Back to Work - by Charlene

Our vacation time is over and it’s time to get back to work. We had a great time with Vince and Stacey and Stacey’s luggage finally arrived on the last flight into Lusaka before the one that was to take them home (Day 16!). At that point we were just really glad that it arrived at all and Danica was especially happy since her birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa was in there.

Before they left we spent a day at Chaminuka Lodge where we went on a safari drive and saw lions, a hyena, zebras, sables, giraffes, many impala and came eye to eye with an elephant who tried to confiscate my camera. We went horseback riding, had a fabulous buffet lunch and the kids got to go swimming in the first heated pool we have seen on this continent. We also got to tour a cheese factory and especially enjoyed the “cheese cave” where we got to sample their products and they made deep fried mozza sticks as well as a Swiss cheese fondue for us – yum, yum.

How close have YOU ever been to an elephant?

Ready to ride - Carter had to concentrate really hard on giving his "thumbs up".

Danica and Madi started off riding together but by the end Madi was on her own.

This week’s focus is delivering text books to community schools in Lusaka. These books arrived in the container that was sent from the U.S. a few months ago and the text books are in brand new condition. They were obtained for free since they were about to be shredded due to curriculum changes. Because Danica and Erin are on their school break they helped with the sorting of the thousands of books and within the next couple of days we will finish the distribution. We have a new volunteer arriving next month who will be spending some time with the teachers to instruct them on how to teach with textbooks since most of these schools have never had any school books before.Danica and Erin helping to sort the new school books

The students of Chimwemwe School helped to unload their boxes of new books.

Zambia, Day 14 ....still no luggage for Stacey - by Special Guest Correspondent Vince Boschman

It is hard to believe we are nearing the end of our time in Lusaka. The roads, street vendors and lack of other Muzungus (white people) that seemed so bizarre when we first arrived are now a part of our normal life.

One of the highlights was our road trip to Lake Kariba, Livingstone and our time spent at Victoria Falls. We spent 3 nights at Lake Kariba, where we took a sunset cruise, toured a crocodile farm and spent a morning fishing for Tiger fish.

Not a Tiger Fish, just a little Bream
The kids caught more fish than the Dads

Once we made it to Livingstone we enjoyed seeing the falls up close and getting drenched was breathtaking and only outmatched by the views from the air.

Vic Falls from a normal perspective

John and I took a Microlight flight over the falls and Erin and I took the zipline off a cliff and out to the middle of the gorge.

Vic Falls from a different perspective
highly recommended

Fearless Erin on the zip line over the gorge

We've also had the opportunity to do some non-touristy things like visit Chimwemwe, a local school in one of the compounds and see the excitement and energy kids have at the opportunity to learn. We also visited Chisomo a local drop in center for street kids where we met Aaron and discussed his vision for the facility and how he'd like to make a bigger impact in the lives of these kids. Coming from Canada it is a real eye opener to see how people live with so much less, both in terms of material wealth but also in terms of opportunity. In Lusaka, more than 70% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day....try that for a day or two.

Last night we headed over to the weekly hockey game at the Swedish embassy and today John and I spent the morning golfing on the finest course in Zambia, the Lusaka Golf Club. It was one of the most unique golf experiences I've had. It's not often you have the chance to step back in time and use clubs and balls from the early 70s. It was definitely an experience I will not soon forget.

We would highly recommend a trip out here to everyone. The accommodations are great, we have built in babysitters and our chef is spoiling us.

p.s. Stacey's luggage hasn't arrived and we just aren't talking about it.

Happy Canada Day!

There were no official Canada Day celebrations going on in Lusaka today (imagine!) so we had to plan our own. We went out for lunch to a nice garden centre/cafe and then went to Munda Wanga - a place with a beautiful botanical garden as well as an environmental education centre with lions, a tiger, an elephant, zebras and a few of the other "regular" African animals.
Here are our guests of honor: Vince, Stacey, Madison and Carter Boschman. They are still recovering from the jet lag but the kids seem to have enough energy to keep us on our toes.
What's for lunch? Chicken!
Yesterday we went to Kalimba reptile park and saw lots of snakes and crocodiles. Danica and Erin were quite keen to have a boa constrictor wrapped around their neck. Madison and Carter didn't want to give it a try but they did touch the snake.

Who is visiting Zambia?

“I’ll take International Visitors for $100 please, Alex.”

“The answer is : Visitors to Lusaka in June, 2007”

“Who are: Alex Trebek, Laura Bush, Chris and Katrina Shore and Vince, Stacey, Madison and Carter Boschman.”

"That is correct!"

What a busy week for Lusaka! Our first guests were John’s cousin Chris and his daughter Katrina from California. We enjoyed having dinner with them at our house on Monday night and then at their hotel on Wednesday night. Chris is with World Vision and brought Katrina along to see some of the projects in the area and they will also be visiting Tanzania. We saw plenty of security at their hotel because Laura Bush (first lady of the U.S.A.) is also in town because of her involvement with malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention.

While waiting and waiting for Vince (Charlene’s brother) and Stacey and Madison and Carter, who should come walking out but Alex Trebek (host of TV’s Jeopardy and spokesperson for World Vision)!

It was great to see everyone but only 80% of Vince and Stacey’s luggage arrived. 80% might sound like a lot unless it is your suitcase that didn’t make it. Fortunately for us, all of our goodies arrived from home and we’ve had fun going through it all. We'll have to post a picture of their family soon but Stacey is out shopping for some new clothes.



Speaking of percentages, we are very proud of Danica for achieving an award for academic excellence in her studies in Year 7 at the International School of Lusaka.

My School Trip - by Danica

On Monday morning I left on a trip to Wild Tracks in the Lower Zambezi with 11 other classmates. We left at 8 a.m. on the new school bus. Unfortunately, the bus broke down about 2 minutes into the ride and we ended up having to wait for 2 hours while the bus got fixed. Once the bus got fixed it was a four hour drive including when we had to cross a river on a pontoon.

The accommodations were called tree houses, but they were actually cabins on tall stilts. This is because there are lots of animals there and we even had elephants walk through our camp at night! Other animals we saw were: kudu, duiker, hippo, crocodile and monitor lizard.

During the day we did activities such as fishing, climbing the giant baobab tree and abseiling down, an obstacle course and a walk using a GPS to find geocash – a hidden treasure. We also did lots of teambuilding activities, we watched the sunset from a boat and we had a night of stargazing – did you know that there is no big dipper in this part of the world?

The food was good (surprisingly), although they gave us way too much. Thankfully they didn’t serve any Nshima - the local maize product that’s really gross.

Overall, it was a really fun trip and we wished we could stay longer but I was really tired when I got home.

Ecumenical Peace Building in Zambia

Last week I had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony for the Africa Peacebuilding Institute at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, a city about five hours north of here. MEF was founded a long time ago by the World Council of Churches and the African Council of Churches (I hope I got that right), and is a training center for African church leaders. Once a year MCC sponsors a six week training course in Peacebuilding for African church leaders. This year there were participants from as far away as Ethiopia and Nigeria. The twenty nine people who took the course this year are from a wide variety of church and faith backgrounds, including at least one Muslim participant. Inter-faith peacebuilding is a topic of great relevance as it seems that all you hear about on the international news these days is tension between Muslims and Christians. It’s interesting to note that from our perspective that this doesn’t seem to be as big an issue in Zambia as in other countries, or as big an issue at the grass roots as at a political level.

It was great to meet the participants; they all had very interesting stories to tell and were very nice folks. Peacebuilding is an important subject to study and apply, there are lots and lots of people doing the opposite (i.e. conflict building) in Africa, especially in trouble spots like Sudan, northern Uganda and so on.

What do you get when an American MCC worker, a Tanzanian pastor, a Zambian Nun and a Congolese Professor have a barbeque together? A peace of meat... er ... sorry.

Spot the Canadian with the inappropriate footwear

The Happy Graduates

MCC is placing a couple at MEF in August to continue peace related training there. We took the opportunity of delivering a piano to the house where the couple will live.

Here is a picture of our country rep Siggi making like Elton John before we left. Note the MCC predilection for sandals. (see previous picture as well) Thankfully the piano made it all the way without any problems.

One of the interesting things about driving in Zambia is all the stuff that is sold on the side of the road. This trip showed us that it was watermelon season (heaps and heaps of watermelons, for about $.50 to $1 each,) and sweet potato season. We also saw: bush honey, little red fruits called “bush onions”, lawn chairs, legs of unidentified animals (bush meat) and of course loads of tomatoes, which are always in season here.

People also sell very large bags of charcoal, which they make in the bush. Charcoal is what most people use for cooking (and it makes an excellent barbeque), but it raises concerns about deforestation. The economics of charcoal are very interesting. Far away from the city a very large (50kg) bag of charcoal costs about $8, but in the city it costs about $16, so if you can get a big bag from the country and sell it in the city you can make some money. So, every day you see men on rickety old bikes, with three 50Kg bags of charcoal riding hundreds of kilometers into the city to sell their charcoal, all for about $25 of profit (and of course, they have to ride back). Still, $25 is probably about 10 to 15 days average wage, so it pays. When the charcoal gets to the city, it goes to any one of one hundred charcoal markets, where it gets divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller bags, which are sold for some profit. The final stop is that ladies sell small plastic shopping bags of charcoal, with just enough charcoal to cook one meal, which is typically the most people buy because that’s usually all they can afford. There are a lot of people in this supply chain, and each takes their small cut.

Another big load of material aid reaches Lusaka - by John

Recently we received a container load of material aid from MCC Akron, and have spent the last few weeks sorting and shipping it out to our partners.There is quite a bit of work involved in receiving a container, unloading it, sorting it and then getting everything off to our partners for distribution to the people who need it most.

Charlene and Siggi start the sorting process

Here is a synopsis of what we got and where it went.

AIDS Kits – AIDS kits, assembled by loving hands back in North America, consisting of supplies typically used by someone suffering from AIDS.Some non-prescription drugs like painkillers (Tylenol and the like), topical antibiotics and anti-fungal creams, soap, towels, bandages and so on are all bundled into a cloth bag. These kits are delivered by MCC partners to those suffering from HIV/AIDS in or to those people providing them care.

Figuring out what we received in which box. This is a box full of vitamins, which will be distributed to AIDS care givers.

Blankets: Blankets are also made by loving hands, then bundled and compressed into bales at MCC in Akron, and then shipped to us. In addition to our regular partners, we sent off a bunch of bales to North-Western province, where large scale flooding had affected a lot of people. See this link for the account of Stefan Epp delivering the bales.

Books: we received two pallet loads of school books, which we are in the process of sorting and will distribute to partner community schools. It’s an interesting process, deciding which books are suitable for which grades. Literacy at a higher grade level is not something you can take for granted, so some of the books which would be used in grades one or two in North America may be going to grades five or six here.

Computers:
We received 15 used computers from MCC via a group called Free Geek Pennsylvania.
These computers are well used, and about eight years old.
We blew the dust out and reinstalled operating systems and software, and installed them into two community schools (Aisha and Chimwemwe).<>Zambia. As soon as we set up the computers the students, teachers and even community residents started using them. We have learned that even though these schools are in very poor parts of the city, the people who want to use the computers are not unsophisticated, and are eager to start using email and the web.
Many Yahoo email accounts have been set up, and informal lessons about Spam have started. It was touching and amusing in a way to see one young man get his first spam, telling him that he had been specially selected to get a lot of money from someone in Nigeria. He was pretty excited, but quite downcast when I had to explain that this was a scam and that the people who sent him the email were liars.

Here are some students using the "new" computers.

Bicycles: We didn’t actually receive bicycles from North America, rather we used our budget to buy bicycles that HIV/AIDS caregivers will use when making their rounds out in the country. We bought the bicycles locally because it is much easier logistically, and it supports the local economy. The bicycles are rugged and simple to use and repair (no fancy multi speed mountain bikes here).We sent 100 bicycles to the BIC office in Choma on the back of a big truck with a bunch of the other supplies. It turns out that 100 bicycles take up a lot of room.

That's a lot of bicycles!

We had to use a separate truck to get the bicycles from the shop to the truck depot. We stacked them high!

Of course, after sorting and packing we had to send the goods to our partners. We loaded a big truck full to go to the BIC office in Choma (about 300Km south of Lusaka), and loaded a smaller truck to go to our partner CHD, who are in Lusaka.

This is the truck going to Choma. There was a LOT of stuff on this truck.

Riberia Monde, from CHD was happy to receive AIDS care kits.

Are these supplies making a difference? It’s easy to say that what we receive from MCC in North America is only a drop in the bucket, and in fact that’s true. But for someone receiving a care kit, a bicycle, or a blanket, that drop in the bucket is more like a cool cup of sweet water on a hot and thirsty day. On a human scale, the things we give people do make a difference, even if our gifts have an impact that may not be appreciable until far into the future. Clearly, pure material aid is not THE long term solution, but it is part of a solution.