Saying Goodbye... For Now

It's my first full day back in the States after visiting South Africa, China, and Korea. I am struggling to keep my eyes open! Hopefully it won't take too long for me to adjust to this time zone...

Since leaving Zambia nearly a month ago I have been asked several times if I think I will be back to Africa someday, back to Kabwe. I can't of course say for sure, only God knows, but there are people in Kabwe who have taken such a hold on my heart that I can't imagine never seeing them again so even if it isn't to live, I do feel I will be back to visit someday.

I'm enrolled for classes at Spring Arbor University starting in September. I was hoping to find a more specialized area of study after working in the field but for now I'll be studying toward a degree in Global Studies. I may continue to post entries from time to time but as uneventful as school generally is, will probably be quite rare! :)

It's been an incredably significant year in my life and to bring it to a close is something I have been very reluctant to do (thus the overdue entry - sorry!). Even if I am no longer living in Kabwe or working with Hands at Work I know those experiences have become part of me and will continue to be for the months and years to come. As far as I'm concerned it's not over.

Thanks for reading and keeping me in your prayers!

...lean not on your own understanding

as i write this i keep thinking of David and what a gift it was from God that he is still alive and a healthy little boy. and it's a struggle now wondering why one is given while the other is taken, and wonder if there was something i could have done, should have done, for nathan like i did for david... in my previous post i pictured and told you about Naomi and her baby boy, Nathan. since that post he became very sick and in the blink of an eye was taken from this world. his burial was yesterday... it is a difficult reminder to me of the urgency to act as well as the deep need to look to Christ. it's too overwhelming without Him.

Forgotten Children

This last week I spent a couple of days with one of CBOs in the second largest shanty compound in all of southern Africa. While in Makululu, I took some time with our home based care to do home visits for orphans and vulnerable children, patients, as well as visiting our 2 community schools in the compound which together have over 1000 children registered. I’ve been racking my brain the last couple weeks of what to write you about because there is so much going on that I could talk about and I couldn’t decide. But after those 2 days in Makululu shanty compound I decided to go back to the beginning, why it is that I came to Zambia, showing you some photos and telling you a little about some of the homes I visited.
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In this home, these grandparents are looking after their 3 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild. Both parents of the children died of AIDS and now the grandfather is sick and suffers from severe back and chest pain. The eldest orphan, Elizabeth, is 14 years old and at the time I visited had gone to town trying to find a bit of work for food and school fees. The little boy being held by the grandmother in the photo is James, Elizabeth’s 2 year old son.
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Nearby Elizabeth’s home lives Naomi. Her parents also died of HIV/TB, leaving behind her and her 2 younger brothers, David & Joshua. Naomi is 16 years old and has been married for 2 years, pictured in her arms is her 11 month old baby boy. Her husband doesn’t work so Naomi makes door mats out of old rags and pieces of cloth and tries selling them to feed her family.
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5 year old Moleki is the beautiful little girl in the centre of the photo. Her mother passed away when she was only 6 months old and she doesn’t know where her father is. Her grandmother cares for her and her 6 other orphaned cousins. Moleki’s mother was one of our home based care patients so our volunteers have made sure to continue visiting Moleki since her mother’s death.
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Chanda Chilungu is the eldest in an orphan-headed household. She is 19 years old and has been caring for her 3 younger siblings since both their parents died of AIDS 6 years ago. Her brothers, Cornelius and Steven, are 17 and 15 years old and their sister Sandra is only 8. Education was clearly a priority for them as Chanda and her bothers worked hard doing work such as harvesting maize and doing laundry to be able to pay for their schooling. Chanda managed to go through grade 12 but in the end could not see her results because she was unable to pay the school fees. Cornelius also was kicked out of school for being unable to pay, but so far they have been able to keep Steven and Sandra in school for grade 7 and 4. I was personally impressed by Chanda’s strength and maturity, 2 years ago her parents’ family tried to take everything from them including their home but Chanda went to the government and fought to keep it. Their little home was meticulously neat and clean with a portrait of Jesus and an abstinence poster on the wall. Considering the 2 teenage mothers I’d just visited, I thought it said a lot about her. Like Moleki’s mother, Chanda’s parents were also our home based care patients and the volunteers have continued to look out for Chanda and her brothers and sisters the last 6 years, developing a close relationship that was apparent by the warmth with which she received us.
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This widow was very excited for our visit and despite my protest gave me some of her sweet potatoes that she had been selling in the market. Her house was falling apart and the 1 blanket she owned was worn and tattered. All her children have died, leaving her with many grandchildren to take care of on her own. She depends solely on God and the little she makes selling veggies in the market to provide for her and the children.
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There was a partially fenced area with a cluster of shacks inside housing 8 orphans. We were visiting 1 orphan in particular, Armon (the one in the yellow shorts). His frail old grandmother came in behind us with a pile of firewood on her head which she carefully set down on the ground near us. Armon has been sick almost constantly since his parents died, and like them the HBC volunteers fear he is also HIV+. They are working on convincing his grandmother to go with them to take Armon for VCT at the clinic as soon as possible.
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As we were leaving the courtyard, the volunteer I was with, Peggy, told me about one of the neighboring orphans who our home based care has ‘adopted’. Rebekah is only 6 years old and lives with her grandmother. Peggy told me that in February a big man had coaxed her into his hut by offering sweets (candy) and raped her. When he was done he pushed her out of his hut, and crying she went and told her grandmother. The man was taken to the police, but Rebekah’s grandmother said she didn’t want any money from him but that God would have His justice on the man.
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Mumabwato Chulembela was new to Makululu and 4 months pregnant with Mapusano when her husband died of HIV/TB. Mapusano is now a year and a half, and they live in a little mud hut with her other 4 children, all under the age of 14. Mumabwato is also HIV+ and constantly sick, but she has no support or means to get food since all her friends and family are far away. A straw mat is all they have to sleep on with 1 thin and torn blanket to share during the freezing cold nights, and finding food is a constant struggle for the family.

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Jennifer is 12 years old and lives with her grandmother in an old broken-down rented house after their own home was washed away during the rainy season. Jennifer’s younger brother and sister were taken by her father when their mother died, but when he went mad his family took the children away to another village. Jennifer’s grandmother is unable to provide for her needs, and the little they used to have has now been taken to pay for rent.

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For a little while Makululu was receiving funding from a European donor that helped them provide things like small food parcels, soap, and medicine to these families, but last year the funding stopped completely leaving the children vulnerable once again. Hands at Work is trying to lessen the dependence on large donors like this one by starting a $15 a child/month funding strategy to go towards providing these children with 3 Essential Services: a meal a day, basic health care through home visits, and access to education. It allows the average person to help, not just large corporations.

Please pray that people respond to the needs of the children in communities like Makululu and get involved soon, and if you know anyone who might be interested in helping please refer them to the Hands at Work website at http://www.handsatwork.org/.

The Suit

David got his new suit!! I think you can tell by his face what he thinks of it. :) Compliments of Kristy Lloyd, from the Lifesaver Team

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Bright Yellow Bicycles

The very first meeting Alisha & I had with the CBO managers when we arrived in Kabwe was introductory, get to know the managers and the work they do; learn their successes, learn their struggles. One of the main struggles they told us that they all faced was transportation for their home based care volunteers who often walk several km’s in a day to visit just 2 or 3 patients and be completely exhausted by the end. They expressed the need for bicycles so that the volunteers could visit more patients and still have energy for other responsibilities when they finished.

In the days following I did some research online to find any organizations in the bicycle business in Africa and came across a relatively new organization called Zambikes that had good quality parts shipped from the US and Taiwan and then assembled and sold out of Lusaka. I decided it was worth a shot to email the director in Lusaka and ask if they would consider donating to our volunteers, and while I was waiting for a reply I found out from the other missionaries in Kabwe that the director, Dustin, was actually a good friend and they had an outlet for Zambikes at Grace Centre in town. A few days later I received an enthusiastic email from Dustin saying they would love to provide our volunteers with Zambikes but that we would be a pioneer project for their donor partner Acirfa (Africa backwards :P) so it could take awhile before getting anything.

Over the last few months since that email, our relationship with Zambikes has proved to be so much more than just about bicycles. Dustin came to Kabwe to visit in January while Alisha was in Livingstone with her parents and on their way back to fly out of Lusaka they found all the lodges there were full, leaving them stranded without a place to stay. I talked to Dustin and he volunteered his place for them to stay the night. Later in February, Alisha was looking to buy 20 soccer balls for our community schools and Dustin connected us to an organization called Alive & Kicking that sells good quality soccer balls at a low price. When we went up to Lusaka to pick them up, he once again provided a place to stay free of charge.

In mid-March I received an email from Dustin telling us that a cycling group called Tour de’ Afrique had donated enough money for 40 Zambikes to a recipient of their choice – and they chose Hands at Work! The catch was that Tour de’ Afrique would be riding through Lusaka from Europe on their way to the southern tip of Africa and they wanted to have a donation ceremony with at least 10 of the volunteers present in Lusaka. Cost of transporting 10 volunteers from Kabwe to Lusaka and back? The exact amount of money we saved on soccer balls by going through Alive & Kicking! As if that wasn’t enough, a few days before the ceremony we got the news that Tour de’ Afrique was throwing in an extra 19 bicycles!

Above: Zambikes mechanic giving volunteers a crash course in bike maintenance, Dustin & I watching from the back

The donors from Tour de' Afrique with Hands at Work recipients at the Tour's campsite

On April 7 we piled into a minbus and traveled up to Lusaka for a nice relaxed ceremony and the following day back in Kabwe we were able to distribute the bicycles to our very excited volunteers. In the next few weeks Zambikes will be sending up a mechanic to provide bicycle maintenance training to the volunteers so that they’ll know how to take care of the bikes themselves. I am completely amazed by how God works and excited to see what He’ll do next!

The bicycles piled on a truck for the 2 hour drive north to Kabwe - once there, some volunteers looking over the sea of bright yellow bicycles

Hard working Alisha taking down serial numbers as the bikes are destributed to the thankful volunteers

Curse Me, I'm Rich

The Rich Young Man is a well known story and many people (including myself) tend to look down on him with shame for not being able to walk away from his riches. There are a couple things about it, though, that I had to stop and think about when I was reading it this morning. Like what qualifies someone as ‘rich’? Isn’t it all kind of relative? I may not have a Mercedes or a safe full of diamonds, but the amount I spend on internet each month is more than a lot of the world has to live on – and that’s just a few dollars. But how willing am I, how willing is the average random person in church, willing to sell their car, their tv, or washing machine to give to the poor, God’s children? Am I really any better than the rich young man? Jesus didn’t just tell him to give up his luxuries, he told him to give up everything, even the things considered basic necessities. It's being willing to sacrifice.

Are any of us really willing to give up everything we have if Jesus asked us to? Does he have to ask us straight out for us to do something? Are we sure he hasn’t already? What do we think he means when he gives the command, ‘Love your neighbor has yourself’? Is spending that money on a 2nd jacket for ourselves really loving our neighbor as ourselves when he has no jacket? I’m not saying this to judge anyone, I am a hypocrite and guilty of it myself. How many times have I ‘treated myself’ as if I deserve it when a single healthy meal is a luxury to many of the people around me? Do I have to have the Mercedes to be in the same category as the rich young man? I don’t think so. Actually he was better than me, cuz he did everything else right. Which means when Jesus says, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’, he’s talking about me. And I used to pity the people with yachts and multi-million dollar mansions.

This morning I was struck by one of the verses that I’m not sure I noticed before. The first part of verse 21 says, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.’ In our ugly selfishness he still looks at us in love... I cannot fathom that at all. How incredible humbling that when the disciples asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ he offered me that hope in verse 27 saying,

‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’

Catch a Breath... Keep Going

Bwafwano CS Feeding Program
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Makululu is the largest shanty compound in all of Zambia (possibly Southern Africa) with 60,000 people and lies about 5 km’s from our service centre. There are no government schools in Makululu and 2 of the 3 community schools in the area are Hands at Work schools. In January there was an outbreak of cholera in Makululu that caused the government to shut down all the schools and prohibit the people from gathering in large groups until further notice. Our largest school, Bwafwano CS, has 724 children and has a feeding program sponsored by a church in the US which of course was unable to run when the school was shut down so we were busy trying to figure out if there was anything we could do while waiting for the situation to end. Our school was informed last week that cholera was over and we could reopen our schools, but have heard from a different source since then that there have continued to be cholera deaths including a student at Kabwe High School who commuted from Makululu. What’s true and what’s rumor? Got me.

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Hanging out at empty school grounds

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I also spent a couple of days this week in another of our communities with Katondo Home Based Care and New Life Community School. Remember a few months ago how we almost moved into a house in a community but ended up not because of security and lead poisoning? Yeah, I stayed just a couple houses away from the one we had picked out. I really enjoyed my time with the Katondo volunteers and their families, going on home based care and playing with the children at the school.

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Roasting corn with the Mwila family in Katondo

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Child playing near New Life CS

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One of the patients I visited on HBC was an old man named Peter. He lived in a tiny windowless mud & thatch hut and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark inside. Peter was crippled and even though he hadn’t been able to go out in over 2 years he was not slow to express how thankful he was for what little he did have. He had no furniture and kept his few clothes in plastic bags beside a blanket on the ground that was his bed. After speaking with him for a little while he hesitantly expressed his desire for a wheelchair so that he could go out, but the volunteer I was with quickly told him are too expensive. Peter ashamedly nodded and said again how grateful he was for what he had. It was heartbreaking.

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Feel like another immigration office story? Last Friday we went to the Immigration HQ in Lusaka to see if our temporary permits had come in yet and the officer told us they had been approved but not processed yet. So yesterday morning we dropped by the Kabwe immigration office to get our passports stamped on the way to work (as we had been told) so that we would be allowed back into Zambia after conference in a couple of weeks. To our dismay we were told that no, they could not stamp our passports because the permits should have been in by now and that we had to go to the HQ in Lusaka. We told them that we had just been there the previous week and what had happened to which they replied there had been a whole 4 days since then that they could have been processed. Mind you, this is Friday morning, we’re leaving Sunday, and the HQ is closed on weekends! Needless to say Alisha & I were not happy, and the officer even had the nerve to tell us it was not their problem.

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This was 8:30 am and we knew the HQ would close at 12:30 so we quickly ran home to get organized, dropped by the service centre quickly to give the guys a list of things they would have to do without us, and were on a bus to Lusaka at 10:00. Arrived in Lusaka at 12:00 and after telling our taxi to step on it were at the Immigration HQ at 12:10. Our names were still not in the processed permit book so we went to talk to the guy at a desk who took us into another office and looked through a stack of files on the floor in which our permits turned out to be in. After going through a series of other desks to get processed, signed, & stamped we were out with our permits and back to the bus by 1:00 pm! Oddly I was granted the full 6 months I had applied for while Alisha was only granted 90 days and will have to apply for an extension in May. Bittersweet.

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We’re able to get on the 26 hour bus ride to South Africa tomorrow! Yay!

Jesus Rides a Tractor

Friday, February 20, 2009. Alisha and I climbed in our service centre vehicle with Lawrence and 2 other CBO members for the 42 km drive into the bush. We had been told before that Malokota village was not always accessible in the rainy season because you have to go through streams to get there and they are sometimes too full for a vehicle. It had rained the night before but we decided to attempt the trip anyway, and a few km into it Alisha and I realized that when they said you have to go ‘through’ streams they actually meant the road was the stream!

About an hour into the trip our luck ran out and we got stuck. No amount of pushing and stuffing branches under the tires would help.

Out in the middle of nowhere, we thought we were pretty much screwed… Alisha thought how if she was at home, her dad would have come and pulled her out with a tractor. And wouldn’t you know, her Father did bring along a tractor to rescue us! check out the guy's cap... :)

Finally we arrived at our destination. We went to Malokota village to visit one of our community schools and speak to the CBO, church, and village leaders about starting up home based care and encourage church involvement in the community. It’s quite amusing how it seems like the middle of nowhere and then people just seem to come out of the woodwork.

It ended up being a pretty good day. Got back home a bit muddier, sunburned, and very exhausted!

He's Going Home!

Yesterday David went home with his mother! He will still be coming to work with her everyday but can go home to be with his family in the evenings... it's been 3 weeks!

His feedings have cut back to every hour rather than every 20 or 30 min and we have started having his mother do all of the feedings so that he will start taking food from her. When he was critical it worked best taking him from her but if he's going home than she's going to have to get him to eat. Which means I am back to work for now, going over there less often.

I haven't been taking care of him for a few days now actually, I was sick at home for a few days last week with a chest infection and while i can't afford anymore sick days at work I don't want to risk passing it on to him. Can't wait to get completely well so i can go visit!

But starting now, my posts are going to start going back to being more about work again, which has been quite hectic. I will of course update with news about David when anything new happens.

Peek-a-Boo! I see you!

Zech, the 4 year missionary kid living where we're taking care of David, taught him how to play. :)

The tests showed David's hemoglobin levels are down even more than they were before and the doctor has no idea why. We've been giving him RB Tone twice a day to help with iron, and we're wondering if there isn't something more involved here like sickle cell anemia or something else that the Kabwe clinics are unable to test for.

One thing we found that causes anemia is lead poisioning, which is very likely here in Kabwe (4th Most Polluted) because of the lead mines.

Good news is, his fever is completely gone and he has no symptoms of being sick that we can detect other than the slightly yellowed eyes and white palms from anemia.

So a picture is worth a thousand words… how about 2?

2 weeks ago...

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...Now!

He has improved so much, each day he looks more and more like a normal, healthy little boy. He played his new harmonica for me (as well as any 2 year old!) and he’s got it in his mind that when he gets well he is going to get a green suit – man, does his face light up when he talks about it! We’ve decided we need to take up a collection to have one made for him. His mother was saying how if we had told her a month ago that he would look like this today, she wouldn’t have believed it…

The protein malnourishment is no longer the issue, all the swelling is gone, but we do think he has some sort of infection. He has continued having a fever and still has signs anemia so he’s going to the doctor again this morning for more tests, but considering he wasn’t expected to live to the end of the week we are all in pretty high spirits and thank God for each day we have with him. I’ll let you know how the visit goes! I know I don’t have to say it again, but I will… please pray!

It’s been a busy day and I’m looking forward to climbing into bed, but I just felt I should first update you on David since it’s been a couple days…

I know I can’t let appearances fool me, but David is looking much better. The swelling around his feet has dropped several cm’s and he was able to get his shoes on for the first time yesterday. When I walked into the yard he was outside with his mother and he tottered over and clutched my leg for me to pick him up… talk about melting my heart. Today he went the whole day without vomiting or diarrhea, and despite his whimper of ‘I have no power’ in Nianja, he had plenty of ‘power’ to try fighting away the chicken puree and soy mince. And while he still has a temperature it has stayed below 100 F rather than the constantly fluctuating temperatures of the last few days. And his weight has dropped a kg!

Trying not to get my hopes up too much, but days like these are definitely encouraging. I got a devious little grin out of him on one of his good days last week and I’m determined to get another one.

Thank you for all of your prayers, don’t let up!

He had a temperature of 105 F in the morning, we’ve been trying to give him fever reducer every 4 hours to get it down and keep it down now. He vomited in the morning, had diarrhea in the afternoon. He’s refusing to eat and makes himself gag but drinks like a fish. His pneumonia is getting worse and the antibiotics are not working. The edema in his face has gone up a little, his feet are so swollen they look like they’re going to burst. His heart, liver, and kidneys are all in poor shape. Everything we give him that’s supposed to be good for one thing ends up being bad for another. Bibi’s treated so many protein malnourished children, sometimes 30 or 40 at a time, and she says she would keep children like David in a separate room from the others. She doesn’t think he’s going to make it.

It’s been a week now since I started helping with David and it has taken all my energy, he’s constantly on my mind even when I’m not with him. I feel sorry for Alisha having to live with me, having a conversation for 5 or 10 minutes without an interruption about something else concerning David is nearly impossible with me. I am so tired.

It’s been a rough week for David, lots of ups and downs. We thought he was doing better when his appetite picked up, his fever lowered to below 100, and the swelling went down ½ a cm around his feet, and his diarrhea slowed. He had stopped vomiting and has been much more agreeable during feeding (even though he relieved his bladder on me a couple of times yesterday I chose to take that as meaning he was comfortable with me). His sores even looked like they were starting to heal yesterday. Our main worry was that his weight had plateaued instead of going down, but we were at least thankful that it had stopped going up.

But last night David’s temperature spiked to 104, so he was immediately put on malaria treatment and then taken to the doctor this morning where tests showed he has a chest infection. Despite our attempts at optimism, we know we still have a long way to go before he’s in the clear. His immune system is pretty much non-existent, and the doctor said it could take 2 or 3 months for him to start being ‘back to normal’.

Getting a smile out of David is pretty much impossible, but he was telling his auntie yesterday when we weren’t in the room that he doesn’t want to go home because the ‘muzungus’ (white people) give him milk and chicken. His 3rd birthday is July 16, we’ve already decided we’re throwing him a big party when he makes it. He has to make it.

Baby David

There is a baby here with protein malnourishment and his mother is unable to provide the care he needs on her own. Bibi is a retired missionary/nurse who the baby was brought to and she wanted to take him in right then but knew that he’s more than she can handle right now, so she sent the baby back with his mother until she figured out what to do. She had seen many children with it this severe who had died within 4 or 5 days.

She had told me this in passing conversation, that she didn’t even know if he would last the week, and it just stayed with me that this child needed someone to take responsibility and look out for him. It weighed heavily on my heart that I had something to offer, that I came here to help children like baby David and to avoid that direct involvement would be a contradiction to what I profess to be doing here. I spoke to Hands at Work and got permission to take time from the office to help with the baby.

I started on Sunday and there are 2 other women who have gotten involved as well so I will not be the only one watching out for him. At this point I have the afternoon to evening shift, so I can still be working in the office in the mornings and helping Alisha as much as I can. He is on day 6 now so he’s already outlived Bibi’s statistic, but yesterday he was taken to the clinic for tests and was found to be extremely anemic, with blood iron levels at half of what it should be. He also has the start of pneumonia with fluid around his lungs and a fever of about 101 F. His body is badly swollen and he has sores on his feet and above his right ear on which we regularly apply Neosporin. As the swelling goes down we want his weight to drop with it, but instead his weight has been steadily increasing. We hope it is because of all the food he’s getting now that he didn’t before and not that the water is going somewhere else in his body like his lungs. He has chronic diarrhea during the night which is good but we’re afraid he’s holding it in during the day.

We have to do feedings every 20 minutes, which can be tricky to regulate when it can take 10 minutes for him to eat an oz of yogurt or boiled egg yolk. The first few days we could barely get him to take more than 1/2 oz of anything, then we discovered that if we take him away from his mother to do the feedings he is much more cooperative and yesterday we were able to up the doses to 2 oz. Unfortunately the meds prescribed to him at the clinic gave him an upset stomach which caused him to lose several hours of feeding.

As I was holding him in my arms last night I realized just how much of a hold he has on my heart already. When it first came to me that maybe I should help I couldn’t help feeling a bit scared, that maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle the responsibility. When I was praying about it this is the verse I received:

John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

I am trying to hold onto this verse and remember that David’s life is in God’s hands and not mine. It doesn’t always feel that way. Please pray for him.

“Halleluiah! God has spared your life another year! He has a plan.” –Lawrence, Service Centre Coordinator

How did you start your year?

I spent New Years Day traveling north with some friends to Mulanga, a heavily populated compound fraught with poverty, HIV/AIDS, violence, and alcoholism. It is also home to scores of vulnerable children and orphans. We went there to visit James, one of our CBO managers who started a feeding program for 20 orphans as well as a home based care with volunteers visiting the sick in their homes. After they started home based care at the beginning of 2008, there was such a spiritual response in the community that one of the volunteers, Pastor Blessings, started a church in Mulanga that has grown to over 40 members.

While we were there we visited the little house that James rented in Mulanga for a widow to live in and feed the childen a meal each day. James and Ma Junior told us some of the individual stories, how there was a little girl who lived far on the other side of town but had walked all the way to the house and spent the previous 3 nights there with Ma Junior without anyone caring enough to come looking for her. They told us about another young girl whose father had just been killed on the nearby path a couple weeks earlier and they were trying to figure out how to include her in the already maxed out feeding program.

We had previously asked James to dream big. If he could do anything, money aside, what would it be? He was a bit hesitant, almost as if he was afraid saying it allowed would crush the dream. A school. He mentioned one of the girls in the feeding program who was 12 years old and had never been to school. He wants more for her future just as he does for his 18 month old daughter and the other children he cares for. He even found a plot of land near the feeding point that the town is willing to give him for free, but he had no way of taking the dream further.

In the 2 weeks since that visit, Hands at Work has secured sponsorship from a church in the US to support the work James is doing as well as for building a community school in Mulanga. He came to Kabwe on the 9th (my birthday :P) with George (Hands CEO) and he was still trying to process that it was actually going to happen! Stories like these are what make me excited, I don’t know about you…

Now another fun (aka frustrating) Zambian story about visas! The work visa that Alisha and I have expires on Tuesday the 20th and when we went to the immigration office on Wednesday to get temporary permits we were told that we needed to apply for those at the headquarters in Lusaka. Luckily Alisha was heading there on Thursday anyway with her parents, so she took my paperwork and all but when she got there in the afternoon they told her they only take payment in the mornings. So she went the next morning. Then they told her no, they don’t take cash, they need a check. Problem: we’re not allowed to open bank accounts with work visas! Figure that one out. Anyways, a few hours later she somehow managed to get a bank check (still waiting to hear that story) and they told her that they can’t do anything now until Tuesday! Being that it’s the last day of our visa, it had better go through or we could be facing fines for overstaying our visa… oh yes, and it is left up to the discretion of the officer how long the permit lasts, he could say 10 days and then we’d have to pay again or he could give us the full 6 months. And these permits are not cheap…

Another challenge Alisha and I are facing is that Zambian Airways recently went under and that’s who our return flight is with. Some friends of ours were trying to get back here from Tanzania when it happened and are now out $1400 after having to purchase new tickets with another airline. Zambian Airways has taken their phones off the hook and locked their doors, no chance of working with them to get reimbursed. We are still trying to see if we can get anything back through MasterCard, but your prayer and support would be greatly appreciated!