Last night’s guest dinner went very well. We had about 7 guests, and two of them brought their children. There was a 3 year old boy and a 4 year old girl. All of the mothers here who have been missing their children really enjoyed spending time with these kids. The power was out for the first half of the dinner, so we ate by candlelight again. The power returned half way through the meal.
Also last night, Lindsay and I visited the teacher’s house. He had a small brick/concrete house with a small living room, a kitchen the size of a closet, and 3 bedrooms. He has 3 children, but he has taken in SIX other children who are orphaned or not cared for. We were amazed at how much he had obviously given to others.
As Lindsay and I were walking back to the mission house, we saw a man get hit by and partially run over by a semi-truck that was going way too fast. Everyone who had been standing around the road and market place created commotion as everyone tried to help the man. We had quite an adrenaline rush as we sprinted the remaining 100 yards to the mission house to get one of our doctors or nurses to come help the man. But by the time we came back out to the road, the people had already thrown the man into a car and were taking him down the road to the hospital. The man who had been driving the semi had stopped his truck and gotten out and ran somewhere. John explained to me that he probably was running to the police because in these types of countries, the community will kill someone who hits a person with his vehicle. So that man was running to the police for safety before the community could catch him. Our doctors and nurses have been checking in on the man who was hit throughout the night and this morning, and they tell me that they expect him to make a full recovery.
Now that the pipes are connected, there has been a brick and concrete box built around the junction to protect it. John, Larry, and Bob ran some tests on the water from the well we are using and found that it is contaminated. They asked the city water maintenance what they should do about cleaning the water in the well, and the city told them they should abandon the well. But we believe there may be some bad history between the hospital and the city water maintenance because the hospital refused to use the city water’s services. We are going to attempt to clean the well so that all this work we have done won’t be wasted.
Today, Lindsay is running the mission house. She is having a great time cooking for us and cleaning the house. She was very excited to feed us lunch, which consisted of sloppy joes and baked beans. She led the prayer, and at the end added in, “And please Lord, don’t let my food kill them,” which didn’t make us feel all that confident. But the food turned out to be very good and we are enjoying her work.
Lori, Tehanne, and Kari took baby hats around the maternity ward this morning. The hats had bunny ears sewed on top. And Dr. Kari and Barb are doing more surgeries today.
I had my last day of teaching today. At the end of class I talked with the students about America again and showed them some pictures that I brought on my computer. I’m always entertained by their reactions to things like pictures of my brother with red hair, my fiancé, and the pictures of snow. They said my brother was very handsome (hint hint, Luke) and wanted to see lots of pictures of my fiancé and told me “I know how to choose them”. I said my good-byes to all the students and the teachers I have been working with. It was bittersweet to be finished with my teaching project. I feel very accomplished that I can now say that I taught in a Zambian school for a week!
It is currently lunchtime on Thursday, so we have one and a half more days of work. We are all sad to leave but very excited to get home. I will be writing again tomorrow, God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment