it! In the afternoon we finished lesson planning for Monday for the most part so that we could enjoy our afternoon. Since we were unable to go to the market yesterday, T and I decided to once again venture on a minibus into town to the weekly market at Arcades, but this time with the purpose of buying souvenirs. I was pretty excited because of all the hype I had heard on campus about bartering, and I haven’t bartered in a year or so (besides a failed attempt in Chinatown in London), so I wanted to see if I still had it. We were fortunate for one of the bigger minibuses on the way into town. When we stopped at the bus stop on the University of Zambia campus, I had the opportunity to sit by a university student and we chatted a bit about the school there. He was majoring in environmental education and he said the university had about 10,000 students. Finally, we made it to the market for some bartering. J Before the ominous rain clouds, too! T and I went to town, (literally, hahaha), and purchased many a souvenir for ourselves and others. Maybe you will be the future owner of one of these trinkets! My best bartering of the day: getting 2 wooden bowls for K30,000 instead of 1 for K30,000, which the man started out at. That’s about $6 for two. Also, I got a smallish mask for K10,00 ($2) instead of K30,000. Nice work! J They were wrong when they thought they could rip off this white American! Plus, you’ll be happy to know that I did find a new pair of flip flops here, so I once again have shoe wear. New rule: they are not allowed to be worn during duck duck goose or kickball, because those games are vicious to my sandals! On the minibus ride back home, we fit 19, yes I did say 19, people in the bus, all scrunched up while holding our souvenirs on our laps. As we stepped onto campus it began to sprinkle—wow we couldn’t have planned that any better! Referring to the ominous clouds during the sales with the locals helped my bartering skills, too. J After our excursion, we continued lesson planning, and tried to plan when we are taking our trips in the next few months. D&D came over and we finalized our game park plans (EXCITING!) and T and I talked over when we want to go to Vic Falls and Malawi. Dinner was again by Mrs. A, a lovely meal including noodles, noodles, NNN-NNN-NNN! (Noodles are the picture we have for our ABC chant that we have taught all the preschoolers. I think it’s hilarious when they start chanting when we walk past them.) J After dinner….you guessed it….we lesson planned! We’re such teachers….BUT, it also decided to DOWNPOUR outside. And me, being the curious person I am, decided I needed to stand out in the rain not once, but twice during this time. Love it. J Reminds me of dancing in the DOWNPOUR in Ukraine with friends. Well, on the second time outside, I was amused by the inswa—hundreds of double winged insects all fluttering under the security light and out of the rain. Unfortunately, they all decided to follow me into the house….even after I shut the door. They were coming in the cracks in the doors and windows! Soon, we probably had 100 inside too, even after plugging the cracks! I didn’t mind so much; they were annoying, but I was busy chatting with someone on the computer. After the short power outage, T, however, was on a mission to get rid of them. So she took the Raid bug spray and used almost THE ENTIRE CAN and sprayed them to kill them. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the floor and taking in the fumes. As the fluttering began to stop, so did our breathing. T and I had to cover our mouths and noses with fabric so we weren’t inhaling the fumes! I definitely felt lightheaded the rest of the night! This, combined with seeing all the carnage over the floor of a hundred dead flies the size of dragonflies, made for an interesting experience. T and I retreated to our rooms and into our mosquito netting to protect ourselves from any other flying creatures. Sitting in the dark and taking brief breaths of air outside hoping that more bugs wouldn’t fly in was the name of the game for the next hour. T probably got sick of my saying “I hope I don’t suffocate in my sleep!” over and over again; but then again, that spray had really messed up my head for awhile! I feel asleep praying that God would let me survive the night and not die from the fumes and lack of ventilation to serve his kingdom another day. J