Rambling on

Greetings,

            As always, things are great in this fine country of Zambia.  More than six weeks have gone by since I set foot on African soil for the first time.  I am convinced now that this trip will not be my only time that I come to this amazing place.  It has surpassed all my expectations and even hopes and I owe thanks to God and to the people here for that.

            The people that I have met here are the type of people that I love being around.  Most days end up with me and the rest of the people here laughing until our stomachs hurt.  While I have mentioned some of them from time to time I have not really talked in depth about any of them.  The three guys that I live with are Abel, Gershom, and Sam (aka Mr. Black).  Abel and Gershom have been doing campus ministry for several years now and are both preparing to leave this place to go out into the workforce and hopefully become insiders for Christ in their fields.  Sam is in his first year on GAP which is a form of full time ministry for graduated students.  He will stay in this apartment and his job is to meet with students and have discussions about what the students are learning, struggling with, and looking forward to.  Ngambo is also doing GAP training and lives in another small home that is located on the same property.  Both are located right next the Nav office here.  The newest member of our team here cannot be left out either.  Paul the Levite was welcomed onto our property this last week and he is growing up every day.  (He is a puppy that was born at Nelson’s home and since they were moving out they needed to find another home for him and his two siblings.)

            Other members of the staff team here are Siku, Mutinta, and Nelson.  Nelson is the leader of the Navigators here and Zambia and he is the father of four young daughters.  Mutinta is the campus director at the medical campus over at Ridgeway and also the national prayer leader here.  Siku is another very involved staff member that spends a lot of time discipling girls from main campus and she also does much of the planning for the year.  She has two children as well, one of which is Mwape who is absolutely adorable.  She is a little older than two years old and is learning all kinds of words on a daily basis.  We have become good friends during the time that she stayed at the same apartment as Ngambo and she has been a ton of fun to have around. 

The basketball team has been great as well.  Several of the guys remind me of players from my own high school team in the way that they play.  There is Richard who is the leader of the team who plays point guard or shooting guard who with his speed and quickness rival Noah Allen.  Nelson is a sharpshooter that also can take the ball to the hole similar to Timmy Ruby.  Chudu is a young forward who is incredibly athletic and reminds me of Seth Johnson in the way he plays.  Finally there is Walter who plays in a similar way and with a similar body type to Matt Heber.  The parallels are quite hilarious for me as I continue to go through practice with them.  I know that many of you that will read this have no clue who anyone I just mentioned is so you can ignore the whole section if you want.

Some things about Zambia and particularly the section of Lusaka that we have been staying are worthy of mentioning as well.  Unlike in the US, where internet, texting, electricity, and everything are purchased so that you can use them as much as you want, those things here are bought in amounts and you run out after you use the amount you paid for.  The cell phones have been the most obvious of the differences as there are booths set up everywhere selling “talk-time”.  Each message that is sent and each minute of talking on the phone cost a certain amount of talk-time and when you spend the amount that you have paid for, you are out and unable to make calls or send texts until you go to the nearest booth and top-up.  Internet is another huge example as you do the same thing.  You pay for a certain number of Gigabytes and once you use up all of that, you cannot access the internet.  Electricity is still done the same way and several days we have “run out” of electricity until one of our hosts can go and buy more.

Water is not done in exactly the same way but we have had problems with it almost constantly.  For some reason, every night the water from the tap is shut off and we are unable to use it at all.  The issue has now invaded the daytime and we have not had any water in the house today.  Apparently the company is working on the whole system right now and they advise that when we do have water we store as much as we can.  The main issue with not having water has been all of our dishes from dinner cannot be washed until the next morning and now even longer.  Still we are able to manage by storing water in the hot water heater or geyser (pronounced geezer) and in old milk jugs and mazoe bottles.

Laundry here is also an adventure.  We do not have a washing machine here or a dryer (the sun and dry air work well with that) so all laundry is washed by hand.  The process involves allowing the clothes to soak for close to an hour in a tub of water and detergent before vigorously scrubbing the clothes against each other.  Once this is finally done, they are thrown into another tub of clean water for rinsing.  The whole process takes several hours and is much more physically demanding than simply throwing all of them into the washer.  I brought two weeks worth of clothes and so hopefully I have done my last load of laundry here and I can show up at home with a huge heap of dirty clothes to wash. 

Food has continued to be delicious as each guy that stays here has their own specialty that we do most every meal.  I have been doing the gravy, Dan and I have been trying to learn the nshima, Gershom does the vegetable, and Sam is the expert at the meat.  That includes all types of meat from goat ribs to chicken and even sausage.  Recently I had the “opportunity” to try a delicacy among the people in Zambia.  Caterpillars.  I was originally thinking that these would be this slimy and gooey food that was tough to swallow.  I was wrong for sure.  They also were much larger than I was anticipating but the thing that I noticed about them first was the smell.  They would be up there as one of the two worst smells I have encountered (right behind Kapenta).  Their stench permeates the entire house when they are being fried and it does not leave for some time.  Despite the awful odor, I was able to eat all of the caterpillars that I put on my plate by mixing them with the other foods on my plate to mask the taste.  The texture was actually very crunchy, especially for the small ones.  They certainly are not a food that I would like to eat on a daily basis but I am glad to say that I have tried them at least.

Our dear teammates Jon and Bryce will be joining us within the next week and I greatly look forward to their presence.  Their experience will be completely different from the one that we have had here in Lusaka and it will be great to hear how God was working at CBU in Kitwe.  Reading their blogs has been great but it does not tell everything that is going on any more than this one paints a full picture of what we have experienced.  If you are interested in reading their blogs, the links are located on the right hand side of the page.

This very well could be one of the last posts that I have on this blog during our time here in Zambia so I want to be sure to again thank my parents for allowing me to come all the way here.  I cannot imagine what they have been going through in the time that I have stayed here and even spent in the village.  That is not easy to do and I have only been able to Skype with them once which is unfortunate.  Mom and Dad this is specifically for you.  There are only eight days until I leave here and come home.  I know that may seem like a long time but with how fast the days go by here I feel like it will fly by.  To my brothers, it has been great to hear the things that you have been doing while I have been gone and even see the great job you did with the woodworking projects.  I look forward to seeing them in person and finding out where the sandpaper is hidden (inside joke for those who are confused).  Carson and Kaitlin I look forward to seeing the ring in person and being able to congratulate you.  One last special shout-out/apology goes to Kylie.  I am sorry that I was unable to bring you along with me and show you all of the animals.  I will try to make up for my grievous mistake.

Farewell my comrades,

Aaron Spesard