School

Here in Mbala our week is taken up with school for everybody. Moses comes in the mornings at 8 AM and helps me by helping the children with their school work. He gives them the tests they have that day. They read their reading books to him. He also does flashcards with them. I still have to do lessons with them in the afternoon, but he helps make that time shorter.

At 9 AM Wigan and Doreen come to our house and help Steve and me to learn ciBemba. They are our Language Helpers.

Miriam who is 3 years old and her youngest child is asleep on her back.

These to are acting up here.  They are both talking, so I'm not sure how you learn language.

I thought you might like to see a little bit of what we do here in Mbala, Zambia. Our first year is spent in language study so that we can communicate to the Zambians in their own language.

Sausage and Biscuits

Thanks for the comments on the biscuits.  I will try the not twisting and going straight down with the cutter.  I have since made biscuits and they were a flop.

We have ground pork that we can buy in Lusaka - 12 hours away.  Then I add all the spices to make the sausage.  It is good.  We feel we spent too much money on the pork we got.  So we are buying a pig and the butcher here is going to do it up for us.  A pig and the cost of the butcher is much cheaper then then the pork we brought back from Lusaka.  Plus, we will have a whole pig and not just part of a pig.

A Hectare of Maize

Two Saturdays ago we went to see Steve’s language helper’s (Wigin) fields. We drove our vehicle and it was quite a ways to get there. If Wigin walks it takes him 45 minutes to get there. He says on the bike it only takes fifteen to twenty minutes. He has about a hectare of Maize. One hectare is the equivalent of 2.47 acres. This man does not have oxen. He works all of this land with a hoe.

The road to the field.

Wigan standing in his Maize field.

Pumpkins growing with the Maize.

Biscuits

It started two years before we even came to Zambia. We knew we would be going to Africa hopefully. We always bought biscuits at Wal-mart in the refrigerated section. You all know what I’m talking about. So if I’m going to Africa, maybe I better learn to make a few things – biscuits was on my list of things to learn.

I would make biscuits and they would not be good. They were either hard or flat or both. So I would give up. Then a few months later I would try a new recipe to see if it would be any better with no results. Homemade biscuits take a little work. I mean more work than opening a can of them and popping them into the oven. So when the results were unfavorable, I really didn’t want to try again. Steve said we just don’t need to eat them for three years. Three years is how long we will be in Zambia before we come back to the United States and can buy already made biscuits in a store.

Over the two years of trying to make them once in awhile, I started to think, a good thing to do. I wondered if I didn’t follow the recipe to the T (I always follow them to the T, at least the first time you make it) maybe it would work better.

I use the Mennonite Community Cookbook. Surely, Mennonite ladies know how to cook! I just looked in the book and on the first biscuit recipe on page 12 I hand wrote on it “OK, roll thicker.” The recipe says to roll 3/8 thick. That is thin!!! They don’t rise up to be big biscuits.

Another missionary lady on my team taught me how to make biscuits. She didn’t have her recipe, but the Buttermilk Biscuits on page 13 in the Mennonite Community Cookbook was close to hers. And the trick is don’t knead them much at all and roll them out thick.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour                       ½ teas. Soda

½ teas. Salt                       3 Tables. Fat

3 teas. Baking powder       1 cup sour milk or buttermilk

Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (like making pie dough. Also my friend used half butter and half Crisco, I don’t) Add sour milk all at once. Stir until dough follows spoon around the bowl. Turn out on floured board and knead for ½ a minute (I’m serious, too long they get tough). Roll 3/8 inch thick (ignore this roll much thicker) and cut out with biscuit cutter. Bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes. My friend also adds 4 teas. of baking powder instead of three. I double the recipe and add 7 teas. of baking powder.


It all seems very simple, yet I never did figure it out until I got hungry for sausage gravy over biscuits.

God bless,

Rita

A Culturally Bad Day

I will not explain how the day was culturally bad, it just was. Sometimes things just get on your nerves, like little children constantly knocking on your gate and looking over your wall. Sometimes you wish they would all go away and give you come privacy.


Steve was having a bad day and so decided to use his hands to do some work. We have a carpenter making frames for our windows, so that we can have screens. This will be a blessing, as the Bowman’s house at Christmas was so much cooler than ours. Between 5 and 6 PM we close up all windows and doors as we do not have screens to keep the mosquitoes out. Sometimes we are fine and sometimes we feel like we are going to suffocate. Some of the windows have poorly designed old screens with hole on them. So Steve took them down and hauled them outside. Then, while standing on a chair he decided to get into the porch ceiling and get the bee nest out. The bees were gone, but we don’t want them back. The following pictures are of dead bees (we had been sticking the spraying wand in their hole and killing them) and their combs.

This is what fell when we took a ceiling panel down.

This is looking up into the ceiling.

Christmas 2009

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go. Oh! We didn’t do that this year. We went: Across northern Zambia and through the mud to the Bowman’s house we went!!! The Bowmans are the team leaders of the Northern Evangelist Team, which is our team. We had a great time with their family. They have cows and one just had a calf a few days earlier. So we went to see it.

We were trying to get it back into its pen. Instead of chasing it and trying to

herd it back in, Steve just decided to pick it up.

While there Amy took this picture of us. Consider it our 2009 Christmas photo that would have been in our Christmas cards that we usually send every year. Sorry, but you are not getting one this year. Our newsletter, blog, and facebook are where you will find updates on our lives.

God knew what he was doing when he shut doors to Kaputa and Isoka and opened the door to Mbala for us. I hate driving, especially long trips. From Kasama to Mbala is a 1 ½ hour drive on a tarmac (blacktop) road. To get to the Bowman’s house we drove to Kasama. From Kasama we went west to Luwingu. The road from Kasama to Luwingu is about the same distance from Kasama to Mbala, but it takes about three hours to drive it. It is dirt and mud. The following are some pictures of that road. Tobias got carsick. He was not a happy camper that day. On the drive back I gave Heather and Tobias Dramamine. About an hour into the trip I gave them some more; they were not looking or feeling good.

Nice Tarmac Road can be found near Luwingu and Kasama

Side road while they are making the road new

They are just grading this side road.  We couldn't decide where we should drive.  We did eventually drive over to the middle of the road. 

Here they have pushed back the trees getting ready to build the new road.

This is just the normal Luwingu Road not under construction yet.

There were many water holes to go around.

Then it started raining. 

We will not be complaining about the Great North Road after this trip.

Now we are finally up to date

These last few post have been about the past.  So this one will bring us up to the present.

One week ago Tobias was at the Schaffer's over night.  The big boys decided to go for a bike ride.  On the way back and only a little way from the house, they decided to stop and drink the water out of the water ditch they have.  Filtered water was not that far away.

The very next day Tobais had diarrhea.  He was sick to his stomach.  Often I would just see him lying in bed hugging the bucket.  Basically, we were told to let things run its course.  So we didn't do any reading up on it until Tuesday morning.  We have this lovely flow chart to figure out what he had.  In the end we decided he had Giardia and started him on Flagyl.  He was on it for 5 days.  It helped him to feel better, but the diarrhea is lingering on.  So yesterday morning (Monday) I went back and read up on it again.  I found out it can last for 7 to 14 days and may need a second treatment of medicine.  So we have started the second round of meds.  Hopefully in a week he will be doing much better, I pray.

Keep him in your prayers.