Last Year

Capenta (fish) and potatoes - to be eaten with Nsima (corn meal)

I've been reminiscing lately and thinking about our 6 week stay in rural Zambia last year. A friend of ours is currently there doing the same type of medical rotation that Dan did. While Dan worked in the hospital in Macha, Zambia, I volunteered at a local primary school and took care of things around the house. I thought I'd share a few pictures that illustrated some of my experiences (so you won't have to see any gory medical pictures!). Enjoy.

Laundry by hand. This was my first attempt. I later moved to doing any laundry on the back porch. Plus, I received lessons in hand washing techniques from one of my (11 year old) students. I didn't do all our laundry on my own. We had some "house help" who did at least a "load" a week. It was all by hand, so having help was wonderful!


The local library. I had some time to read, so I would bike here and check out one book at a time.


Here's what part of my path to school looked like (the rest was a wider dirt road - this was a little shortcut).
And here's what I looked like. What you can't see is the awesome pink bike I used to travel the 2.5 kilometers each way.

I taught sewing at the primary school, among other things. Here were three of my youngest students. Even the Kindergarten students did their own hand-sewing!
And here are four of the proudest boys - they loved the bags they made. I had a lot of fun teaching such willing, eager students!
After school, it wasn't uncommon to have some visitors.
We had an informal crochet club.
And some kids learned to play "Dutch Blitz."