The day that was Indescribable

Sunday

The elements of today [Sunday] that I would want to picture and write up on a blog are unwriteable.  They are unable to be captured with mere words and painted with black letters on a white computer screen.

The best way I can describe it is:

You know how sometimes at church when you’re not worried about anything because it’s been a pretty good week and you’re not distracted by anyone around you coming in late or catching up on the week or what people are wearing and you can really hear God speaking to you through praise and worship music and you can actually feel his presence and it is so peaceful and real that it almost brings tears to your eyes.

It’s just naturally like that here.

Because you’re not distracted by the band.  There isn’t one.

And you’re not distracted by your clothes.  Because you aren’t wearing the latest fashion, you don’t match and no one else does either.  And no one cares.

And out of the peace a single voice starts a song, and then the others join in with perfect harmony.  The only sound other than voices is the swish-step-swish-step that the choir is making.

There’s just this peace.  And this raw, unprocessed joy where you can actually feel God is there.

And I’m not saying that having a band is wrong or dressing nice is wrong or that American Church isn’t doing things right.  Because church is so complicated and so shaped by the culture that you’re in.  And so personal.  And there are a lot of great things about church in America.

I’m just trying to depict the difference in a way that makes sense to me.  In the only way my brain can wrap around it.

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Being obviously and unmistakably new we got to stand up and be introduced to the entire congregation.

We got to shake everyone’s hand.

The sermon was on one of my favorite topics: The fiery furnace in Daniel 3.  I had a bit of trouble because the pastor spoke in Lamba and there was a translator who didn’t speak English very well, and off and on the pastor would switch to speaking English but I wouldn’t catch it until the translator spoke Lamba and I realized I completely missed what the pastor was saying.  But parts of the message hit home.  The pastor talked about people who sit in church and don’t change their hearts and compared them to Nebuchandezzer who kept saying people should worship Daniel’s God off and on but don’t actually take God into their hearts and change them, which I thought was interesting.  He also talked about how God is always with people in the fiery furnace, but he doesn’t always choose to save them.  He actually used the phrase “go hungry” which I’ve worried about a few times since we’ve been here.  Then he talked about people who studied the word of God and put the word into their heads, but didn’t put the word of God into their hearts.

How many times do I read and study God’s word, and I understand what it says, even memorize it, and forget to put it in my heart?

Mmmm. Food for thought.

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The rest of my day I ate and slept, but you didn’t come all the way to my blog to read about that.

Except that I did eat peas.  If you know me you know how much I hate peas.  I love love love vegetables.  Every one except peas and maybe lima beans.  But I was so hungry for vegetables, that I ate peas.  I never would have thought that I would be missing out on vegetables in Africa.

Oh, and I guess we ate Christmas Dinner.  I thought our supervisor was joking with us when she said that what we were eating (rice and fried chicken) was like a “Christmas Meal” for most people here.  Not, a joke really, but more of an exaggeration of sorts at least.  I didn’t really think much of it.  Rice and chicken instead of Nshima (cornmeal-ish) and fish didn’t seem that different to me.

But then Henry, our supervisor’s “son”/ tour guide/ security guard/ assistant came in because there was some kind of misunderstanding over a camera.  But I’ll never forget what he said:

“Looks like I missed Christmas Dinner.”

Fried Chicken.  Rice.  Peas.

Christmas Dinner. 

It made my heart want to sob.  That isn’t Christmas dinner to me, that’s “I’m in a hurry and have to grab some fast food so I guess fried chicken and fried potatoes will work.” 

I only really eat rice when I’m working really hard to stick to a tight budget and I have a new recipe I want to try.

The majority of people in our village can only afford to eat rice once a year.

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Monday

Children’s Clinic Outreach Day

Again, It’s really hard for me to describe in words what all is spinning through my head right now.  I feel like my blog just isn’t doing justice to the experiences we’re having here.

Maybe if you were to take your computer outside and read this sitting in the dirt.  Or in a plastic folding chair under a tree, because people here don’t like to let you sit in the dirt.  And you can sit reading it with a cup of instant coffee and fake creamer or a cup of water that you boiled and then filtered.  Maybe then you’d get a better idea of what life is like here.

Because it really isn’t all that different, but it kinda is. 

And that might be the best I can explain it right now.

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Today we left for the clinic around 8:45, and it should have only taken 10 or 15 minutes to get there.  But our driver today had to personally greet every single person we passed by on the road, plus make a stop to figure out why the air con (what they call A/C) was on, because he didn’t turn it on.

I was just hoping the outreach team didn’t leave without us.

But I shouldn’t have feared. 

Because this is a developing country and nothing starts on time.

When we arrived at the clinic around 9:15 the outreach team still had to get the vaccines ready to take with us and the paperwork and the scales.

We all piled into a little truck.  The front seat had room for 3 of us, and being from America and “fragile” we got to ride up front in the truck and several people rode in the bed.

I really hope I don’t come home with some kind of complex.  Here, everyone waves to me, everyone goes out of their way to greet me and drive me places.  People practically treat me like a princess.  I feel like I live in a palace because our home is so nice and huge and modern compared to everything else.  And it’s not like I deserve to be treated this way, I just am.  I feel terrible about it sometimes, but that’s just the way life is.  So I’m starting to work on my “beauty queen wave” like the royalty in England do.

I’m just saying, if I come home acting like a Zambian princess, you have my permission to slap me a few times.

We started out toward our first outreach site by traveling back up the 10 kilometer dirt road.  But Frances and I, on our many adventures, have been to the end of our dirt road.  It runs into a river.  We haven’t seen any other roads that split off of it.  Where could we possibly be going?!  Unless this truck turns into a boat like one of those awesome things they have in Northeastern sea towns (I think they call them duck trucks) we’re not going very far.

But again, I was thinking like an American.

Why would we need a dirt road when we have dirt footpaths?

At this point, Frances and I have traveled up and down our 10K dirt “driveway” as our supervisor fondly calls it at least 20 times, and I have never even considered that one of these paths could fit a car on it.

So, we embarked from our bumpy dirt road onto an even bumpier (is that even possible?!) footpath.  And we were in the front of the truck. 

I can’t imagine the people in the back.

For future reference, dirt roads are best traversed when you don’t have to pee.  I’d advise using the bushes if you have to just to avoid all the discomfort of traveling with a full bladder.

Oh, and if you can take a Range Rover, I’d recommend that too.  We rode in one once and it was the least-bumpy experience we’ve had thus far.  It’s like they were made for dirt roads or something!

We traveled for at least half an hour on the dirt footpath, but we were going slowly so as not to blend all our organs to mush, or loose vital car parts, I feel like we only traveled 2 or 3 miles.  Which is a far walk, but I felt like when they said we were “going out into the bush” we would be going farther.

It made me think of this one small, one-stoplight town I know of with two Family Dollar stores at opposite sides of town.  I couldn’t really figure out why one wasn’t enough, but I guess if you’re walking into that town, traveling another mile with hands full of goods from the Family Dollar store is a lot.

Which I suppose is the equivalent to walking 3 extra miles with a child, who might be 15 kg strapped to your back.  If you’re walking 10 miles to get somewhere, an extra 3 is a big deal.

We set up the clinic under a small straw-roofed hut.

Straight out of what you might find in a National Geographic magazine.

I’ll really have to bring my camera next time and figure out a way to stealthily take pictures. Because I don’t want to be rude, but I just really feel like these are memories I’ll want to have forever.  Especially when I get Alzheimer’s and can’t remember it perfectly, I’ll need the pictures I took.

AND there were 2 precious little girls in black TOMS!  Which I feel I definitely need a picture of while I’m wearing my black TOMS!

We did a lot of the same things we did at the last children’s clinic: weigh children and vaccinate them and educate the mothers if the child is losing weight.

Except that instead of weighing the kids in a cloth blanket, we used a fabric grocery-style bag (think fabric Kroger bag that we use to hold a lot of groceries) that had leg-holes in it.  But that made some of the kids cry which made me sad.

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The rest of the day wasn’t worth documenting.  We rode home on a really bumpy bus.  I felt exhausted and took a nap. 

I think the fun of being in a new place is starting to wear off and I’m starting to feel a bit homesick and frustrated by life here.  Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. 

It's another ante-natal (pre-natal) clinic day.  And we've decided to go "exploring" in town during our lunch break, which I'm super excited about.

Look forward to fun stories.  Keep praying.  I love you all!

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“Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
Incomparable, unchangeable
You see the depths of my heart and You love me the same
You are amazing God”