The Bush - Part 2

For the 2nd week in the bush, we camped next to the clinic Dignity had built in Mibila. This meant taking one of the worst roads (tracks) I’ve driven on so far in Zambia, and there are many bad roads here, but more about bad roads in my next update.

The programme for this week was much the same as the last week, visiting a different village each afternoon and evening, and coming back to the camp each night. This time there were no spiders in my tent, however the first night was interesting as a bush fire came within a few hundred metres of the tents, but fortunately stopped! On the second night a party somewhere in the village seemed to go on through most of the night, which woke me a few times, and then a many many goats bleating very loudly at around 5am, so all in all not the best nights sleep. This week the temperature seemed to go up a notch or two, and yet the nights seemed even colder. In the day it was close on 40 degrees while at night it was down to around 10 degrees. A difference in a few hours that you just don’t get in the UK. Between around 8am and 10am and 4pm and 6pm the temperature is just nice!

Photo: Camp set up

This week as well as meeting some of the people in Mibila village, we also visited Kepeshi (where Alice runs the school I talked about in a previous update), Chinemo a bit further down the road from Kepeshi and Millulu, which is on the way back from Mibila.

Kepeshi: Singing, dancing and football

At Kepeshi, after the main session had been done by Mark and Jon, we were able to see an impromptu performance of some African dance and music, which was great. There was also a football match taking place. Football is so popular in Zambia, and I think in Africa as a whole at the moment. I don’t believe it will be long before an African nation wins the World Cup. Most of the players play bare foot, which seems slightly painful to me, especially as the pitch is not exactly the flattest, and rarely a blade of grass to be seen with not a drop of rain for 5 months.

Photos: Singing and Football

The mobile sound system at Chinemo

At Chinemo we were greeted on arrival by African dancing and great celebrations. However, there were not as many people, as Jon had swapped two of the days around, so we had been due to go there the day after, and although a message had been sent, not everyone had heard….But no problem, we had a loud speaker in the vehicle and a microphone, and importantly a bungee rope which strapped the speaker to the top of the car, so in the style of a politician campaigning before an election, I drove around the village, while Joel spoke or rather shouted into a microphone that we were here, and basically stop what you were doing and come down to the church.

Photos: Speaker attached to vehicle and Vincent preparing projector.

At Milulu children learn lots of new games, while some of the adults have demons cast out.

At the final village of Millulu, only Mark and I joined Joel, Vincent, Casper and Daniel. Jon, Jude, Ruth and the kids headed home early, so Mark had to do all the sessions with the adults, and I had to amuse the 60 or so children, with the help of Daniel translating. So after talking to them for a bit, we played Duck duck goose, bull dog – until there were a few injuries when children started chasing each other through plants, shrubs and trees, relay races, football with around 20 per side on the narrowest pitch for the number of people playing, and then when they’d got a bit tired, Daniel asked me to do a talk about Aids to the older ones, to see if they knew about it. Slightly unexpected, but anyway it turned out that they did know quite a bit about the disease.

Photos: Duck duck goose and Bulldog (Crocodiles and Wildebeast!)

Meanwhile with the adults there had been a time of prayer going on, and around 10 people were suffering from demon possession, so a great deal of noise was coming from the church, as demons were cast out. These villages and rural areas in general are rife with witchcraft, and many people will turn to witchdoctors when they have problems here, even those who attend church on a Sunday. A few of the pastors talked about occurances of witches on broomsticks falling out of the sky here, and while I believe that evil spirits and demons exist, my western mind wants to dismiss the idea of witches actually flying around on broomsticks to fantasy. However, these intelligent men talk about these things without a doubt in their voices. - "We've seen it, occasionally it just happens here".

Sugar cane and bamboo javelin

On the lighter side of things, Casper showed us sugar cane, and we tasted the raw sugar. I’m sure not great for your teeth, but Casper and Joel cycled back to their villages at the end of the week with lots of sugar canes attached to their bike, as well as their overnight bags…. Sadly it was too dark to get a photo of this but I've observed people carring much more than this on their bikes such as a chair and table, metal roofing panels, and numerous food items.

Ruth and I showed off our bamboo stick fighting skills, and although we've been unable to follow much of the olympics, apart from seeing the 100m final last saturday, Ruth was able to show Ethan and Josh how to throw the bamboo stick javelin!

Photo: Josh waits for Daniel with sugar cane and Bamboo fighting skills!

Photos: Bamboo javelin throwing

Next time on the blog…. The thrills and spills of the Zambian driving adventure.

The Bush - Part 1

Hi again, and thanks for reading my blog updates. Thanks also for those of you who have emailed me (aklancey@hotmail.co.uk) or facebook messaged me. It's good to hear from people as it can feel a bit cut off from the world here, and text messages do not seem to be getting through very well if at all, although I have received one or two texts from people. In some moments it feels like my life back in England is a distant memory, and yet I've only been here 3 weeks now. Very strange! Anyway, to the blog.... It’s a long blog this time, as with no internet access in the bush, I have a whole weeks worth of things to talk about in this update, so I've put it into some sections for ease of reading! The campLast week was quite an experience. We arrived on Monday afternoon in a village called Ipafu, and set up the tents along with 5 pastors: Vincent, Joel, Daniel, Casper and Selah. The camping was ok. In the mornings we got up and were escorted to one of the villagers homes where we’d wash. This tended to be in the outdoor bathroom, which for me was a corrugated iron sheet round in a circle, with a bowl of hot water to wash in. Simple, but to be fair, with the hot weather, it was an improvement on some freezing bathrooms I’ve used in Britain! One of the young girls in the family would collect the water for my wash by dropping a used plastic oil container attached to a rope into a well, and pulling it up again when full. She’d then pour the water into a metal bowl being heated on a charcoal fire. The other small thing is having to use the long-drop latrine for the toilet. This was much better in the early morning light, before there were too many flies at the latrine.

Photo: Base camp!

Power corrupts
After sitting together to have breakfast the mornings were spent chatting, meeting people in the villages, and each day we made a visit to a different place - a clinic, a school, a grinding mill for maize and also a coffee plantation. The coffee plantation was suffering a lot because while the coffee beans were bought by companies for quite a lot of money, the middlemen in the co-operative were not passing this money back to the farmers and had also not paid the electricity bills. A pump is needed to pump water around the plantation to keep the crops watered. Without this the crops were dying. However the farmers were powerless to do anything, and as often seems to be the case here, the powerful prosper and the weak suffer. All the time and effort spent tending to the crops earlier in the year, would seem to have been wasted for the farmers, who numbered 30 in all, because some of the co-operative members were taking the money for themselves. Here it seems that many just seem to accept their lot in life, feeling they are powerless to challenge authority. Power as so often is the case, seems to breed corruption.

Creepy Crawlies
Mark and I were managing to keep the tent bug free, until that is last Wednesday morning when I woke up to find a poisonous spider in my tent. I’m not afraid of spiders, so wasn’t too bothered, except that this one did look a bit mean – mainly the big body and hairy legs! Anyway I came out of the tent and asked one of the pastors camping with us to identify the spider. He said ‘what it’s still alive – why didn’t you kill it? – Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever killed a spider, probably because they don’t bother me, so I don’t bother them! Anyway Daniel or Pastor Ponde as he’s usually known, killed it instantly with a shoe, and said “Hmm, very bad, that’s probably the most poisonous one we have”. Great I thought. He continued “It wont usually kill someone, as it depends how their body reacts, but people do die from it’s venom.” I started a small investigation to the amusement of the Zambians about how it might have got in. Tent security was I thought, very tight indeed. – Zips always done up at the top, always check porch area for unwanted visitors prior to entry, enter quickly and zip tent up immediately. Mark swore that he had followed this code of conduct for tent entry. There was of course another possibility – Had the spider entered attached to somebody entering the tent? Hmm I decided not to think to much more about this, after all as Joel, one of the pastors pointed out, well clearly God is looking after you, and keeping the spider from attacking. Nothing more was discussed, that is until later that evening while we sat around a fire, before going to bed. Ruth was talking about her fear of spiders and getting a little worried about the night ahead. Vincent another one of the pastors camping with us said “Spiders I don’t mind, but I have a real fear of the spitting cobra”. The spitting cobra can spit venom from distance straight into the human eye, and blind you. It rarely misses apparently. The good thing he said was that he’d only seen 2 this year. Hmm. I’d quite like not to see one ever, never mind this year. Anyway we quickly stopped speaking about this, as Vincent reminded us that a Zambian saying that if you talk long enough about something or someone, it will appear!

Photo: Spider

Afternoon sessions
In the afternoon we’d drive out to a different village each day. The villages normally had names beginning with K, and often quite difficult to pronounce. For interest I think we went to Kalatashi, Kamiter, Killilu, and then the final day on Friday was spent were our camp was in Ipafu village. We aimed to get to each village for 2pm, usually arrived around 2.30pm and then waited for people to turn up to the sessions which were advertised as starting at 2pm, but usually got under way by around 3.30pm when it was felt enough people had turned up! The villages were different in their levels of poverty, with some having schools and clinics, while others had neither, and children who had never been to school. Some had ground that was a bit more fertile for growing crops while in other villages growing crops was a real struggle.
The ministry time in the different villages went really well, with people turning up in large numbers and responding well. The afternoon sessions were on the subject of prayer, which Mark and Jon led. I gave a testimony of prayer in my life in the middle of this teaching, while also spending some time helping Ruth with the many kids. – They don’t really do much with the kids over there. In some churches the kids just sit in with the rest of the congregation. In another church, which had 30 adult members and 70 children, the pastor taught the 30 adults in the main church building while one woman taught all 70 children which bearing in mind that apart from the large number, that they were aged 3-14 years old, is quite some effort. Ruth spoke to the children for a few minutes with translation into Bemba from one of the pastors, and then we played as number of kids games as well as football. On Thursday Ruth and Jon had to go back to Chingola for some meetings so I had to entertain the children. When I’ve been in Hungary we’ve done lots of games using parachutes such as cat and mouse, and also games with balls, but without these helpful accessories, I was struggling to think of the next game to play, when I thought back to playing Bulldog at school. (Running from one side of the playground to the other trying not to get tagged by those in the middle in case you weren’t sure of the game). However trying to explain this to my translator was difficult, until I renamed it Crocodiles and Wildebeest, and explained that the wildebeest had to get from one side of the river to the other, and those being the crocodiles had to catch them. This game was then played for at least half an hour, with the kids loving it! It also means you can just stand and watch, which in the heat of the afternoon, isn’t a bad thing at all.

Photo: Session

Photo: Kids

Discussing the issues
As many of you know my heart is very much for the social action side, and especially that people can be empowered to live improved lives, where they can reach their full potential and are not reliant on aid or handouts from others or westerners etc, but that they receive some help so they can be empowered. I suppose the concept of showing someone how to fish, and letting them get on with it, rather than just providing them the fish, and creating this dependence. So it was great each afternoon to spend some time speaking to groups of people finding out about the issues and struggles they face living in their villages. There are many issues. Agriculture is a big one, and not having fertiliser to make the soil good, means people can be limited to one crop cassava, which is usually able to grow in most soils without fertiliser, but even this was not growing well in some places. While most villages in this area are able to access clean drinking water through wells, and bore holes, even if they have to walk quite a long way sometimes, there is a problem of a lack of water for irrigation, and also issues such as I mentioned with the coffee plantation, where people are suffering because of the selfishness and corruption of others. Another common problem talked about was that of transport, as although a few people have bikes many have to walk a long way to tend to crops or sell at the markets which are usually in towns, often quite some distance away or near to the main roads, which depending on the village can often be as far as 10 miles away. This was interesting to me of course, as transport has been my area of work for a while now.

Photo: Issues

The film and the food
In the evenings, the Jesus film was shown, showing the life of Jesus in case you’re not aware of this classic 1970’s film, which does have some rather amusing beards in it! The film was projected onto a large screen, on a different village football pitch each day. The film is shown across 4 reels of film, so while the next reel is being loaded, one of the pastors we’re working with would speak to the crowd of people which numbered between 200 and 500 people each time. After the film usually around a couple of hundred people made commitments. While the film was going on the team cooked a meal out of the back of one of the vehicles. This was usually pasta and something, while the Zambians had their enshima (This is the ground up maize into a paste type food which is eaten across Africa – and usually called something different in each country, I think it’s posho in Uganda. Anyway as some of you will know who have been to Africa, it tastes of very little, but is quite filling). While it has been extremely hot in the day, the temperature at night gets very cold indeed, and so the crowd have had to get wrapped up warm. Plenty of wooly hats - slightly strange sight for Africa! In one of the villages, people just set fire to the forest to keep warm. At one point the fire seemed completely out of control, and in Britain, fire engines would be on their way, but here people seemed perfectly happy with the situation! The villagers burn much of the ground at this time of year, in order to get the ground ready for planting crops.

Photo: Film

Today we had out into the bush again, for another 4 days doing much the same as last week, so again please pray for safety and no poisonous spiders snakes etc.....

Chingola Chimps and Billy the Hippo

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here less than 2 weeks. It seems like much longer. I guess the pace of life is much slower here anyway, but the heat makes the days quite tiring at times. So it was good to have a bit of a break on Saturday and visit a chimpanzee orphanage close to Chingola. (Well around 90 minutes drive – The place isn’t that far away, but the roads are pretty bad, so it takes that long). As well as the chimps, there was a fully grown female hippo called Billy, who is allowed to walk around the reserve, and was actually brought up by the owners living in their house when she was younger, however now she’s not allowed in the house, mainly as too big to fit through the door, and also no doubt because of the damage she’d cause. Hippos are actually the most dangerous animals in Zambia, killing more people than any other animal, despite hippos being vegetarians, so we didn’t get too close however tame Billy may seem!

This morning we were invited to Barry’s wife Freda’s church (she’s been going along to give support), and Mark preached, while I talked a bit about how I came to give up my job, and being in Zambia and Ruth played her guitar and sang a song (Blessed be your name) which was quite different to the Zambian worship style, but they seemed to still enjoy it and join in.

We’ve also been learning some Bemba (the local language here), and had a lesson from Freda on Friday. Having tried to study Hungarian over the past few years (and if you don’t know Hungarian, it is quite a hard language to get to grips with), I have found another language which appears equally perplexing to the English speaker. Some of it reflects the culture. In the Zambian culture it is important to greet everyone all the time, so it’s no surprise I suppose that there are the usual different greetings for the time of day as we have good morning (Mwashubukeni mukwai!) good afternoon etc, but also a greeting to people if they are sitting down when you enter a room, another greeting for if they are eating when you enter a room, another if they are working, another if they are studying…. I think you get the picture. Somehow part of the verb for each activity get’s added on to a stem greeting, plus it also changes depending who you’re speaking to. Do you follow? You can see how we got a bit lost!

Tomorrow we'll be heading out into the bush again, but this time to camp overnight for 4 nights, which I'm sure will be an interesting experience!

Please pray for: Safety; Team morale - both within our team and the Zambians that we're working with; Acceptance by the villagers; that people from a wide area will come to the events being put on.

Next time.....what happened in the bush!

The drive out to the bush...

On Monday we met with 5 pastors who work in the rural bush area, and they talked about their experience of ministry, their heart for the area, and some of the issues that the rural people face. They seemed to really care about the people in the rural areas, and had given up the opportunity of earning more money by working in business or being pastors in the urban areas where they can earn more money.

Yesterday (Tuesday) the team headed out to Mibila village to visit the clinic Dignity had helped build and support, and also a school in the nearby village of Kapeshi.
The drive from Chingola is around 90 minutes to Kapeshi, and after an initial 30 kms along the main tarmac road out west from Chingola, you turn off onto a dirt track, which although, contained many potholes and bumps, was slightly easier to drive along than in March, when much of the road was flooded due to it being near the end of the rainy season. For the last 4 months or so, there has not been a drop of rain, so everything looks a lot less green and lush than on my previous visit. As we drove through you could see much of the land has been burnt. This is where villagers have been making charcoal, which they put in sacks and then walk pushing a bicycle with 2 or 3 large sacks to the main road, where they try to sell the charcoal to urban dwellers passing by along the road. With the money, they try to buy food off others who grow extra food to sell. Many village folk, however are just growing cassava or maize for their family to survive.

We arrived at the primary school and met the main teacher there. She is called Alice – a mother of 4 girls, and along with one other teacher, they teach 146 pupils from grade 1-6. It is the school holidays at the moment, but normally Grades 4-6 will be taught in the morning, and the younger children in the afternoon. Alice has to take grades 1 and 2 together and also 5 and 6 together, because of a lack of teachers. She and the other teacher also struggle to get paid, because funding has to come from the parents, and many have little money to give. The school was built in 2002 with the help of Barry Ilunga, but in recent years has suffered with lack of resources. Alice was finding it really hard there, because of a lack of teachers to help her, but felt that this was where God wanted her to be, rather than earning money elsewhere.

After this we travelled to the clinic and met George who works there dealing with many illnesses. Since April they have also been giving immunisations to children, which are kept in a fridge running on paraffin. Unfortunately the paraffin gives off a smoke into the clinic which blackens the ceiling and walls, plus it is not great just to breathe in. One option is to build another shelter for the fridge, or a different type of power such as gas or solar power. A solar fridge, although seemingly the best option, is very expensive to buy.

Dogs, birds, bananas and a rat...

After spending much of Friday with the team talking over plans for the ‘Life’ project over the next month, in the evening we went for a meal with Pastor Barry Illunga and his family at his house which is in Chingola, although you have to drive over a terrain similar to the moon in order to get there. Crater after crater, but a good meal and evening at the end made it well worth it! Barry has been a good friend of Jon for some years, and is involved with the Clinic in Mibila, one of Dignity’s projects, as well as being very well respected in Chingola.

On Saturday it was a relaxed day, and after being woken up by the orchestra which is the local bird population, (this happens each morning at around 6am by the way!) Incidentally a similar occurrence happens at night, only with dogs barking and howling and is certainly less like an orchestra! For the last 3 years I have spent a week or so in August along with a group from my church in a place called Pecel, just outside Budapest in Hungary, where we help with a kids English and Football camp, and here too barking dogs is a problem in the night, so to some extent I’m used to this!

Our Flat (Ground floor)

Mark, Ruth and I chilled out in the very well kept garden, which boasts numerous flowers and plants, and not being a gardener, I’ve not a clue what they are, but one thing is certain the plants all seem much bigger than plants in England. I guess that’s something to do with the amount of sunshine, perhaps, I don’t know. I was however able to recognise a couple of banana trees.

Each morning we’ve been eating breakfast outside overlooking the garden, and sitting in camping chairs which are unfortunately much too low for the table we’re eating at. Jon does have 3 stools in his flat which would be perfect for the table, however these are acting as the legs for his desk – a piece of wood. Oh well. In the afternoon we wandered into the town while Jon, Jude and the boys headed to Kitwe, a town some 45 minutes south of here, where they spent some relaxed time at a restaurant with a childrens play area – not so common in Zambia.

In the evening we went out to the main hotel in Chingola (The Protea) , where we had a good meal, although this was interrupted by a rat running around the outside tables. Ruth wasn’t so keen on having her toes gnawed so we got moved inside, where most people were. In fact we were the only people sitting outside, but I think this was more to do with it being too cold for the locals than due to the rat.

On Sunday we headed to church at the local Anglican cathedral, mainly because it was very close. The cathedral was actually quite a small church, with a small congregation but with an enthusiastic priest, who was well versed in English premiership football, which brings me to the afternoon, where we tried to find a place showing the Charity shield game between Man Utd (Mark’s Team) and Pompey (My team). However, it appeared the Protea hotel and another potential establishment did not have the required South African sports channel to show this. As it turned out I don’t think we missed too much, with a 0-0 game, although Mark was quick to point out the win by penalties for Man Utd.

Next time on the blog: The team head out to the rural bush for the day....

Arrived!

Pre-trip prologue:
Well, the last month has been extremely busy. I have managed to rent my house out to a guy called Matt who I know through Ruth, my car is being looked after, I have sorted out various admin things that had to be sorted for home and the trip, and packed – which was quite an undertaking, as not only do you have to pack for a few months away, but we also had to take a number of items in the luggage for use out in Zambia, such as printers and copiers, extension leads, tents, and strangely a portable microwave! I also took my trumpet for good measure. However my piano keyboard was too big to take, but is being used by a friend - Susie.

I left Altrincham in somewhat of a whirlwind last Friday, desperately trying to get the house sorted, including moving a great many boxes into the loft. Thanks to Brian, Kinga and Dave for their help with this last week, and huge thank you to Sally and Ruth who helped on the Friday with some cleaning and getting yet more boxes in the loft. Anyway I made my pre-booked train down south with plenty of time – 10 seconds before the guard's whistle is plenty isn’t it?!

So to the trip…
I met up with Ruth and Mark at the airport on Monday and after checking in the extremely heavy luggage (but fortunately within the weight limit), we had a coffee with families and flew out around 8pm. The flight was ok, although as usual not a great deal of sleep was had. I dont really sleep anywhere, unlike Mark, who can sleep in a vehicle driving over numerous potholes through the bush!

Tuesday 5th August
Jon (who has been out in Zambia with his wife and 3 kids for around 2 weeks now) was there to pick us up at the airport, as well as all our luggage. This was an improvement for British Airways on the trip in March, when Mark’s bag never made it further than Heathrow. The fact that mark’s luggage got lost last Tuesday on a business flight from Heathrow to Manchester, did make us slightly concerned though!
The rest of Tuesday was spent sleeping a bit, and doing a bit of shopping in Lusaka, including getting Zambian mobile phones for us.

Wednesday 6th August
Jon and I drove the 2 vehicles to Chingola. First challenge was trying to buy diesel. By the 5th fuel station we cracked it though and managed to find somewhere that had diesel. However we needed air for the tyres. Of course they didnt have any air, so we had to go back to one of the other fuel stations. Anyway, with the cars fully fuelled, we were off; for at least 30 minutes before a Police check point pulled me over for overtaking on a solid white line, along with the other 4 cars in front of me who had done the same., only they were allowed to carry on. So the moral here is 'When in Zambia don’t do as the Zambians do!' Fortunately Jon turned his car back and arrived just in time to argue the way out of my first Zambian ticket. Close call! Another 30 minutes later the kids were hungry so we stopped off for food. An hour and half later we were back on the road. I know things in Africa take a little longer than normal but we had planned to set off at 10am and arrive in Chingola by 4pm. Night driving is not fun, and was reminiscent of some driving I did in Hungary where night time driving means it’s hard to see where the road actually is! After stopping off at a friend of Jon’s in Kitwe to drop some items off, we eventually arrived at our new flat around 10pm at night, safe, but quite exhausted.

Thursday 7th August
Today the team are getting their bearings, getting properly unpacked and settling into the 'better than expected' accomodation. By the way it's hot here today. However this is really more like spring for Zambia, and I couldnt help noticing an old guy wearing a thick scalf.

I'll say goodbye for now, until next time.