Tree Tops Trip - By Erin

On the 10^th of September my grade went to Tree Tops School Camp for a whole week. It was an eight hour long drive in our school’s smelly bus. When we got there everyone went to their dorms to have a shower and put on fresh clothes because everything is so dry and dusty here right now.

The kids did all the cooking ourselves and the food was great. We made things like: chicken and rice, mashed potatoes, Nshima with curries and pasta with tomato sauce. We did all of our cooking over an open charcoal fire.

Some of our activities were making plaster casts of animal footprints. Mr. Bowen said that our lion prints were the best ever! We did water color paintings of the river and we did a charcoal drawing of the humongous 2,000 year old Baobab tree in the camp. We did lots of safaris and saw: loads of pukus, a few impala, one huge elephant that charged at us, over 60 hippos, crocodiles, a cheetah, a leopard which ran away before all the kids could see it (I think we were a little loud on the bus), and the most amazing of all was 18 lions who had just started eating a dead hippo! The stomach was torn open and there was lots of half-digested grass falling out everywhere – the vultures had already gotten the eyeballs and brains!

We went on long safari walks through the bush in lion territory but we had Michael the guard with us and he had a gun to scare any predators away. Luckily on the long walk back to the camp the bus came to pick us up and for once the big, hot, stinky bus felt good!

We had a big bonfire one night and roasted marshmallows and had the best hot chocolate ever. It was made with sweetened condensed milk and it was sooooo good. One night we had a quiz on everything we saw and we learnt how to use a GPS.

The experience at Tree Tops was long, tiring, exciting, unforgettable and was the best field trip of my whole entire life!

Happy to be back home

Visit to Chisomo – by Charlene

Last week I had the opportunity to spend some time at the Chisomo drop-in centre which is one of MCC’s partner organizations here in Lusaka. We are helping them set up a basic website that they will be able to use in fund-raising efforts in the United States. Chisomo offers schooling, food and lodging to help get kids off of the street and I was there to take photos and get some stories of the children involved in the programs there.

After a very short period of initial shyness the kids warmed up to me very quickly. It seemed that all it took was for me to take out my camera and then they were all ready to pose. Zambians love to have their photo taken and they are aware of digital technology and right away ask to see the picture displayed on the window on the back of the camera. Whenever I took a group photo the question was right away “Can you make them one, one, one?” Which translates to can they have one each.

The kids were keen to show off their talents and soon there were kids hanging upside down out of trees, kids drumming and kids singing and dancing. So much for the idea of being discreet and taking casual photos of everyday life!

These boys are making toy cars out of barbed wire

The Drummers

The Dancers

Most people in Zambia get their clothes from salaulas which are markets that sell used clothes that get donated from North America and the U.K. I got a kick out of reading all of their T-shirts, they said everything from Tim Hortons (sigh…), 4H, Spiderman, the Ontario Rodeo (who knew?) to Siemens electronics.

I also sat with a few of the kids to record their stories to go on the Chisomo website. The stories they told just boggled my mind but they spoke them very matter-of-factly and seemingly without exaggeration. I’d like you to meet a girl named Memory…

Memory

“I will be a nurse” was the statement from the quiet 11 year old when asked what her hopes are for the future. Not long ago, this girl didn’t have any dreams beyond getting her next meal.

Memory lived with her grandmother in Kabwe after her mother had died. While living with her grandmother she was not allowed to go to school and her grandmother would beat her and leave her in a room padlocked from the outside all day long and she did not get enough food. At night she and her siblings were forced to sleep on the floor rather than on the available beds. Memory describes her life there as a constant struggle.

One day she was told that they were going on a trip to visit some relatives and she was brought from Kabwe to Lusaka where her family abandoned her and left her to fend for herself on the streets. At only ten years old she was very scared and she spent the first night in a police station. While walking in town the next day, a woman stopped and talked to Memory and then took her to Chisomo drop-in centre.

Memory was spared from having to live on the streets and she is really enjoying staying at Chisomo. She is currently studying in Grade 4. She has very few memories of her mother but she remembers her as a beautiful, tall, slender lady with a dark complexion and she remembers that her mother said that nurses are good people so Memory has set herself a goal for when she grows up.

Pioneer Days - Zambian Style - By John

As we slip into September, I am reminded that Pioneer Days, that celebration of all things Mennonite and old fashioned, is held around now at the Mennonite Village Museum in Steinbach. You know, the place where they butcher a hog, just to show the kids how it was done in the old days? One of the things they would make from the pig would be tubs of Lard.

Lard happens to be one of the few things I have missed and have not been able to find in Africa. It just isn’t available, you can only buy something called "Half Fat Spread" or Baking Margarine, which is strange and unnatural, and so my pie crusts aren’t as flaky as they should be. Do you remember the old Lard commercial from the seventies?

When I bake a pie
For the apple of my eye
I bake it with a crust
I know that I can trust
I bake it so good he (or she) can smell it from the yard
I’ll tell you what my secret is
My secret is my Lard.

Well, I wanted a crust that was good and flaky and I needed good lard, so I decided to follow in my forefathers footsteps and try to make my own. First I had to find a pig. Luckily there was already a dead and dismembered one at Rudi's (“The Swiss Butcher”), and so instead of all that killing and skinning all I had to do was buy a bag of fat.

Mmmm, pig fat!

Then I took the fat home, cut it up into little pieces and put it in a pot to render. Unfortunately,
this was exactly the time that Zesco, the local power utility, decided to cut the power in our neighbourhood! What to do with that pot full of slightly warm pieces of fat (other than get out a fork and dig in)? Well, the Zambian way is to pull out the brazier, fill it with charcoal, light it up and render away, which is exactly what I did.

The cooking apparatus, much like the pioneers used

It worked out really well, actually. All the smelly cooking happened outdoors, and the fire was good and hot, and in no time we had a pot full of lard and some cracklings to snack on later.

All I had to do was stir the pot

This is what it looked like while it was cooking

The result - almost 1Kg. of pure goodness

The final product will surely go into a yummy pie, just like Oma used to make.

Bon Appetit!