The first full Zambia day - Sunday, June 15, 2008

MWB gets the best airline price they can, whatever day it happens to be. Our team was very lucky in that we arrived on a Saturday night. Sunday is a quieter day, with church in the morning and a visit to the Children's Resource Center (I will tell about the CRC shortly) in the afternoon. Tara and I did not go to church so that gave us the whole morning to sleep in, take a shower and recover from our trip. Mormons have three hour church so the rest of the team didn't come back until after noontime. I slept until 9:30 and took one of the only hot showers that day. They had a little room with one shower in it and a tub with a hand shower. Showers were very iffy, sometimes no water pressure and very often no warm water.

As I said we had peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch every day. I still like p and j sandwiches, though, because they tasted so good every day by the time we got to them. We were given two bottles of mineral water to start with. Each day water was boiled and poured into empty jugs. We refilled our bottles for two days and then we had fresh bottles of water. I looked forward to the fresh bottles because sometimes the boiled water tasted awful. I got so I froze one bottle and then I had cold water all day.

Anyway back to Sunday, the Mormons came home from their three hour church after noontime. We had our sandwiches and hung out and rested until 2:30 when we boarded the bus for the Children's Resource Center (CRC).

Mothers Without Borders has established their own home for orphaned children, the Children's Resource Center (CRC.) Their focus is on child led households and they do not split up families. At this time they have 20 orphaned children from the ages of about four to teenagers. They are housed in rented houses until they move into their new quarters on "THE LAND." Much more about that later. There are two sets of parents, who have their own children and two single women who watch over the children. The kids are nurtured, educated and taken care of medically. It costs about $100 a month to care for each child.

To get to the CRC you have to go over rocky dirt roads so bad that I will never complain about any road in the US being bad. Chiphus maneuvered the bus back and forth across the road to get us out there.

We arrived at the CRC and the children were all waiting for us, waving to us and very excited. As were we. After huge smiles snd hugs and hellos we were seated in an open area between the buildings and they presented their welcoming performance for us. They sang and danced.

While I was seated on the floor little Emmanuel*(four)came up and sat beside me, pretty soon he was leaning on me and eventually sat between my legs and leaned back to watch the show since he was too young to be in it. He got up occasionally to see what was going on around the side of the building as they prepared for more dances but he always came back to me. It was wonderful.

The kids did a great job dancing and singing. In the middle of the dancing the kids started grabbing the MWB people to dance. I didn't get up because I had Emmanuel sitting with me. But I was pulled into the dancing and dance I did.

Toward the end it got very serious and they sang a very sad and extremely haunting song about AIDS and what it was doing to their lives. One of the girls who hadn't been at the center very long broke down in tears during the song. Then several other kids started crying. This was the first time that had happened. It took a lot of hugs and loving to console them, it was very emotional and left everyone in tears. They were "almost" able to pull themselves together and ended by singing several religious songs and then each of them told us their name, grade and ambition.

After the performance we talked to the kids for awhile and then it was time to head back to our quarters. I was talking to 5th grader, Vincent (who wants to be an accountant). When we had to get on the bus he asked if he could "escort" me to the bus. But, of course.


After that was the meeting upstairs, my thought for the day was -we were this small group and they were their small group and we came together with love, why can't the whole world do this instead of all the ugliness between people of different backgrounds.

We then boarded the bus to go back to our bunkhouse and prepare for the next day.
As I said this was a light day. The busy days started the next day.

*Emmanuel's story -
He and his brother were being cared for by their 14 yr old sister. She was caring for them and a grandfather who was molesting her. I don't believe they knew their father and their mother had died. The two brothers are now safe at CRC and their sister is away getting some vocational training through MWB.

Tomorrow we go to the House of Moses (an orphanage) and to the hospital.

I hope this isn't too much detail. I know lots of people have questions about this and that so I am trying to be thorough in my descriptions. But I guess if I am boring you, you don't have to read it. Right?! I am going to post this and then post photos when I get back from the band concert and ice cream social on the Green.

Zambia is so much in my thoughts all the time.