The Second Part of 40/40 - Small Town / Villages

After, I don’t know how many days, our stay in Lusaka came to an end. On a Tuesday morning we boarded a bus that was suppose to be air conditioned. We traveled east to Petauke for what was to be a 6 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip. We learned to say “This is Africa.” Meaning things are not always going to be the way you think they should be or planned on them being.

Here we lived in tents. The kids had one end and we had the other. It poured rain and we stayed dry.

We had to pump our own water to take a shower. If you wanted it heated you put it on the camp fire, but the teapot needed to come back clean at the end of our stay. So the kids had chores. Two of them had to pump our teapots and two buckets full of water before breakfast which was at 7 AM. The water sat in the sun all day getting warm. I didn’t want to scrub a black teapot from the fire. Then it rained. That was the coldest shower I ever took. I folded and heated water for two days. Then it got warm again. We learned that it is pretty much daylight at 5 AM here. So the kids were up and ready to go by 6 am. Lesson: can’t get your kids up in the morning? Move to Africa and live in a tent!!

The men’s shower

The bucket with the shower attachment on it.

We were all given a teapot, bucket, choo bucket (bathroom in the middle of the night), and a tub to do laundry in. Our family was supplied with two each. This picture is of us moving in. We paid local ladies to wash our laundry by hand.

The first few days we took a flat bed truck into town and did our daily assignments there. We actually found a witch doctor and got to talk to him. I prayed most of the time (with my eyes wide open) while the others asked the questions. On that Sunday each family went to a different denomination / cult church.

The next few days we walked to local villages for our assignments or were dropped off in the van.

On a Friday morning after 9 days and nights of camping we packed it all up and headed to our home stays in the villages. That is the next blog.