Christmas Nativity Play

Yesterday was the children's nativity play at our church. Our girls were angels - in the literal sense. Much to our surprise, the shepherds had real, live sheep! We remarked to others that we would never see this in Winnipeg and they responded "Really?" The sheep were terribly cute and you can guess that by the end of the morning Danica and Erin were begging for some new pets: "But Daddy, then the lawn wouldn't have to be mowed!"

Regional Retreat

We've just returned from our MCC Southern Africa Regional Retreat. It was held just outside Lusaka, at a place called "Pioneer Camp", which (unlike the Canadian Pioneer Camp) is a guest lodge. We had MCCers come from Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

It's very interesting learning about MCC work in this part of the world. MCC is doing all sorts of things, everything from drilling wells by hand and building sand dams to working with HIV/AIDS support groups, education, and agricultural development. MCC has a special emphasis on working with local partners, so a lot of the work is at a very grass roots level. Perhaps the most interesting part of the retreat was hearing first hand about the situation in Zimbabwe. Needless to say, it's very difficult for everyone but especially for the poor. Runaway inflation has destroyed the economy, and now starvation is a very real possibility for most of the population. Meanwhile, there are groups of people who are benefiting from the chaos and are amassing great wealth. It's a place where there is a great cry for justice, please remember the people of Zimbabwe in your prayers.

It's also great getting to know the MCCers themselves. The stories about how people got involved in MCC in the first place are interesting and uplifting. One of the nice aspects of the retreat is that local MCC employees also attended, and they had all sorts of interesting stories to tell as well.

The entire Southern Africa MCC Team

The MCC Zambia Team

We also had an opportunity to have a bunch of fun together. One day we all went to Zambia's only water slide park for a slide and a picnic.

The traditional "talent show" was a big hit with many laughs.

The Limbo contest was one of the less serious moments of the retreat

The 5K fun run was held on a nice hot and steamy afternoon with the sun coming out to make the country side look like a shimmering emerald. Even the kids completed the run!

Finally, a big Christmas dinner and a time of reflection and sharing was a wonderful way to end our time together. Being part of a team has been a big positive part of our MCC experience, and retreats like this are a big and memorable part of team building.

A Taste of Zambia - by Charlene

There are several purposes for this blog:

1. to introduce you to the culinary experiences of Zambia
2. to show how adventurous “we” are (meaning John)
3. to really freak out our friends Dave & Ruth who are visiting later this month

Miriam, our maid, cooks her lunch at our place and often eats together with some of the other people who are working on our property. Today they were eating at our house and as I was making my salad in the kitchen they invited me to come and taste their food.

from left - Rape Relish, Nshima and Chinkubala

The two staple foods of the Zambian diet are Nshima (bottom centre) which is a corn maize product and Rape (upper left) which is a green leafy vegetable (from the Rapeseed and Canola family) which when fried in oil with a bit of onion and tomato is called a "relish".

Mmmm....Chinkubala!

I hesitated because Zambian food is not my favourite, but when I discovered today’s menu included Chinkubala I suddenly remembered some urgent emails that needed to be sent! Chinkubala are caterpillars, picked from the trees and dried. To cook them you soak them in water for a while, and then fry them up with onion and tomatoes.

Luckily John drove up just in time to save the day, his adventurous palate was more than happy to give it a try. While the Zambian ladies were disappointed that I wouldn’t taste the caterpillars, they all had looks of horror when I offered them a taste of my salad . (A lot of Zambians don’t really eat raw food or fresh vegetables). We decided to call a truce and each stick to our own foods!

Mmm, crunchy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside

Also in season now are the flying ants known as "Inswa", they are on the top of John's "Must Taste" list (apparently crunchy and buttery) . So, we've asked Miriam to make a "special" Zambian meal for when Dave and Ruth come.

The Snow Queen

ISL had their primary school production of the play Snow Queen last night. The kids and staff had all put forth a huge amount of effort and it was a great show. Erin was thrilled to be cast in the title role of the Snow Queen.All dressed and ready to go

Katrina (the witch of Finland), Erin and Shanelle who had the lead role of Gerda

Erin as the Snow Queen surrounded by her Sprites

Erin delivering her address of her desire to capture a boy and freeze his little heart!

The entire cast delivering the final song

A congratulatory hug from her sister, time to go out for ice cream now

November Potpourri

Hello Dear Readers - almost a month has gone past without a post on our blog. We had a bunch of technical problems with our internet connection which pretty much prevented us from posting anything, but that seems to be behind us now, so we will do our best to catch up.

Lusaka Halloween - this is a very, very late entry. We didn't really celebrate Halloween here, but we did carve a "pumpkin", well, it's a watermelon. Someone emailed us and demanded a picture, so here it is.

Oooh, the worlds scariest (and tastiest) jack-o-lantern

Teaching Systems Administrators - I (John) have just finished teaching some of the staff at our partner schools and the ISP partner in basic systems administration for the Linux computer systems we have installed in the schools. Despite being eight or nine years old the computers are performing pretty well, but when they do break, the schools always call me. This training is an attempt to get the schools to be more self sufficient, to be able to create and delete accounts on their own, to set up printers and so on. We had eight students for eight classes and it went pretty well. Some students were very quick on the uptake, but everyone seemed to have a good time. We'll see how effective the course was by how well the computers keep running.

The happy students

Team Meeting - One of the great things about MCC in Zambia is that we have regular team meetings. It's great to get together with all the far flung MCC volunteers, this year there are more than ever with the Smith family working up in Kitwe. This time, after a day and a half of meetings we went to "Adventure City", which is Lusaka's (and probably Zambia's) only water slide park. Everyone had a great time.

It's all downhill from here

Putting up the Christmas Tree - Christmas trees are really not available around here. Christmas time is the right time for mangoes, avocados, lychees and guavas, not pine trees. However, friends of ours are in the US for Christmas and lent us their fake tree for the season. Erin and Kristina had a great time putting it up, and now we have a lovely fake tree, and no needles on the floor.

We have to figure out where the branches go....

Tada!

Coming Events: We are looking forward to our big MCC Southern Africa regional retreat starting next weekend. Our friends Dave and Ruth and their two boys are coming out mid December and we will be taking a trip to Zanzibar with them - we are also very much looking forward to that. December will be very busy!

Camping - Zambian style

So, the provocative title of this blog is somewhat misleading, as it turns out that Zambian camping and Canadian camping have a lot of similarities. Read on to find out more.

Two weeks ago we spent a weekend with a bunch of families from our church at a place called Nsobe about 300 km north of Lusaka. It was a nice, relaxing weekend without any schedule to follow.

The big difference from Canadian camping is that Nsobe is a game park, and there were three giraffe near our campsite and a few kinds of different antelope too. We (John) went for a run and ran right past a bunch of rare sable antelopes! Our campsite was right at the edge of a little lake and we did some canoeing, swimming and just general hanging out.

Hanging out at the lake,

canoeing - just like in Canada,

and hiking

Our second night there was the official start to the rainy season in that area and after not having any rain for over 6 months, there was a good long downpour for a couple of hours which resulted in some puddles in our tents but our beds stayed dry for the most part. We felt that this part of the weekend was a lot like some of our other soggy Canadian camping experiences. Fortunately, the poolside restaurant had a very large thatched roof so we were all able to hang out there during the rain and have our suppers there, and the next day dawned sunny and warm and everything dried out pretty well.

A nice swim after lunch

The drive home, a view of prairie fields out of the window while the kids sleep in the back seat- just like in Canada

We (Charlene) are still not convinced that we're cut out for regular camping excursions but once in awhile it can be a nice get away.

A Season of Lasts - by Charlene

Even though we are still in our first year here in Zambia, we are in our last year of service with MCC so every season from now on is the last one we will experience here in Africa. We’ve begun talking about going home (next July) and the things we’ll miss about Zambia. One of the physical attributes of Zambia that we love is all of the blooming trees. We are just at the end of Jacaranda season now and I seem to have missed the perfect photo opportunity on that one but there are still a few of the beautiful lilac coloured flowers left here and there.

We are in the peak of the season for the Flamboyant tree which is also known as the Flame tree because of its firey colour. It seems the whole city has erupted into this glorious colour…

Our mulberry tree is giving much more fruit than we can handle but we’ve made some wonderful milkshakes, pavlova and some jam that turned out to be syrup.

Mango season is just ahead and it’s promising to be a good one.

How do we cool off in the heat? Nice cold watermelon, another one of our local crops. We bought our first watermelon of the season on the side of the road on the way to Kitwe last week and then we immediately bought another in the Kitwe vegetable market with our colleague Cheryl.

Happy Independence Day! Today is the day 43 years ago that Zambia gained its independence from the British. To celebrate, the girls’ school had a Parade of Nations assembly where each person dressed in attire from their home country. There are 48 nations represented by the student body and 15 nations represented by the teachers, it is truly the International School of Lusaka.

Three Canadian girls: Erin, Danica and Katrina.

Tree Tops Photos

We were able to get over 200 photos of Erin's school trip from some of the teachers (see previous blog). We'll just share a few:

This is both of the Year 6 classes and teachers on the trip.

This pod of hippos were right in front of their picnic spot.

When elephants start flapping their ears and charging towards you it's not a good sign.

On a walking safari with a guide - yes, the gun is loaded.

It appears that this dead hippo had a heaping helping of grass for its last supper. The kids returned at night to watch 18 lions enjoying a big dinner.

The mama lion watched over the dead hippo until dinner time.

Still playing netball...

This weekend Erin had a netball tournament, Erin blogged about netball when we were in South Africa but for those who missed it, netball is like basketball without the backboard and without any dribbling. Basically, the ball gets passed up and down the court and the players play specific positions in different zones based on the position stated on their pinnie - Wing Attack and Wing Defense were the two positions that Erin played this weekend. Some of the other teams had much bigger kids and they had played together much longer but they all had fun. Here are some pics:

This is one very HOT kid!
The temp was actually about 35 degrees in the shade - unfortunately the girls weren't playing in the shade.

An enthusiastic fan...
Danica actually just finished reading the new Harry Potter book - for the third time!

What do Kids want? - By John

This afternoon I visited George compound to interview a bunch of kids about what their needs are. Chisomo, one of our MCC partners, is thinking of starting an outreach ministry in this area of town, and instead of barging in and telling people what they would do for them, they decided to take the more thoughtful approach and ask what people wanted instead, and this is where I was helping out. George compound is a pretty poor part of town, poor even in the standards of the local slums. There is no running water anywhere, no sewerage, and limited and sporadic electricity, so if you want to find poverty it's a pretty good place to start looking.

A couple of weeks ago we interviewed the ladies of the community to ask for their feedback, and it was pretty interesting. What they wanted was consistent and inexpensive food and access to education for their children, all other things coming in a distant second. Of course, all this boils down to having monetary resources. We were wondering if the children would feel the same way, so we set out to a local church for our meeting.

I was expecting about thirty kids to show up, instead we had over 80, from four or five year olds to sixteen year olds. It was pretty noisy when we got there, but it was fun talking to the children, luckily I had an interpreter with me.

The children were happy to participate

After a good question and answer period a few interesting observations emerged. While most of the kids have regular meals, most of them also miss a day of meals quite regularly, perhaps as often as once a week. Most of them don't eat three meals a day, two is more likely. They all LOVE nshima, but they all love biscuits (cookies) even more, so this confirms that they are like children all over the world. They also all want to go to school, but many are prevented by poverty. In theory, Zambian government schools are free, but there are additional school fees levied by the Parent Teacher Associations for things like books which become an effective barrier to education for someone without money. There is also the problem that there are not enough spaces in the government schools for everyone, so the solution that emerges is community schools, which are outside the government system and run for profit or as a cooperative enterprise. Community schools charge a tuition, so if you can't afford it, you can't attend. It's pretty tough to hear a twelve year old talking about wanting to attend school but not being able to because they can't afford the uniform or the notebooks required.

It might be 35c outside,
but what this girl wants is to wear her fuzzy pink toque

After the meeting we gave the kids a soft drink and a pack of biscuits, they were pretty happy!

Hooray for soft drinks and biscuits!

... and hooray for a better Internet Connection!

We have been very blessed by working out a deal for a new internet connection at our house. One of our partners working on the community school computer project is a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), and in a kind of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" deal we got hooked up a few days ago, what a difference. I'm happy to reciprocate by helping to set up software and do some training, which is part of the project. A big thanks to Nick and the crew at iConnect!