Friday
Cheri and our last guest leave tomorrow. Our plans to get an early start in Kantolomba were foiled again when we got stopped at yet another police roadblock. This time it seemed our vehicle did not have the correct reflector stickers on the front. Back to the police station where we once again left Muyunda. Eunice happened to be in town so she picked us all up and graciously offered to take us out to Kantolomba.
Greeting Marion. Her very distended belly worries us a great deal--a sign that the ARV's she is taking for HIV are affecting her liver.
The tailors had made 200 of the 300 clothespin bags!
The sewing team hard at work.
More art projects.
The bathrooms are looking quite spiff as the tiling reaches completion.
Gibson carefully measures and cuts the corner pieces.
Sweeping dust is a constant job in the dry seasons. Cheri showed the women how
to hold a cloth over their mouths to minimize breathing in the dirt!
Hands down, the highlight of our last day all together was delivering the team their new uniforms. We bought new chitenge and snazzy yellow shirts to go with it. Nothing like matching outfits to make a group feel like a team!
The new uniform.
Handing them out to the team.
Always so great to gather as a whole team for a photo. If you look closely you can see that the
guys chose to don their chitenge as skirts for the photo much to all of us gals' delight!
Unfortunately Theresa has a cold. We have ordered her on strict bed rest. Normally a small cold like that would not stop her from being out at the property to participate on a good bye day but these are not normal times--she if flying to the United States next week!!! A huge trip for anyone and especially for someone who has never been on an airplane.
Theresa with her new uniform at her house.
We hand delivered her new uniform to her house.
Back at the Lodge Cheri and Tina started packing. In the early evening we were treated to a visit with a very charming young man. Eunice had been telling us about Chilufya, someone who worked at the lodge for a brief period. They had gotten to know each other better when they both took salsa lessons! Chilufya has a passion for helping vulnerable young people. He is a fountain of great ideas for assisting and empowering youth and has just lacked the resources to get anything regular going. We feel certain this young man is a part of our future here.
We had dinner with a fellow American doing very similar work here in Ndola. It was fun to compare notes and quite informative both to hear how someone else deals with the same roadblocks we encounter as well as to have mirrored the things about our project that are really working. Plus, he took us to a restaurant we had never been too thus expanding our repertoire by 33%.
Left to right: Gertrude, Eunice, Cheri, Chilufya, Tina, Jen.]]>