My First Days in Zambia!

 I last left you in the airport right before my final leg of travel. The flight was good and normal, I slept for a bit and we landed in Zambia. The first thing that stuck me as we were landing is, everything is so brown. No leaves on trees, no flowers, dry grass, there was nothing. We got off the plane and onto a bus and headed to go through immigrations and customs, all super easy and straightforward. Then we walked out into Zambia. 

The director couldn't meet us, so he sent one of the drivers named Moses, our first introduction to Riverside. The airport attendednents threw our luggage into the back and we were off. And of course we have our priorities straight, we needed new SIM cards. That was a journey in and of itself. Here they drive on the left side of the road, so everytime I would look down for a period of time and then look up, I was incredibly concerned. Eventually we pulled into a parking lot near a market in the city and ventured out with Moses as our guide. We walked for ten minutes to an Airtel store where we bought SIM cards showed them our passports. Now we had service! Kinda... My phone was still locked so roughly two days later I finally had service. 

We still had about an hour to go to get to Riverside. We went through a couple of military checkpoints, but were never stopped. My friends, Sarah and Sara fell asleep in the back and I talked to the driver for a while, the whole time taking in the view. We crossed a river and he pointed out riverside just a little bit further up it, ten minutes later we were there. We pulled up to a little house and we were there! Home for the next eight months. 

We walked in and met the other SMs who were already here, Elizebeth and Scott. The director and his family, the Hardings, stopped by and greeted us and invited us to a campus tour later. We spent some time unpacking, me decorating while my friends napped. 

We then got a tour of the campus, everything from the wellness center to the banana trees, from the grain circles to brand new schools. We also stopped by the Akuna Factory, an unreal experience after have only seeing it in pictures and videos. Finally we ended up at the Harding's house where we ate dinner, our first meal in Africa was... corn bread and tomato soup! 10/10 very delicious. We finished the night with worship and headed to bed around 8:30 Zambian time. 

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I slept for 12 hours straight and still managed to wake up a little tired. We had some breakfast and finished unpacking. By the time we had finished it was lunch time. This was our first truly African meal. We grabbed our plates and headed over to the cafeteria. They served us massive portions of enshima, a corn meal bread substance, grape, collard greens, gluten and raw carrots. We ate with our right hands, first rolling little balls of enshima and scooping up the greens or the gluten with it. It was pretty good but it was so much! We were sitting with some other foriengers, one from Brazil and the other from New Zealand and they said we had to finish it. We actually found out we didn't need to and could ask for half next time. 

Later that afternoon we got to see where we would be working the next eight months, first stopping by Akuna. Isaac, the production manager gave us a little tour and demonstration of how everything worked. They were in the process of making charcoal soap, the most popular soap they are currently selling. Then we went to the Secondary school where we saw, once finished Sarah would be working as school nurse. Lastly we stopped at the clinic just a stones throw away from our house where Sara would be working. We met so many lovely people during our mini tour. 

That took up the majority of the afternoon and 5 o'clock was dinner! The cafeteria served bananas, freshly made bread, peanut butter and molasses tea. All of it was great, it just wasn't a typical American dinner. We packed up our plates and headed up the mountain to watch the sunset. It was stunning! Imagine a National Geographic glowing orange orb setting over a valley with a river. Absolutlely beautiful, pictures could never capture it. We hiked down the mountain and over to the Harding's house for a bit to say hello. We ended our night around 9:30. 

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Friday we woke up around 6:50 and went with some of the Harding's kids to watch them milk the cows. A very exciting experience to be sure. We mostly just stood and watched as the cows in the corral watched us. We went back home had breakfast and started our days. For me that was walking over to Akuna's new factory, for my friends, that was a mid morning nap. It's about a 15 minute walk from my house to the factory, somethings I will definitely be getting used to. Once I made it there I found a worker packaging our Boabab soap. It smelled amazing and she showed me how to wipe off the soap and box it up. It was so incredible to finally be where I knew I was supposed to be. After an hour I had to head off to have a meeting with Craig to figure out more what I was to be doing for the next eight months. It sounds mostly like a sales/administrative job. I will be reaching out to stores and companies to get them to sign contracts for our products. I will be also looking into exportation and into taxes and the like. Now that I'm starting to better understand my roll I'm starting to get excited!

As soon as the meeting was finished we hopped into a cab and headed to Kafue, the town fifteen minutes over. We had ice cream and pizza for lunch, at this point I've had more normal food than African. After that we walk 10 minutes over to the market. We are clearly different. People honk at us and say the phrase Mzungu or white person. It was, interesting to say the least. At the market we bought chitenge fabric, lovely pieces with different patterns on them. It was so cool! Then we headed to a grocery store, and it was surprisingly modern. Dairy products are rather expensive, and so is toilet paper. We headed back to our house to get ready for the Sabbath. 

Vespers was very nice, short and sweet... although they did make us try to sing in Tonga by ourselves. We didn't do too bad. We finished the night at the Hardings house with haystacks... with a twist. We had strange puffy corn chips and home made sour cream, we also used cabbage for lettuce, definitely some things to get used to here. To end the evening we sang some songs to bring in the Sabbath together. 

Girls SM House

African Sunset over Kafue River

Market in Kafue

Wearing Chitenge our first vespers

Lunch on Friday

I have really been enjoying it here. I survived the 7 hour jetlag and everyone here is so nice! I am looking forward to getting into a routine. Follow along for more updates!