Week 7: Hospice, Muchipapa, and Chabbobboma

This week on Monday I went to Hospice. My group was supposed to go out on home visits with Kara Counseling services but when we arrived to go, they only had room for two of us. We decided that it wouldn't be good for just two to go if a leader couldn't go to so we just went back to Martin Hospice and worked there for the day. We helped clean the rooms and then had tea. After tea the other girls went with one of the nurses to the hospital to get some medications and i stayed back to play with the children at the house behind. There were only two patients at the hospice that day so there was not much to do for them. I went back to help with the children and the teacher was teaching them about the alphabet. After she finished she told me i was in charge and could do with them whatever i wanted. I taught them the song Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes. Then we played "Lion and Zebras" for a little bit but instead of the lion getting the zebras everyone was just chasing each other. We finally ended up playing "Land Rover, Land Rover" which is red rover in the US. they really enjoyed it though and loved making me run back and forth! I played that with them until their lunch time and the other girls came back from the hospital and played for a while too. We left around 1 to go back to the guest house for our lunch. I was a little disappointed about not going on the home visits but then i learned that Mrs. Sianchapa who was with us for the day was not feeling well at all and it would have been a very long and hard day for her had we gone on the visits. So i was glad that God worked things out the way he did.

Tuesday i was to go to Dr. Jain's, but i was not feeling the best with a sore throat and headache and stayed back at the house for the day. I rested some and did get quite a bit of homework done so it was a productive day.

Wednesday we had WHIZ staff devotions in the morning and then had class after that. After lunch we had time to work on homework and for two hours from 3-5 we had some women from the WHIZ staff come and talk to us about marriage and family here in Zambia.

Thursday morning we all went to Muchipapa Trust with Rebecca, a staff member at WHIZ. She was doing a nutrition education session with the caregivers there. It was really good time to interact and share with the caregivers there and also learn from them. After the education there was a meal provided for each of the orphan or vulnerable children that the caregivers care for. Before the meal was ready i was just standing in between some of our other girls and one small boy just came right up to me and put his arms out. I picked him up and held him for quite awhile while we waited for the food to be ready. He was so sweet and even though he didn't say a word to me that was okay. When the food was ready we watched them all eat and then before we left i asked one of the woman if i could carry her baby on my back. So she helped me tie the baby on. But he didn't like it for very long and started squirming so i let him down. But it was nice to hold him for a little bit.

Friday was our trip to Chabbobboma banana plantation which is the livelihood project for Chabbobboma trust. We left early around 6:30. It took us about 2 and a half hours to get there. The roads were very interesting and at one point when we turned off the dirt road i couldn't see a road that we were turning on. It just looked like a dry riverbed but we drove on it down to the plantation. When we got there all the woman came out and greeted us with singing and handshakes underneath this huge old tree. Then we had a tour of the plantation and saw quite a few bananas on the trees. After we walked through the plantation we drove over to the harbor at Lake Cariba which was just about 10 mins away. We spent a little time there and got lots of pictures before we went back over to the plantation and had our lunch underneath the big tree. We had chicken, greens, and a big lump of nshima for lunch. I could not eat it all but the Zambians had more nshima than i did and they ate it all. We left after lunch and traveled back home. We got back around 4:30. It was a really fun day and a nice chance to get out and see some different things.

Saturday i got up at 10 as we had a free day to do whatever we wanted. I worked on some homework during the day and then after dinner we had a Halloween party for our activity night. If you remember from a previous post i talked about how Fred, one of the Zambian men who work here on the WHIZ compound, had killed the turkey that had been roaming around for a couple days. So Lauren had a good idea to dress up as Fred and the turkey. I think it turned out really well. I was Fred and Lauren was the turkey. We found feathers, construction paper, and watercolor paints in our supply closet to use for our costumes. I wore a black shirt, red hat and blue pants because that's what Fred usually wears. Lauren painted my face black before we went over and we made a knife out of construction paper and put some red paint on the edge of it. Everyone else had really good costumes too. I put a few pictures of them in the album below. We got a big group picture of all of us too at the end of the evening.

Sunday was church in the morning and i had Chabota come and sit with me for most of the service after she saw me during the offering and came to sit with me. In the afternoon i worked on my journals for Transcultural and did some other homework. This week was a pretty good one.

I have lots of pictures from this week so please enjoy them!

Week 7 Photos