April 28 "Rice, Computers, and Goats"

Today. Our last “normal” teaching day. Kind of. Unfortunately, R and J forgot about tutoring this morning. You would think after coming every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 8 hours for 3 months and they’d remember….but then again they are 11 and 9 year old boys. Too bad, but I think they’ll come tomorrow instead. I didn’t mind having an extra hour and a half off; my immune system doesn’t like Africa and I just wanted to sleep, sleep, sleep all day, so I got some extra time to rest.

For our last normal day of class (since next week we’re finishing the book and doing activities as a whole group), my ladies got within 7 pages of the end. I know it’s cruel to pause reading right after a murder with just 7 pages to go, but that’s just how the time makes it go sometimes. With the lower group, we were still working on household items, so they wrote for me sentences about different items they had randomly circled on a sheet. My favorites were for rice, computer, and goats. The sentence for rice ended up being, “Abby, I eat rice with a spoon!” said so forcefully that I won’t doubt V ever again! I had a big debate with one of the ladies as she tried making her sentence about having a computer in her house when I know she doesn’t! It was quite a funny conversation. And the icing on the cake, using goats as an item in the yard. I said, “V, what’s your sentence with goats?” V: “My family eats goats.” Well, I couldn’t argue with her there! Quite entertaining. J These ladies finished off by drawing and labeling floor plans of their houses.

Lunch time flew by with fritters Mrs. A had made, reading my book, napping, and apartment searching. During my afternoon tutoring, my girls finished their animal books. They were quite lovely. J Then, I finished my teaching day with A. We were playing Memory with cards that we had made from our vocab/spelling words. For the second game, I got a pair first, and then when she got a pair and I asked her to spell for me “cat” she said “But you didn’t spell for me bird!” Hahahah, so true. So cute. Don’t worry, all words were spelled by the end of the game. J As I was cleaning up the materials when she was finishing her last work for the day, she says “Miss A, take these things inside and bring out the mat. I am going to plait your hair.” No sense in arguing! I brought out my book and 20 minutes later I had 12 micro-braids in my hair. Third day in a row. Thanks A! J

This evening I spent a good chunk of time apartment searching and laptop browsing since I was done with planning for tomorrow. I’m in the market for both of them, got any leads on either? Mrs. A came over and chatted for a bit and served us a lovely meal, complete with mashed potatoes. Oh, how I love them. Second time eating them in Africa! She also brought over a visitor to stay in the other half of our guest house since the one across the yard is full. Funny thing is, after we met her, we didn’t see her all night! After dinner, I went over my notes for tomorrow (final teaching training) and continued my apt and comp searching online before T and I continued to tackle our to do list (watch all movies we have here—9.5 left! The 0.5 is because I stupidly only brought one of the two required disks for Pearl Harbor…) and watched Mamma Mia. It made me think of my roomies in America. J We had gone to the musical shortly before I came to Africa as my Christmas present to them—what fun! J I turned in early, because as they say, the night before the night before is the important for sleep for racing!

April 27 "Tackled by 5 year olds"

Did not want to get out of bed today. But I did it for the kids. J But I haven’t gotten much sleep recently, so that’s probably why. Tutoring this morning with M and E. They were making their animal books and reading a story about Lambikin. They did really well on the comprehension questions! After tutoring, it was time for ESL. Again, today was spent reading our novel (11 pages left and we’re in the middle of a murder!) and finishing our penpal letters. Too bad one of the ladies wasn’t there, so I’ll have to hunt her down tomorrow to make sure her penpal gets a letter this week!

T and I had a working lunch today. We made copies of all the preschool work to keep here as examples, sorted the preschool papers, copied and assembled packets for Friday, and created certificates for our students. Then it was time for lunch and a much needed nap. J

Second last preschool today. L We did letters V (show me your violin!), W (check your watch!), and X (play your xylophone!). T and I couldn’t believe that we used to do one letter a day and now we’re up to three. But with some luck, we’ll finish in time! J Then the kids can all have a book of all their letters. They’re getting pretty good! We did some songs, playing, and storytime in there too. Then, on Wednesdays, Mr. D&D has kickball with the older kids, so I took the preschoolers next to the kickball field to help play together. We had a few second and third graders join too. The field was tiny—it was so cute! I had to end the game sooner than I would have liked because I was being surrounded by the kids who were supposed to playing! Instead of waiting their turn to kick and playing in the field, they decided they needed to lay their heads on my lap, braid my hair, hang on my back, play with my necklace and earrings, etc… It was just the pitcher and the kicker playing for awhile, because obviously surrounded the teacher was more important. Obviously. J They’re so darn cute, though. And the little kids, too. I made sure I held one of those cute little goobers before going on my walk to the market for some apples, peanut butter, and chocolate. You know, the essentials. J

I spent the evening doing the following activities: eating supper, responding to emails, taking pictures of student work, prepping for tomorrow, organizing teaching materials, watching Kungfu Panda, and crossing things off the to do list slowly but surely. Hopefully it’ll all get done in the next 9 days!

April 26 "Wrapping Up"

Back in the saddle again. I had a wonderful morning tutoring session with R where we started to make our cards for the animal memory game we’ll play on Thursday. J, sadly, did not show. L When I told R to bring him on Thursday, he said no! Guess he likes our one-on-one time, perhaps? But I found J later in the day and reminded him again….hopefully he’ll come because this week will be our last regular week of lessons! After am tutoring, it was time for ESL with the ladies. The higher group and I jumped into our book that we haven’t read since before I was in Malawi; last week they were writing character descriptions instead. But seeing as we have less than a handful of days left, we need to get going on the book so we can finish! Sprint to the end of the book! I spent the rest of the class working with the lower group on writing their last penpal letters. I think this was the best one as far as each lady coming up with their own thoughts to fill in the blanks in the letter. Nice work!

During lunch I did some prep for tomorrow’s lessons, went for a run, and ate some lunch. T and I then spent some time updating our advice log for the next crew (we hadn’t done it in a month and a half…) and putting our finishing touches on the handouts for Friday’s inservice. 13:30 was here before I knew it and I was off again teaching.

I had J and B for the first afternoon session. We read a few stories about animals and worked on comprehension. Then we started in on making our own story books about animals. After that was my time with A. Boy was she sassy today! But a very cute sassy. Usually she’s so quiet and adorable, but today she told me she didn’t want to do the alphabet flashcards because we do them every day (good point since she’s so stellar at them anyway) so we switched it up a bit. She kept saying the Nyanja for words I was having her read on the other flashcards instead of English, but that helped me learn some new words! Malua, Nkuku, Chisote. Flower, Chicken, Hat. The teaching day flew by.

After teaching, I took A with me and took my book, camera, and ipod outside and laid out on the mat. Within seconds, I had gained a flock of pre-schoolers, along with A. Camera, ipod, and sunglasses (magogo) are a dangerous concoction for little kids when you don’t want things broken. They got my sunglasses and camera, but I held onto that ipod and prayed for the best with the camera. I had no idea what they were doing with it (since I had taught A how to use it and then everyone knew how), since I was reading and then A and E attacked my head and started braiding it. T came outside to meet some kids for a walk and that’s when I finally got the camera back—after the boys had filled the memory card of course with pictures of them in karate poses. Oh boys. A asked me to come along on the walk/run today, so I joined, with crazy braids all over and all. I guess T usually goes with a bunch of girls, but today it was A and lots of boys. Only A and O followed us outside the grounds, though. We stopped and picked up M. I chatted a bit and then headed back to work on the advice log again before dinner.

T and I enjoyed a lovely dinner, and since I was done with prep for tomorrow and most of Thursday, we just got a bit goofy and slacked off. However, we did go through all the preschool sheets to return. All 350 of them. Just some copies and pictures for the next group’s materials and then that’s another check off our list! We ended the night by watching The Notebook (as one of the goals on our to do list is to watch all the remaining movies we brought and haven’t watched yet, meaning we need to watch about one a day!), enjoying our pineapple Fanta, goofing off, and bumming around online.

April 25 "Fun to do List"

Easter Monday—a public holiday in Zambia. Thank goodness, too, because I feel like the weekend was really busy and not relaxing at all! I got some much needed sleep, and tried crossing things off my to do list in the morning. Lots of emails and a facebook chat later, I decided to shower and finally present myself to the world at 11. Mrs. A was worried about us; she knocked on the door twice before then to see if we were alright since we weren’t out and about yet. J

Well, T and I have two to do lists for our dwindling time here: a “fun” list and an “other” list. We decided that today would be the day to tackle the fun list. J We headed out to Arcades, where this guy wanted to talk to me, which happens often (trying to sell things) but this guy grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go. Eventually I got him off, but it wasn’t too fun. We went to Mint Cafe for lunch. Delicious. I had been craving it; we had eaten there for our first meal in Zambia and not since then! We decided to splurge too and get cake. J Mint cafe: check one. Well, the Sunday market happened to be partially around too. On a Monday. Because of the holiday, there were performers and a bounce house and musicians and some of the market, so T and I meandered through in search of these bags we had seen a friend buy in Malawi. Found em! Decided to stick around the mall until later since the prices are better later in the day. What do you do at the outlet mall with time to kill? Well, we checked out movie show times and Just Go With It with Adam Sandler was playing later, so we decided to see that. In the mean time, we walked down the road to Unza—the University of Zambia—to see what a big college campus is like in Africa. So we became college students again for about an hour. J We found the school of education and checked out the dorms from the outside, too. Definitely appreciate my school after seeing their facilities. Unza: check two. We headed back to the movie and enjoyed it in a very full theatre.

After the movie, we went back to the bag lady (hahah that songs bad, but that’s what she was selling!) and asked if she could personalize some bags for us with chitenga material we would provide and she said yes! So, there was a lot of back and forth and bartering with several stands, but in the end, T and I picked our material, got to a price we could live with, and are having the lady make the bags and we’ll pick them up at the market on Sunday. Chitenga backpacks: check three. Well, by this time it was 5 pm, so we decided to hit Rhapsody’s for a drink. And who would we meet there, but a man from Michigan. Small world! Drink at Rhapsody’s: check four.

Next was the minibus ride home. Usually not that entertaining once you get the hang of it. I confidently handed forward my K2000 (40 cents) to get from the mall home and was told the ride was K4000. Well, I’ve paid between K2000 and K3500 to get to the mall, but never K4000, and I was not backing down. I wasn’t going to let him rip me off just because I was a Mzungu. So for 15 minutes (our minibus had to fill up at the diesel station while we were crammed in it unfortunately), I was stubborn and battled with our minibus director guy about how I always pay K2000 (usually) and have never paid K4000. So, yes, we were arguing about 40 cents, but I wasn’t going to give in. Others in the minibus were starting to say just to give in to him to shut him up, but we just got out of the minibus two stops early to get away from this guy. A lady in there told me not to get off because he wouldn’t throw me out (which I knew was true because other minibus guys have been made at how much I’ve given them before), but we decided to get off early to get our last checkmark. So, there’s a giant chicken in the roundabout by our house that’s pretty new. And of course we wanted Easter pictures with the Easter chicken. So we did. Check five. And then we ended up walking the 25 minutes back to campus. My poor feet in my flats!

We got back to campus and went over by D&D. They have this neat idea to take the campus kids to the croc and snake farm nearby next week, and wanted to know if we wanted to help chaperone. Heck yes! It’s kind of a goodbye for us and for the kids, as the kids will be all moving in about a month, too. We made it back to our house in time for dinner from Mrs. A (Hungarians, coleslaw/veggie mixture, and chips aka fries) before lesson planning for tomorrow and trying to cross more things off the to do lists. While we got five things off the “fun” list, we still have many things on the “other” side of the list….

April 24 "Mweva mwi sone day"

Happy Easter! While it’s just not the same as spending time with family on Easter, I had an enjoyable day overall. Church was packed for the occasion, and it was really neat to celebrate the resurrection with new friends in Africa. Yours truly played the liturgy and hymns on the piano to lead the congregation in singing. T and I also made our choir debut by singing 8 songs with the choir. Thankfully, several of them were ones I have heard before. But let me tell you, it was not an easy task singing songs in another language and doing a different choreographed dance to each song! T and I usually are the center of attention being the only Mzungus, but we were especially stared at today! The choir always sings as they leave church and go through the reception line afterwards, so T and I joined in to, and of course all our little preschoolers thought this was the funniest thing ever to hear the Mzungus singing in Nyanja while greeting them after church! It was a very joyous occasion and I feel honored to have shared the celebration with my new African students and friends.

Random things that happened after church: I asked a lady to take a picture of T and I by the church, and after showing her the button to push, she held the camera the wrong way. Sometimes I forget the lack of technology here and that she’s probably never held a digital camera before. I also took some of the caramel Cadburry eggs T and I bought with some lollipops we had and hid an Easter basket for T to find. J Lunch happened. Unfortunately, I spent some of my Easter working on things, like figuring out our cost spreadsheet, but the good news is, I found one of the mistakes! Hurray! That only took forever to find…

To fit in the mold of normal Sundays, D&D took me to the pool for a swim. The last time seeing it before the big race! I’ve definitely gotten a lot better at swimming pool lengths, but I’m by no means good. Same with running and biking. So of course I’m doing a triathlon…right? I hope this was a good idea, especially since I have to miss the Dutch Reform, the big market that happens once a month, while T and I already missed the first two.

When I got back from swimming, choir practice had already started, so I followed the singing voices and found the choir practicing outside and joined in. After the confidence from excelling this morning in the choir, I thought this would be a piece of cake. But no. The songs we went through were less call and response with different rhythms and more words to memorize. I can’t pronounce the words, let alone memorize them! In one of the songs the sopranos start really low and end up really really high, and I don’t remember any of the words, but the melody has been stuck in my head all day! I do remember the first line: Mweva mwi sone day coo ti que ni, but I have no idea what it means! N, the choir director, even had a song in English today, and they’ve never sang an English song in the three months we’ve been here, but even that one was tough to learn. But at least I knew I was singing the correct words! After those overwhelming 90 minutes, I went back to home for some down time.

Not too much down time because EW and MW, a missionary family we don’t know too well, invited us over for dinner. Good thing because otherwise we had no plans and we were running out of food! They provided a delicious meal including chicken, scalloped potatoes, salad, beans, squash, and cherry cobbler. A meal that makes me forget I’m in Africa. The W family is very well traveled, and they’ve been in Zambia for over 40 years, so it was really neat listening to all their stories. A very nice evening indeed. Unfortunately, after leaving, I really wasn’t feeling well and was dead tired, so I turned in early and missed two chatting dates with loved ones. L The sleep did me good, though.

April 23 "Kickball and Choir"

Today began bright and early with kickball. Mr. D&D was hosting a kickball tournament (he has singlehandedly brought kickball to Lusaka), and he wanted me to ump one game for him. So, at 9, about 25 kids piled into the back of the pickup and headed off to meet the other teams. Well, one didn’t show, so there were only three times. I ended up helping ump the first and third games, and someone got hurt, so I played the second game with Kaunda Square. Yours truly scored a few run. J It was just fun hanging out with all the kids and goofing off. My sunglasses got passed around to all the kids who were wearing them and posing with them, of course. R, who is quickly becoming one of my favorites, kept asking me to play with his team, but I said no, that the time was for the kids. Well, it ends up that I ended up playing against him, and hit him in the face with a ball I kicked! Oops! R is a tough little guy though, so he shook it off. The team from the sem ended up winning J which was surprising since the other teams were high schoolers! Before we left the host school had a nice little greeting for all of us and a few games to goof around and play together before leaving. It was a very fun morning. J

On the way back, I found out choir practice wasn’t until 16 hours, instead of 14, so I had some extra free time, since it was already 13:15 when I got back. Remember that to do list I was made up yesterday? Well, I spent the next several hours trying to accomplish a few things. I feel like the list is never ending (kind of like the book the To Do List that I read last month), but it made me feel a bit accomplished.

At 16 hours, T and I headed over to the church for choir practice. The choir had invited us to sing with them a few weeks ago, so today we joined. Well, it was quite an experience! All the songs are in Nyanja or other local dialects. None of the words are written to read. They don’t practice the lyrics, they just start doing the call and response singing. So that’s how T and I tried, too. So, on top of learning 15 new songs for tomorrow, we were learning them in African languages, having no idea what we were saying. On top of that, the choir does different dances to each song, too, so I had to pretend that I had African rhythm and dance on top of the singing. But it was fun. J Have I mentioned that I’ve never been in a real choir in my life? We must have been ok though, because they invited us to sing with them tomorrow and come to practice the following day!

After choir, T and I unfortunately had to sit down and stare at and try to make sense of our cost spreadsheet. That wasn’t too fun, but we’re a bit closer to figuring it out. By this time I had the hymns for tomorrow, so practicing piano was next. Hopefully my musical extravaganza tomorrow will go well! Then we made some sandwiches for dinner, and settled in with a few movies (since that’s the only thing we can do at night!) and watched The Guardian and Ocean’s 11. Not a super stellar Saturday, but it’s nice to have those down days sometimes, too.

April 22 "Fun and Games!"

Good Friday. It didn't start off so good. We have a termite infestation in our shower. And since I was the first one in the shower today, I was the lucky one to stumble upon the three foot long termite tunnel home being built on the shower wall. Lovely. And, I was also the lucky one to see them rebuilding it later on in the day and deal with that, too. Oh, I hope the next two weeks aren't filled with termites in my shower!

After that, the day was much better. Today started off with church at Bethel. Pastor M read the seven words from the cross. My favorite part of the service was the song the Sunday School sang. It was mostly in Nyanja or another local dialect, but I could understand when they were singing Gethsemane. Then they all started humming one verse and one girl recited John 3:16 during the humming. It was really well done and gave me goose bumps and definitely made me think about the day.

After church, T and I had planned a fun and games day for the kids on campus and the ones who go to Bethel congregation. We had told a few kids to come, but when 11 hours arrived, about 45 kids ran into the guest house area. J We taught them a few Jesus songs, read a few stories, played some relay games, and all crowded around T’s computer to watch an episode of Spongebob. J The games were really fun to watch; we had them doing the crab walk, hopping, carrying eggs on spoons, and passing a hoola hoop through everyone while holding hands. All the little kids came too, so I got to hold a toddler while watching Spongebob, too. J I was definitely happy, and the kids had a great time too!

For lunch, Mrs. A shared her bananas with us (they’re really tiny here) and we made peanut butter and banana sandwiches, while relaxing a bit. D&D called me up to head to AIS to practice for the triathlon, so I went with them. It definitely didn’t feel like a Friday today! But it was good to ride the bike route, which is all on dirt roads and paths full of potholes, before race day. And since I haven’t swam in two weeks, it was good to get in the pool, too. And it was fun hanging out with D&D for a bit. J I’m going to miss them…

After being gone all afternoon, I waited for T to get back from being out and about, and then we just ended up being bums all night. I ended up spending a bunch of time online, angry that my computer is dying a slow and painful death in Zambia. Ordering a new one is on the agenda for the next two weeks! T and I also made some “mac and cheese” as best as we could, while making to do lists for the next two weeks (a “fun” and an “other” one), because without these there is no way we will be able to fit everything in before we leave! We watched a few movies: Emma and Runaway Bride, which are both stupid love stories about stupid boys, so then, of course, T and I started talking about stupid boys and stupid love stories before heading to bed.

April 21 "The First Goodbye"

Maundy Thursday. A very full teaching day for me. First was with R and J—J hasn’t been there for weeks! I’m so glad he came! R never fails to make me laugh. Today it was because they came a few minutes early and I wasn’t outside yet, so he decided to repeatedly call through the window to wake me up because he thought I was sleeping! After tutoring, it was time for ESL. Our class went long today, so I taught an extra half hour or so. The ladies greatly enjoyed class today because I turned a bunch of different things into competitions, like naming off as many household items as possible in two minutes (our weekly theme).

After teaching, we walked back to our house and T announced that she really wanted fritters, and not 10 seconds later, Mrs. A said she had made some “Easter fritters” for us! Sweet! A yummy, and horribly bad for you, lunch. The “Easter” part was that some were filled with cheese. J We are Wisconsinites; we love our cheese! I decided that since we aren’t teaching tomorrow, that we should invite the kids for a day of fun, so T and I planned that over lunch. We kind of told about 10 kids, but figure the word will spread like wildfire, so I am curious to see how many kids show up at 11 hours tomorrow! Hopefully the church service will be done by then!

After the lunchtime break, it was time for more tutoring. A knock on the door came about 10 minutes before lessons were scheduled to start. I thought it was just the kids coming early, but no, there were 4 of the preschoolers standing at the door asking if we could learn today! So precious! Man, is it hard to turn away 4 and 5 year olds who can barely speak any English who want to learn more! But today was time for the big kids. The preschoolers melt my heart, though. J My first tutoring session went very well with the girls reading a story and writing about it. Oh yeah, and I made a connection with Good Friday, so it was an especially good lesson. (hahah, get it?) Then it was my time with A, and although she had forgotten some of her letters over the 2 week break, she’s so much farther ahead than what she was in February!

After tutoring it was time for a quick snack and finalizing our ideas for the fun day tomorrow before church. L (and N) took us to Good Shepherd across town for church tonight. I really liked the part in the sermon where the pastor related Jesus words of institution to the words written in someone’s will. It made a lot of sense to me how it was written, then. L drove us back home to the seminary, and we stopped at her house to pick up supplies for game day tomorrow. Unfortunately, we found out that since the S family will be going on a holiday and L will be staying for a few weeks longer than D and N, we won’t see her again before we leave! I definitely wasn’t ready to say one of my first goodbyes tonight! I was getting pretty emotional about it, but then N decided to tell a bunch of stories about his school to diffuse the situation. His chats gave me a good insight into how the 6^th graders mind works. J L has been a wonderful woman to get to know here and I will miss her dearly. She said that we’ve definitely made an impact; the kids are always talking about Miss A and Miss T! N and D have also said that the kids talk about us more than Mr. D&D, which is a big feat, because he’s the whole who organizes kickball for them a few times a week! But it was a really touching moment, and I’m sad not to see her again. L

T and I headed back for a late dinner (it was almost 9!) and popped in Pearl Harbor, before I realized that I only have one of the two disks here that the movie is on! So we switched and watched Pirates of the Caribbean, wrote a few emails, read, and went to bed. I love not having to plan lessons. J  

April 20 "Kids and Kickball"

Today T and I got back into the swing of things. Slept in until quarter to 7! Hurray! All the kids showed up for tutoring this morning, early, too! Even the boy that has been MIA for awhile! Boy, they must have missed us! I took advantage of the short week and did a combination English and Good Friday lesson. It was good. J We had a small group for ESL today, but that was to be suspected, since they haven’t had class in awhile and might have had other things planned. Although, we did see most of them after they left chapel last night and reminded them…Oh well. Those who were there had a good lesson; today’s was on household items for the lower group.

My lunch hour was productive: I went for a run for the first time in almost two weeks (and was a minute faster on my route! J), I used the last of my Internet before it expired for the month, I blogged, I completed my lesson plans for Thursday, and I made and ate my lunch. Not bad for 2 and a half hours! Yay productivity!

So, when T and I left for preschool today, we weren’t quite sure what we’d see. Schools are out in April and we last taught preschool 2 weeks ago, when they were still in session. C isn’t teaching the rest of the week, but T and I plan to teach on Mondays and Wednesdays through the end of our time here. So, knowing the memory of 5 year olds and the fact that we haven’t seen them in 2 weeks (although we did remind the wives this morning to send their children), we didn’t know how many would show up. But everyone was there! We had a very productive class period, finishing R, and doing all of S, T, and U. Normally we only do 2 letters a day, but in a rush to finish before we leave, desperate times call for desperate measures! Hopefully we’ll finish and the kids will still have fun! I think the class went very well, though, and it was so fun to see all their smiling faces again. I still melt when they run across the yard by the school when they see us to give us hugs. And they started lining up and doing their opening routine before we even told them to, too! Love it! So cute! J I’m going to miss them so much, even when they’re naughty a lot of the time….

After preschool, I found myself without Internet and with all my prep for tomorrow done, so what else is there to do, but join the kids for kickball for two hours! I watched the end of the first game amidst pleas from the kids for “Miss Abby” to play too. I played and held the little babies instead. J And the preschoolers who were playing their own mini game of kickball on the side came over by me and cuddled whenever they weren’t in the game. J They melt my heart all the time. I’m bringing them all home with me. I joined in on the second game and everyone was so excited when Miss Abby was picked to join the team. J I do hold some kickball records at my grade school, I’m pretty sure. J But it was really fun, and I met some new kids from the neighborhood and from Kaunda Square.

Mrs. A made chicken and chips and cabbage for dinner, so T and I enjoyed our meal and reflected on how quickly our time in Zambia is coming to a close. Considering neither of us had Internet after dinner (Mrs. D&D was taking care of that for us), and we both had weeks of blogging to catch up on (you’re welcome!), we both ended up spending a lot of time with our computers tonight. But I still had a bunch of time to read. I’m currently borrowing a book from the guest house called “Three Cups of Tea.” I’ve heard it’s a good book to read as an educator and it’s been pretty interesting so far. Hopefully I’ll finish before I need to leave! I decided to end the evening by watching Zoolander and getting a good night’s sleep. J I’m so thankful for my bed. J

April 19 "Mwembezhi and Manda Hill"

Today was out final excursion in Zambia before leaving. Again, as has been the theme of the past week, we were up and outta there by 6:30. Since the Malawi and Livingstone missionaries were still in town today (to see the wonders that are Manda Hill Mall—a real mall in Africa is hard to come by!), the Malawian nurses—our fellow Schuschunckterhintzes—were going to Mwembezhi medical clinic run by the LCCA, so we tagged along, too. It’s about an hour and a half drive from Lusaka into the village, but it was worth it because we got to see the difference between a static and mobile clinic within the LCCA. It was a smaller operation, but the people can see the patients daily instead of weekly, so I guess that was to be expected. I was impressed that they had separate rooms and lab equipment that the mobile clinic in Malawi lacked, but again, it was nowhere near any kind of standards in America. They had gloves at Mwembezhi to use, unlike many of the nurses at the Suzi clinic; however, I saw the lab test reader put them on, and then hang onto the peeling paint metal bars over the windows while waiting for the results and drawing blood. That wouldn’t fly in America. But, they’re way ahead, technologically, than the mobile clinic, and both sites are doing great things. People at the seminary talk about the Mwembezhi clinic and church often, so I was glad I could see what everyone was talking about before leaving Zambia.

Mr. B, our driver, dropped T and I off at Manda Hill to do some much needed grocery shopping, since we’ve been gone for a week and a half. We tried, unsuccessfully, to renew our monthly internet, but besides that it was a successful trip including window shopping, grocery shopping, a lunch at Galito’s (yum!), and ice cream. Then, we walked to Arcades to check out movie times, only to find out that the movie we wanted to see had left already! Bummer! We ran into the Schuschunckterhintzes and MH at the mall, surprisingly, before taking a trusty minibus back home. As I stepped off the minibus, a guy told me that he liked my tattoo and wanted me to draw him one, too. This seems to be a common theme here; I can’t count how many times that has been said to me! Also, there are food stands at this bus stop, and we’re kind of regulars at that bus stop, so I think the same people are used to seeing us, so maybe this guy just got the nerve up to talk to me this time or something. Only one guy asked if we wanted a taxi as opposed to 10 guys, so maybe they’re realizing we’re regulars and never take a taxi home. J It’s good to feel like I fit in. I don’t know what it was, but I felt like I had less stares today, too. Maybe the neighborhood is getting used to us, or maybe it’s because there were less people about being the middle of the day on a Tuesday and school is out, so the kids weren’t walking to and from school.

We got back into our regular rhythm by lesson planning when we got back from shopping for tomorrow. Since the missionaries would all be leaving early the next morning, we stopped over gy the guest house across the street for a quick goodbye. Two hours later, and we were tearing ourselves away to finish prepping for tomorrow. M and K invited us over for some wine and we enjoyed chatting with them and reliving Schuschunckterhintz memories, and we said goodbye to all the other missionaries. It was a fun weekend; it turned out much better than I had anticipated, thinking it was just going to be uncomfortable sleeping (which it was) and unending small talk (which actually turned into real and fun conversations). It was sad to see everyone leave, and I’m sure it’ll be much worse in a few weeks when we leave. T and I begrudgingly went back to our guest house to finishing planning for tomorrow. (I really wanted to teach, but I didn’t want to prep at all!) And since the Internet was not cooperating—it didn’t realize I had 50 emails to respond to and several blogs to post!—I decided to read and get a good night’s sleep. J

April 18 "Home Sweet Home away from Home"

Today was the end of the Easter Retreat. I “slept in” today, meaning I woke up before 6 with everyone else because of the noise level, but I stayed in bed until 7:15. Nice sleeping in, right? Showering and breakfast were first, before a closing service around the campfire led by DS. Everyone spent the remainder of the morning packing up camp and heading to Lusaka. D&D and one of the JH’s had gone on a walk over the breakfast hour and found the giraffe! So, it was my idea to find out where they saw them and go in search of them. Twenty minutes later, about 15 people joined in on my idea! We looked in the woods, off the paths, for about 30 minutes before giving up. Oh well. It was fun searching for them though! T and I walked around the game ranch and took pictures before helping the S’s load up.

We were on our way back to Lusaka by noon and stopped at the Fig Tree again for “takeaway” food (again, not a common concept in Zambia) and a milkshake! We were back by 4 and listened to Mr. D&D’s story about getting pulled over on the way home and talking his way out of a K180,000 ticket! Nice work! On our walk across campus to our guest house, we ran into several of the sem students, wives, and kids. They missed us! Mrs. A missed us, too! She cooked us our favorite—chicken and rice—to welcome us home. My favorite part of the night was when about 6 of our students came to our door (which doesn’t happen often) to welcome us back and to ask if we could have learning tomorrow! It broke my heart to tell them to wait until Wednesday! Made my day, though. J I’m so excited to see them all again!

T and I again spent our night doing laundry. Showering and feeling clean for the first time in a week and a half was really exciting too. Using the Internet was awesome, too. Lots of emails to catch up on! And it was also exciting not having to lesson plan, but to relax by watching You’ve Got Mail, for real this time. And so was sleeping in a real bed. Oh, it’s good to be home, even if it is only my home away from home!

April 17 "Sitatunga Sighting"

Palm Sunday! Again, I went on the morning game drive. This time at 6 am….SB drove this time instead of DS, and we didn’t see many antelope today, so I was kind of bummed, but we ran into a herd of zebra before the end! Score! Yes, I saw them all over at South Luangwa, but it was neat to see them in another place. J SB did so well, that she took us on another short drive after the first one because we had some extra time.

Breakfast happened and then it was time for the Palm Sunday church service in the conference room. After they set it up, it looked a lot like a church actually. Unfortunately, T and I left our hymnals in America, so the singing at devotions and at church didn’t work so well…but it was nice worshipping with all these others in fellowship in Zambia.

After church, M, T and I went canoeing. Mr. D&D tried to hit us with a water balloon, but missed, so the three Schuschunckterhintzes spent awhile trying to obtain the water balloon by canoeing to it and getting it from the water and then getting Mr. D&D to come back down by the water and try hitting him with the balloon. Well, we missed, but it was still fun. J Next was a not so delicious lunch that T and I tried to walk off by going on another walk around the park. We were gone almost two hours! But, we ran into a few herds of sable, waterbuck, and bushbuck. There’s just something about seeing them so close to you while you’re walking instead of in a big vehicle. I also saw a monitor lizard run across the road. And, as there is a cattle ranch on the game ranch, too, there was a herd of cattle in the woods. It took T and I a second to figure out what they were, and I am not so proud to say that my first instinct upon seeing the white creatures was that they were unicorns…..oops. J I guess the unicorn starts with u from tutoring has been engrained in my head!

T and I decided 2 hours of physical activity wasn’t enough; right after we got back from our walk, we decided to play volleyball for an hour and a half! My team (same as yesterday) smoked the other team in 3 games. Then, we switched up teams a bit and played another game before I called it quits. The most memorable part of the game was a collision that took place between (surprise!) one of the JH’s and yours truly. From what I heard, it looked painful, and a few days later I’m a bit sore, but ok. I felt horrible when I found out that JH had a prosthetic hip! How horrible would that have been to mess that up upon first meeting him! But all is well, and I’m sure the Volleyball Collision of 2011 will be talked about for many Easter Retreats to come.

Next was devotion, given by the other JH, about how when we have God, we can never be shaken. It was adorable because he used little 5 year old J as part of his object lesson and literally shook him. J Dinner was delicious—fish and ribs, surprisingly! And this divine mousse. I was definitely on a sugar high after that! Several of us went on a night drive after that to see some nocturnal animals. We saw a bunch of antelope again, but the new animals we saw were a bush baby (like a tiny monkey with a furry tail), a duiker (mini antelope), and the elusive sitatunga! Nsobe game ranch gets its name from the sitatunga; nsobe is the local name for sitatunga. A sitatunga is a large antelope which hides completely underwater when it’s afraid. I guess they’re really rare to see! But no giraffe. L which everyone has been on the look out for all weekend. T and I went on a short night walk after the game drive, but turned around when we got freaked out by a herd of antelope all around us. Yes, they’re more scared of us than we are of them, but the chances that we are bigger than them was pretty slim. It was exhilarating to have them run around us, but kind of scary, too! But I like adventure. J We went back and joined the campfire for the evening before another early night. It was kind of crazy that I was the last one at the campfire and it was only 10:30, but that’s how things work in Africa!

April 16 "Stellar Saturn and Cool Constellations"

The name of the game (unfortunately) for Easter Retreat was waking up early. Ugh. A game drive left at 6:30 am, so I dragged myself out of bed for it, thinking when else am I going to get to go? One of the pickup trucks that our group drove to Nsobe had been turned into a safari vehicle with seats in the truck bed (better than the matolas, of course!), so the Schuschunkterhintzes and most of the kids ended up going on the morning drive, while a bunch of adults went birding. I’ll take the game drive any day, even if it is with all kids! We probably scared away most of the game since the kids were all playing telephone, that game with whispering. My contribution was stinky skunks stunk up the toaster and they all thought that was hilarious. J We did see several types of antelope though: eland (they’re HUGE—I think the biggest antelope in the world), sable (a gorgeous dark brown with curved antlers), roan (lighter than sable and less majestic), hartebeest (their horns are shaped like a heart if you look from the front), waterbuck (I think that the one’s here have faces that look like koala bears), impala, puku, and kudu. Back at the campsite, several monkeys were running through (that’s common), and I saw a monkey paging through a Bible left on a picnic table. J He was scared off (since they steal everything before I got a picture though!).

After the game drive, we had breakfast and shower time before the adults did Bible study and the kids did Sunday school (on Saturday). T and I were in charge of Sunday School, which was fine by me. We did a Palm Sunday themed one (since it’s tomorrow). The kids were kept busy with the Bible reading, acting out the account, playing a board game with questions about Palm Sunday, singing “Our God is an Awesome God” with a verse I made up for Palm Sunday, and making glass vases with a tissue paper and glue concoction in which they collected palm branches from the campsite. It was a very busy, fun, productive, and educational hour and a half! Our kids were aged 5 to 14 and I think they all loved it! At least they said so!

After that, I decided to journal and read by the pool (it was too cold for swimming, yes I know that sounds mean coming from Africa, but the water was freezing!), but that plan was quickly thwarted as the kids all jumped in the pool and my books got all wet! I was entertained watching them play in the water though. A, the 8 year old girl, asked me about 100 questions about what I was reading so we chatted a bit, and J, the 13 year old boy told me I’m illegal in 51 (communist) countries because of my cross tattoo. Kids are great. J

Lots of small talk and getting to know all the new people occurred over the next few hours. Lunch was eaten and then it was time for the relay races. They put us all into four teams, and I am proud to say I was the captain for the Jiggly Jellybeans. J We won the egg carrying contest, and lost the “bunny” sack race by just a hare (ahahahah, I’m so funny), completely failed at the watermelon seed spitting contest, came in second with the “egg” toss, and did alright at constructing a pyramid but then lost because the person at the top had to crack and eat a whole hardboiled egg at the top. No one on our team liked eggs. So, we didn’t win overall, but had lots of fun! After those fun and games, several of us ended up playing volleyball. Many of you know of my amazing volleyball skills (NOT!) but I held my own. J Our team was mostly adults who were competitive, while the other team was all current or ex volleyball players, so I was happy that we held our own and had to play all 5 games to only lose the third one by a few. Definitely not usually that competitive with volleyball! But then again, I never play!

I relaxed after the fun and games by reading before the afternoon game drive. This one ended up being all adults, and my animal spotting skills which I had been proud of in the morning with the kids were put to shame with the avid adult spotters on this trip. Oh well. We did see a large variety of antelope again. Bigger herds and more often, but the same ones as the morning. PM gave the devotion when we got back, and dinner of chicken and rice was followed. They also served these tiny rolls that everyone was eating and kept disappearing at my table the night before, and tonight they placed the whole basket on our table. J Dessert was yummy brownies. I haven’t had many baked goods here; they’ve been soooo good this weekend. After dinner (and chatting about the earth’s orbit around the sun, of all things), PB had set up his telescope and was showing the constellations to all. The full moon was the following night, so it was super bright, and neat to see the craters on the moon, too. Plus, in the southern hemisphere, you see the rabbit in the moon instead of the man in the moon. I saw the Southern cross, Orion’s belt and sword, and Gemini. But mostly they were just pretty to look at overall. The “grooviest” part (stealing the term from JH) was that Saturn (my favorite planet, going back to my fourth grade science project!) was able to be seen tonight, and through the telescope, I could actually see the rings around it and two of its moons, too! Some more campfire chats and real s’mores (someone had brought the fixings from the States!) were had, but I was so pooped that I was in bed by 10 pm. Apparently camping tires me out!

April 15 "A Monkey Reading the Bible"

Easter Retreat—our last “vacation” in Africa—is here! Four missionaries and three missionary families could not make it, but our group was made up of 17 adults and 9 kids. We headed out early in the morning with the S family to the northern province, to Nsobe, a village on the outskirts of Ndola. This year’s Easter Retreat was held at Nsobe game ranch. What’s the difference between a game park and a game ranch, you ask? Well, a game park (South Luangwa that we went to a month ago) is a national park and usually has a bigger variety of game (big cats and such), while a game ranch is a privately owned area where the game happen to be. Nsobe has a large variety of antelope, as well as zebra and giraffe. Anyway, the game ranch has several different accommodation styles, but our group was tent camping. As many of you may know, nature and I usually don’t get along, and I can only remember two times in my life that I slept in a tent. I was skeptical of how I would get along with tenting for four days (but it turned out alright). N, D&L’s son, set up my one man tent for me. It was so cute. J

D is the mission coordinator, so we were the first to arrive, and while all the other families were making the four hour trek from Lusaka (with a stop at the Fig Tree for some ‘take-away’ hot drinks—unheard of in Africa!), T and I explored the camp. It was a nice big place with canoes to use and trails to walk and swings. J We grabbed a map and started out on the road for a brief walk, which ended up being 90 minutes! It was a neat feeling to walk through a game ranch, never knowing if we’d run into animals or not! We only saw one antelope on our walk and I don’t know if the consensus was ever decided between a sable, roan, and eland (none of which we had seen before). It was really cool. J

Upon return, everyone else was arriving and setting up camp, so we chatted and helped with everyone before tonight’s devotion. One of the JH’s gave a devotion on “this is the day the Lord has made.” What a good reminder in tough times; it stuck with me all weekend. Next was dinner (prepared by Nsobe, hurray!) of beef and nshima. Tasty, but nowhere near as good as Mrs. A’s cooking. J But—there was ice cream for dessert. With chocolate sauce. And they almost brought me two scoops, by accident. It was yummy. J After dinner, everyone chatted around the campfire and discussed the agenda for the rest of the weekend. There were “s’mores” to be had—biscuit/crackers with a tiny piece of chocolate and pink marshmallows. They don’t have graham crackers here. But they were still decent. And the kids were so cute toasting everyone’s marshmallows. J I talked with the other Schuschunckterhintzes for most of the night before turning in. It was a noisy night as there was a pig farm across the pond/lake at the camp, and of course, monkeys were running through the campsite all night…That happens all the time when camping, right?

April 14 "Travel Day Two"

Today’s our travel day back to Zambia. We were up at the crack of dawn, literally, and to our first stop by 5.45 am. Pastor H’s family said they’d take us to Zambia; we were very gracious. In the two big vehicles we had all the camping gear and tents along with T and I, K and M, Pastor H and his wife, their daughters R and H, and another missionary, SL. We all had met at Pastor M’s house, so we had a few quick introductions before hitting the road. While R and H are 13 and 14, Pastor M and his wife have four kids: 3 boys and a girl ranging from ages 13 to 5. J, the little 5 year old boy, was adorable and the center of attention, definitely, while A, the 8 year old girl became my shadow a few times. Very cute. J There were a few Malawian families and one Zambian family who wouldn’t be able to attend the Retreat, but it was nice to meet some new people and have a big group of missionaries. Our vehicle was M, K, T, and I, along with MH. The first four of us, the nurses and teachers, became our own little family over the coming days at Easter Retreat as the younger and single people. Our surname, a compilation of all our surnames, was Schuschunckterhintz. With two umlauts. J It was quite fun coming up with the name and hearing some of the missionaries using that name to refer to us. J

The ride back to Zambia was quite long, but nowhere near as painful as going to Malawi on bus. We got stuck at the border for a long time, but thanks to our new travel permits, T and I had no problem getting through; it was the missionaries! We past the time in the car by listening to a man sing about Malawian minibuses and listening to a Laura Ingals Wilder book on tape. Yes, it was a random sort of day. Not much sleeping occurred, but I survived, somehow!

We got back to the guest house in time for the evening braii (barbeque) with all the LCCA missionaries who were headed to Easter Retreat. Lots of yummy food—potato salad, cake, brownies, fruit salad. It’s times like these that I forget I’m in Africa! T and I chatted with everyone for a bit (going through the animal--spouse compatibility game for the first time, which became ever so popular over the weekend), but then had to head out to unpack, do laundry, and repack for Easter Retreat! It was a very quick turn around with a busy night, but everything got done. J PS—when I went to do the laundry in the other guest house, I noticed the door handle was broken. Not a common American thing, but in Zambia, things like this happen all the time. And it was especially funny since I had just heard a joke about Zambians breaking doorknobs a few hours earlier for the third time. J

April 13 "Malawian Medical Mission"

Today was an adventure in a different way. M and K run the Lutheran Mobile Mission Clinic through the LCCA. They serve 5 villages and visit each once a week. Today M was the one going out to clinic and she took us with her and the staff out to the village of Suzi. It’s amazing seeing someone just a few years older than me running this whole extravagant operation! Suzi is a small village, like others we’ve seen, but again it was really cool to get up close and see everything and kind of experience village life.

The mobile clinic operates like this: M or K go out to the village for the day. They drive the ambulance and pick up the staff members each day who ride in the back. There are about 9 of them I think. Then, once they get to the clinic, everything needs to be unpacked and set up each day. While this is happening, everyone is weighed, and a devotion is lead outside for the villagers, so I got to sing in Chechewa. Then the staff take turns teaching about something important to the villagers in the world of healthcare. Today’s topic was about under-5s vaccinations. After the teaching, the clinic operates different lines for sick patients, under-5s, antenatal care, family planning, and pharmacy. The staff members are busy constantly and the villagers know which lines they need to be in and wait patiently. The sick line today had at least 150 people in it. The staff just keep calling people through the lines under everyone has been taken care of. Whenever the lines are done, that’s when they go home. We got started around 9:15 and they were done around 1:15. Then they pack everything back up and head back for the day to do it all again the next day!

I was in awe of this well oiled machine and it was neat watching for awhile, but not being a nurse, I didn’t really know what to look for. So, being the teacher, I found all the small children and started making friends with them. J Also, the clinic can only do so much, so if someone is extremely ill, they will take them into Lilongwe in the ambulance. Usually they come with the staff at the end of the day, but today there was a man who was not doing well at all, so he had to go back in the middle of the day. T and I accompanied the driver on this hour plus drive into Lilongwe and the same back to Suzi just to turn around and come back to Lilongwe. But this gave us a chance to see what the ambulance driver does and how the Malawian hospital system works. We saw just a bit though, so not enough to compare to the one in Lusaka, but this one looked cleaner, by a bit. Unfortunately when we got back to Suzi, M told me that she had found out that they expected this man to have TB. And I sat next to him during the ride. He didn’t cough on me, so my chances of being infected are slim, but the running joke for the next few days from K, M, and T was that I was coughing or couldn’t do things because I’ve been infected with TB. It’s fun to be silly sometimes. J

After clinic, T and I rested before church. The church building at the LBI is gorgeous and they have the new hymnals! We have been using the old ones from 40 years ago in Lusaka! We enjoyed the final Wednesday of Lent in Lilongwe, and we enjoyed meeting the missionary families that are in Lilongwe. After church, everyone had meetings, so T and I decided to wander the LBI campus. It’s very nice! More classrooms and prettier grounds than the sem. There’s even this cute gazebo that T and I hung out in. They have all their student housing in one place instead of spread out like at the sem, so I didn’t like that as much. Hopefully a program will be there one day eventually, too. I was very impressed by the LBI and was excited to meet missionaries JH, MP, and PN. After church, K, M, T, and I went back to K and M’s house to find the power out. Usually it’s on Tuesday night apparently, so it was weird to be without power on a Wednesday. We ate chick burgers though (and oranges with cinnamon on them—strange but yummy!) and packed for returning to Zambia!

April 12 "Adventure Time!"

Alright. Today was an adventure. I like being independent and having adventures, and I think this day filled my quota for awhile! T and I were told Dedza Pottery and Lake Malawi were both must sees in Malawi, yet we were told we would not have enough time for both. Well, we sure proved everyone wrong!

We started the morning bright and early by watching the sunrise over the lake. It was gorgeous. And it was funny to watch people coming out to fish or bathe in the water as we watched the sunrise. It’s just another day for them! We headed back to bed for a few hours, but in hindsight we should have gotten up and started going for the day already!

We left Cool Runnings (good thing—our bathroom was full of ants) for our adventure to the southwest around 9:30 am. Little did we know that it would take ALL DAY to get to our next destination, a mere 180 km away! Walking to the main road and hitching a ride on a matola took awhile. The matola was packed—at least 25 adults. Standing room only! When I did get a seat later on in the trip, my center of gravity was outside the vehicle and I felt like I was falling the entire way. That and I couldn’t feel my left leg at all and had no idea how I would be able to successfully walk once we got to Salima. It worked out somehow though and we arrived safely in Salima to catch a minibus to Golomoti, a little over 100km to the south. Well, that was no problem. It didn’t take long for the bus to fill up and leave, so that was nice for a change. We rode to Golomoti with a bunch of Belgians, and it was funny because when we came up to the minibus, the guy who herds you in said come on this one, all your friends are here! Yes, because we’re Mzungus, we’re all friends. Of course. J But it was neat to hear about the program that the Belgians were doing in Malawi because they were teachers, too. They were headed to Monkey Bay after Golomoti and we were heading to Dedza, so we parted ways. Now comes the interesting part. Golomoti is a village only a tiny bit bigger than other villages, but there were two matolas there, one for Dedza and one for Monkey Bay. The Dedza one leaves whenever it’s full and we happened to be in luck and only wait about 20 minutes to leave! This matola was a bigger truck, and we even got seats! This turned out not to be a good thing, though, because the plank we were sitting on wasn’t attached to the vehicle and the 50km to Dedza was completely through the mountains! I was again sitting on the edge and there were a few times I wasn’t sure I’d be in the matola after the next curve! I white knuckled it the entire way there! But just another experience for T and I. J Ok, so we got to Dedza successfully right before 2 and since it gets dark shortly after 6, we wanted to be home by then, but Lilongwe is 100km north of Dedza, meaning we’d have no time in Dedza at all after that ordeal. So that idea was shot.

We hopped out of the matola and continued on foot in search of an ATM (Senga Bay doesn’t have any and we were out of Malawian kwacha!). That part wasn’t too painful, but then we had to find Dedza Pottery, which of course isn’t in town. In the travel book we had, we saw a path that looked like a short cut to the pottery, a 3km walk instead of a 5km walk! So we started along a random dirt path hoping it was the correct random dirt path. We asked a few locals, but not as many know English as in Zambia, so we got mixed results. After walking for 10 minutes, a man came up to us, told us we were going the wrong way, and told us to follow him. Yay, another guide! Well, Dedza is a mountain, and this guy was booking it through the mountain. Did I mention we had all our bags and I was wearing sandals? Yeah, so we ended up power walking/hiking through the mountains following a stranger for a half hour, but we made it! T and I were both prayng that this was a nice stranger since we were foreigners getting lead through a mountain; it could have ended badly….but it didn’t! Finally! By 3 pm we were SOOOO excited to sit in a nice restaurant and get some food! It was quite the adventure!

We got some yummy food at the pottery lodge (and more importantly beverages because we were both dehydrated by this point!) and hit the pottery. It’s a smallish place, but all their things are hand carved and painted. Beautiful work. Some of my readers may become owners of some of this pottery, which is quite special, considering the adventure it took to get there! We left the pottery shop with slightly heavier bags and stopped in a few more artsy shops before heading back to the main road (not through the mountain this time!) We found a minibus back to Lilongwe pretty easily and we were on our way before dark.

Well, we got back to Lilongwe around 7 and it’s dark then. And of course the bus was headed for the huge crazy bus stop downtown which isn’t safe for visitors after dark. So no one could pick us up, again, and again, we needed to hail a taxi. By this time I had gotten the exchange rate down, so I made sure we got a good rate; we hopped from taxi to taxi even to barter for the best price! Lilongwe is broken up into different “areas” and the nurses, K and M, live in Area 10, on the other side of town, and our taxi driver didn’t really know where, and we didn’t really know either. So he ended up dropping us off on the side of a road near our destination and thanks to the powers of cell phones, we got the final directions and made our way “home.” Many modes of transportation and about $13 later, T and I successfully left Senga Bay, went through Salima and Golomoti to Dedza and back to Lilongwe by making a square without planning any of it. K and M greatly enjoyed our story about our adventure and couldn’t believe we did all the crazy things we did. But it was fun. J They made us grilled cheese and yummy eggplant soup and we chatted a bit before watching Dirty Dancing Havana Nights (Oh Javier!) and hitting the hay.

April 11 "Matolas in Malawi"

So, under M and K’s wonderful direction, T and I decided today would be a nice day to hit Lake Malawi, as that’s probably the largest tourist attraction here. Malawi is a very pretty country, but not too much to do. It’s weird that it can be right next to Zambia, but so different! For example, they have a few shortage here, so there are lines for petrol that go on forever it seems. Good thing the LCCA uses huge Land Cruisers that only run on diesel! It’s cheaper here and there’s no shortage!

Anyway, M took us to catch a minibus to Salima. It was a nice experience; not as crowded as the ones we use in Lusaka with more leg room too! Someone had fit a bike inside too; I don’t know how! The ride was about an hour. Then from Samila to Senga Bay on the lake is another 20 km. However, no minibuses go here, so we rode on the back of a glorified pick up truck (I’ve heard them called matolas and cantors and lowries, but the travel book says matola and that’s what the people said, so that’s what I’ll go with) in the bed. That’s their public transportation. We had about 18 adults back there, some standing and some sitting, or crouching, as I was doing. It was a long 30 minutes, but we made it! Next on the agenda was to find a place to stay, so we ventured towards Cool Runnings (yes, a Malawian hostel with a Zambia themed room based on an American movie about Jamaican bobsledders that takes place in Canada). Lucky us, as soon as we hopped off the matola, two gentlemen found us and escorted us to the hostel which was about 1K down the winding road and through a village. These two guys ended up being our guides for the day! They brought us to Cool Runnings and told us about all the wonderful opportunities which they could lead us to in the area like Lizard Island ($55 to hike and eat at an island crawling with monitor lizards) or explore the hippo pools (a guided tour to and from the pools for $35), but we gratefully thanked them for helping us to our hostel but turned them down. Oh, don’t you worry; they showed up later too!

Next up was exploring the beach. The beach area was small, but nice. It’s definitely not a touristy place, but it was nice enough. Kind of cool to walk down the beach and instead of seeing resorts you see people’s homes and people swimming or fishing like they do daily. T and I opted for laying out (myself in the sun and T in the shade) instead of swimming since the water is full of bilharzia, a bacteria. I really don’t want to get even more sick than I am (have I mentioned that my immune system doesn’t get along with Africa?) so tanning it was. J I’m ok with that! T and I went in search of some lupper after that and guess what—our guides showed up again! Good thing, though, because even though we had a map, we didn’t know it would be a 30 minute walk to find a restaurant! We ate some yummy Chinese food at a nicer hotel in Senga Bay and relaxed a bit. We wanted to go in search of the craft stalls next, and guess what—our guides showed up again! It was getting on past 5 pm now, but they said we’d try to see if they were still open. Well, the head guy started walking through a village and through the bush. I definitely felt like an intruder, but it was neat to see where the locals live up close! This guide in fact led us not to the craft stalls, which were closed apparently, but to his house to show us the artwork and things he makes! Tricky guy! But he was really nice and really talented, so we did end up purchasing some things. I felt bad haggling with him! Afterwards I got a picture of him and his family which we met by their house. It was quite an experience. But don’t worry. That’s not the only random stranger I followed in Malawi!

The gentlemen took us back to the hostel as it was starting to get dark. They invited us for a night out on the town, but considering we were in the middle of  a village and I really don’t want to try their standard drink called Chibuku or Shake Shake here, which is made from mealie meal, T and I thanked them again and parted ways. Instead, we spent the evening at the hostel bar, gazing at the Southern Hemisphere constellations over the lake and playing Yahtzee and Scrabble. Not much to do after dark, as we’ve realized in Africa, but it was still enjoyable.

April 10 "The Never Ending Day"

4.10 am departure for the bus stop. I used to wake up at this time all the time during student teaching, but my body is definitely not used to it now, even though I did make it staying up all night! Mr. D&D thankfully took us to the bus stop. Arriving at 4:30 with a 5 am departure (supposedly) meant we were semi late. The bus was packed! Only one goes to Malawi a day, so I guess that makes sense. T and I headed to the last row on the bus, unfortunately with all our belongings, because there was no space underneath the coach. So holding our bags it was! It was actually nice to have the back seat because there was more room for the bags.

It was a LONG day on the bus. Even with the long breaks to get up and stretch, the fourteen hours did not go quickly. I tried sleeping most of the time to make up for last night and to avoid motion sickness in the mountains. Worked alright until they gave us soda, which made me nauseous, and I had no cover for it (only glass bottles here). Nothing really exciting happened until Chipata besides stopping for a potty break, aka squatting in a field, and delivering a stack of LCCA chitenges by passing them out of the moving coach bus in the parking lot to a guy I’ve never met. Besides that, T and I stretched our legs in Chipata to find our bus emptied out and everyone gone. Apparently there was supposed to be a bus switch to the border. This bus has more seats on it, but it was the same size, very squishy. As T and I missed the bus change memo, we had separate seats this time. Well, I was lucky enough to used as a footstool on this bus. Why, you ask? Well, in Africa you can bring whatever you want on buses (including livestock) but thankfully that wasn’t the case. Someone decided to bring a 12 foot long bookshelf on board that was 5 feet high and have it in the aisle right next to me. So people couldn’t get past it to their seats ( I was in the middle of the bus) without stepping on my seat’s armchair to get by. So my shoulder and arm were also stepped on as well as my hair pulled, my foot stepped on, and having random strangers sit on my possessions which were on my lap. Oh what fun.

Chipata is near the border, so our bus was soon emptied again so everyone could go through customs. Us Mzungus were called out of the line and got to go right through—sweet! Then came time for changing money. No official place of course, just a bunch of guys standing at the border. So Malawian money is also the kwacha. Zambian kwacha exchange rate is about 4800 to $1 and Malawi kwacha is about 150 kwacha to one dollar. So changing between the two made me think a bit. And unfortunately I got ripped off. But I realized I got ripped off MK2,000 ~ $16. However, I could not remember for the life of me who the guy was that I changed money with. Then, just as people were starting to board our bus, I just walked over to one guy who looked familiar and asked where his friend was that I changed with because he shorted me. He said hold on, he’s on the Zambian side and stays there (the guy I was with was on the Malawi side) and said he’d bring him back. So this is the last time I’m thinking I’ll see this guy, but no he walks back, says yes his friend shorted me, and gives me the money! SWEET! I didn’t think that would work but it totally did! I hightailed it to the bus, where the guy and his friend followed me a few minutes later so that he could show his friend that I had the money and that he didn’t steal it. But hey, it worked!

The rest of the ride to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, was pretty boring. I did meet Levison who chatted with me a bit and held my bags for awhile. I shared my Pringles with him. He didn’t know what they were. We got to the bus stop in Lilongwe around 7 pm and ended up taking a taxi to the LBI (Lutheran Bible Institute—the 3 year college before the LCCA seminary in Lusaka—where some of the missionaries live). So now I’ve taken a taxi in Malawi, Zambia, and Thailand—if you count that one, but never America! Yay for taxis in third world countries! We went to J&M’s house and met their daughters, as well as K and M, the nurses who we will be staying with. J&M fed us—chicken and rice casserole with spinach soup—before we headed to K and M’s house on the other side of town. K just happens to be my cousin’s friend (J, my cousin in Germany), so we ended up video skyping her! So that was random and fun! After that, T and I made a game plan for the following day as we had planned none of this trip in advance, and then hit the hay!