Saturday

     Today was our Safari! Simply put: It was amazing! Describing it in a blog post won’t do it justice, so I will save most of the descriptive details for us to share with our families when we get home. We got hundreds of pictures. We saw multiple types of colorful birds, hippos, zebras, giraffes, water buffalo, alligators, elephants, warthogs, baboons, kudu, impalas, iguanas, sable antelopes, mongoose, and…. Lions!! Lions are the most rare animals to see on their safaris because they tend to stay far away from the paths and sleep during the day. But we had an excellent tour guide! We were sitting in the middle of a group of giraffes when our tour guide noticed the giraffes were looking at something far away in the bushes and started moving in the other direction. He told us they must be looking at “some cats”, so we did a little off-roading through bushes and trees! It was very exciting! After about ten minutes we spotted the two lions lying underneath a tree. We pulled our big jeep right up next to them – we were about 10 yards away! It was the highlight of the day. When we rejoined the other groups in jeeps, the other tour guides did not believe our tour guide that we had found lions until we showed them the pictures. The second best part of the safari was when we got to watch two male elephants spare for about 30 full minutes! We got lots of video of that. That was also a rare occurrence.  I will save the rest of the details for us to share in person.

            Once again, it is getting late here in Zambia. Tomorrow is Sunday, so I should have time to write a more comprehensive post. I apologize for how brief my last two posts have been. We have been very busy and the Internet has been unreliable. Good night from Zambia!

Day Two

Days 2

Note: I wrote this post last night, but Dr. Dan took the computer, before I could post it, to the hospital so some patients could watch a movie about Christ in Tonga (their native language). I am sorry I have not been able to post in the last couple days!

It is Friday evening already! We can hardly believe it. I apologize for not posting yesterday; we lost power for most of the evening. Apparently the power grid in Zambia is a little screwy, because they purposely cut off power sometimes to distribute it somewhere else. When the power went out yesterday evening, Dr. Kari, Barb, Lori, Kari and the African assistants were in surgery but luckily the hospital has a generator. The power-outage turned out to be an awesome experience because it made us have an amazing feast by candlelight (from a giant candelabrum!). And, we went outside for a bit and saw the most amazing stars most of us have ever seen. There were not lights for miles, making the stars extremely bright and multiple! It was truly beautiful.

In our other activities yesterday, the nurses (Lori and Kari) made morning rounds like they did the first day. They spent time in both the Men’s and Women’s wards. They also said that they are trying to be good influences on the Zambian nurses on getting lab work done. The work ethic in Zambia is very different. This is partly because the government pays all the hospital employees and they are paid whether they come to work or not. So many people who are employed do not show up for months at a time, and the workers who do come to work are not very motivated. Lori and Kari are helping motivate these workers.

Dr. Kari and Barb did many surgeries yesterday. They work together the entire time because Barb provides the anesthesia while Kari operates. They have mostly performed hysterectomies. They work with the Zambian hospital employees on all of these surgeries.

Bob spend yesterday morning visiting the patients in the hospital with a translator, Ana. He said that he really enjoyed praying and talking with the patients. He got to go to every ward, which is unusually because men are usually not allowed in the maternity ward.

Tehanne and Lindsay spent the day trying to organize the pharmacy at the hospital. The hospital is not very organized, so often times the staff will try to treat various things without the best materials even when they have the materials because they do not know where to find them.

Larry and John spent the day figuring out how to hook up the plumbing to the water tank. It was difficult because Dennis, the maintenance man they were working with, left unexpectantly for Livingstone for the day. But they were able to get some planning done and Larry spent some time preparing a program they are going to present to the Zambian church about finances.

I went over to the school in the morning and the assistant headmaster set me up with the head science teacher. They decided to have me teach 9^th grade science once a day for a whole week! I am pretty excited about this! They set me up with a textbook and let me select a section to teach. So I took the text home and made a lesson plan for most of the day.

It is getting late, so I am going to write another post soon on our activities from Friday. Everyone is doing well; we have not had any sickness or injury. We are continuing to pray for everyone at home. God bless!

Day One

Today has been a great day, if only because we got to wake up in beds this morning! We began the day with breakfast, which consisted of milk and cereal, toast and jam, and apples and oranges. We then went over to the chapel in the hospital at 8:00 for morning chapel service. The service was very touching because we are thousands of miles from home, yet we can all connect on our universal faith. After singing a few hymns and hearing a short sermon, our group split up into our own specialized activities.

            Barb spent part of the day sorting through all the medical supplies we brought with us. She has concluded that we brought 800lbs of medical supplies! In Zambia, it is tradition that women do the heavy carrying of things. So when Barb and Tehanne worked with some of the Zambian men to carry the supplies down to the hospital, they were expected to carry the supplies themselves.  An interesting cultural difference.

            Tehanne and Lindsay went on an outreach with some of the hospital staff. This means that they drove out to a small village to give medical care to mothers and infants. They gave vaccines, weighed the infants, and helped the mothers with whatever they needed. Lindsay said that the highlight was when she got to use an authentic Zambian latrine, which consisted of a hole in the ground and some brinks around it. She said that people are supposed to stand, “But I squatted, because I’m a lady.” We all had a good laugh at that. Tehanne said that her favorite part was when she got to just sit and watch the outreach and saw a little girl playing. She said the girl was just twirling around in her skirt and that she saw how similar we all are. She said that she loved seeing how close the families were, and that even children as young as 5 or 6 would help carry the infants on their backs.

            Dr. Kari actually missed chapel because she went with Dr. Dan (one of our hosts) to meet the Health Officer as a representative of our group. Once she returned, she was able to see patients. Mostly notably, she saw a patient who has a potentially cancerous tumor in her uterus. This patient has 10 children and is in her mid-late forty’s, so Kari and the other doctors have concluded that a hysterectomy would be the best option to save this woman’s life. However, there is clearly a very big cultural difference because this woman needs permission from both her husband and her village’s elders in order to have this procedure.  As Americans we are so unaccustomed to this kind of authority and reliance. The woman’s husband has left to go seek the permission of their elders. The operation is delayed at best, or possibly canceled.

            Lori, as one of our nurses, spent the day working in the hospital. She wanted me to share about the extreme differences in the cultures and how we differ in our medical treatments in America.  In Zambia, the medical care is extremely simple compared to in the U.S. Only the worst patients get O2 here, and it is usually a sign that the patient is doing poorly. She was very interested in how the patients’ families are expected to do the general care – they bring their own blankets, get them food, etc. She was very amazed by these differences.

            Kari, as our other nurse, had similar activities as Lori. She made morning rounds with the physician. She was also interested in how they have mostly the same types of diseases and problems as we have in American hospitals, yet they treat things so differently. She said that she really liked the simplicity of it and is really enjoying her work.

            I spent the morning at the local primary school. I met with the assistant headmaster and he gave me a tour of the school. The school holds grades 1-9, and each grade has three classrooms. The students all wore uniforms, and the little children were very amused with me (I assume because of my white skin). Whenever the assistant headmaster would enter a classroom, the students would stand and say in unison, “Good morning sir, how are you today?” It was very impressive! After my tour, the assistant headmaster told me that he would have something for me to help with starting tomorrow morning. He had one of the students escort me back to the mission house, and I joined the rest of the men in today’s work.

            Jonathan, Larry, Bob, and I spent the day working on assessing the hospital’s water supply. John’s specialty in water maintenance has been extreme useful and he has been leading the way. The hospital has been having problems with their water supply because new houses have been built nearby that have been using their water supply and they are not sure how the water is all being used so fast.  We have measured the rate each of the three pumps in the wells can pump water. Only one well can be used at a time, so it could be extremely valuable if we could find one well that is better than the others. On a humorous note, I’ll mention that John broke the mission house gardener’s bucket after tossing it down from a 3-story tall water tower (we were half entertained and half embarrassed, so I taunted him by telling him the story would go in the blog). The two wells that are currently hooked up to the water tanks are producing 6 GPM (gallons per minute) and 11 GPM. We discovered that the third well, which is not hooked up to the tanks, is producing 35 GPM. John says that this third well has potential to produce up to 140 GPM! Because of this, our new goal is to supply the plumbing for this third pump to be connected to the hospital. This would give the hospital three times as much water each day! If the hospital someday got a better motor and bigger pipes, they could increase their water supply to the well’s full potential.  This would be extremely valuable. We are now in the process of finding a way to purchase the plumbing pieces we need.

           

            Thank you to everyone for your prayers! Again, if you have any questions on our activities please post them. Or if you would like me to focus more on something in my posts let me know. We all send love to our family and friends at home. God bless!

Hello from Zimba, Zambia!

     After over 20 hours on airplanes, 14 hours of layover, 2 red-eye flights in a row, and a drive from Livingstone to Zimba, we have arrived! The jouney was mostly uneventful, so praise God. Everyone has been telling me to make sure I mention how excited we are: We are excited!! The mission house is very nice and the people here have been very friendly.  We just arrived about an hour ago, so there is not much to update on except to let our families at home know that we have all arrived safely. It is currently 4:00pm on Tuesday local time. I will hopefully have the chance to post a few of our pictures at some point. Thank you for your thoughts and prayer!

Helpful Hint: Our local time is 6 hours ahead of Michigan time. For the rest of the blog posts, I will only refer to the time as it is here in Zambia.

Hello from London!

Note: This post was written Monday evening in London. There was no internet access, so I am just now posting it.

Hello from London! Our travels so far have been relatively smooth.  We had a huge blessing as soon as we got to O’Hare airport when Lori happened to mention in passing to the baggage check-in clerk that we are going on a mission trip, which resulted in the airline refunding the charge for our second bags of medical supplies. This saved us a total of $600! After some delay in Chicago due to weather and mechanical problems, we arrived in London this morning about 10:00am local time (5:00am Michigan time). 

None of us got much sleep, but it really seems that the Lord has been filling us with energy as we have been traveling around London today. We have seen so many amazing buildings and places today! We took a train and the London ‘subway’ and ended up in Westminster. We saw and took pictures in front of Big Ben and the British Parliament. We then headed over to Westminster Abbey, where some of us took an audio tour inside. Unfortunately pictures were prohibited, so I will not be able to upload pictures from inside the church. After seeing the Abbey, we walked through the park (and saw some pretty exotic birds on the way) to Buckingham Palace. We weren’t able to spend quite as much time in front of the Palace as we would have liked because the weather was starting to look bad, so we soon started trying to find our way back to the subway.

Once we found the subway entrance, we had a couple hours to spare. We sat down to eat at an old fashioned pub where more than half of us had some AMAZING fish and chips. They were great! After a nice early dinner, we crammed into the subway (during rush hour) and made our way back to the airport. We are now relaxing after a very tiring day and we are waiting for our gate to open. It has been a great day!

We are praying for all of those at home who have dealt with the storms and tornadoes in the last 24 hours. I will hopefully be able to post again tomorrow evening (tomorrow afternoon for Michigan time) from the mission house in Zambia. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments! Any one of us can respond to the questions so don’t hold back! I am sure that we all would really appreciate that chance to communicate with our loved ones at home. God bless!

Where We're Going

Hello family and friends! This blog is being designed as a way for the team going to Zambia this June to post updates on our activities while we are out of touch via cell phones. My name is R.J., I am the unofficial team 'blogger', so I will probably be writing most of these posts. Other people may write occasionally and I hope to have a post at least once every couple days (depending on reliability of our internet connection while in Zambia).

To begin, I would like to show where we will be going. Zambia is a land-locked country in southern Africa.

 Our flight plans include a 12-hour layover in London, and then we will be flying into Livingstone (southern boarder of Zambia).

The town our mission house is located in is called Zimba. It is located approximately 40 miles north-east of Livingstone. The main road between Livingstone and Lusaka runs directly through the middle of Zimba.

On our trip, we will also be seeing Victoria Falls. It is only about 10 miles from our airport in Livingstone.