Africa #1

Well I have landed in Zambia and so far I’m loving it. Below is an itemized listing of notable happenings.

Transatlantic Flight: I landed in Toronto at 12:30 and wasn’t able to drop my luggage off until 3:30, all 95 lbs of it, then the plane was delayed for an hour so I didn’t leave until 10:30. 10 hours in an airport is too long. I met this Dr. of Sociology (sp?) who did her thesis on the effects of Christianity (Catholicism being the biggest percentage) on the cast system in southern India. Really interesting stuff. Then on the North Atlantic flight I sat beside a Arab lady who thought I was 16 (!?!) and mothered me the whole time, including tucking an extra blanket around me when she thought I was sleeping. In London Judi picked me up and I was able to catch 4 hours of sleep in a REAL bed, as at this point I was beyond tired. London to Africa: apparently Africans have a different view of what personal space is. I think my body is permanently tilted to the right from leaning away from the man sitting beside me!

The bush flight: I was looking forward to seeing all of this terrain from the air, and the first 15 minutes were beautiful but then I fell asleep and didn’t wake up till we landed. One interesting difference in the landscape: In North America the roads are laid out in a definite grid system, here the roads are trails leading directly to a specific place. From the air this looks like a spider web.

Roads: had my first ‘ride in the back of a truck’. OUCH- talk about developing muscles by hanging on for dear life.

Meeting (Church): The singing is awesome! I will take a video of a sampling at some point because it has to be heard to be believed. Everything was in Lunda though so I didn’t understand much. I was trying to follow along with the singing using the Lunda hymnal and WOW some of the words are atrociously long!!!

Bugs, Snakes and Other Things: Ants are everywhere. No wonder they eat them! There’s this one type of ant that if you step in there marching line they scurrying up you and when they reach your waist they all chomp down on your skin, and they won’t let go. So watch for lines of ants. There are various types of snakes that just can do different wonderfully amazing feats one being (this one scares me) striking a man’s face. So going from completely horizontal on the ground to having 5 feet of it’s length completely vertical. There is this spider called a ‘flatty’ because, yes you guessed it, it’s flat. And big. And ugly. But apparently it’s completely harmless. I’m starting to not mind all the bugs etc. as long as I know they won’t hurt me. As to the mosquitos? Home is way, way worse. The only thing being that the ones here could be malaria carriers. Oh well, I know a lot of you are praying for me so if you’re looking for specifics the above paragraph holds many!!

Work: Kid’s don’t start arriving until Tuesday so everyone is still taking it easy. Tomorrow I think I’m helping Leah with classroom prep, but we’ll find out what tomorrow brings when tomorrow comes!!

Weather and Flora: It’s usually 20 degrees celcius and there are always clouds somewhere in the sky, the air is really heavy with moisture, but ahhh the sun is hot and nice when it decides to shine! There are some mango trees and a banana grove NEAR MY HOUSE! sweet eh?!?! The bananas are weird though- kinda midget bananas.

FYI: the time here is 8 hours ahead of prarie time.

Signing off for now- Angelina