It is 19 hours (7 o'clock), the last night of the trip. We are in the middle of one of the glorious evening downpours that bring in a cool, gentle breeze. Dave is already on his way home to facilitate a retreat on the east coast. I leave tomorrow morning. It has once again been a wonderful trip, filled with things we had hoped for as well as things we could never have dreamed of.
One of the unplanned aspects of the trip was the cold I brought with me from the U.S. The result of hosting that stowaway was that my extra time was spent resting while Dave's was spent cooking and washing dishes for us. A casualty of the cold was the writing of the daily blog. However, we kept very good notes and will still walk you through each day, though not at the same level of detail as usual. We will give highlights of some events and tell you the broad strokes of others. We hope to still provide you with a clear sense of all you are helping to accomplish in a beautiful community halfway around the world.
In lovingkindness,
Jen
Africa Projects Coordinator
Blog 1
Greetings from South Africa
It is a beautiful, mild summer morning in Johannesburg. The temperature is slightly cool as a gentle breeze passes. We flew in yesterday afternoon and spent the night since the flight arriving from the U.S. misses the last flight of the day to Ndola. We have done the trip this way--spending one night in Johannesburg--the last two times and find it a kindness to the body to have a good night's rest before landing in Ndola.
Looking out from the porch of our rooms.
It is the height of summer in southern Africa and the middle of the rainy season. Even though we have made this journey many times, we've never come in this season; being here now feels new. The air is tropical; everything is green. It feels like Florida in spring. We are used to brown and dry, so it's exciting to be here at a different time of year.
Dave eating dinner.
We will return to the airport early in the morning in hopes that we can use the wireless Internet connection to send you this first blog (if you're reading this, it worked!). Anything is possible, but, based on our last trip, we are not optimistic that we will have an Internet option that will allow us to send a daily blog. If that's the case, we will write the daily blogs and post them as soon as we return to the U.S.
When we arrive in Ndola we will go straight to the grocery store, attempting to get there before it closes for the weekend so we can stock up on our vegetarian "musungu" (if you are out of practice from the last blog, that is the Bemba word for white folk) food. We then have a list of phone calls to make and meetings to set up to put our schedule in place for next week. There is an exciting agenda ahead of us--drilling the first well, meeting with potential contractors to lay out the architectural plans for the Kantolomba Community and Medical Center, completing the filing for our NGO status, meeting with new Zambian colleagues, checking in on existing projects, bringing home more products to sell through Keep It Simple to support micro-businesses in the community, and greeting the new class of pre-schoolers at the Living Compassion school (the school year starts in January in Zambia). Then there are all those things we can't anticipate that make a trip even more exciting.
Keep us in your meditations and prayers (if you are a meditating or praying sort) as we dive into 10 days of our next Zambian adventure.
In gassho