Trip to Northwestern Zambia

Wed. Oct. 5 – we drove and drove and drove : ) and had several geography stops  (bathroom breaks in the bush)

Thurs. Oct. 6- we left Frangilla Farm where we stayed the night and headed for Mumena
(our destination) in total we drove for about 18hrs.

Fri. Oct. 7- the missionaries taught two classes the first was about cultural research. The first thing a missionary should do is observe and get to know the people before diving in. With their experience they told us about the Kaonde people who live around them. They are people who used to be hunters but do to immigration from Congo they had too many people with little food and killed off all the wild animals. Since they didn’t grow up with agriculture they now have to teach themselves  from scratch. Religiously they believe in ancestral spirits and witchcraft even though he current chief is a Christian and has made those practices illegal most of the tribe continues to do it in secret. In this part of the world witchcraft influences their lives daily. Their number one emotion is fear, if they have a nightmare it’s because someone is trying to attack them in their sleep. Along with fear comes jealousy, no one wants to get ahead of another person because their afraid of causing someone to be jealous of them and curse them.  The Kaonde tribe is matrilineal; if your mom is in the royal family then a counsel of old women will consider you as the next chief.

The second class was about missionary team strategies. First you have to discover the root cause of the problem and then a solution using the appropriate technology. The difficult thing is finding a solution that works and won’t cause dependency.

That afternoon Whitney, one of the missionaries who arrived in Jan. took us to the Konkwa village where we met Josephine. She’s a mother of five boys, when we first arrived at her house she was bathing one of her sons outside in a little bucket, but stopped to get a grass mat for us to sit on. She was very friendly even though it was hard communicating with our language barrier. She cooked us some ground nuts that were pretty good! It was fun to actually be in the village instead of just driving or walking past on the way somewhere.

Sat. Oct 8- We went to Meheba Refugee camp and spent to day with the Congolese Christians. The refugee camp has been there for many years and has developed into what looks more to me like a village except you still have to go through a gate and bribe the police to get in. there used to be 150,000 refugees there when a war in Congo began but now there are about 50,000. When a refugee first arrives they are given a tent, a small plot of land, and enough seed to last them two years so then they can provide for themselves. Driving through tents were still set up in some places but by now most families have different upgrades such as mud huts and brick houses, we even noticed solar panels and cable satellite dishes. The day consisted of lessons and singing by different people and a lunch with nsime, rape, and goat. One of the missionaries said that the church there has progressed well, only 5 years ago when the 1^st missionaries moved to Mumena they were just having one on one lessons with the Congolese and now at this meeting there were elders who were first taught sitting toward the back of the group watching the young men take charge and practice what they’ve learned.  

Sun. Oct. 9- everyone spilt up into smaller group and went with the missionaries to different churches that had been planted. I went back to Konkwa Village Church of Christ where Josephine lives, it was about a 2km walk. Other groups walked 4km, rode different vehicles to father churches, and one group even biked an hour through the forest to church. It’s amazing how much effort the people here have to put into just getting to and from church, while in the states we just hop into a car drive down a paved road and are there within minutes.  The Konkwa church altogether had about 80 members present including children, other churches had smaller groups the bike group had about 11 Zambian members.  What amazes me is how far God’s word has spread here in only 5 years!

Sunday night we had a trick-or-treat celebration for the missionaries kids. We all went back to our rooms got creative costumes on and waited for the children to knock on our bed room doors. They had so much fun with it!

Mon. Oct. 10- we left the mission and drove to Nsobe Game Park where we stayed the night. The place was so green and beautiful! There were monkeys swinging around on trees and after dark we saw a kudu! Before dinner we had several hours to spare so we rented 4 canoes and 12 of us girls went out on the lake, it was so much fun (even though we got stuck once) because the sun was setting and there were pretty birds everywhere!

Tues. Oct. 11- at Nsobe we went to a reptile exhibit where we got to hold a baby croc, a small green snake, and a python! Then we hit the road and stopped for lunch at Ibis Garden Hotel where we swam, before getting to Frangilla Farm to stay the night. We arrived there at 3p.m and had so much time to kill and it was raining so we stayed in our room and watch TV for the first time. Before dinner at 7 we watched news about 101 deaths due to a flood (that’s the 1^st time we’d ever heard about anything going on outside of Zambia, we are so out of the loop here), then we watched the end of a really weird Arnold Swartzenager movie, watched a little motocross, the end of hotel for dogs, Argentina vs. New Zealand in the rugby world cup, and the beginning of the patriot. We def. got enough TV in that one period to last us the whole 3 months we are here, at dinner we found out several other rooms watched the same things, I guess when you don’t have very many channels you don’t have any other choice!

Wed. Oct. 12- after breakfast we drove to Lusaka to spend most of the day there. We started out at the Northmead market which is similar to the ones we’ve been to throughout Zambia but because it was in the capitol it had more of a variety and some nicer things! After we ate at Revolucion a Mexican food restaurant started by a guy from California. It was pretty good compared to what I was expecting! Then we went to the mall and I couldn’t even believe I was still in Zambia! It felt like a rich mall in the U.S. they had high fashion clothing stores, high tech. stores, even a store attached that looked and felt like a super Wal-Mart! All anyone pretty much bought was ice-cream…well until we got back on the bus. As we were driving through downtown people come up to your windows and try to sell you jerseys and some guys decided it would be funny to open the window and bought a poster the only bad thing was once he paid the light we were stopped at turned green so the seller had to run next to the bus until he got the poster rolled up and handed into the bus. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, it was like a drive through sonic only it was clothing and other random items that you could buy! We stayed the night at Eureka camp grounds where some of our group saw zebras walk through the camp grounds. I didn’t see them because I was too amused with the flying termites?! Apparently since the rainy season is here (it wasn’t supposed to get here till Oct.24 but the first rain came on the 5^th I think) anyway the flight of the termites began while we were outside. It was so amusing; they were coming out of tons of holes in the ground and taking their first flight! The bad thing was then birds kept dive-bombing and eating them. Someone said “it looks like its snowing backwards” because there were so many flying up at once! If you looked closely at the small holes you could see them crawling out and surrounding the holes were tons of larvae squirming around. That night around 3a.m while we were sleeping apparently a group of zebras charged through the campground. I wish I would’ve seen it but it didnt wake me up and I slept through it!

Thurs. Oct. 13- we finally made it back home, but before we had to stop in Choma for chitangie shopping!

Overall being in Mumena has been one of the highlights of this semester! I enjoyed seeing the missionaries and getting to hear what life for them is like here in Africa. There was a diversity of missionaries from a retired couple, a few families, and newlyweds; it was interesting to hear about how each couple got into mission work and how it’s possible at any stage in your life! Most of them suggested if you wanted to go into mission work to first take classes/major ->intern -> 2 year apprentice->and then be a missionary long term. If you dive straight into long term you’re more likely to have negative culture shock because all the preparations are like a safety net.  Seeing everything they had given up and were doing really taught me what being a disciple of Christ really means.