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
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