Oh sure, that could be anyone. Whose life isn't frantic these days?

"Frantic and a complete lack of peace. Somehow it's connected to allergies. This person may not have even put these two together yet."

How could she possibly know that? I'd been trying to put up such a brave front - showing the world I had it all together. I was trying to show I knew what I was doing, full of confidence. Inside, I was falling apart. And physically, I was in more pain that I could remember being in for a very long time - maybe ever. So much pain. Some days my eyes were hot with tears that I was trying to hide. The pain on the outside matched the intensity of the pain on the inside. It had been getting progressively worse for weeks.

"Frantic....allergies."

How could she know? I know she has the gift of knowledge, but still. How could she know that?

I tried to become invisible in my chair. No one could know. People I knew were in the room. What would they think? Would they feel sorry for me in my weakness? Would they mock me for it? Believe it was real?

"Come forward. Let us pray for you. Let us pray for peace in your heart and healing in your body."

I've requested prayer for healing for my body more times than I can count. What was the use? How would this be any different? I willed myself to be glued into my chair.

"Come forward. If you have pain we want to pray for you."

My body left the chair. I felt compelled. It certainly wasn't of my own volition.

"How can we pray for you?" her husband asked.

I was on my way home and peeved that I had to make yet another stop. Why couldn't there be fast food drive-thrus like the "civilized" country I had come from? As I gathered my purse, cell phone, and list, Kennedy approached my car. I had already shooed away the men selling socket wrenches, DVDs and talk time. I didn't have time to deal with this kid too. I'd always managed to dodge him before. This time though, he was there before I even got out of the car.

"Madam, ground nuts?" he asked in a nearly inaudible voice.

"No, I don't want any."

"Only 5000, madam." I did the math in my head. That was about a buck for what looked like 3-4 pounds of peanuts.

"No, I don't want any," I repeated a bit more sternly.

"Madam. Please." He said it with such a sad, pathetic look on his face.

"No, I'm allergic to ground nuts." That wasn't really true. Just intolerant, not allergic. And I don't really like them anyway. Thinking I was safe, I stormed off into the Castle Supermarket.

It was nearly dark when I reemerged loaded down with groceries. In a country where the average worker earns 10,000 ZMK per day, I'm sure I had just spent 100,000 ZMK ($20) without a second thought.

I had already reversed my car out of the parking space when he showed up at my open window.

"Please, madam, I need money to buy notebooks for school."

Do not plug a 110V surge protector into a 220V outlet.

It explodes.

Everything else attached to that outlet shuts down and the fuse requires replacing.

Feel free to pray for me.

Women are pretty much the glue that hold family and society together in much of Africa. The same seemed to be true for the Mwaanga family. Andrew has a job as a security guard at the Ubuntu school campus. He often has to work nights. During the day, as most men here do, he goes out visiting. Africans are very relational people. Much of their time is spent maintaining relationships with family and friends.

Their church has been unable to afford a roof yet. So they've got this little shelter made of branches which covers the first few pews in the church. However, in a pouring down rain, that wouldn't be enough to keep everyone dry. So we ended up in a very small building next door. There were an awful lot of us crammed into that tiny space. As soon as the service was over, it stopped raining.

We walked back home and Grace and the girls started fixing lunch. All of the sudden, I had the most terrible homesickness. I wasn't even sure why. The entire family was being extremely nice to me. At first it was just a few tears here and there that I could surreptitiously wipe away. After a while, the youngest girl noticed some of the tears. I went inside and wiped them away and tried to pull myself together. But really, it just kept getting worse. I continued to try to talk myself out of the homesickness. It didn't work.

This family certainly has found a place in my heart and I will have many memories of them to treasure! I look forward to visiting them again.

Macha Family Stay

If you are unable to simply link to it, copy and paste the following url in your address bar:
http://picasaweb.google.com/africagabi/MachaFamilyStay#

I'll be living with a Zambian family for a week. My understanding is that they have a house made of mud bricks and a proper tin roof. I am brining along a mosquito net and candles. The family is the brother and sister-in-law of Esther, the Zambian helper at the guest house. If they are even half as nice as she is, I'll be just fine.

The hope is that I will gain a little understanding of what life is like for the Zambians and learn some of their culture.

Obviously, I won't be taking my computer and won't be on for the entire week. Right now, the plan is that I will ride out with Gertjan who lives and works there and fly back on a tentatively scheduled flight next Thursday. If the flight gets cancelled, I will stay there longer or find another way back into town. :-)

See you later!! I'm sure I'll have stories to tell.

I had forgotten to take the copies of my passport and work permit with me. So that meant we would have to go next door to make the copies. (It is actually not uncommon for businesses to request that you bring the copies along.) According to the instructions I'd received, I was to bring two copies of each document with me. I assumed this meant the face pages.

The copier next door was broken. Oh dear. Now what? Lesson one: Always make the copies at our office at the Farm. The gatekeeper at the NRC building wouldn't even let us in without the copies. So we walked back toward the car. I noticed another official building and decided to take a chance. So talked to the first person who looked like she worked there and asked if they had a copier we could use to get this done.

She was very pleasant and took us upstairs to her office where she had a small copier sitting right on her desk. Then she disappeared with my passport and work permit. She was gone nearly 20 mintues. I had no idea what she could possibly be doing, but Ernst told me not to worry. She wouldn't do anything malicious with my docs.

When she finally came back, she had had each of the 4 copies certified - far more than we needed or had asked for! Then she told us they were 11,000K each! That's over $2 a copy. We paid her and thanked her profusely and went on back to the NRC.

Today, Ernst and Susi were helping me get things done in town. Susi waited outside with a good book while Ernst and I went in to start the process. We were ushered into an office where a woman sat behind a desk looking over the tops of her glasses. It was her job to determine whether each applicant had brought the appropriate paperwork and copies.

I had not.

Roads are pretty poorly marked here in Lusaka and the names on the signs don't always correspond with the names on the map. In addition to never having been there, Mary-Ann was having to navigate through the pouring rain and crazy traffic. Diane was giving directions which had been given to her by a friend. Unfortunately, her friend missed a step or two. Yay! An adventure!!

We finally found it anyway and pulled into a very muddy parking lot. We were greeted by a gaggle of young boys (12-18 years old) who all wanted to carry our bags for us. Of course, they expected to be paid for that as well. ;-) Thankfully, we already knew to expect them and to simply accept one of them to carry bags since they would follow us around anyway. A 13-year-old named Gift (not an uncommon name in Africa) came with me.

The market turned out to be covered. The wall around it was about 6 feet high and the ceilings were about 25-30 feet high. That was nice since it had been raining until about the time we arrived. It was a huge place and was PACKED with people selling their produce. There were about 8 -10 rows of vendors. Many of them had similar wares: mangos, avocados, green beans, corn, carrots, onions, potatoes, fresh herbs (including cilantro - called coriander here) and a variety of other things. I saw lots of okra too. :-( There were also a number of folks selling dried goods such as a variety of beans and spices (fennel, cumin, lentils, etc).

I walked up and down the aisles finding things I will eventually buy. Since I'm still living in the guest house at the moment, I didn't want to fill up their fridge with my stuff, so I didn't buy a whole lot today. However, I definitely plan on going back. I'll have to find a way to work it into my Tuesday schedule.

Today as Guillermo and I were running around accomplishing things in town, we stopped at Curry in a Hurry at the Manda Hill Mall for lunch. So it wasn't exactly in a hurry, but it was certainly worth the wait! Yum! They had quite the extensive menu of fabulous Indian food to select from and both Guillermo and I were very pleased with our choices, including the garlic naan.

So the next time you are in Lusaka ;-) I'll take you to Curry in a Hurry, or the Irish Pub right nearby. You decide.

Mary-Ann and I made a list and schedule to complete all the things that I need to do/know fairly quickly. Her husband Guillermo got volunteered to drive me around Lusaka on Monday to help me get all of these things done. We had seven things on our list that we really wanted to accomplish as well as a list of eight things on a list of things to do as time permitted. Additionally, we were dropping off Guillermo's smaller truck at the mechanic's before we got under way.

As we were driving into town, I prayed with Guillermo that we would be able to accomplish everything on our list for the day as God would allow. So off we went expecting miracles!

We stopped at the ATM to load up on some more cash (total cash society here), then checked out the private clinic that most of the FMZ members use for general medical care. I was looking for a specific store that sells my vitamins and supplements. We found it, but didn't stop. I'll go back another time.

Then we made our way to the Ministry of Immigration where we were looking for my completed/ approved work permit. We had stopped by three weeks earlier, but it wasn't completed. Today we found the record of it in the book, but we didn't have the receipt with us. Can't do anything there without the date-stamped receipt. But Guillermo had an idea. We went to see the man who had started the processing of my application. It seems that he had been promoted. We explained to him that we'd forgotten the receipt, but had the receipt number with us. So he wrote down the receipt number, date submitted, and the date and approval number for the completed permit on a piece of scrap paper. Then he handed it to Guillermo and wished us a nice day. Miracle #1!!
We took our newly minted "receipt" to the desk where you pick up the permits. There were two guys there: one who takes your receipt and pulls the permit and one who watches you sign it and then seals it. G had been building a relationship with the second man which is key in this culture. So after a little confusion about the receipt and me playing up the "stupid-American-girl=please-have-pity-on-me" bit, the first man found my permit and gave it to the second man.