You Know You Live In Africa When...

More Rats

2008-07-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

We have had a real big problem with rats in the recent months. They say it's because of the weather. I could care less why, I just want them out of my house. They eat my clothes, poop everywhere, and make our house smell. My favorite is when they die and you can't find them so everything smells like decaying rodent for days.
On this fun occasion we needed to make some copies for our Bible study. I pulled the printer down from it's shelf so it would be easier for me to reach and all of this junk came down with it. A rat had made a nest behind the printer and had eaten through tons of paper to make it nice and soft for himself. Not only that by ants were attracked by the fabulous rat smell and came to join the party. We now have a huge colony of ants living INSIDE our printer. I tried the zap them with 220v of electricity but those suckers are still alive. Only in Africa!

??

2008-06-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

The sticker on the bus says "Do not Panic, Needs Never End". Can someone please tell what this means.

Muzungu Minibus

2008-06-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

So how many people can you fit in our car. Legally it is built for 7, but this past week on our way to training we fit 10 with a whiteboard and 3 bags. We probably could have fit more if we really tried but on that day it was crowded enough for us.

Parade or Traffic Jam?

2008-06-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

In America we have well organized parades where streets are blocked off and traffic is controlled. Not so here. On any given day you will find a group of people, some as small as 10, walking against traffic or with it which ever they feel like in the middle of the road and they call it a parade. Sometimes they have a police office walking in front of them most often not. The whole purpose for the parade is to get the cars passing by to give money out the window. What it really accomplished is massive traffic jams, a lot of honking, and stress all around. Trust me it's no fun.

Maggots

2008-06-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on our rug one day doing some paperwork when this brown thing fell from the ceiling. This is not unusual for us because we have a roof made out of grass and things like to live in it so we have bugs falling out of it all the time. But this was not regular bug, it was poop. Ok fine there is poop raining from above whatever, but it kept falling. So I got up and tried to see if I could tell where it was coming from. It wasn't rat, mice, or lizard poop so I got a little nervous cause the only other thing that would be up there would be a snake. I didn't see anything so I made Mike come in and look at it. He said it wasn't poop at all but rat poison. I said he was crazy because we don't put rat poison up there so why would it be falling from the ceiling. Oh well TIA right. So later that day Steph and I are sitting trying to finish our charts and things start falling from the ceiling again. This time its not poop but huge alive maggots. Giganticly gross maggots! Now I can handle a lot of things but maggots is not one of them.

The next day we asked Roger to climb up in our roof to see if he could find what it was. He found a huge very dead rat (that's where the poison came from) that was full of maggots feeding on it's decaying body. Not I forgot to mention that our room also smelled like dead animal but this is fairly normal for us so we didn't think twice about it. He pulled it down and got rid of all the maggots for us. Sick!

Car Frustrations

2008-05-25T11:10:00.000-07:00

We took our car into the shop to get the tires balanced because we were having a problem with alignment and some other things. They quoted us 1 hour until completion. Knowing that this s Zambia we didn't return for two and a half hours. The car was still up and the tires off. The thought they could get away with just saying sorry because this society does not know how to take responsibility for their actions. Yet what the didn't know that Stephanie and I were having a bad day and in the end not only did they fix they car but they gave us a major discount. I may not know a lot about cars but I do know how to bargin.

Rats

2008-05-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

Stephanie and I were driving to Lusaka from the base early one morning on our way to get supplies in the city when we st oped in Mazabuka to use the toilet. As we pulled in the grocery store was just opening and the workers were sweeping the floor. Just outside the entrance door there was a trashcan that they were putting the dirt into and on top of the trashcan was a pile of dead rats that they had apparently also cleaned out of the grocery store. Now we are pretty used to rats but it still gets me when you see them running around restaurants and grocery stores. Where is the Health Department when you need them.

...Subway is in Zambia

2008-03-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

When most people think of Africa or even Zambia they think of the pictures that National Geographic shows of desert and animals with starving children. This is an accurate picture in most parts, but not when you come to the capital city, Lusaka. The funny part to me is when I find things here in Zambia that are at home in America. Subway for instance is something that I associate with the US, yet it's here in Lusaka. It doesn't taste the same but its here none the less. So we thought to prove that this is not the norm but people who come to visit and only see the capital think it is, we would wear our "Zambia the Real Africa" T-shirts and pose in front of Subway for you.

...You Get Attacked by Mold!

2008-02-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

It has been attack of the mold monsters the last few weeks. The combination of rain, humidity, and closed in storerooms and created a massive mold breading ground at the base. When Stephanie and I returned from Christmas break in Lusaka we found our clinic walls covered in mold. We immediately washed the walls and wiped them down with bleach. We installed some windows and bought a fan that now runs continuously to keep some airflow going. If with all this the mold came back in force. We now have a widow who is struggling to care for her family, come in 2-3 days a week to scrub the walls and wipe down the equipment. So far it seems to be working and the mold has been held at bay.
The mold has also attacked our houses. Stephanie found a bush of mold growing in her shoes that were stored in the closet. We have also found mold growing all over the inside of our car. Because we have not driven it in awhile due to the broken axel, when we opened it open it reeked of mildew. We still have not been able to find anything to kill the mold there because we can’t use bleach.
They keep saying that the mold will slowly go away as the rains stop and the humidity decreases, but for now it’s a little frustrating to have everything covered in this fuzzy smelly stuff. It doesn’t help that Stephanie is allergic to it. Oh well, this is Africa!

Tree Splint

2007-12-13T05:02:00.000-08:00

… the boxed Christmas tree that you buy from the store doesn’t fit together properly. We had to fashion a splint out of sticks, metal rods, and plastic tape in lieu of tape to keep the tree standing up straight. It took us a good hour of experimenting with different things, but we got it up with only a slight tilt. It was a Christmas Miracle!

...you break out from just breathing!

2007-12-05T04:52:00.000-08:00

Were not quite sure how it happened but it happened. We arrived home and within 5 minutes Stephanie was itching all over the place. She had leaned up against a cement wall, one that we lean against all the time. She had not been bit by anything and there was nothing on the wall that we could see, but none the less the rash was there. I thought it was quite comically to watch her itch like crazy. Of course I dosed her with all the typical allergic reaction meds and then we ate cake. I ate some for moral support ☺

...buying vegetables becomes a comical event

2007-10-15T05:11:00.000-07:00

On the way to one of our outreach clinics, there is a large outpost where ladies come to sell vegetables and fruit that they grow on their farms. We always stop because those items are not available near us. As soon as the venders see our car, or any car for that matter approaching, the start running and swarm the car with baskets and handfuls of various different items. The reach in and thrust food in and you yelling different prices and shouting out deals. As soon as you pick what you want they dump their bowl full of food into your lap and take your money. In our case it was mangos this day and Stephanie had to ride home with mangos at her feet because we didn’t have a bag to put them in. We never lack for funny moments at the “bump” veggie market.

...You have to improvise almost everything

2007-10-09T00:25:00.000-07:00

When you live in a rural area you learn to adapt to your surroundings and you start to do things a little differently. Because all of our supplies, medication, and even food comes from over 6 hours away, we have gotten pretty skilled at making something out of nothing. For example, I needed a spacer to help an old lady get the medicine she needed from an inhaler. Of course a spacer doesn’t even exist here so we had to get creative. Erica, a visiting nurse, made a spacer out of a water bottle. It worked beautifully and I have now since made many water bottle spacers to help asthmatic patients.
We have gotten really handy at using what is available to use, and making due with what is not. Specifically electricity. It is not always there, and seems to go out at the hottest part of the day when you would do anything for a little breeze from a fan! It’s not always fun having to adapt, but it is always comical to see what other people do to get by.
Our most recent improv was a paper cup. We ran out of cups and needed to give a patient some water to take some medicine. All we had was some extra charts laying around so Stephanie folded one into the shape of a cup and told her to drink fast!

Traffic Jam

2007-08-10T01:38:00.000-07:00

Now that we live in the bush there are a lot of things about the city that I miss. Traffic is not one of them! There are very few cars here, they eithr belong to the mission or the local farm. Other than that there is nothing on the roads except tons and tons of animals. You know you live in Africa when the only traffic jam you see is a herd of cows :)

Frustration

2007-07-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

There are many frustrations living in a different culture, I wouldn’t even be able to list them all. One of my major frustrations however is the money system. I am very used to, and like, being able to use an ATM card or write a cheque. You don’t have to have cash on you to be able to make a purchase. It does not work like that here. Everything is in cash; there is no such thing as an ATM card. Occasionally you will find a place that takes credit cards, but the incidence of identity theft is so high that it’s not worth using it. The largest bill is a 50,000k, which is approximately $13.00. This makes it very difficult to make large purchases. You have to carry around huge amounts of cash with you, even the guys have been forced to carry a bag to hold it all in. Depending on what I’m buying I might be able to write a cheque from our ACTION account. It sounds simple, and I thought it was until yesterday. I had to buy new tires for our vehicle and I was able to write a cheque. It wasn’t until they gave me the total and I had to write it out by hand that I realize dhow much I miss the money system in America. The number part was easy, but I had to write out three million seven hundred and fifty six thousand kwacha! I wrote small but it still didn’t fit in the space provided. There is nothing you can do about this crazy system but sigh and say TIA, This Is Africa ☺

What are Calming Drops?

2007-07-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things in Zambia that are very different from the U.S Finding medication is one of those things that take all day and tries your patience. At home you could just walk into a drug store ask the pharmacist and get what you need in 10 min. Here you might have to go to 4 or 5 different stores, explain in detail exactly what you need, and try not to pay your entire savings on it. If your not careful they will give you a box with the medicine name on it and it may even have the same colors as the box at home, but when you look at the ingredients its completely different than what you needed. Many places don’t have what you need or it cost too much. It has taken us the better part of a year to obtain inventory lists from multiple pharmacies to try and streamline our shopping. This is a picture of an interesting medication we found at one of the pharmacies.

Bean Extravaganza

2007-05-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

Beans really are the musical food. Just for fun for the past week, 2 meals a day, we have eaten beans and rice. It started out as a way to save money and then turned into a challenge to see if we could really do it. We have come up with many tasty recipes for beans and I'm not even sick of them yet. The crazy things you do when you get bored :)

More Beans Please!

Pesto Beans and Rice

Beans Again!

Bean Stir fry and rice

Spicy tomato beans and rice

Bean chili and rice

White beans and rice

Garbanzo beans and rice

Red beans and rice

Bugs Everywhere

2007-05-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have tons of bugs and occasionally they fly into our food. But recently we have had an enormous amount of bugs in our food when we open the package. Maggots in the eggs and potatoes, worms in the spices, and caterpillars in the green beans. It might be extra protein to just eat them along with the food, but I'm not the desperate of hungry.

Language Training

2006-12-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

Living in a different country brings on tons of new challenges and adventures. One of those is learning a new language. Here however there are over 70 languages spoken in Zambia. Lucky for us there are 4 main ones and they are very similar.
When you arrive on the field as a new missionary you enter into the world of orientation and language training for 2-3 months. In addition to learning how to drive, where the store is, and how to function on a basic level, your days are spent in intense sessions on culture, how the mission is run, why we are here etc. The afternoons are spent on language acquisition and the learning of Nyanja. Now everyone who knows me even a little knows that I have trouble with English, so learning another language is not my gift (ask any of my patients from East LA how my Spanish is).
I have been through the course twice and am still plucking away at it. Happily for me, I am not the only one that has decided to return this February for the third time to beginning Nyanja. Only 4 members of our team have "graduated" and feel comfortable enough to go out and continue learning on their own. Everyone will be with me back in the learners seat. Nyanja is different from English in that the sounds are ones that we don't make and therefore are not used to hearing. So not only is it difficult to speak, but it is also hard to understand others who are speaking to you. I feel like I'm back in 2nd grade on the short yellow bus. Except we don't have a bus. Maybe I'll just wear a pointed hat and sit in the corner :)