Makuwa Lisa

Gee Whizz

2011-10-13T07:49:00.001-07:00

I have been living in a foreign country for a year and a half now, but I am far from assimilated. I still struggle with the mundane. Trying to get health insurance, car insurance, driver’s license, bank account, a Visa to remain here legally – you know, little things like that – only one of which I have successfully managed to obtain.

It definitely helps that most people speak English, but sometimes that just leads to more confusion. For example, when buying car insurance, you do not buy a policy with a deductible. You buy a “facility” with an “excess”. I can’t tell you how exasperating this conversation was, “What kind of a facility would you like to buy?” I don’t want to buy a facility, I want car insurance. They don’t understand why I don’t understand because we are both speaking English.

Here’s another example: whizz. It’s now summer on our side of the globe so the little backyard blow-up pools are now on display in the stores. The box is labeled “Whizz pool”. When I was a too-cool teenager, we called the kiddie splash pool in public places the “pee pool”, because we all knew what was inevitably going on in there. They can’t help it, they’re little kids. But would we buy something called a pee pool? I don’t think so - it must mean something else here, right?

Then I saw a big ole bin of Vanilla Whizz on sale. Now I was really baffled... so I had to buy one. Basically it’s a Twinkie. Whatever this whizz was, how are kiddie pools and twinkies both filled with them? It was a cultural enigma wrapped in a riddle.

My friend and neighbor Amanda, previously identified as my resident poop expert for identifying the gecko poop on my pillow, explained that whizz means anything that bubbles or fizzes or spins, or something like that. It is associated with fun, which kinda makes sense. So now Amanda has the dubious distinction of being both a poop and whizz expert. Can you believe how junior high I can be? Or perhaps the harder thing for you to believe would be that I actually used to handle murder cases in a court of law.

Back to whizz. Last week I was whizzed on (in the American sense) and was thoroughly touched by the experience. I was out in Soshanguve painting the bathroom at the orphan center (don’t get ahead of me here). Pastor Jack arrived and said that someone had broken into the crèche kitchen and stolen the frozen meats. The crèche is a paid day care run by the church and separate from the orphan program that AFnetAid operates in partnership with the church. Pastor Jack brought me into the crèche area to show me the window that had been broken and how he had since reinforced the burglar bars.

I rarely go into the crèche so I was very surprised when a little boy, maybe a year and a half old, reached up his arms to me as I was walking by. I don’t know this child but he was raising his arms and scrunching up his little hands and opening them again, his big brown eyes puppy-dog pleading. I may not be a mom but I know the international sign for “I want to be picked up” when I see it. Even though I had a bathroom to paint and this was not one of “our kids”, I couldn’t resist.

He snuggled in against my neck. I held him as Pastor Jack continued his saga of the break in. Pastor Jack went back to work and I walked around for a few minutes still holding Salvation, his name supplied by one of the teachers. When I realized Salvation’s pants were wet with whizz, I tried to hand him off to a teacher. He turned his little face to me and said “mama” and would not let go. I had never had someone call me mama before and I had NO idea how that turns your insides to mush.

So I held him for the next hour, fed him, played with him, not minding at all that my T-shirt and jeans were now whizz soaked too. Several times a teacher would reach for him, and he would scream and grab for me, crying mama.

I am still wondering why he made this attachment. Being makuwa, I am sure I look nothing like his mother, but for some reason he wanted me. He only speaks Sotho and I only speak English. I guess using the right words wasn't so important after all. But how are these bonds made? And within minutes?
My only guess is that he somehow knows that I love him even though I do not know him. It was such a glorious thing to be loved back.

We are called to be the hands and feet of a loving God to serve the poor, the oppressed, the abandoned.

And for that one hour, I got to be His heart too.

Happy Birthday Mom! 9/19/11

2011-09-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

The other day I went to Ithemba La Bantwana in Soshanguve to take photos for the new flyers I was putting together to try and increase child sponsorships for that orphan center.
Only 5 of the 46 children there are sponsored so we cannot meet all the needs of the children.
(Oops, how’d that shameless plug get in there?)

After climbing walls and ladders trying to get the right angle and shading and get the children to look natural instead of posing, I gave up and admitted “photographer” will not be listed under skills on my resume.

The kids went inside to have their meal for the day. I was packing up my ladder when Sbusiso and Sidwell shyly approached. They looked quite serious as they posed their question, “The girls got to go to a girls-only Camp, we want to know if we will get to go to a boys-only camp?” A few weeks ago, Pastor Jack’s church (the one that partners with AFnetAid to run the Tsakelani orphan center) organized a girls-only camp and invited the girls from both orphan centers to attend. The girls went to a camp in the country for 4 days and talked about “girl stuff”. Weeks later they were still talking about it, and the boys had had enough!

While we were talking to the boys, Christo noticed Sbusiso’s shoes – the top half peeling back to reveal all his toes. Christo asked him, “What size shoes do you wear?” Sbusiso looked down and covered his face with his hands. He was silently crying and he didn’t want us, and perhaps more importantly Sidwell, to see. He was shamed by his battered shoes and now he was embarrassed of his tears. Christo apologized for drawing attention to them but let him know that it was only because he wanted to help. I piped in, “yes, we have new shoes at Afnet just waiting to go to someone who needs them, maybe we have some in your size. Please tell us.” Sidwell tried to make him feel better too, “Look Sibu, look at my shoes. They are worse than yours.” And they were. Only he was missing the back portion of his shoes, so his heels were on the ground.

My zectron heart went out to both of them - the boy who cried when asked about his shoes, and the boy who understood and tried to restore his friend’s ego by pointing out his own tattered shoes.

They were boys on the verge of being men, wanting to be proud and confident, approaching us to ask for a boys-only camp to learn about things that a boy should know to be a man. Most of these boys do not have fathers in the picture, no male role model. They are being cared for by a grandma, an aunt, or if they are lucky, they still have a mom. At 12 and 13, they are the men of the house, with no one to turn to for the “boy only” questions.

The camp was going to take some time to pull off, but shoes I could do something about! (You may be wondering, what about that shoe drive you just had? It was a huge success! But it was spearheaded by a team that was volunteering at the orphan center in Mansa, Zambia and they distributed the shoes to our children in the program there. Every child, 95 of them, got a new pair of school shoes! It was awesome - can’t wait to share that experience with you in an upcoming blog…)

I have the most wonderful parents in the world. When I decided to quit my lucrative job as a lawyer and move to Africa to care for orphans, and not get paid for it, they didn’t say, “WHAT?! What about the loan that we gave you to go to law school and you haven’t paid back yet and was supposed to be our retirement plan?”
Nope, they said, “What can we do to help you?”
I do have a point here and it does have something to do with shoes. Last Christmas they told me, “Don’t get us any presents. We don’t need anything. Buy something for the children.” So now on every holiday, my parents get a card with a picture of the children enjoying a gift from them or a dorky picture of me with the gift. For Christmas, the children of ILB got swings. For Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, the children at both centers got something they don’t get very often – fruit!

Today is my mom’s birthday and she is getting two new pairs of shoes – one for Sbusiso and one for Sidwell.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Zectron Heart

2011-09-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Written August 2, 2011
How does a human heart keep on beating after it has been stretched out, bursting at the seams with intense joy and overwhelming love one minute, and then pierced and wrung out another? My poor heart was tested in a 24 hour period with such highs and lows that I am convinced it must be made of some super high tech rubber compound.

Last night I arrived in Mansa, Zambia after being away from the orphan center there for 4 months. I was anxious to share the program with a team of ten I picked up at the airport, friends from my home church in Santa Cruz, California. We decided to walk from the lodge the team was staying at to the center to stretch our legs after the 10 hour drive from Lusaka. As we walked down the dirt road to the orphan center, a perfect African sunset reddening the sky, we could hear the children singing. I hadn’t realized how tightly I was wound until all the stress and fatigue of a 4 day pothole-plagued road trip to get here melted away at the sound of their beautiful voices.

When the children saw me, their singing abruptly stopped, a loud cheer rang out and they ran to me. I was surrounded, 45 little bodies all trying to hug me at the same time. They jumped up and down and squirmed to get in close enough to touch me. I was blown away by their excitement to see me! I could not believe that these outgoing affectionate positively-bubbly children were the same dead-eyed child/zombies who greeted me a year ago when I first met them. The sweet sweet reunion brought a flood of happy tears.

Then today, my first day in Mansa, I went to the funeral of one of our orphans. Alick was 18 years old. He was only in 9th grade because he had to keep dropping out of school each time he was in the hospital. He got further and further behind in school and got skinnier and skinnier as AIDS ravaged his body and stole his childhood. But he kept going back to school, eager to learn, eager to live. He was on ARV’s for years, but his tired body finally gave out yesterday.

Those same children that were singing songs of joy last night were now inside Alick’s house singing songs of comfort for his family. It wasn’t actually a funeral, just a gathering at his house. Friends and family come to the house and sit with Alick’s grandma and his brothers and sisters. They do this for days - a silent comforting presence. I saw this way too often when I lived in Mansa last year. I would be walking down a street in town or a nearby village and see a house surrounded by people. Sometimes there was wailing, but often times it was a quiet house with dozens of people sitting outside, leaning against trees and the sides of the house. Nobody talking. I knew what that meant. I never imagined that one day I would be one of those silent sitters.

So this team from America, on their first day in Mansa, had to scrap their plans and instead of playing fun getting-to-know-you games, found themselves following the older children in the program down the dirt roads of the village towards Alick’s house. The children went inside to sing, to hold a hand, to say good bye to their friend. The team and I stayed outside and just sat, to show this family that we cared about Alick, that his life meant something. I prayed with his granny – prayed for her strength as she still had other orphaned grandchildren to take care of and provide for. I prayed for the children left behind, that they would know a future that had conquered this disease, that this would be the last generation of silent sitters.

I feel anger and disgust and frustration. It is absolutely senseless that this disease has been killing people for decades and will go on killing people when it is 100% preventable. There doesn’t have to be a single death beyond those who already have it right now. It can end with those who are currently infected. It can end in our life time. If everyone was tested and knew their status, it can be stopped. There are steps that can be taken to prevent every method of transmission. These are not insurmountable challenges. This is not a hopeless situation that Africa cannot overcome. This turns my anger to hope and hope to motivation!

What are the other emotions bouncing around inside the walls of my high tech rubber heart? Sadness – such sadness for the children who suffer because of choices someone else made. Then my sadness fuels a renewed dedication to make the next nine days here in Mansa the best they can be for these children who have experienced so much loss. Give them new memories – of laughter and carefree times, of love received, of pride in new skills gained.

Hakuna Matata

2011-05-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

Note to Readers: Did you know that if you click on a picture it will open up full screen? It really helps because these photos are so small. Don't you want to see for yourself that the crew really was chiseled?
The Journey to Zanzibar- Part Deux.
When we last left our heroes, Tim, Katrien and Lisa (hey, that’s me!), we had survived the Tazara train ride through Tanzania and had boarded the ferry to Zanzibar. It felt like when Dorothy woke up in Oz, shifting from the dismal grey of depression-era, dust-bowl Kansas to the bright sunshine and brilliant colors of a fantasy paradise. Remember watching that as a kid? You thought you were watching a black and white movie and then – wham – technicolor! Whoa… trippy. And there were singing flowers and munchkin punks with lollipops and flying monkeys. That’s what the ferry ride and arrival on Zanzibar felt like.

We sat on the top deck of the ferry and shielded our eyes against the diamond sunshine bouncing off the toilet-bowl-blue waters. Dar Es Salaam looked exotic and mysterious as we pulled away from the dock. We sucked in deep lungfuls of fresh sea air after the confinement of the train for 56 hours. There weren’t any singing flowers but the deck did have big bean bag chairs as a seating option. And a Boston-accented family each wearing one big letter on their chest so that when they lined up along the railing, they spelled out their last name. Whoa…trippy.

Zanzibar is also known as the Spice Island, having plantations that grow clove, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper that once made the island a busy stop for merchants bringing flavor to the Middle East and India. It was also East Africa’s main slave trading port. Slaves from all over inland Africa were funneled here and sold to ships on their way to the palaces of Arabia, Persia and all parts of the world. I did not have the cajones to visit the slave market museum – I knew my heart was not up to the task, having been broken too many times by what I had seen in present day Africa to withstand the horrors of its past.

Zanzibar is no Oz mixture of munchkins, witches, and Kansans, but it is an equally fascinating mix of cultures. It has a Caribbean island feel with swaying palm trees and Rastafarian African beach boys whose mantra is Hakuna Matata – Swahili for “no worries”. Then there is the conservative Muslim culture with the Burqa-clad women and Persian style architecture of Stone Town. Throw in a spattering of Christians around the island and the clear presence of tribal Maasai warriors as the security system at all the beach front hotels and you got yourself the makings of one interesting vacation.

Stone Town, a World Heritage Site, is the ancient city that greets you upon your arrival at the dock. Karibu – that is welcome in Swahili. The city doesn’t exactly greet you, but a pack of touts and cons and shouting/grabbing taxi drivers make it known you are quite welcome. We chose Akbar to help us navigate the maze of narrow cobblestone streets to get to the Zanzibar Coffee House, our hotel for the night. We followed the peppery little man in flowing white robes through the maze - twisting and turning, every new alley looking the same, no visible street names. We tried to keep track of our path with landmarks, 2 lefts and one right after the blue turret then 3 rights and a left after the spice stand. But there were too many turrets, too many mosques, too many spice stands. We were like rats in a lab maze, but then we realized we were probably more like the cheese because this shady looking guy has been behind us all the way from the ferry dock and our money belts are the reward at the end of the dead end alley.

“Akbar, we are stopping right here and we are not paying you anything until that guy is gone.” Not sure what we expected him to do, some kind of Indiana Jones move where he whips out a pistol in the face of a pack of robed assassins.“Trust me, I will get you there.” “We don’t know you. We will find it ourselves.” Which we would not have. Akbar went and spoke to the guy and poof he was gone. True to his word, Akbar got us there.

Zanzibar Coffee House – what an oasis. Fresh fruit smoothies free upon arrival. Gorgeous lush courtyard. Beautiful carved wooden beds with white netting. Balconies overlooking the city of Stone Town. A colorful rooftop pillow room where our morning heart-shaped waffles and fresh squeezed tropical juices were served. At sunset and sunrise, many deep voices singing the call to prayer found their way upward from different parts of the city and joined to echo from the rooftops and ricochet down the alleys.

It is Ramadan so there is no drinking and no food may be served until the sun goes down. But it was worth the wait. The place to be at sunset is the Forodhoni Gardens where the public square is magically transformed. Tables appeared under the trees, candles and torches flickered against the backdrop of the pink and lavender haze of the sky. Vendors lay out long skewers with octopus, prawns, lobster claws straight from the boats, I swear they are still twitching. There is fresh baked naan bread crusted with Zanzibarian spices. The bright colors of juicy red watermelon and sweet yellow pineapple make your mouth water just looking at it. Green sugar cane is cranked through rolling steel bars to drip juice into glasses. It is surreal with soft light, soft air, soft music - a sensory symphony of savory smells and fresh fresh flavors.

The next day we were off to Kendwa Rocks – a small beach town on the northwest side of the island, though you couldn’t really call it a town. It is just what that strip of beach with a few hotels on it is called, famous for its full moon parties. Sunset Bungalows was just the ticket - hammocks on the beach, beach volleyball court - what more could an ex-Santa Cruzan pining for home ask for? Besides sharing it with all my wonderful amazing friends back home that is…

We purchased a cheapo snorkel trip from a smooth-talker wandering on the beach with a laminated picture of a boat and hoped a boat would actually appear the next morning to pick us up. It did! This “trust” thing was working for us. An old rickety wooden boat called a dhow scraped up and we hopped on for our adventure. We got stuck on the rocks, stuck in some fishermen’s nets, stuck on a beach at low tide. But our crew was chiseled with great white smiles and made our repeated snagging seem a part of the charm of the experience. When we got to our promised “exclusive destination” for snorkeling off a private marine reserve island, about a dozen other boats had beat us there.
The snorkeling was okay – schools of fish, schools of tourists. It was like being in one of those shimmering walls of silver fish, only less fluid and pretty. The fish don’t whap you in the face with their fins like Gordy from Texas does.

When we got back to Sunset Bungalows, I took a night off from my third wheel duties and left Tim and Katrien to have a romantic dinner at our beachfront restaurant. I played beach volleyball with the locals and some young men from Canada, Italy, and Holland. We played until the sun went down and we struggled to see the ball. We finally had to give up when the starving Zanzibarians who hadn’t eaten all day rushed off to their Ramadan dinner. Under the moonlight, I went swimming in the clear, silky, bath-water-warm Indian ocean. Heaven.

I was sad to leave Sunset Bungalows, my beach volleyball fix not yet met, but we had more of the island to explore. Our three hour taxi ride to the other side of the island became an all day fiasco with the following obstacles: empty gas tank, dead battery, 3 taxi switches, fellow passengers who couldn’t pay for the ride so we went from bank to bank looking for a functioning ATM in ancient Stone Town, and a driver who forgot where we were going. By now Tim and Katrien have gotten the hang of TIA and Hakuna Matata so we got as comfortable as we could in our wedged-in back seat and went with the flow.

Twisted Palms Lodge is on the southeast side of the island, completely different than Stone Town and Kendwa Rocks. There are no people, no strips of hotels, no real activities. No swimming, no snorkeling. We are forced to relax, read, nap, do nothing. It is beautiful and quiet and there is just the three of us at Twisted Palms - on the beach and in the restaurant. This was the view from the front door of my cabana, just steps from the water and only $27 per person including a real breakfast. I splurged on a one hour massage for $10.

We went for a walk down the beach and found a stand selling African crafts. We were eager to buy some souvenirs to bring home but there was no one manning the store. We looked down the beach aways and saw a soccer game in progress with an unusual spin on the team designation of shirts v. skins. It was shuka vs. Speedo. Maasai warriors were taking on a group of Italian tourists.
Sorry for the blurry pictures of the game but I really don’t like to get too close to Speedos unless they are being worn by Olympic swimmers.
Shuka is the red fabric that the Maasai wear around their neck as their only garment. A few Maasai broke off and came running over when they saw us standing in front of their hut. I bought some jewelry for my niece and Tim bought some carved animals and they ran back to their game.

I mentioned earlier that many of the hotels use Maasai warriors as their security and Twisted Palms was no exception. The Maasai are tall and thin and always have a tall thin stick in their hand. The shuka is tied around their neck and hangs to about knee level. They wear beadwork going up their neck and sometimes connected to beadwork hanging from their ears. They also wear beadwork on their wrists and ankles, but it is not in any way feminine. They are a quiet presence and exude pride and confidence and centuries of tradition.

My last morning at Twisted Palms I woke up at sunrise intending to go for a swim. This is the only time you can swim at Twisted Palms due to the tide charts. I looked out the window of my cabana to check the tide and had another one of those perfect African images seared into my memory. Framed by palm fronds and in front of a glowing red sun rising from a perfectly flat Indian ocean was the silhouette of a Maasai warrior on duty guarding my cabana.

Completely relaxed, refreshed, renewed, we headed back to Stone Town. Tim and Katrien were staying a few days more on Zanzibar then flying to Morocco. I guess they hadn’t had enough adventure yet. I was heading back to Mansa to open a new daily orphan program and was eager to start the work. But first I had to get back to Dar Es Salaam and figure out how to get back to Lusaka. No Tazara train this time!

The ferry dock in Stone Town was not as organized as it was on the Dar side. There were no announcements of arrivals or departures. No signs, no numbered docks, no designated lines, no body in charge. A boat would arrive and hundreds of people would surge forward trying to load the boat, battling against the hundreds of people surging the opposite direction trying to get off the boat. The crowd simultaneously surging in both directions included men carrying refrigerators on their shoulders, women with huge bundles on their heads, children, livestock, and really large unidentifiable fruits. At least I think they were fruits, they looked like lumpy, spiky, brownish watermelons. Not wanting to miss the boat, I joined the surge. We would surge down the dock, find out it’s not our boat then turn and surge back the other way yelling, “it’s not our boat, it’s not our boat.” Because after doing this a couple of times, you knew who was waiting for the same boat you were. Ohhhhhhh, that’s where that saying comes from, “we’re all in the same boat.”

When I finally battled my way onto the right ferry, my seat was in the bowels of the boat, instead of on the sunny top deck with the quirky bean bag chairs. It was a rough crossing and I was surrounded by crinkling brown paper bags being filled with vomit, little Muslim girls with live chickens, and a large bundle of lychees under my feet. Right in front of me was a window that looked onto the front deck. Outside, staring back in the window directly at me, was a man in a perfectly pressed three piece suit sitting on a full branch from a banana tree, swaying side to side turning green and periodically puking over the rail. Somehow I didn’t get sick and even got through two chapters of the book I was reading. I was back in Dar Es Salaam, vacation over.

It was all smooth sailing from there – God delivered me safely, quickly and cheaply back to Mansa. He had some children there He wanted to hear laughing again…

I'll take “Games You Play on a Train” for $500, Alex

2011-03-12T04:26:00.000-08:00

In February I returned “home” to South Africa. Africa stole my heart seven years ago when I visited here, but it is still strange to have that feeling of coming home when returning to a foreign land. I no longer have to think before pulling out, “Which side of the road am I supposed to be on?” Like I did when I was in California in January, with one close call when I forgot what country I was currently in.
Some things still came naturally to me in the USA. After eight months in Africa with no Starbucks, I made a bee-line for it during my one hour layover in Atlanta. I was outside the Starbucks waiting in a long line when a girl appeared with her notepad to take my order. Without even thinking, it just popped out, “grande nonfat no whip mocha for Lisa”. I still spoke the language.

Now that I am back, I am determined to catch up on my blogging. I have so many stories to tell and they are dying to get out of my head! So forgive me if my blogs jump around in time. I am trying to get them all down before the details get blurry.

For this blog, I am going back to August 2010 when I took a side trip to Tanzania. When I returned from this jaunt, there was no time to write and post the tale as I was immediately immersed in the overwhelming task of trying to open the new daily orphan program in Mansa. I am hoping that with the seven month time lapse, the players in this story are now over the trauma and can look back and laugh at the experience.
Tim and Katrien, is it funny yet?

Blog disclaimer: Let me just apologize upfront for the potty humor that follows. There is simply no way to describe the train trip to Tanzania without sharing the gory details. The Tazara train is not for sissies. In the past, some of my readers have given me crap for discussing crap. If you are one of them, you might want to sit this week out. But you should also know that I promise not to write about it again, I am pretty sure I have exhausted the subject. It’s not that I particularly enjoy the subject, it’s just that it seems to come up a lot in Africa. It happens.

This story picks up where “Naked Knees and Other Misdeeds” left off. Tim and Katrien had just finished painting an orphan center in Soshanguve, doing craft days at both orphan centers, then packing up the AFnet van and moving me 1000 miles to Zambia and delivering supplies for a new program to be launched there. After they had me settled in and had a day of coloring and treats with the orphans of Mansa, the three of us set off for a well earned vacation on the beautiful island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania.

Tim and Katrien having spent a good deal of their travel money on gifts for the orphans, and me being a missionary and all, we opted to take the budget-friendly train ($50) rather than fly ($250). Besides, what better way to see the scenic countryside of Tanzania than from the windows of our first class cabin on the express train from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar Es Salaam? We would leave Zambia at 4:00 on Wednesday and at noon on Friday be pulling into the train station at Dar, bop on over to catch the 4:00 ferry to Zanzibar, and then enjoy the sunset from the rooftop bar of our hotel in Stonetown.
Piece o’cake.

We barely made it to Kapiri Mposhi by 4:00, having run out of gas out in the African bush. Luckily a Seventh Day Adventist van happened by and our hero Pius, a friend travelling with us as far as Kapiri, hitched a ride to the next town and came back with a gas can. We had bought our train tickets in advance, to be sure to get all four beds of a first class sleeper cabin so we would have it to ourselves. By the time we arrived and found our compartment, there were already two women firmly ensconced in the bottom bunks, their bags spread on the top bunks. Their tickets showed the same cabin number as ours. We calmly and confidently explained that we however had purchased all four beds of this cabin, so clearly this cabin was ours. They refused to leave. We summoned the conductor, sure that he would right the injustice of this situation. He meekly suggested to the ladies that they ought to leave the cabin. When one bellowed, “you’re just taking their side because they’re white”, he left, declaring that it would be up to us to sort it out.
Katrien and Tim staged a sit-down strike in the corridor blocking the path of passengers trying to load the train. Five hours and several emotional meltdowns later, we were still without a cabin. It was now 9:00 at night.
There were two women in our four bed cabin, and next door were two men in a four bed cabin. The loud woman was married to one of the men in the cabin next door, but she could not sleep with him because men and women cannot sleep in the same cabin together unless they book the whole cabin. It is not culturally acceptable for the two men and two women to be combined. So they got to keep their whole cabins, even though they didn’t pay for them. And we, who had paid for a whole first class cabin, got bumped to second class.
The conductor oh-so-graciously said we could still have a whole cabin, even though these have six bunks and we only paid for four. Our new cabin was at the other end of the train, next to the pleasant odor and banging door of the toilets. It was also the first door that everybody getting onto the train sees. This door did not lock. Therefore, every hour when the train stopped, our door would be yanked open and we would argue anew that we had paid for the whole cabin. Not understanding English, men would be throwing their bags on our empty bunks and trying to climb in. At 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m.

I am allergic to only two things in this world, and they were both happily thriving in that cabin: dust mites and cockroaches. So aside from the hourly cabin disputes, my sneezing, wheezing, and nose blowing kept us all awake. I was also going through my roll of toilet paper at an alarming rate. We were each down to one roll. In Africa, you must bring your own TP as a mandatory travel accessory. By Day 2 we were all exhausted, we all had diarrhea, and TP had become a precious commodity.

Which brings us to the next subject, the toilets. I call it that, but there were no actual toilets, no porcelain thrones to perch upon. Just a hole in the floor where you could see the tracks going by underneath you. You had to straddle it and try to hit the hole. And mind you, this was not a big hole, so you had to squat low. I don’t know how to describe this feat, and perhaps I shouldn’t try. Remember, we have diarrhea and we are trying to hit a moving target.

If any of you have been on a train, or seen movies set on a train, you know about the normal sway of a train. There is some slight rocking back and forth which some people even find soothing. The Tazara train, however, was not laid during the height of African technology. Have you seen The Ghost and the Darkness? Great flick. Val Kilmer is the brave English chap who comes to finish the railway lines in Africa. He brings in Michael Douglas to kill the lions who are eating his crew. The crew, when they were not being eaten by lions, is busy laying track. Think about it, did you ever see them using a level? My point is, take the normal sway of a train and multiply it exponentially for the Tazara train. Although it’s not really a sway, more like spasmodic jerking.

Squat, sway, aim. Needless to say, not all passengers hit the hole. So this tiny room with a hole in the floor was equipped with a bucket of water to wash the floor down after use. By Day 2, they were out of water, hence the pleasant aroma of this room and our cabin next door. (At the end of the trip, we discovered that the first class car had toilets with toilets! Rrrrgggghhhh)

I must say, Tim and Katrien were amazingly good sports. Tim was able to take gorgeous photos out the window, when he wasn’t vomiting out the window. Katrien was able to fall back to sleep, after finding a large cockroach nesting in her hair. Day 3 we awoke with a sense of unease - the train was too quiet, too still. Why hadn’t we been awakened every hour by people moving into our cabin? Drats! We were still sitting at the same station we were at the night before. There was an accident on the tracks up ahead, we would have to wait until it was cleared. Four more hours we sat on those tracks, 12 hours total.
How do you pass the time when you are stuck on a train for 56 hours? Here’s some fun travel games for the kids to try:
Name that sickness – players speculate as to what is causing the vomiting and diarrhea. Malaria, food poisoning, allergy, dengue fever, parasite?

Name the offending food item – once players determine it probably was something ingested, players try to guess what it was. Was it the eggs or the chicken or maybe they didn’t boil the water for the coffee or tea. Players take turns experimenting by eliminating different foods on their trip to the dining car and see who gets better first.

Find the stinky item in your cabin – Players first guess if it is animal, vegetable, mineral. Then the hunt is on! Players look for forgotten food items left at the bottom of a backpack, old socks, B.O., what IS that smell?

Who can make 10 squares of TP last the longest – self explanatory

Name the object being shoved in your window – at each stop, women would run up to the train with baskets on their head full of food for sale. Players first try to guess what the item is, then decide whether to take the risk – is this item safer to eat than what the train is serving? Bonus points for guessing pastries – anything could be stuffed inside!

Name that language being shouted at you at 2:00 a.m. by strange man inside your cabin – Tanzania has 126 of them

We pulled into Dar Es Salaam at midnight, of course missing the last ferry to Zanzibar. Tim expertly dodged the aggressive taxi drivers and found us a helpful one who drove us from guest house to guest house, banging on doors to wake up someone to find us a room. The driver came back the next morning to take us to the ferry dock. Ahhhhh, we were finally crossing the incredibly blue waters of the Indian Ocean on our way to Zanzibar…

As miserable as that train trip was, it wasn’t totally miserable! I am glad that I had the experience.
The countryside of Tanzania that we passed through was beautiful. I loved pulling into all the little villages and having the children come running barefoot alongside the train.

And buying fresh fruit from the women in brightly colored fabrics with baskets on their heads.
And sitting in the dining car chatting with fascinatingly-accented fellow travelers.
It was an interesting cultural experience, seeing the way that the locals live and travel. This was not a tourist train.

It was also interesting to see the change in the people groups as we traveled north. Different modes of dress, language, facial features, customs. Beautiful land, beautiful people.

Plus I can say, I survived the Tazara train! I would do it again, if I could be assured of that first class cabin I paid for!
But TIA…

Tim and Katrien, good times, eh?

Back to Normal?

2011-02-16T00:53:00.000-08:00

I am back in Africa. Just when I think life here is not so much different than my life back home, reality smacks me upside the head again, or I should say the heart again.
After a whirlwind 6 weeks in USA, visiting family friends supporters, speaking to churches schools small groups community groups, staying at 12 different places in 27 days, I was looking forward to getting back to normal in my new life in South Africa.
Today I joined a gym on my lunch break. It is bright and shiny with all the latest exercise equipment. It is going to be just like my old routine in Aptos, CA - use the elliptical for cardio and go to pilates class. I was very excited about my new gym, the new healthy body I would soon have, and the new red backpack they gave me for signing up.
I was having a good day. With an email to Zambia, I paid the school fees for a 16 year old boy who didn’t think he would be able to go to high school. After lunch, Christo and I drove out to Soshanguve and delivered gas tanks to the two orphan centers there so they could continue to cook hot meals on the gas stove. We brought worksheets for the children to practice English and math (drawn up by a seven year old girl in California, thank you Mia Karina!) We made plans to have a future Art & Craft day at both centers. We drove away, happy for the little part we get to play.

On the way back to the office, a different route took us past the cemetery in the township of Soshanguve. The huge mounds of earth, from dozens of new grave sites dug each day, spoke louder than any statistics on the effects of AIDS in South Africa. Christo pointed out a tree in the middle and said to the right of the tree is the children’s section. I should have known better but I asked him to pull over. Why do they have a separate section for children? In America, family members would be buried next to each other. I am not sure I want to know the answer to this question. The possible answers are all too depressing to contemplate.
I am at a loss to describe the feelings you have when you are looking at rows of tiny little mounds of dirt, knowing each one is the grave of a child. And they are fresh piles. So many little ones buried in one day, how can that be?
Most of the parents cannot afford gravestones, so the mounds are marked with sticks and paper, like marking the rows of a garden. Or with a little bit of money, they can buy a thin metal sign, like we use for garage sales or real estate. Some of the children’s things adorn the graves - bottles, tippy cups, baby food jars. The smiling faces of teddy bears sitting on top of a child’s grave sets off a disconnect inside of me. I am still struggling to process this…

Daily Life in Zambia 10/27/10

2010-10-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

I just went through and read some of my old blogs from when I first arrived in South Africa. I had to laugh at how I describe how different everything is from my cush life in America, how difficult and challenging every little thing is. HA! That was nothing compared to life in Zambia. South Africa is Africa Lite.

I actually wrote about going to the movies in the mall during my rant on cultural differences. What a dolt.

Upon arriving in Mansa, Pastor Henry said, “Welcome to the real Africa”. He teases me that I am living in the AFnet Hotel because I have indoor plumbing and electricity, while most of the people here do not. However, the water and electricity stops working every single day, it is just a matter of when and for how long. When there is water, you fill up buckets so you have something to use when it is not working. And I have candles for when the power is out.
But don’t drink the water – it’ll make you sick. You must buy it, boil it, or add clorin to it to make it safe. I had diarrhea for the first five weeks I was here. I knew better than to drink the water but I was being hosted for meals and it would be rude not to eat and drink everything they give you since they are making a sacrifice to serve you the best of what they have. They use unsafe water in meal prep and without electricity there is no refrigeration so the food is sometimes questionable.
When vomiting and fever set in also, it was time for me to go to the hospital to get medication. My malaria test was negative so it was probably the food or water. Sorry to include you in this discussion of my bodily functions but diarrhea is a big part of daily life around here, as you can see from this mural painted on the side of a school. The children get sick fairly regularly – from malaria or unsafe water or lack of nutritious diet so they can’t fight off a common virus.

Now that I am cooking and shopping for myself I have been able to stay healthy. The new well is in (thank you Twin Lakes Church elementary school students!) so soon the orphans and I will have safe drinking water. We are just waiting for the electric company to increase the voltage to our site so we have enough energy to run the pump. Right now, even when we have power, the amount of it is not enough to read by light bulb. I can only read during the day.

What do I eat? Nshima is the staple here. Zambians adore it. It is not considered a meal unless nshima is served. This is mealie meal, a powder made out of pounding corn. In South Africa, it is called pap. In Tanzania, ugali. You add the maize meal to boiling water and keep stirring and stirring until it is impossible to move the spoon. Then you grab it with your fingers and moosh it into a ball to dip into relish (usually cooked tomato and onion). But that’s not what I eat. Too much work for almost nil nutritional value. It’s easier to throw pasta into boiling water, which I can buy at Shoprite, the only grocery store in town. The selection there is very limited. You can only get eggs if you go first thing in the morning, cheese and yogurt only if you happen to be there the same day the truck arrives, every couple of days but not regular. There is one kind of bread – white. No salad! Oh how I miss a good salad! But I shouldn’t get started on the things I miss… So that leaves cereal for breakfast, PB&J for lunch, pasta and veggies for dinner. Sorry to bore you with my menu, but people keep asking me. I stay away from the traditional foods, the little dried fishies at the market, dried caterpillar, or the village chicken - and it keeps me out of the hospital. This woman is on her way to the market to sell a big bowl of caterpillar goodness.

I do like the door to door food sales – the ladies arrive with the baskets on their head. Sometimes I don’t know what the strange food item is, and they don’t speak English to explain to me what to do with the item.
But if they have tomatoes or carrots or pineapple, I buy.

I do not have a car so I walk everywhere, like everyone else. Because it is so hot, and tennis shoes and chitenge look silly together, I wear my flip flops all the time. With the heat and the hard packed dusty dirt roads, I soon had cracked and bleeding heels. I thought it funny at first when the skin hardened and made sharp ridges. “Look, you can grate cheese on my feet”. Then the sharp bits started poking into the cracked open bits and it felt like walking on shards of glass. The ladies told me to use a stone. Now I rub my feet each day with a stone and put camphor cream on the shredded bits. Don’t ask me what’s in that. Evidently they don’t have labeling laws in Zambia so I have no idea what is in any of the products I am ingesting into, or slathering onto, my body.

My hate affair with roosters continues. Judging by the ear-plug-penetrating, ear-drum-shattering, SKAreeches of the roosters here, Zambia has clearly been cross breeding chickens with pterodactyls. And they get up even earlier here. They begin at 3:30, I guess to make sure that people are up in time for the 5:00 a.m. worship service in the church. Yes, I said FIVE a.m., every day, Monday thru Friday, they are shouting to the Lord for joy! They really take that verse seriously, a few feet away from my bedroom.

Back in California I used to think, if I slip and hit my head in the bathtub, I could be dead for a week before anyone noticed or found me. By then, my cat Charlie would be eating me. That could never happen here! People are knocking on my door all day long, checking on me or wanting something from me or just to greet me. And if I don’t answer, they go from window to window looking for me. Doesn’t matter if I am in the bathtub, on the toilet, in bed sleeping, they will find me! It is so hot here that I have to have the windows open during the day and they will reach in to move the curtain aside to look for you, yelling Madame Lisa, Madame Lisa, or the Bemba version, Ba Lisa. There is a concept that I spent 3 years in law school learning and 10 years as a lawyer arguing in court that does not exist here. There is no “reasonable expectation of privacy”. They are not being rude or insensitive to my need for personal time or space. It’s just a different culture. Everybody is in everybody’s business because they take care of each other.

Of all the embarrassing things I have admitted on this blog, this is probably the most embarrassing thing I am going to admit doing. I divulge it for several reasons: 1) to show that you do what ya gotta do for the survival of a loved one; 2) perhaps someone out there can tell me a better way to accomplish the same end; 3) maybe my method is useless and I can stop risking my health needlessly. The loved one is my laptop and each day I perform a form of CPR on it.
Because of the heat (did I mention it was really really hot here?), the windows are open which means all that previously mentioned dust and dirt blows in and covers everything in my house. When my laptop started to overheat a lot and I could hear the fan struggling to blow stuff out, I knew drastic measures must be taken. My laptop is my life line – to family, to friends, to getting my job here done. So now every day I place my mouth over the exhaust vent and suck as hard as I can to get all the dust particles out. I am allergic to dust mites so sometimes I have to use my inhaler afterwards if my airway starts to constrict. Small price to pay to keep my laptop alive.
I have two fantasies that I have concocted to adapt to daily life here. Yes, it is called living in denial, but it is what allows me to have peace of mind so please don’t burst my fantasy bubbles. The first is my magic shield mosquito net. I know that the rats, spiders, cock roaches, frogs, lizards, and mosquitos that I see in abundance flying and crawling and scurrying in my house by day, cannot penetrate the net and gnaw on me as I sleep. If if I did not firmly believe this, I would not be able to sleep at night.
I carefully wrap myself into a cocoon each night, obsessively tucking the net underneath every millimeter of my mattress, which sets on the floor. Then I emerge each morning a beautiful butterfly. Not really, but I couldn’t resist. I am not getting enough beauty sleep due to the prehistoric pterodactachickens.
And the soft breathing of a rat. My front door has a gap at the bottom about 2 inches high, so lots of critters can creep in. I put a box up against it to block their nocturnal entry. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by the eerie sound of cardboard slowly scraping across concrete. In the morning the box was in the middle of the room. The next night, I jammed a really thick blanket into the crack. In the morning, I found a shredded blanket in the middle of the room. Now I put a cement block in front of the crack. But one night I saw a furry little butt dart around the corner so he is still getting in somehow. I swear I hear him breathing right next to my pillow at night, but outside the magic net of course. And perhaps it’s not breathing, it’s probably rat laughter.

Fantasy number two involves my laundry. It is a long process that takes two days. First I wash it in the bath tub, rubbing it with a stone (no, not the same one I use to scrape my feet).
Then I hang it to dry on the clothesline, hoping today’s wind direction leaves my clothes drying upwind from the outhouse the line is attached to. EW, gross, why attach it there? It is the only patch of grass around. If I attach it over the dirt, the dirt just blows up onto it and sticks to the wet fabric so it ends up dirtier than when I started. I forgot to mention you must first separate out the “unmentionables”, that’s what they call it. My bras and granny panties must not be hung out in public for the world to see. Given the fact that they are granny panties, I am on board with this policy. I strung a second clothes line in my bedroom. With concrete floors, it doesn’t really matter if they drip on the floor. Then after the mentionables and unmentionables are dry, I have to iron them all. Sheets, socks, towels, underpants, you name it, it must be ironed. This is because when clothes are drying on the line, tiny flies lay their eggs in them. Then when you wear the item, your body heat causes the eggs to hatch and they burrow into your skin, causing redness and itching. Zambians iron to prevent this from happening. So I iron. My theory on this is that the extreme heat from the iron causes the eggs to combust and all the little baby fly particles immediately completely evaporate into the air allowing me to put on a pristine garment. This is better than the alternative, that I am walking around with melted dead fly embryos in my underpants.

I don’t mean to make it sound like my life here is horrible. It is hard, but very far from horrible. As I said in my last blog, I love the people of Zambia. The way they have made me feel part of their community, it will be hard to leave them all in a few weeks. I am also in complete awe of them. After long days of walking and hauling; shopping, chopping and cooking for 75; teaching, singing, and playing with children ages 3-18, I am exhausted. But not the amazing volunteers, they keep right on going and right on smiling. Everything I am doing, they are doing alongside me but in high heels with a child strapped to their back. Then they still have a 30-45 minute walk home to the village and still have to cook a meal for their own family.
And you know what I am going to say next, what totally makes it all worthwhile – the children! To see the change in them after just two days in the program was miraculous. This morning my eyes misted over as I heard their little voices sweetly singing. So I will gladly keep sucking dust, ironing fly babies, wrangling rats, and stoning my feet if I can keep seeing their beautiful smiles…

The Orphans of Mansa 9/11/10

2010-09-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

I am in love with the people of Zambia. They are so happy, so full of joy. Their smiles are huge, transforming their faces into beauty that beams out at you. I love to walk down the street and smile at everyone I meet to watch the smile take over their face.
Outside of the big cities like Lusaka, life has not changed much for the people of the villages. They live pretty much as they have for centuries. Huts made of dirt walls and a grass roof, water hauled on your head from the well, laundry done in the river. Some homes may have cement brick walls and some of those may have electricity, but that is rare. Food is hard to grow in the hard dry dust of Zambia, but many keep trying. Life is hard.

The statistic is that the majority of Zambians live on less than $2 a day, what you and I would call extreme poverty. So where is all this happiness coming from? I met a social scientist last weekend who explained it this way, “Whatever you have is normal. You do not know you are poor.”

They have very little but they proclaim, “God is good! He has blessed me with much.” And what little they have, they will gladly give to you. They are sincere and generous, warm and welcoming. They laugh loud and often and it is infectious.

Now take everything I just said, and disregard it when it comes to the orphans.

The first day I met the orphans, we had invited them to the church to color and get a little bag of treats. My friends Tim & Katrien had helped me move up here from South Africa and brought supplies which had been donated: toothpaste and toothbrushes from Katrien’s dentist in Belgium, art supplies and girl’s hair accessories from Santa Cruz, California (thank you Sissy and Club Shoreline volleyball!), potato chips from a friend of a friend in Pretoria (thank you Lerina!), and we added in toy cars for the boys. We were expecting to get the same kind of reception we always get at the orphan centers in Shoshanguve. Laughter, smiles, hugs, high fives, excitement and enthusiasm!

You could have heard a pin drop as the children quietly filed in. They were so serious, somber. They were shy and withdrawn. Normally, it is easy to get a child to smile. Nothing worked. When they were coloring, there was no laughter or even much talking. What a difference from the children in the programs in South Africa! I found this encouraging. The children who had been part of a daily program for the last couple of years are more confident, affectionate, outgoing, and down-right happy! They know how to have fun. They are clearly receiving love, attention and given opportunities to be kids!

Here in Mansa, the orphans only come about once a month to receive help in the form of food, blankets, clothing, or school fees. That is because right now only 11 children are sponsored. So instead of a daily program for 11 children, the church here has been taking care of about 75 orphans by prioritizing their needs on a monthly basis. AFnetAid is determined to expand the support base to start a daily program for all 75. That is why I am here.

I started by doing research to determine what kind of a program would work here. How far do the children have to walk to get here and get to school? If it is too far, maybe a daily program isn’t feasible. What kind and how many meals are they getting now? What do the children most need to receive to have a chance at a better future? To help them smile again?
I went on home visits. What I learned was disheartening and daunting. I learned why the orphans are different from the other children and the adults of Mansa, the happy ones I began this blog telling you about. The orphans know they are poor because they sit in the dirt and watch the other children walking past chattering on their way to school. They cannot go because they can’t afford the school fees. They know they are poor because even if they have the school fees, they are embarrassed wearing their rags and bare feet to school when the other children are in uniforms and black school shoes. The little girls wear dresses until they are falling off of them. They know they are poor when they go to bed with hunger each night because they only get one meal a day. They know they are not normal, and they long to be normal children.
I will introduce you to just a few of the children I met on these home visits. This is Christine, she is 16 and lives with her aunt. She lost both parents to AIDS when she was a baby. Flavior is also 16 and lives with her aunt. She has had malaria and tuberculosis so now needs to have her eyes tested. We visited one grandmother who watched six of her own children die and was now caring for eight grandchildren. There are a total of 13 in her house, one of them visibly in the final stages of AIDS.
Susan is 12 and lives with her grandma. This is a picture of me, church volunteer Mathilda, and Susan’s grandma, her eyes clouded over with malaria. Susan was not home. She was in town selling fritters. She had been doing this for the last month to save up enough money to pay her school fees so she could go back to school. What is this exorbitant sum she is working so hard to obtain? $4

Grandma said that they need bedding, clothing, food, and grass for the roof before the rainy season comes. When I asked her what was the most important thing we could do for Susan, she said, “I want you to give her an education because otherwise what will happen to her when I die?” This was her biggest fear.

Then there’s Ester. Ester says she is not going back to school, everybody laughs at her. They make fun of her because she is bigger than the rest of her class. That is because Ester is 13 years old and only in grade 3. Whenever there was not enough money for school fees, she would have to drop out. Each time she would work and save and go back, but she was falling further and further behind. Now she has given up.

If the children were home, I would ask them, “What do you do for fun?” I wanted to find out what kinds of activities they like so we could offer them in the program. They just looked at me blankly. Fun is a foreign concept. You have to give them ideas. Do you like to draw, read, sing, dance, play soccer? Mostly, they just want help with their school work so they won’t struggle so much.

After the home visits, it appeared that a daily program was desperately needed. The children all said they would walk as far as they had to if it meant a second meal that day. But I needed still more information. The children I met all had different school times. I needed to know what schools they attended, what hours they were in school, the ages and grades of the children, how many children in each age group, and so on.

So we had a registration day for a new daily orphan program. 84 orphans and their guardians showed up to register. The orphans attend 8 schools with 12 different starting and stopping times! In Shoshanguve, all the children come to the orphan center after school from 2-4. Easy. Here, each school has time periods based on grade level with times like 7-10, 10-12, 9-1, 11-2, 1-5, and numerous other impossibly overlapping combinations. My powers of organization will be put to the test here!

Registration day gave us lots of helpful information, and also gave me hope! I saw smiles and heard laughter from the orphans for the first time!

We divided the children into three groups. Grades 1-4 started in the registration area filling out the paper work and eating oranges and calcium cookies. Grades 5-7 started outside playing games, with me of course. Those of you who know me well know that I am always in charge of the games! Grades 8-11 started inside the orphan center and were asked to draw designs for ideas of what to paint on the blank walls inside. Mostly they drew pictures of food, flowers, and brick houses. They sat on the cement floor because we do not have tables and chairs yet.

Back to the fun part. I thought maybe if I asked them to do silly things, they might loosen up and maybe, just maybe, smile. We did relay races. Remember the potato between the knees game? You put a potato between your knees, walk across a certain distance and then, without using your hands, drop the potato into a pot. It makes you walk funny and YES, the children laughed! They cheered each other on in the marble on a spoon race and the water on a spoon race. Then we topped it off with a rousing game of volleyball over the clothesline, until they popped the beachball in their exuberant whacking of the flimsy thing.

These are my goals - to give the children back their childhood and give them back a future. I think about what the parents must have felt when these children were just babies – the positive dreams they had for their future. The love they felt is evident in the wonderful names they chose for them. Names like Gift, Given, Loveness, Delight, Precious, Blessings, Faith, Hope, Joy, Praise, Savior. Those of you who are parents, can you remember that moment? When you held that new little life in your arms and dreamed of their future…

Maybe the parent’s dreams for their children didn’t have to die with them. Maybe some of you out there will consider sponsoring a child. I know some of you already support me or a child in our programs, or even both! But maybe you are reading this and you are not a regular supporter. Will you think about it?
$35 a month will ensure that a child has school fees, a uniform, shoes, a nutritious meal, help with homework, and time to be a child! At slightly more than a dollar a day, you will barely miss it. But can you see what a life changing thing you will be doing for that child? If you can’t see it, just wait, I will show you! I will show you photos of the children after the program starts, and you judge for yourself.

If you would like more information about child sponsorship, or would like to receive an email flier you can forward on to others, please write to me at Lisa@afnet.org
You can also learn more at www.afnetaid.org

Naked Knees and Other Misdeeds 08/10/10

2010-09-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

The saga of getting Lisa to Mansa, Zambia continues…
After a nice break at Victoria Falls, our long journey continued north ward, deeper into Zambia. I was eager to get to Mansa and my new home, the guest room attached to the orphan center. As we approached Mansa, Pastor Henry called and warned us, “Do not go into the orphan center. Don’t put anything inside the building. Come straight to my house.” Sounds serious.

Henry had sent people in to clean for my arrival, but they all came out red and scratching. So he hired a pest sprayer. The ladies went in to clean and once again came out red & scratching. Henry was stumped, until he noticed the Sepe tree on the lot next door. It has evil spores that explode in the wind and send itchy little hairs into the air that cause bad reactions on human skin. We couldn’t move in and we waited a few days while the tree was cut down and the place aired out.

Finally, we were cleared to move in. The orphan center and guest rooms are just an empty shell of a building - concrete floors with inches of dirt to be swept out. And lots of creepy crawly things. Tim and I were both shocked to hear Katrien screaming “Kill it, kill it, KILL IT!” She is a vegetarian for humane reasons, killing animals is cruel. Evidently this does not apply to creatures where she has to sleep, namely a large spider with a dozen babies jumping off its back and scurrying towards her like a scene from “The Ring”.

As we moved our stuff in and cleaned, a crowd of children gathered at the windows, peering in and giggling. They just lined up along the sill, watching our every move, like they were watching a TV show. “What’s the white girl doing now?”

They were fascinated, they had never seen white people before. If you tried to talk to them, they ducked down or ran away. Until we unpacked little toy cars and handed them out the window, now we were not so scary. With no curtains on any of the windows, the children moved from window to window to follow all the action. I was living in a fish bowl, the Lisa Poll show.

We spent our first night there, basically camping on the cement. We had flashlights and mattresses on the floor and we rigged up mosquito nets to tuck around the bottoms. There was no furniture and no electricity. I fell asleep early to the sound of children outside singing black gospel songs in Bemba.

The next day I attended three hours of church. This is typical of churches in rural Africa. Church is an all day event. There is singing and dancing and the pastor can talk for hours! It brought back wonderful memories of my first trip to Africa in 2004. That was the first time that I really knew what it meant to be part of the family of God. Here are people on the other side of the world, whose culture is so different, who don’t speak my language, and we are singing and worshipping Jesus together. They call me sister because we are children of the same God. What a beautiful huge family I have!

It was amazing to be sitting in the church that I helped to build. The last time I was here, this building was just a hole in the ground. Back in 2004, all that was on this property was a big ole tree. I laid under that tree because I was sick from eating too much nshima, taking pictures of my team mates make bricks which became this church. That counts right?
I helped more when we got back.
Our team had a concert to raise the money to finish building the church.

Now, to the right of the tree, the church is done and to the left, there is an orphan center. I never dreamed six years ago I’d be returning here to live! Now I sit under that tree and play Go Fish with the neighbor children.

Back to the church service. Pastor Henry introduced me and asked me to say a few words. I recounted the story of laying under the tree six years ago, told them what I was here to do and also explained that “I will be living here for a few months, if I look helpless or am doing something wrong, please come tell me.” This proved to be quite prophetic and more immediate than I had hoped.
Right after church, while the church elders were waiting next door to meet me, I proceeded to lock myself in the bathroom for half an hour.
The handle of the door just broke right off in my hand. I could not climb out the window as there are bars on the windows. I stuck my arms out and waved until someone noticed me. A group of children came to the window to see me, but they didn’t understand English so they didn’t know why this white woman was waving and standing in a bathroom for half an hour. Finally, Tim came to my rescue.

After meeting the church elders, we walked to the market. We went into sensory overload as we weaved through a maze of tables piled high with bright red tomatoes, brown casaba roots, rows of large blackened fish, mountains of tiny dried out fishies, buckets of beans, pyramids of potatoes, racks of vividly colored patterned fabrics, and marble-sized white balls of unknown origin (I have since been told these are balls of clay which are eaten to aid digestion, though I’ve never seen anyone actually do this).

The sellers were mostly women, with babies strapped to their backs by the patterned fabrics. As we passed, the babies screamed and hid their faces in their mother’s shoulders. Never having seen white people before, they thought we were ghosts.

It just kept getting hotter and hotter so I changed into shorts to walk up to the internet place. Everyone openly stared at my white legs. Being that I had just endured my second winter this year, my legs had not seen the sun in many, many months, so they were pretty scary. When I got home, there was a knock at the door and two women came in and quietly introduced themselves as being from the nearby Bible college. They got right to the point. “You cannot run away from our culture. You are in it.” They proceeded to rap a piece of fabric around my waist that went all the way to the floor. “This is how the women in our church show respect. If you want the men to treat you properly, you must not show your knees.”

Ohhhhh, that’s why everyone was gawking at my legs – they were naked! I have ugly surgery-scarred knees, who would have thought they were sexual objects? The women taught me how to wrap the chitenge (what the fabric square is called) and I vowed to wear it each time I went out. When they left, I could hear Tim & Katrien snickering in the next room, “You’ve received your first civic censure.”

The next day, the orphans showed up at church. But I am going to leave that story for another day. I want to give the children the time and space that they deserve in a blog that is all about them. There is so much to say about and for them. They are the reason I am here.

8/01/2010 Rodney the Rooster's Road Trip

2010-09-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

Bright and early August 1, we hit the road for Zambia. Just Katrien, Tim, me and Rodney the Rooster. Up to the very last minute, I was expecting Johan to change his mind, that we Americans would not be able to handle the road trip across three African countries without an experienced guide. My friends Tim and Katrien were helping me move to the orphan center in Mansa so the van and trailer were loaded to the gills with mattresses, a refrigerator, pots, pans, dishes, blankets, towels, and so on. Coworker Christo had thrown in a large ceramic rooster when packing the van as a joke because he knows how much I looooove roosters.

It is roughly 1000 miles from Pretoria, South Africa to Mansa, Zambia, and I mean rough. In between we would battle poorly marked roads (turn left at the Nando chicken), a van that may or may not go into second gear, potholes that can swallow you whole, finding long enough parking places for a van and trailer that also allows a forward escape (none of us could back up with a trailer attached), 4 border crossings, a tipsy ferry, a severe lack of gas stations (which are really hard to find when no one understands what I am trying to find - gas is for cooking, a filling station is for cars) and numerous road blocks with corrupt officials wanting bribes.

At the first border crossing, from South Africa into Botswana, the customs guy was inspecting the bulging van and noticed the box of bibles we had conspicuously placed on the back seat. We needed to convince border guards we were delivering supplies to an orphan center (which of course we were) so they would not charge us import fees and have us unpack the van and trailer at every border. He asked me, “Are you a Lady of God?” Does he mean am I a believer? “Yes, I am a lady of God.” Maybe he meant a nun? Oops, I didn’t mean to pass myself off as a nun. I gave him a Bible - cuz that’s what nuns do. He passed us through.

Then when we showed our customs stamp to the border guard, he said, “I like your T-shirt, I want to eat it.” So perhaps I didn’t look so much like a nun after all. Or perhaps that wasn’t the English word he was searching for. Another possibility is my bad hearing. He might have said, “I like your rooster, I want to eat it.”
Driving through Botswana, we stopped several times to take pictures of animals, BIG animals. This was not in a game park, the animals are just naturally there on the side of the road. We saw giraffes, baboons, elephants – up close and personal with no ranger to stop us from exiting our vehicle. Nearing sunset, we saw the silhouettes of a line of more than 50 elephants single file crossing a field. They were too far away for my camera to capture the image, but it is seared on my brain as a perfect African memory.
The next day we entered Zambia by crossing the Zambezi River at the Kazungula ferry. The line of big semi trucks stretched back from the river for a mile, it would take all day for these truckers to wait their turn to get on the ferry. We drove to the front, having been thoughtfully warned by Johan that cars don’t have to wait in that line. Tim and Katrien were dismayed to see how small the ferry was, expecting to see the big thing that hauls hundreds of cars. I probably shouldn’t have told them how important it is for the ferry to be loaded evenly. In the past, the ferry had tipped over and all passengers died – either drowned or eaten by crocs.
There were already two big semis loaded on the ferry and the men were waving me forward. I would have to fit into the tiny space left at the back of the ferry by driving across a narrow ramp. I would have to get it right the first time because there was no way I could back up the van and trailer and keep the wheels on that narrow ramp. Tim and Katrien showed their faith in my driving abilities by quickly jumping out of the van and watching safely from shore. The van and trailer made it onto the ferry, but didn’t quite fit. No problem, as the ramp was raised to become the back wall of the ferry, the trailer just poked up into the sky. I prayed the trailer wouldn’t snap off at the hitch, and it didn’t. We safely reached the other side – disappointing the crocs and hippos.

Then the real ordeal began - the bureaucratic mess of six different offices to get approval and pay fees in to officially be IN Zambia. It took us three hours to navigate this minefield: Immigration, Customs and Excise, Carbon Tax, Counselor Fee, Road toll tax, and Third Party insurance. It was like a scavenger hunt, after endless waiting in a dusty stuffy office then negotiating to get the paperwork we needed, that official would tell us what we needed next but not where to find it. So the hunt was on to find the next unmarked office and stamp we needed. Katrien and I collected stamps and negotiated hundreds of thousands of kwachas (approximately 5,000 Zambian kwacha = $1US), while Tim guarded the van and trailer and fended off the touts and scam artists and beggars. He saw the young women earning money to feed their families by jumping into the cabs of the waiting truckers. Tim witnessed firsthand how AIDS spread across Africa along the major trucking lines.

Once we cleared the border minefield, it was not too far a drive and we were soon enjoying the sunset from the Zambezi Waterfront Lodge’s deck on the river. We had reserved tents there for a few days and they were set up and waiting for us. The picture at left is Katrien and I at breakfast at the Zambezi Waterfront. The cloud on the left is actually the spray from Victoria Falls.

The next day, we were up early excited to be whitewater rafting the mighty Zambezi! We first had a lesson on rafting, paddling, safety, emergency rescues, etc. The guides said nothing about the real danger – how we would be getting TO the river. The river is at the bottom of a 350 foot deep gorge. Somehow we had to get down the steep cliff sides of the gorge holding onto our paddle, wearing our lifejackets and helmets. They had kindly nailed branches into the sides of the cliff which were supposed to serve as a ladder of sorts, but the branches (really more aptly described as sticks) would often break off, sending you sliding down until you grabbed the next branch, boulder, or thorn bush. There were eight boat loads of us adventure tourists laughing at how our home countries would never allow such an activity – due to extreme liability issues. But TIA! By the time we reached the bottom, we were hot, dirty, sweaty, bloody, and quite proud of our accomplishment and we still had a full day of class 4 rapids ahead of us. We had survived the first challenge and had a pretty good idea of who we would vote off the island first.

It was beautiful rafting through the gorge and the guides were good at their job, keeping us alive and entertaining us. We got the most experienced of the guides since Tim, Katrien and I were on the “special boat” – our three boat mates were paddle challenged and severely hung over, having done the sunset booze cruise the night before. Our boat became a laughingstock as Tim spent the entire day yelling out “stroke – stroke - stroke” so the timing was right or our paddles just became entangled and we couldn’t get anywhere. But we managed not to flip the raft all day, which is something four of the other boats can’t say.

We were only truly terrified twice, mostly it was a blast! Thrilling rapids, monkeys playing on shore, crocodiles sunning on the rocks. One of the rapids was only class 2 so we had the option of riding it outside the boat, floating on our backs. What a crazy ride - bobbing and spinning, and hills like a roller coaster. I couldn’t contain my “Wahooooooos” of happiness, even if it meant gulping in water. When we came out the other side, we all clambered back into the raft grinning from ear to ear. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – we’re one short. Where’s Dan? Dan was not a good swimmer. Dan?! We all shouted, “Daaaaan!” He was nowhere to be found. We paddled upstream, all seriously worried Dan had actually drowned. Ten minutes of paddling upstream later, we found Dan clinging white-knuckled to a rescue kayaker.
After the last rapid, a cable car took us back up the sides of the gorge. Thank goodness, after paddling 18 rapids and digging in especially hard to make up for the three hungover Australians, I did not have the arm strength to climb back up. On the drive back to the Zambezi Waterfront, we stopped for a herd of elephants. It was a great day.
Back at the lodge, we watched the video of our adventure – the rafts flipping, the bodies flying. Fun! Let’s do it again! Then Tim, Katrien and I headed to Livingstone for some traditional Zambian food for dinner. We ate a plate of mopane worms. Tastes like chicken. Bad, chewy, charcoaly chicken. Ok, so I only ate one. The rest of the plate we shared with a table of Danish tourists who we felt shouldn’t miss out on the cultural experience either. I must give extra kudos to Katrien here, a devout vegetarian, who gamely ate a worm to be part of the experience. Although technically, are worms meat?
The next day I paid 100 rand ($14) to have a man hold my hand for an hour. It was fantastic. Has it really come to that? Not quite. Yet.
The man was my guide for crossing the river at the top of Victoria Falls so I could traverse the rocks to get into the middle of the Falls at the very edge where one million liters of water per second careens down 350 feet. But I am getting ahead of myself.
First we walked the tame side, the side of the gorge where you look across and view the magnificent falls.
Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world and the Seventh Natural Wonder of the World. The waterfall is a mile wide and so much water hits the bottom of the gorge that a wall of mist and steam rises up into the air that can be seen for miles away. The local name for it is Mosi O Tunya – The Smoke That Thunders.

When you enter the park, you rent ponchos because you become completely soaked by the water in the air. Photos cannot do justice to the size and majesty of Mosi O Tunya.
At one point, there is a bridge to cross and to the left you see the gorge that we rafted through and to the right you see the wall of water. You are surrounded by a rainbow, but it is not an arch, it is a complete circle of rainbow. This moment of incredible beauty was interrupted by a baboon leaping onto the railing and chasing us off the bridge.
We returned our ponchos and headed to the other side of the gorge, the side where the river dropped off the edge of the mile long cliff. We noticed little people specks out on the rocks at the edge of the falls. I wonder how they got there? This is where my handholding episode comes in. Local man steps up, “I can show you how to get there.” Tim is up for it too. Katrien feels class 4 rapids with crocodiles, cliff sliding, monkey attack, and mopane worms is enough risk in a 24 hour time period and opts to sit on the banks.

Tim and I held hands with our two guides who showed us where and how to cross the river. You hold hands because you are balancing on a concrete ledge submerged in water slightly above your knees. Your toes must grip the edge of the ledge to keep the current from pushing you backward (I knew my hideously curved toes would come in handy some day). After an hour (that’s ten minutes in real time which only feels like an hour in “waterfall crossing” time), we reached an island in the middle of the river. Then we had to boulder hop to get over to the edge. Our guides showed us step by step where to place our feet so we would choose a boulder that would not give way or was not too slimy/slippery. But again, the hardship and difficulty was worth it (I find myself saying that a lot in Africa). The view, to be IN Victoria Falls, was a once in a lifetime, awe-inspiring, THANK YOU GOD experience!
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, although they may be too humble to speak the truth…

I Love Your Turtleneck 7/16/2010

2010-07-16T01:39:00.000-07:00

With so much negativity in the world, do you ever stop and think about how good people are? How MANY good people there are? That is one of the biggest benefits of this new direction my life has taken. I get to experience the goodness of people. Not just the ones who are in the trenches giving their lives daily to lift up the sick, the poor, the abandoned. But also the people who read or hear about a problem and then actually DO something about it. They contribute, donate, think of solutions, get involved, spread the word, change their behavior, write to encourage, write to persuade. They don’t say, gee that’s too bad but what can I do about it?
I think anyone who sees a child suffering has some visceral gut reaction, we all feel something. Horror, disgust, shock, pain, sadness, injustice, anger, pity, empathy, compassion. We all want to make it stop, stop the suffering. But how many act on that feeling?
A LOT!!
512 blankets donated in 6 days.
A friend hearing about our orphan programs and dropping off over 800 bags of chips in the lobby of AFnetAid.
My physio- therapist using her spare time to build puppets and sets and then put on shows for the orphans.
A friend coming to visit bringing dental and medical supplies because her dentist and doctor asked if they could help when they heard where she was going.
My friend’s nine year old son donating all his balls, even the ones he plays with all the time, because it was just too sad that little boys in Africa play with balls made out of garbage.
I think the vast majority of people act when given a chance. Before this job, I think I would have said differently. And it is the compassion and generosity of this huge mass of people that inspires me to keep plugging away day after day in the face of what seems like overwhelming suffering. If time after time, people respond and do what they can in the moment, who am I not to do what I can right here right now?
I get the joy of being a part of events like the blanket drive, seeing people back home respond, thrilling as the numbers go up each day. I get the joy of being there to hand out the blankets and watch the children’s faces light up as they wrap fuzzy blankets around them on a cold wintery day.
When I am with the children, I am happy. Sometimes they are so serious, but you can easily get them to smile and laugh and giggle – the most beautiful sound on the planet. I take pictures of them with their blankets and I feel like I have accomplished something today. I go back to the office and I am loading the pictures on to the computer to share with you. I smile at their smiling faces and zoom in. And then I start to cry. Looking down I see their shoes. How could I not have noticed their shoes when I was there? They are dusty, raggedy, worn thin. Their little toes are sticking out of their shoes.
I don’t want to stop noticing. I don’t want to stop doing. Whatever little thing I can do.
Elsabe noticed and did. Elsabe works at Afnet too and went on the blanket delivery last time. After delivering to this family I just described, she called the little girl over to the van and handed her a turtleneck sweater. Elsabe had been wearing a lovely blue soft-looking turtleneck under her shirt and had taken it off and given it to the little girl. I had just complemented her on it that morning. At our daily staff meeting, I said in front of everyone, “I love your turtleneck”. They all looked at me strangely and she looked hurt. After an awkward moment, I realized I better explain. “That shirt that goes up your neck, we call that a turtleneck.” She looked relieved. They don’t call it that here so basically I was insulting her neck. But that’s not why she gave it away. She did everything she could in the moment when she saw that little girl living in a tin shack without warm clothes.
People like Elsabe, people like my physio, people like you who keep asking “what can I do to help?", inspire me.

From Virtual to Reality 6/21/2010

2010-06-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

I am loving the virtual brainstorming session! (See my last blog if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I have received some good ideas and I will keep you in the loop as to what I find out. Some of you have asked if you can send me coats and blankets. That is a very nice offer, but please don't. By the time you pay for shipping and then we pay the duty fees to pick them up on this end, it is cheaper just to buy new ones here! Some of you have asked how to send money so we can do that. I have included the address below if you want to mail a check. But it also gave me the idea, if I can have a virtual brainstorming session, why can’t I have a virtual blanket drive? And why can’t you all have virtual blanket drives? I am going to send out an email for my virtual blanket drive and you can forward it on to everyone you know! We’ll see how many blankets we can buy! It’s like those emails you get asked to forward on for their kids science project, only this time instead of helping a kid get an A on their report card, you are helping a kid make it through the night without freezing to death. (Was that too much? Sorry, let me scale down the drama. I get carried away sometimes when I get excited about an idea. Not that it isn’t true though.)

If I don’t have your email, write to me at Lisa@afnet.org.

If you want to buy a blanket, you can send a check to AFnet at 3630 Charter Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95136 and just put “blanket” on the memo line of your check.

The photo above has nothing to do with this blog, except that I took it when I was out in Shoshanguve delivering blankets. Wonder how that marketing plan is working out for them…

Ttypinbg with nmy gfloves pon 6/17/2010

2010-06-18T01:03:00.000-07:00

Last night it was -1 degrees. My little cottage is made of brick with no insulation and does not have a heating system so it was very cold. But I have a portable heater to sit in front of, ugg boots and layers of fleece, a microwave to heat a hot water bottle for my feet, and an electric blanket when I go to bed. But as I shiver and think how cold I am, I remember the miles and miles of tin shacks. How cold must those people be? No electricity, no shoes, no warm clothes, maybe a thin blanket. A thin piece of metal for walls that don’t seal out the cold wind. If I am this cold, I can’t imagine how painful negative one must feel to them. I have to stop thinking about it. I can’t think of how the children must feel, I can’t. If I think about it for one second longer, my heart will explode.

I try to change the subject in my mind, but each time I nuke my hot water bottle or grab my mug of hot tea to warm my hands, I am reminded. I can’t shake the image. My heart screams, “What can I do?” There are hundreds of thousands of people living like this in the townships. I cry out in prayer for them, but I don’t even know what to ask for. Do I pray that someone builds 500,000 houses? Do I pray for blankets? Do I pray that the temperature never goes below 50? What can I realistically request?
I fail even in praying for them.

When I got to work this morning, I asked my coworkers, what can we do? Chris said we have about 30 blankets in the storeroom that we can deliver. I said Great, can we go today? Chris knew of a pastor in a very poor part of the township of Shoshanguve who would know which homes in the community needed the blankets the most. AFnetAid has two orphan day care centers and an orphanage in Shoshanguve, but they recently had 210 blankets donated to them by a Christian radio station, so we knew our centers didn’t need them as much as Pastor Gert. Chris, Banie, and I hopped in the Landrover and headed out to Shoshanguve.

Pastor Gert and his wife Lienkie are both graduates of the AFnet Pastor Training Program. Their church takes care of orphans, runs a day care, and has a literacy program for the elderly. Since their congregation cannot pay them to do all this, he builds bricks to make money and she has a nightshift at a factory in a different town sewing car seat covers. They took the time to walk around the neighborhood with us introducing us to the people who could really use some blankets right now. We delivered to a granny who was caring for two orphans.In a makeshift room attached to her home was a man dying of AIDS. They did not call it this. They said that he was being cursed because of his infidelity. He was married but began an affair with a woman who was said to be full of demons. When she died, she passed all her demons on to him and now he was very sick. This is Chris going into the cold shack to pray for him and leave a blanket.We met a blind mom and her children who lived in this weird dome thing. These were left behind from the time when the railroads were built. Here’s Banie handing over extra warmth to a little one.We met this family that had been thrown together by fate. The little baby became an orphan when her mother died in childbirth. The two women took in her orphans. All lived in this little shack.I was happy to do the little bit that I could do. Until I got home. I watched the news and the weather report says a cold front is moving through tonight. You gotta be kidding me. It is going to get colder?!! I must not think of all the children that will freeze tonight. I must think of the 30 that maybe have a bit more comfort tonight. I cannot help them all, but I did what I could do for today. But have I done all that I can? I am going to contact the big rich white churches in Pretoria – they need to do a coat drive. Wish me luck!

Anybody out there have ideas on how to help? You engineer types, can you think of a way to make the shacks warmer? That doesn’t cost money? You creative types, can you think of ways to keep the children warmer? I have so many brilliant friends, time to tap into that brainpower! Let’s get this virtual reality brainstorming session underway…

Privacy Schmivacy 6/9/10

2010-06-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

A good friend recently commented that my blogs seem to have a recurring theme – poop. What can I say, it’s a part of life. Poop happens. Apart from that deep philosophical musing, this will be a poop-free blog.

I have been meaning to tell you about my trip to the free clinic. I went to POPUP, People’s Upliftment Programme, a few weeks ago to find out what they have to offer for our orphans. During the tour of the facilities, we went to the medical clinic. In addition to vocational training classes, POPUP offers free medical services not just to their students but also to anyone in the community, even me. It is rudimentary - corrugated steel walls and roof, cement floors, plastic chairs – but that is not what attracted me. It was the really large woman who was introduced as the physiotherapist. She looked like a rugby player. She had big biceps, big hands, a big laugh, and a big heart to match, donating her time to the clinic every week. I knew I must have her. Working on my neck.

I came back during clinic hours. I got there right when it opened, but there was a line already. Only 4 people ahead of me, not too bad, how long could my wait be? 2 hours. And no outdated magazines to look at. The waiting room is outside and if those hard plastic chairs weren’t so very very cold (did I mention it is winter here), it would have been a pleasant wait. We were right next to the day care center for the children of the students in vocational training. They are so darned cute. The little ones were bundled up to protect them from the cold so much that they had trouble running around the playground and tipped over a lot while trying to play soccer. They don’t have proper warm clothing so they just keep putting on layer after layer until they can barely bend their arms and legs. So it didn’t hurt when they tipped over which made it okay for me to laugh at them.

After recess was over, they went into class and we could hear them singing. They sang Old MacDonald had a farm. Again - so cute! Then they came outside to a little pond in the yard where there are bunnies, ducks, chickens and continued the song while pointing to the animals.

Finally, the aide came out and starting talking to the patients to fill out the paperwork. I was really glad I was there for a neck injury after a car accident and not some girlie issue since this conversation took place right in front of everyone. The man sitting inches away from me answered all her questions about his delicate situation. I was so glad to go inside, now I would warm up. Nope, now you take your jacket and shirt off and lay on this table with just a curtain separating you from the outside world. The other wall was a curtain too where I could hear the doctor questioning a man about his rash.

Then the physiotherapist came in and my instincts proved right. She was good. She was strong and she knew what she was doing. Her fingers went right to the spots causing me pain. She asked me to slide toward her on the table so she could get to my neck. Before I could get my hands under me to squirm upwards, she had her hands under my shoulders and slid me down the table like I was Kleenex.

I found out that her practice is not far from my work office so I made an appointment to see her there. I felt guilty taking up the time in the free clinic when there are others that can’t afford to pay and for now, I can. I assumed her office would be warmer and more private. You would think I would have learned by now not to make any assumptions about the way things work in Africa. Her office was much warmer – real walls, fuzzy blankets, hot pads. But privacy is just a different concept here. There were several of us patients all lying on tables separated by curtains. So I am laying there with no shirt on while she works on my muscles, when she introduces me to the guy lying half naked behind the curtain (which I happen to know because I “accidentally” pulled the wrong curtain when trying to get out of there later, oops).

We all chatted, all of us half-naked faceless people behind curtains, about AIDS orphans (half-naked guy didn't know there were 2 million of them in his country), puppet shows, and how the American judicial system is designed to protect the rights of the criminals. Where your face pokes out through the hole in the table, you are looking down at a Bible verse printed on paper on the floor (it changes every time I come). After an hour of chatting, neck manipulating, muscle-knot poking, listening to Italian opera on the stereo system, and getting re-dressed, it was time to go. Goodbye man behind the curtain, nice chatting with you.

Next time maybe I'll tell you about how the physio stuck needles in my neck then attached electrodes. Lekker. That's Afrikaans for awesome.

Just a Typical Family Road Trip Vacation 5/25/10

2010-05-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

I feel a bit like I am writing my homework assignment for my fourth grade teacher, “My Summer Vacation, by Lisa Poll,” because at times my trip to Capetown felt like some of the trips of my childhood. But take the typical American experience and add an African twist to everything!

I live in a guest house on the property of a wonderful family who demonstrates the traditional Afrikaaner hospitality to the point that I feel like family. They even invited me on their family trip to Capetown, a beautiful city down at the bottom tip of the continent. Everything is so breathtakingly dramatic with Table Mountain as a backdrop. It has beaches on two oceans, Atlantic and Indian. It has whale migrations, diving with great white sharks, surfing in those same waters, mountains and valleys to hike and bike, safaris and winetasting. We set out early each day in our car to explore…

It brought me back to the long days in the back seat with my sister on the family road trip. It was deja vu - the brother and sister in the back seat fighting over who’s taking up too much space, whether the window should be up or down, who drank all the water, your cheesy popcorn is stinking up the car, when are we going to stop for lunch? But then… they sing. They sing rounds with verses in English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Tswana. Their young voices are so beautiful together, and in four languages! Sure beats Found a Peanut and 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

There were many times that I felt nostalgic, when I felt so much at home because an area overwhelmingly reminded me of my beloved California, only to be ripped back to the realization that in this moment I could only be in Africa. Stellenbosch, the wine country a short drive from Capetown, looked like Napa in the fall. The reds and golds of rolling vineyards in front of a line of jagged mountains. Then wham, there’s an ostrich roaming the vineyard. Add in petting a cheetah and my face painted by Xhosa, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Napa anymore.”

Then there’s Robben Island, a penal institution on an island off Capetown where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. I felt like I was on the Alcatraz tour in San Francisco bay until a bunch of penguins went waddling by.

Then there’s Cape Point, a winding coastline of gorgeous sheer rock cliffs towering above turquoise blue waters crashing onto beach coves or rock walls. You take the Big Sur coast line and add in a family of baboons moving into your car.

When we arrived at the national park at Cape Point, we had to pay a huge park fee per person. I squawked as we drove through the gate, “How could they possibly need this much for maintenance of this park?” They handed us a brochure with a map and park guidelines. It gravely warned us to be sure to close the doors and windows of your vehicle, but it said nothing about LOCKING the doors (ominous foreshadowing). We drove to a spot said to be good for spotting whales close to shore at this time of year. We had the beach to ourselves and we all got out of the car, closing the doors and windows like the rule-abiding tourists that we are.While we scanned the sea for breaching whales, a large baboon walked up behind us and opened the car door like he'd been driving for years. He hopped in the back seat, rummaged through Andri’s backpack and ripped open a bag of chips. We stood there watching him enjoy a large bag of Fruit Chutney flavored Doritoes, unsure how to get this big creature out of the back seat. I remembered how a chimpanzee had ripped the face off a woman last year in the United States, and that was a pet. This was a wild animal, who was hungry and quite dextrous. I wasn’t about to try the “shoo” technique here. As we stood there helplessly, Mom baboon with a baby on her back climbed into the front seat and started eating my apple. Dad baboon then decided he'd rather have the apple instead of the chips and a fight broke out inside the vehicle. Turns out when agitated, baboons poop. A LOT.
Three rangers with big sticks came running and mediated the apple dispute, ejecting the family in the process. Dad baboon had grabbed my bag from the front seat and was running away. It was a sight to behold, a big baboon with a bright red bag being chased by a stick-waving ranger a long distance down this pristine white sand beach. He was able to retrieve my bag, which I didn’t have the heart to tell him only contained a pair of flip flops now covered in mooshy apple bits. Another ranger took Andri’s backpack into a restroom and washed the poop off it. The visitor center gave us the supplies to scrub the car seats and gave us big plastic garbage bags that we sat on the rest of the trip. Thank goodness for entry fees! Those rangers earned every rand.Now I am back at home. It did my soul good to be at the ocean for a bit, to lay in bed at night and imagine I am in Santa Cruz because I hear the sound of waves instead of roosters. It did my soul good to walk freely outside of a fenced compound. And yet, it did feel good to come home. That was a good feeling, feeling that my little cottage in Pretoria was home. It’s amazing how quickly we humans can adapt to change. Individually, but not as a society. I am thinking here of the end of apartheid, but that is a subject for another day...

TIA 5/13/10

2010-05-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

I figured it was about time to introduce you to TIA. Anyone who has spent any time at all in Africa knows this expression well. It means “This Is Africa”. You say it whenever things pop up unexpectedly to slow you down, which happens all the time. You use it to explain all the little daily frustrations which are so typical of Africa, as well as the big daily frustrations which are so typical of Africa, like corruption and crime. You use it to deal with the things you cannot control and must shrug off if you are going to accept life here. No water for three days – TIA. No electricity, no phone, no internet connection – TIA. Potholes the size of hippos – TIA. Missing your first Netball game because you are stuck in a traffic mess in downtown Pretoria for two and a half hours – TIA.
My new friend Liezel said that her Netball team was short a player on Thursday, do I want to play? Even though I had no idea what Netball was, I said, “Of course I want to play! Do I wear a little tennis skirt or shinguards?” I was a little worried when she said I had to cut off my fingernails and I couldn’t wear jewelry, but I was still really looking forward to it. I would get to make some new friends and get some exercise – two things I am in very short supply of right now. On Thursday, I had a meeting in downtown Pretoria with POPUP – People’s Upliftment Programme. They do vocational training and AFnetAid would like to partner with them to get our older orphans into their classes. The meeting would be over at 4:00 and it’s only a 30 minute drive, so no problem making a 6:30 Netball game. At 6:00, I was still sitting in the middle of an intersection, staring at the side of a bus that had not budged for 17 cycles of the traffic light. The taxis (which are minivans driven by the insane) just drove up onto the sidewalks, sending the people selling their wares scrambling. So as I sat there, knowing I would miss the game and let Liezel’s team down, I calmly thought, TIA.
In Africa, you have to take things as they come, the good and the bad, because you cannot control them, when they will come and how long it will last. I almost passed up an offer to go to Capetown, because the timing was not right. The family that I rent my guest house from is going to Capetown this week and asked if I wanted to come along. I thought, no, it is too soon. I have only been with AFnetAid for 5 weeks, I can’t go away now. Johan was the one to convince me to go, pointing out that you have to take things when they come. I cannot control when the good comes any more than I can control when the bad stuff happens.
And this is definitely a good thing, this trip to Capetown. There are the practical reasons - free place to stay, transportation while there, knowledgeable local guide, companionship, safety, bond with the family I live with, get experience traveling within the country because when my guests come I will be expected to be the knowledgeable local guide! Me, the California blonde (ok, Loreal blonde but you get the idea). Don’t worry, by the time you get here, I’ll be ready for you. I am getting my multiples of 7 down! When you ask me how much something costs in US dollars, I can tell you in mere seconds. Now if the rand exchange rate changes, no promises my math skills will keep up.
But in addition to the practical, there are reasons of the heart. For me to love this country I serve in, I should see the beauty as well as the ugliness. I know of the crime of Pretoria and the despair of the shanty towns – miles and miles of people living in shacks made of scrap metal hobbled together, ravaged by unemployment and AIDS. These are towns formed as people left their families and homes in the villages and country to come to the big city for the promise of jobs. Promises that 75% of the time go unmet in the townships. Or they are people that were pushed out of the city during the apartheid years. The blacks were forced to live in these shanty towns on land where nothing could grow. They could not go into the white areas of the city unless they had a pass because they had a job there. Many areas within these shanty towns have no water, electricity, bathrooms, garbage collection. This last may seem like a silly thing to throw in, but think about it. What do you do with your garbage if there is nowhere to put it? The garbage everywhere adds to the picture of hopelessness of the shanty towns. It is on the streets, piled in the ditches, blown up against the sides of the buildings.

This is not to say that I have not seen beauty already. I have. The beauty of my coworkers hearts, beauty in the laughter of the children, beauty in the love and innocence seen in their eyes. But there is much natural beauty in this country as well. Everyone knows of the beauty of the majestic animals – lions, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, zebras, sable, kudu. But there is also the land – sunsets on the savannah, the mountains and waterfalls of the Drakensburg, Table Mountain and the wine country of Capetown, the beaches of Durban, etc. I want to post pictures so amazingly beautiful that you will all want to come visit me!
So Friday, I leave for Capetown. TIA!

Bafana Bafana 5/8/2010

2010-05-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have caught Bafana Bafana fever. I need to go buy a vuvuzela. Don’t worry, it’s not some tropical disease that will cause my tongue to swell up to the size of a football. But it has to do with football. And by that, I mean soccer to you Americans. The rest of the world calls it football. The World Cup is being held in South Africa in 33 days. Bafana Bafana is the South African team. A vuvuzela is the brightly colored plastic horn that sounds like an elephant – it is a mandatory fan accessory. I would love to go to one of the games but none of my coworkers have any interest in it. They loooove their rugby and cricket, but seem to be oblivious to the World Cup mania surrounding them. I want to wear a green and yellow jersey and wave the South African flag and be a part of the roaring crowd.
So far, the best part about the World Cup coming here – the commercials! I wish this country was as jolly and unified as the commercials portray. Racial harmony and national pride oozes from the TV screen. I love to watch them, they make me feel all warm and fuzzy, like a Hallmark commercial. There is an ad with Nelson Mandela and tells of how it was his dream to host the World Cup. (by Mandela: "If there is one thing in this planet that has the power to bind people together it is soccer.") Another ad shows a scruffy little boy from a village playing soccer in the dirt and dreaming of growing up to be a soccer star and then now he is here, playing in the World Cup. Another shows different crowds huddling around TV screens watching a game: in multi-racial bars, rundown township halls, a living room with 20 people crammed into it and a tiny black and white TV – and all the crowds are cheering at the same moment, when Bafana Bafana scores! This one is most poignant, as that is how the majority of South Africans will see the games being played in their own backyard - on TV. The ticket prices are so high that they cannot afford them.
Soccer is the main sport of the shanty towns. The little boys dig through the garbage to find plastic bags, plastic wrap, little bits they can wrap into a ball and keep adding to it until it is big enough to be a soccer ball. The people that love the sport the most will not be able to attend, and will be lucky if they get to watch it on TV. Many villages and shanty towns do not have electricity. And there are parts of the country to which TV does not reach. SABC is the South African Broadcasting Company, the main TV station and the one that will be broadcasting the World Cup. According to their commercials, SABC vows that every South African will be able to watch the World Cup on TV. They state they are using their own money to put in new transmitters so the signal can reach all regions. Municipalities are buying TVs so those that can’t afford TV can come to a community center to watch.
I love this, not because it is important that the idiot box (a.k.a. TV) reaches all areas of a country, but I love the national pride it is instilling. Not just to get behind our team, we have little hope that Bafana Bafana will go very far in the world cup, but to be a good host to the world. The commercials aren’t just about trying to sell tickets to the game, they are aimed at all of us in South Africa, telling us to be welcoming and put our best foot forward so the rest of the world will know that South Africa has come a long way since Apartheid ended. After years of being banned from playing due to apartheid, Bafana Bafana was allowed to play in the World Cup again in 1992. South Africa is the first African country to host the World Cup, so the country feels the pressure to put on a great event. New stadiums have been built, new transportation systems installed, roads upgraded, and police and stadium security ramped up so there will be no negative stories to report.
On the news, the head of security for the stadiums in Johannesburg stated, “My main headache is the American president. ‘I am coming, No I am not coming, I am coming, No I’m not.’ I am praying that America does not make it past the first round.” Not that Barack is not welcome, it’s just the security logistics of a head of state attending. You can’t just spring it on a stadium. Oh by the way, Barack might drop in.
Lisa Poll might drop in, if I can still score a ticket, and I’ll be rooting for Bafana Bafana, my new home.

Watter dier se mis es dit daardie? 4/28/10

2010-05-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

I think you can tell a lot about a country by what phrases they feel the need to include in their language guides.
"Watter dier se mis es dit daardie?" This particular Afrikaans phrase means “Which animal’s droppings are those?” I bought a tiny phrasebook called “Hello South Africa” and I can now ask which animal made these droppings in 11 languages. Evidently the situation arises often enough where this phrase was deemed helpful. I have traveled to Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Greece. The issue never came up.
I have already experienced the situation, not exactly the way the authors of the phrasebook had in mind. Poor Amanda, I asked her to identify the poop on my pillow. Sorry, but how else am I going to learn these things? Is it bug, rodent, lizard? I need to know how to get rid of the poorly housetrained critter, don’t I? She believes it was Gecko dropping. This is a good thing, they are awfully cute and they eat bugs. So no need to trap or spray… but I wonder if I can train them to use a litter box.
The phrasebook I’m sure was referring to the bigger animals that you might want to know if they are in the vicinity: lions, elephants, rhinos, wildebeests. Gotta love this country.
2 more phrases they thought I would need:
Dis ‘n lieflike dag – It’s a beautiful day!
Dankie vir die gasvryheid – thanks for the hospitality.
Yep, I know I will use these a lot.

Dueling Roosters / Dueling Thoughts 4/26/10

2010-05-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

The other day I was late for work because of dueling roosters. There is this teenage rooster who is learning to crow and Papa rooster who is modeling proper obnoxious rooster behavior. Teen Rooster makes this awful noise: Ca-ah-awckh-uh-ack. Sounds like a chicken with smoker’s voice choking on a corn kernel. Then Papa rooster says “No, boy, do it like this: COCKADOODLEDOOO!” Ca-ah-awckh-uh-ack. COCKADOODLEDOOO! Ca-ah-awckh-uh-ack. And so on, you get the idea. Teen Rooster did not. This crow lesson was conducted at 4:30 a.m. Eventually, I put my ear plugs in. Then I slept through my alarm clock. Duhh.
Hallelujah, it rained this weekend! No crow lessons in the rain! Two good nights' sleep! Then I think, Wow - that is a selfish thought. Here I am warm and dry in my little brick cottage enjoying the soothing sound of rain on the roof and no crowing, while the tin shacks of the shanty towns do not stop the wind and rain. The children are cold and wet. It is hard to start a fire in the rain, which is their only source of warmth and means of cooking.
When it is raining, I look out the window and see the sheep and chickens huddling under a tin roof canopy, trying to get out of the wind and rain. In my mind’s eye, I see the children doing the same thing. Stop rain, stop! Now when I am awakened by roosters crowing, instead of selfish thoughts of lost sleep, I will think, “Yes! A child is warmer right now because that rooster is crowing!”
Let the roosters crow….

It's the Little Things 4/22/10

2010-05-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Everyone keeps telling me horror stories of the crime in and around Pretoria. I won’t share them here because I don’t want you all to worry about me. As each new person feels compelled to tell me these stories, I say “Now you tell me. You didn’t think to mention this while I was back tucked safely in my American bed?” They are not trying to scare me, they just want to impress upon me that I should be sure to use all the safety precautions they have advised. If I do these things, I will be safe. Everyone is so protective of me. They don’t want me walking around oblivious to my surroundings – which I am likely to do. I am just so happy to be here and soaking up everything, interested in everything, but filtering through my naïve perspective. Not to mention my independent and adventurous spirit that wants to master all these new things myself! It is hard to set that aside, but don’t worry Mom and Dad, I will let all my willing guides accompany me on even the most basic of tasks. But after two weeks of this, I have had the safety lecture, I take it seriously, I have gotten the point. I have forbidden Piet from entering my office until he has good news. He is the maintenance man, and the resident voice of gloom and doom. He told me about the earthquake that is going to cause the East coast of South Africa to drop off into the sea. I have survived the same situation in California for 20 years now. And Piet is very detailed in his crime stories that are never on the nightly news, so I’m not sure of his sources. He walked in the other day, “Another one was just killed.” Piet, what did I tell you? You may not cross that threshold unless you have a happy story.
These are big things that I have to adjust to. Don’t open the gate to drive in or out if anyone is hanging around. Don’t drive with your purse in the car, put it in the boot (trunk). Keep your windows rolled up at a robot (stoplight). I have learned these big things, like driving on the left side of the road, shifting a manual stick with my left hand. But it’s the little things that still get me. I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten into the car and went Darn, no steering wheel. I still turn on the windshield wipers at every corner because the turn signal should be on the right. And it’s not just cars that are backwards. To turn a light switch on, you flick it down, not up. It’s the little things that make everything an adventure.
Like going to the movies, such a little thing, such a normal American thing to do, how could I mess this up? Went to the mall, bought my movie ticket and my popcorn, start to go where I always sit, on the aisle in the middle of the theater. Wrong! Your ticket has your seat number printed on it! It is assigned seating but you don’t get to pick. Tickets are randomly assigned seat numbers. So even though only 10 people were in the theater, we were all sitting in the back rows. And people actually sat where they were supposed to, imagine THAT happening in America!
Then there are the little things I took for granted at home. Like faucets, here there are two – one for hot, one for cold. That is if you are lucky enough to have two faucets. Often times, there is only one and that means Cold. But if you have two, the hot is too hot to use to wash your hands or your face, but you can’t adjust it. The cold is separate. So you have to run both faucets and try to splash the water together in the middle before using.
Another thing you might take for granted – if you buy a product here, you can actually use it here. I can’t use the curling iron I brought from home because it is American voltage. Finally ran out of butane for my travel curling iron so I went and bought a South African curling iron. Can’t use it. Has a Chinese plug on it. Now I have to go buy a prong adapter, Chinese to South African. This is because everything has to be imported. South Africa doesn’t make anything except gold, diamonds, and wine. This leads to strange results. When shopping for a printer for my office, I found out a printer costs less than the replacement cartridge of ink. This explains AFnet’s old printers lying around in the storeroom. They ran out of ink. It’s cheaper to just go buy a new printer.
Then there are the big things we take for granted in America, like having water and electricity at all. The water has been off in a few block radius around the AFnet office for the last few days. For no apparent reason, no storm or pipe burst. Just waiting for the city to make it work again. Can’t do the dishes, wash our hands, flush the toilet, and the people who live here can’t take a bath or shower. We brought bottled water so we could make coffee – we can go without bathing but not coffee, we’re not total barbarians. I am told the electricity can be out for days too.
Last weekend, I realized an even bigger thing I take for granted, even more important than water, electricity, indoor plumbing. I was attending an Oggendtee, a morning tea. It was a fundraiser for three local charities. A group performed and they were amazingly gifted singers. They had such beautiful voices that my eyes were misting up as their singing filled the hall. You know how beauty can affect you that way sometimes? Then I looked across the table and saw Christa’s sister and I began to really cry. She could not experience this beauty. She is deaf. She was reading their lips so she knew the words they were singing, but she could not know that these particular voices were not voices you hear every day, that each voice was unique and talented and that when their voices blended and built to an emotional crescendo it made you tingle. It put my attempts to communicate in Afrikaans in a new perspective too. Though I am struggling to communicate with others because I don’t speak Afrikaans, or Zulu, or Tswana, or Ndebele, I can hear them! I can hear these strange sounds that evidently are words. It makes me want to run out and learn all these languages, because I can!
Little things. Big things. Because I am here, where everything is new, I am intensely aware of both. And being more aware, feels more alive.
Try it…

Makuwa Lisa 4/15/10

2010-05-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

I really must find an Afrikaans phrase book. The other day, as I was being mauled by the family dog, yelling Stop, Down, No, Off – every doggie command I could think of to stop the gnawing of my arm, it suddenly occurred to me - this dog doesn’t speak English. I was right, she only speaks Afrikaans and the proper command is Luop, which means Walk, as in Go away, take a walk. This could be a helpful phrase.
But let me tell you about a more pleasant language lesson I received – by far my best day in Africa! My first food delivery. On Tuesday, five of us AFnet workers headed to a large Costco-like store and piled high 4 flat bed carts with milk, chicken, beans, maize meal, rice, sorghum, potatoes, squash, and so on. With a trailer full of food behind the Landrover, we headed to Shoshanguve. This is a township about a half hour away from Pretoria. We visited three orphan centers in the next couple of hours. The children came running out and they were laughing and smiling, jumping up and down chanting, “Makuwa, Makuwa, Makuwa”. I was told that this means “white man”. I pointed to myself and said, “Lisa”. The chanting then changed to “Makuwa Lisa” and they continued this the whole time we were unloading the trailer!
Because it was midday, all the children ages 6 and over were in school. So at each of the centers, only the children 5 and under were there – the little ones. I cannot describe how incredibly adorable these children are!! And they all want to be hugged – alright, if I have to…
Since I can’t describe how fantastically cute these kids are, you are probably thinking, good thing you are posting pictures. I know right?
No camera. You heard me. Makuwa Lisa forgot her camera. It’s just that I was so eager to go and I had so much to learn, I was going as a worker not an observer. Still, on the drive there I was beating myself up for having forgotten and my coworkers thought I was so silly – so what, you will be coming out here every week, just bring it next time. I told them they don’t understand how much everyone back home is craving images – not words. Patience my friends. I promise the pictures will come. And eventually, they may even get less blurry when I figure out how to use my new camera.
I was so excited to finally be going to Tsakelani Center – this is the center that Santa Cruz Cares and Twin Lakes Church raised the money to build and then found sponsors for 68 orphans. For the last five years, I have been involved in making this happen, and now I am here, seeing it, seeing the children. It was amazing – to see how nice the building is, to see how happy the children are, to see the good care that they are getting. Some of you know how hard we Santa Cruz Cares members worked for all these years, the hours we put in on top of our full time jobs. Let me tell you, it is BEYOND worth it! And to those of you who sponsor orphans, know that you ARE making a difference!
It was a long day. When I closed my eyes that night to go to sleep, a hundred beautiful little faces swam before my eyes and I slept peacefully through the night for the first time since arriving in Africa. Sweet dreams indeed. It is going to be a good year.

Buy A Donkey 4/11/10

2010-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

It is only fitting that the first phrase (okay, only phrase) I have learned in Afrikaans is thank you, because I have so much to be grateful for!
You pronounce it “Buy A Donkey,” I don’t know how to spell it. I need to find an Afrikaans phrase book. I thought I could get by on English and my amazing miming skills (only surpassed by Leslie, who on our trip to Greece somehow successfully mimed to an old fisherman who didn’t speak any English that her friends were stranded on the rocks around the corner and he must come rescue us in his boat). It looks like I am going to have to learn a new language, several in fact. South Africa has eleven official languages, English, Afrikaans, and nine African languages. At least I have one of the nine down, right? Think again my friend. I spent 15 hours on the plane sitting next to a man from South Africa and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I asked him what language he was speaking. He said, “English.”
They have different English words for many things: Nappy for diaper, Braai for Barbeque, Storktie for baby shower, serviette for napkin. In case you haven’t guessed, my first social event was a baby shower. I was also at an extreme cultural disadvantage in the shower game department. How am I supposed to know what type of chocolate candy bar is melted into a gooey mess in the baby diaper (I mean, Nappy) when they have different names for them all? I could swear that was a Milky Way I was scooping out of the nappy and eating with a plastic spoon.
Now back to my buyadonkey list.
I am thankful that my parents stayed at the airport with me through check in, so they could haul home with them (in a garbage bag Dad snagged from a maintenance man) 11 pounds of precious items that I had to remove from my suitcase because it was over the weight allowance. (I made a bad call removing the umbrella, it was raining when I landed.)
Thankful that Mom convinced me to bring my Easter candy on the plane, so I wouldn’t have to eat pizza and garbanzo beans for breakfast. I am not kidding – that is what the airline served.
Thankful that I arrived safely and had a wonderful welcome committee of Johan & Christa to pick me up at the airport.
Thankful for my new home – an apartment in the back yard of Johan’s brother’s house. Christa had stocked it with food and Johan’s mom put a vase of fresh flowers on the table. I am not so thankful for the rooster whose internal alarm clock is set for 3:30 a.m., which is NOT sunrise, and who doesn’t stop crowing until I give up and get up three hours later. (okay, four)
Thankful for Amanda & Adrian who kindly offered to let me rent their guest house and then made me feel so welcome, bringing me food and cold supplies (yep, picked up a nasty bug on the plane.) Then, when they heard about my rooster issue, they moved the chicken coop to the other side of the house. How sweet is that?!!
Thankful that Johan gave me a few days to get over my jet lag, head cold, & rooster-induced-insomnia. I will start work tomorrow.
Thankful for my little butane curling iron since I did not think to pack a prong adapter and currency converter for my myriad of beauty appliances. (And yet - I thought of a butane curling iron?)
Thankful that it was sooo hard to leave the USA. It is GOOD that I have so much to miss, so many friends and family that I love dearly.
And last but not least, I am thankful for all of you who made this opportunity possible. Buyadonkey to you.