The day the bike made us laugh.

Thursday

Last days are always bittersweet.  That word always makes me think of the song Strawberry Wine.  Which actually sounds pretty fabulous right now.

It’s just the sunsets that are so pretty that make me want to enjoy a sweet glass of wine with them. 

………………………………………………………………………………..

Our Marlinso (lizard) was on the wrong couch.  He gets one couch.  The whole thing.  But he chose a chair.  Frances’ chair.  Like he owned it or something.  Not ok.

Even if he was here first.

[other]

Today was a short day at clinic.  We don’t start until 10 on Thursdays or Fridays, which is pretty sweet.  The internet was on for about an hour before work this morning, so I posted a few hundred blogs and I sent a few emails.  I have about a thousand more to send.

We arrived at clinic and walked around looking for Rose.  We usually try to work with her since she’s our favorite.  (She treats us like equals and explains things really well.  We also think she’s very smart!)  Mr. Musonda (Lamb) was in the dispensary this morning.  We like him too, especially when he’s running children’s clinic.  The old nurse, Lorna, was in the screening room.  Gift was in the lab, and Maureen was running Ante-natal clinic.

After scoping out clinic, we decided we’d work with Mr. Musonda because he’s the nicest and he genuinely appreciates our help.  But Maureen spotted us first and asked for our help.

We had no choice but to join ante-natal clinic with her.

We know how the show works now.  Thursdays are “booking days” where new mothers get their “safe motherhood numbers” and booklets.  Then they get a physical exam.  We’ve made hundreds of booklets.  We’ve taken hundreds of blood pressures.  We’ve weighed hundreds of mothers.

And the nurse has SEEN us do it all.  But that didn’t make a difference.  We still got the explanations all over again. 

Just for the record, we’re not idiots.

The blood pressure machine has been broken for about a week now, which I told the nurse.  She didn’t believe me, so I showed her.  She started explaining how to take a manual blood pressure, which we’ve done a million times and we would take it manually over using a machine, but they don’t have a manual cuff.  Which she was surprised to hear.  Especially because she works there.

My favorite part of the morning: the nurse asked when we would be leaving for America.  We said “tomorrow we leave, today is our last day.” And she said, “oh, I will miss you so much, I really like you guys.”

Really?  You could have fooled us!

Then she asked us to send her a flower from America.  Somehow, I don’t know if a flower would make it in the mail.  Maybe though.

We worked in the dispensary after antenatal clinic.  Mr. Musonda took over for the Nurse Midwife in the screening room.  We love it when he screens because we can actually read his handwriting and he shows us anything that he thinks we don’t see much of in America.

He knows what we see and what we don’t see in America because we talk with him at lunch and after lunch and we ask him questions and he asks us questions.  We really appreciate him!

He filled out our evaluations because he has the best English of anyone there today.  Elija Pule also has good English, but he was at a conference in Kitwe.  I love how in Lamba they don’t put silent letters onto words.  You don’t pronounce the h in Elijah, so he doesn’t have an h in his name.  Finally, something that makes sense.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

We footed home.  Or part of the way home.  On the way home we saw the craziest thing ever.  You remember how I’ve talked about people put crazy things on the back of their bikes like six 80 lb bags of coal or mattresses and they ride their bikes like that.  Well today takes the cake.

[bike]

I know it’s hard to see, but yes.

That’s 2 live pigs on the back of his bike.

Flapping around, waving and oinking.

Frances and I almost died. 

Then we turned our attention to the lady carrying a suitcase on her head.  For real.  We’ve decided to learn how to carry things on our heads.  I tried today and failed miserably.  All I did was mess my hair up.  The ladies here are way more legit than we are!

[suitcase]

………………………………………………………………….

So, we were invited to watch a movie with the missionary family that lives here.  Frances and I were decently excited because we’ve only watched one other movie here and it was pretty good.  But it wasn’t a missionary movie.

We were offered caramel popcorn and leche juice.  These people know the (African) way to my heart!!

The movie turned out to be hilarious.

Not as funny as the pigs on the bike, but it was pretty good.  It was a documentary/ reenactment of missionaries.  Except that it was filmed in the late 80s and their shorts were too short.  But it was a good message calling for more missionaries. 

It made me excited to see the power and strength of our God.

Even the late 80s couldn’t stop God’s power.

………………………………………………………………….

By the end of the night our Marlinso made it back to his couch.

Thankfully.

[Marlinso]

Frances still decided to read on a new couch.

[Frances]