Camping, days 1 & 2: Weekend in Chipata, Zambia (and visit to a student's church - 8)

On Saturday the 18th of May we finished loading up our camping equipment and stuff into the back of our truck and headed out.We aimed for leaving the house at 8am, but ended up pulling out right at 8:40.  Packing the vehicle took some extra time.  In the end we were loaded 'to the gills'!

We hit the road to Chipata, 2 hours east of where we live.  On our way we received a call from our student, Levy, whose village congregation we would be visiting the next day. He was in Chipata waiting to meet us. So when we arrived, around 10:45, we drove into town and met him by the side of the road to discuss arrangements for the following day’s visit.  Here we found out that another student, Sangwani, would be joining us for the church visit as well.  They would both meet us by the side of the road at the same supermarket at 8:30am the next day so that we could drive to Levy’s village together.  

(Some of you will remember Levy from this post -- during his time at the College he has started a church plant in the nearest village to the College which was without a church.  This was our opportunity to visit him in his home congregation.)

By the time we had finished sorting all the arrangements with Levy and Sangwani, it was after 11am, so we headed a few kilometers out of town to Mama Rulas, a bed & breakfast where we would be camping for the next 2 nights. Then it was time to survey our surroundings and decide where to put up our tent. We have a large 6-person tent, tall enough to stand up in.  We bought it the first year we were here in Zambia, to take a10day camping trip through the north of Zambia with our colleagues, and it has been worth its weight in gold to us!  Camping is by far the most affordable way to travel around Zambia. 

the camping area - showers and toilets on the right, restaurant in the center

 While David was deciding where to put our tent, I walked up to the open-air restaurant, just at the edge of the camping area, and ordered lunch so that it would be ready for us.  We got the tent set up in a shady, grassy area which seemed to be the best spot in the camping pitch.  Lunch was chicken pizza for David and me and cheese toasties for the children.  We got the air mattresses inflated and beds put together, and all went down for an afternoon snooze!  It was a good way to get our holiday started!  

setting up our camp at Mama Rula's (photo taken before we put the rain cover over the tent)

 When we got up from our snooze, we headed back into town to do some shopping for our upcoming travel into Malawi.  We went to the main supermarket and spent almost an hour getting what we needed.  Then it was time for our dinner engagement.  We have never had opportunity to meet any of the other missionary families in Chipata, but recently we met the only other expat family in our area (Petauke) and they gave us a couple of contact details for families with young children in Chipata.  When we texted to say that we would be passing through and would love to meet up, one family responded and invited us for dinner on Saturday night!  So we drove up to their house and had a lovely evening with them.  Kevin & Savannah have two little girls (aged 3 and 9 mos.) and Elijah and Ketzia had a great time playing with them.  Savannah spoiled us with a tasty meal of lasagna, salad, green beans and bread, and homemade icecream (with pumpkin bread that I had brought) for dessert!  It was so tasty, and the fellowship was very enjoyable.  They are southern Baptists working with church planting in the Chipata area. We enjoyed visiting with them until the children’s bedtime.  On the way back to the campsite we filled up our tank with diesel for our big trip on Monday.

the kids enjoying camping :)

Day 2 – Sunday 19 May

Visit to a student's church (8)

This morning we woke up to see monkeys swinging from the trees around the campsite! They didn’t approach our camp, but it was fun to see.  (The dogs keep them mostly in the trees.)  I fixed a breakfast of eggs and bacon, with pumpkin muffins I had baked to use up a pumpkin before we left.  We carry a 2-burner gas stove and a small bottle of cooking gas while we are camping.  This helps cut down on our expenses by cooking our own food when we are able.  This particular campsite was well equipped with toilet and shower facilities (although the showers kept running out of hot water!) and the water from the taps was safe to drink.

We left the campsite around 8:15am to meet Levy and Sangwani in town. They were supposed to meet us at 8:30, but only Sangwani was waiting there when we arrived at the designated spot.  We waited for quite a while for Levy, who finally showed up at 9am!  Unfortunately his wife (who was at our recent women’s conference) had to suddenly travel out of town for her father’s funeral far away in Kitwe, so she wasn’t around for our visit.

Ah well, Levy's late arrival just showed us that the day’s events would be off to a flexible start. :)

We drove back up the road, past the campsite where we were staying, and took the turn-off towards Lundazi which is 2 ½ hours north, up the road.  But we didn’t go that far – we drove maybe 10 kilometers, or maybe a bit more, and then turned off the main road.  And that’s when it got interesting.  :)  The first part of the drive wasn’t bad -- the dirt road was quite good as we wound past villages.  We were driving through a beautiful valley surrounded by very scenic hills with large buttresses of hills made of stone boulders cropping up randomly in the plain.

what parts of the road looked like

 But soon the road became very interesting.  :)  Levy was quite funny because he gave us no warning at all – just suddenly said  very calmly, ‘and now there is a bridge.’ Which we quickly learned did NOT mean there was an actual bridge, only that we would have to cross some form of water – with or without a bridge!  We forded streams something like 5 or 6 times – 3 of which had bridges and the rest didn’t.  The road was EXTREMELY bad – very rutted, very narrow, very bumpy.  We were all bruised afterwards – especially those of us in the back seat because we kept smashing into Elijah’s car seat, which is not very comfortable!  Sangwani was sitting on the left, Elijah was in his car seat in the middle and I was on the right, holding Ketzia on my lap.  Levy was in the front passenger seat directing David.  We drove further and further and further into the bush and the road just kept getting worse and worse!  We kept thinking we must be almost there, but nope… At one point we turned a corner and suddenly came upon a stretch of road which was entirely under water/mud.  The only thing to do is to keep driving, as steadily as possible, always moving forward, and DO NOT STOP so you don’t get stuck!!

the road under water

 Finally we reached Levy’s village, around 9:40 or 9:45 (so it took slightly over an hour to get there).  On the right side of the road were two simple church buildings.  The first one didn’t seem to be in use at all.  I think they told us it is a Roman Catholic building and they have meetings on a different day of the week.  Levy’s church, of course, was empty.  No one was there for church yet.  Levy directed us to park behind his house, which was just across the street from the church, and then welcomed us into his home.  His home is in the process of being renovated, so only 1 ½ rooms are currently livable!  He welcomed us into his ‘living room’ which was a tiny, tiny room with a small table, 4 chairs and a couple of mats on the floor.  There was a small rickety shelf in one corner with some tin dishes on it.  The front door was very low so we had to duck to come inside, and there was no window.  He told us that he had bricked up the window because of thieves who had come before and stolen everything – his T.V. and other possessions.  There was an even smaller doorway into a sleeping room which was also doubling as a storage room.  The front door opened in what was currently a courtyard, because it was without a roof.  Eventually it will be the main living area of the house, but there is no roof, floor, windows, or door at present.  It is always sobering to see the very simple, impoverished living conditions of most of our students, but some of them in particular are in very poor surroundings.

visiting in Levy's house - Levy in center, Sangwani on the right

 Then Levy took us over to see the church, but there was still no one there. So he sent someone to start rounding up the congregation, and meanwhile he took us back to his house and insisted on serving us tea and bread!  The tea was made with milk fresh from the cow – a first experience for us.  Levy had a loaf of bread and some margarine specially for us, and some homemade peanut butter.  It was very kind of him to extend such hospitality to us.

a view of the church building from Levy's house

inside the church

After finishing our snack, we went back over to the church where people were beginning to gather and the service eventually started.  By this time it was 11am!  (Reminiscent of the previous week’s church visit…)  Levy is the pastor of a Pentecostal congregation.  (In his absence, when he is studying at the College, the congregation is under the oversight of an elder.)   

women pounding maize in the village, oblivious to the idea of stopping work to attending church

 They began the service by singing choruses with lots of clapping.  A woman from the congregation came up and led a song which then morphed into a ‘chaos prayer’ – which seems to be in the identifying factor of ‘Pentecostal’ congregations here (although it is also done by other denominations as well).  An offering was taken, there was another time of choruses, another time of chaos prayer.  In the midst of all of this I had to take Elijah to the toilet something like 3 times – back at our truck which was parked at Levy’s house.   

Elijah sitting in the doorway of the church

 Then they had the Scripture reading – from Matt. 28 – and David preached the sermon.  I had to take Elijah out again for another potty break, and basically struggled to keep the kids settled. 

 

 

 

David preaching, with Sangwani translating (Levy seated in the back)

When David was on his last sermon point I had to take them outside.   

 

what the surrounding area looked like

 By that time it was past noon and the kids were exhausted AND hungry.  Ketzia had had no morning nap so… she was crying again, inconsolable.  I couldn’t get her to go to sleep, so we just found a place to sit in the shade by Levy’s house.  Ketzia started chasing the goats and went into the thornbushes, because she wasn’t listening to me, so then I was picking thorns out of her little cardigan.  And then Elijah, for whose sake I had missed large portions of the service on ‘potty runs,’ decided that he was going to MESS IN HIS PANTS during a church outing for the first time since he was potty trained!!  Arrrgh.  So I had to get him cleaned up, and his clothes changed, and by the time we were finished, the service was over.  Sangwani came over to fetch the camera on David’s behalf.  When I got myself and the kids back over to the church, the congregation was outside singing while David was getting a congregational photo.

Then they did something we were NOT expecting – they asked us to come back inside the church.  We sat down, not knowing what the plan was, and then they started singing again. And Levy said something about ‘time for the gift.’  Since nothing happened and everyone kept singing, I started getting worried that he meant that someone was going to claim to have the ‘gift of the Spirit’ and start speaking in tongues or something.  :)  But after a bit of singing suddenly we realized  that they were going to give gifts to us!  People from the congregation started coming forward with parcels—bags of groundnuts (peanuts), huge stalks of sugar cane, huge bunches of green bananas, it was incredible.  They were SO generous.  In the end we had a big pile of huge sugar cane stalks, two big bunches of bananas, 3 or 4 bags of peanuts, a large bag (10 kilos maybe) of sweet potatoes!

Ketzia with the gift from the congregation

 After presenting us with the gift, the congregation carried everything over to our truck and loaded it into the back.  Then we were taken back inside Levy's house for a meal of nshima with chicken, rice, potatoes and veg.

Levy outside the back of his house

After the meal Levy told David that there was a man in the village who was extremely sick and his relatives had asked the visiting preacher to come and pray for him.  So David went along with Levy and Sangwani to the house of the sick man, and I waited with the kids.  While we were waiting, Elijah cut his lip with a stick, and Ketzia was so tired that she literally screamed the entire time David was away until she finally fell asleep in my arms from sheer exhaustion.  :)  David was gone for about 30 minutes.  When he came back he reported that the man he had prayed for looked really, really bad -- he had a huge growth on his neck and looked like he would die at any moment.  When we came back through Chipata 2 weeks later we learned that this man had been taken to the hospital in Lusaka and passed away there.

Then it was time to head back to our camp.  A girl from Chipata asked for a lift back to town, so Sangwani took the front seat and we all squeezed into the back again.  Ketzia still asleep on my lap.  And back down the horrible road we went lurching and bumping.  :) 

 

 

 

 

 

one of the 'bridges' we had to ford

another portion of the road

At last we were back in the town of Chipata, where we dropped off Sangwani and the girl from the village and then headed back to our campsite, tired after a long day full of new experiences.

The end of the story is... remember how I said that the back of our truck was chock-full with camping equipment?  :)  Well, we came back from visiting Levy's church with this huge gift of massive stalks of sugar cane, loads of bananas, etc. and our first concern was 'Where on earth are we going to fit all these things??'  We had absolutely NO space.  So in the end, we asked around at the campsite where we were staying and found out about a local school for deaf and blind children, and donated all the food to them!  It was nice to know that even though we couldn't benefit from the generosity of these villagers ourselves, we could at least pass the blessing on to others who would really appreciate it.