OOPS!!!

It’s usually a good thing to be able to laugh at yourself, especially if you’re a missionary in a new culture. We are laughing along with everyone else at Namwianga over yesterday’s goof-up.

There has been no diesel in Zambia for more than two weeks now. Every day we hear rumors that “the trucks will be arriving tomorrow.” And so we hope and wait and conserve what little fuel we have left by staying close to home.

On Friday morning we were on our way to Dube, a congregation near Kalomo, to participate in a church gathering. David was to deliver a lecture and I was going to do the children’s program. We stopped on our way through Kalomo at the filling station to pick up my translator, Jerrie. David asked Jerrie if the station had any diesel yet, and Jerrie said yes. David asked him again, just to make sure, and Jerrie again said yes and pointed to the pump as he declared, “It’s in that pump right over there.” One more time David said, “Are you sure?” and Jerrie again assured him that there was diesel. David even asked why there wasn’t a queue (line), and Jerrie said he didn’t know. We started to pull over to fill up, but then we checked David’s wallet, and he didn’t have any kwacha. So we headed on out to Dube, but we couldn’t keep good news like that to ourselves, so we called back to Ellie at Namwianga and told her the that yes, indeed, finally there was diesel in Kalomo at the filling station.

Innocently we went on with our day. I set up the children’s classes and got them going while David preached. His cell phone rang during the lecture, but he turned it off and went on with the lesson. The question and answer session lasted a long time after he finished speaking, so it was more than an hour later when he returned the call from Ellie and found out what had happened.

It seems that our diesel news spread like wildfire through Namwianga. Everyone who owned a diesel vehicle (and that’s most of the drivers at Namwianga) packed up and headed for Kalomo. The motor pool even loaded 55-gallon drums on the back of a truck and took them in. One driver had gone to Choma (an hour away) to look for fuel, and he hurried back south when his wife relayed the news to him on the cell phone.

It must have been quite a gathering when they arrived at the filling station and found out that THERE STILL WAS NO DIESEL IN KALOMO!!!!! Cell phones began ringing again, telling those on the way to turn back. We’re pretty certain that questions about the sanity and trustworthiness of the Gregersens circulated freely.

With egg on our face we returned late that afternoon. No tar and feathers, thankfully, just lots of good-natured ribbing about how gullible we must be to believe that there would be diesel in Kalomo with no long line of cars waiting to fill up!

Our best guess is that we had a communication breakdown with Jerrie. Since he doesn’t drive or own a car, he may not have even known that there was a diesel shortage and just assumed that we were asking if the filling station was a dealer of diesel. Obviously, he didn’t understand our question.

We’re patiently enduring the light-hearted teasing of our co-workers. At least we can take comfort in knowing that we have increased the repertoire of humorous stories about Namwianga missionaries.