Mumbwa

Greetings,

            I am officially Zambian.  I bought my Zambian footbol jersey and I am now watching my first game although I am somewhat distracted by writing.  The last few days we have been doing a large amount of training for our trip to the village known as Door of Hope.  The meetings have started at 9 in the morning and the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday lasted until late in the afternoon around 5:30. 

Yesterday we took some much needed team time and discussed how we all had been adjusting to the new culture and how we were doing in our personal walks.  This all happened at Nelson’s house (The leader of the Navs in Zambia) and he brought us some pizza back for lunch.  Immediately after lunch we went over to UNZA for some personal quiet time and some more team time in smaller groups of two or three as we discussed different things that we have struggled with and what we had been learning.  We continued to stay as a group late last night as we went from store to store at the mall at Manda Hill.  While there we visited a total of 6 stores; one of which was the store that I purchased my nice jersey and another was the Milky Lane where Silas shoved his ice cream cone in Nathan’s face and Nathan graced us with several magic tricks.

A couple nights ago Bryce and I sat down and had a very long conversation with our friends Gershom and Ngambo and the topic of family came up.  We found out that we were not cousins in Zambia.  We are actually brothers.  Here in Zambia, the only way people can be considered cousins is if they are the children of your father’s sister or your mother’s brother.  If they are the children of your mother’s sister such as Bryce and I, they are considered brothers.  We also talked about how great it would be to have the Navigators from here come and visit us in the US and then all the challenges that would come with that.

I meant to mention this in my last post but I am pretty sure that I have the greatest family in the world.  Ever since I have started getting into my bags and getting stuff out I have been finding little surprises in the most random locations.  I have found pictures of everything from me at the talent show to the mouse that I caught and hung up at the cabin that has been hanging for over a year now.  I have also been finding Bible verses hidden all over such as inside my socks or in my giant bag of mints that I brought.  I got a brief phone call last night to Jenny and it was good to get to talk to someone on the phone before our trip to the village.

Speaking of the village, we will be leaving for the village on this upcoming Tuesday.  The original plan was for the Zambitious 7 (our name we came up with last night), the staff members here in Zambia, and then the students that have agreed to come would be split up into groups of about ten each and we would go to three villages.  That plan has since changed due to a lack of numbers and now it appears that we will only be going to two villages, Mumbwa and Chibombo.  We will be at these villages from this Tuesday until next Sunday.  During that time I will not have access to internet obviously and we will be sleeping in tents around the village.  We will be bringing a lot of food but I believe that we will also be eating some with the villagers who grow maize and make their own nshima. 

While we were being trained about what to expect in the village some interesting things came up.  We at times will be asked to share about different life skills that would be good for those that live there such as ambition/vision for their lives and hygiene.  We even might be asked to share at the church service that we will be attending on the last day of our stay.  Some customs that we will have to abide by while living there are to not deny their food.  When they offer their food to us they see it as offering themselves to us and us rejecting that food is us rejecting them.  Another thing is that being given a chicken is a great honor among them.  So if one of them were to offer me a live chicken I should accept it with a smile on my face and then be ready to kill it.

We have now treated our hosts as well as many others to some American food.  Last night for dinner we served twelve people French toast using a whopping three loaves of bread and 25 eggs.  The syrup was very similar and the whole process went very well.

As of now, I will be going to the village Mumbwa with Dan and Jon.  We will be going with several of the staff members here and some students from UNZA as well.  The planning has been very hectic but we seem to now be pretty much ready to go and experience the villages of Africa for ourselves.  Over and out!

Aaron Spesard