No Day 3

01:00 am:

Incomprehensible shouting coming from just outside my window.  Probably the local tongue, Lamba. Loud enough to wake me up, terrifies me.  Who is that?

01:01 am:

A crowd of voices joins in.  Celebratory?  Angry?  Ready to Fight? Right?

Awake at 1 am: just wrong.

The best that I can come up with is that there’s an angry mob of villagers in the middle of our soccer field and they’re out to seek revenge by attacking everyone that’s asleep.

Our guard dogs Dozer and Blazer make noises, as if to agree with me and let me know they’re ready to attack anyone who steps foot into our compound.

Best to just stay in bed.  If someone’s out to kill me, I’d rather be well rested for it.

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8:00 am: 

Frances and I wake up for our morning run.  We discuss what happened last night, ‘Good, I wasn’t dreaming!’  We wonder if it’s safe for a run.

Let’s ask Dr. Google.

We can’t find anything on Google about the results of the election.   So we try to reason it out in our heads.  “If the opposition party wins, the copperbelt will be happy, so we can go to the market again, but people in the village might not be happy because they didn’t vote like the copperbelt wanted them too…

Who won?  Is it safe to go out?

Should we just go back to bed?

So we ran, but we mixed it up a bit with push-ups (is it possible to be so weak that you can’t do a single push-up?  Because I think we both fell into that category)

The nice thing was we found a place to do push-ups where no one could watch us so they wouldn’t know how pathetic we were.

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9:30 am:

After showering and eating a hearty breakfast of fried egg and toast, we make lunch and get ready to leave for work.

We toast our bread that comes out of the refrigerator (To keep it fresh longer) because we don’t like cold bread.  We decide to skip coffee because the instant stuff just isn’t that good.

As we finish getting ready, our supervisor knocks at the door.  She has been in touch with the director at the hospital and learned that the doctor who comes in to do the ART clinic (Anti-retroviral therapy) cannot make it in due to too much celebration in the streets.

I only wish we could get away with that excuse in America.

We learn that last night, the election results were announced just after 12 am.

What kind of country announces their president at midnight?

Her husband heard all the commotion outside too and loaded up some of his guns and took them outside, thinking that the Village Drunks were up to no good.  I’m thankful to know we are not only being protected by our Lord but also by a man with a pistol.

But he finds out it isn’t the Village Drunks yelling, it’s the Village Christians.

Cheering for the announced victory of Sata, the opposition leader who is pro-working class citizens.

Today was supposed to be ART, or anti-retroviral therapy day. At the clinic, but since the doctor who runs that part of the clinic can’t make it in, and we were going to be working with him today, we got the day off.  

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 11:00am

We went on an adventure to see the river.  Henry came with us I think to protect us.  They think we’re made out of glass here.

[river pictures]

But Henry is good for telling us more about the culture.  Here, people burn parts of the forest to make the rats run out so they can eat them.  If they have to burn a corn field they pick it all first.  But sometimes they don't get it all.  And they don't eat it once it's burnt.

[burnt corn] 

We made our own path for a while, but then we eventually followed someone else’s path and then we got back on the road and walked to the same river we found on Monday.

We found a beautiful grove of trees by that river.  It was so pretty.  The picture doesn't capture the peacefulness of the spot, but it was beautiful!

[trees]

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We came home to eat and I took a nap because I didn’t want to work on my project anymore and I didn’t have any books to read because I finished them already.  Frances ended up taking a nap too.

I guess that’s what people do without the internet (during the day) and TV.

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Frances and I have all sorts of funny conversations.  Usually, they’re one of those things that are funnier in person, but sometimes I write them down and read them again, and think they’re funny the second time, so I decided to post some.

“It’s 4 pm, can we go walking?  If not I might eat again.”

So we started another walk. This time we walked towards town. Henry came with us again.

[walkers]

We found a store. 

And saw a pretty sunset on the way home.

[if you're a nerd like me you think this tree looks like a kidney with ureters]

[this is me with the sign for the mission where we stay, Kafulafuta]

But then it was going to get dark and we decided to come in so we didn’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes.  And we were legitimately getting hungry again.  So we came in to eat leftovers, which were made possible by our refrigerator and microwave.  We don’t take these things for granted anymore.

Since the internet wasn’t working at 6 pm (when it usually starts to work) we took showers.  I seriously considered going to bed at 6:45, but then the internet started working again.  Thankfully.