Trip to South Africa

We experienced “the other Africa” last week. Rod and Sue Calder run an orphanage and farm next to Namwianga. They suggested that we make a trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, to buy items for our house. They are from Johannesburg themselves and assured us that we would find a greater selection and much lower prices. The Calders were picking up a bus in South Africa, so we could ride home with them. They even found a cousin of theirs that we could stay with. It was too good an offer to refuse!

We flew down last Monday. Rod and Sue met us at the airport and took us to the home of Ivan and Marlene Currie, Sue’s cousins. The Curries live in a beautiful Italian style home and were superb hosts. Besides feeding us delicious meals, the Curries transported us all around the area.

Johannesburg is a world away from Namwianga! The city is every bit as modern and industrialized as Dallas or Houston, if not more so. The malls and shopping centers were huge, the traffic was horrendous, and the pace of life hectic. Almost all of the goods available to buy are manufactured right in South Africa, and the prices were very comparable to what we would have paid in the U.S. We shopped non-stop for two and a half days and were able to get almost everything on our lengthy list.

One highlight of our trip was a hospital visit to see Johnny and Cindy Robinson. Johnny is an American on the medical mission team who began having seizures and had to be evacuated to Mill Park Hospital in Johannesburg on July 9. He was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor and chose to have surgery at Mill Park. We spent the afternoon at the hospital with Johnny and Cindy on Wednesday. We were thrilled to hear later that he was dismissed from Mill Park on Friday! He will have a follow-up visit with his doctors this week and hopefully they will be on their way home this weekend. It has been a long and difficult time for the Robinsons, but they have made the best of their situation by sharing their faith in every situation.

We worshipped with the Benoni congregation on Wednesday evening and received a warm welcome. We even managed to find people there who are connected to family and friends of ours in the U.S. It is a very small world in many ways!

Friday morning we set off at 5 a.m. for the return trip to Zambia. In the Calder’s 27-passenger Coaster bus we joined Rod and Sue, their three children, and Rod’s mother. The back of the bus was filled with all the goods that our two families had purchased in Johannesburg. We crossed South Africa on Friday morning, arriving at the border post at noon. Now the complexities of border bureaucracy began! We first traipsed over to a dismal brick office to find a clearing agent. Rod had to clear the bus and his goods through customs, and we had to clear the things we had purchased. The clearing agent did her work and then sent us back to the bus to wait for the customs inspector. He arrived some time later and insisted that he needed to see the vehicle number on the engine to make sure it matched the number on the forms. Rod, David, and Sue began to search for the number as the disinterested inspector stood at a distance and complained of being sick. He offered no help in locating the number, even though there were two Coaster buses just ahead of us that he had inspected, which means he must have had some idea where the numbers were located. His female co-worker finally suggested to Rod that we “just give him something,” intimating that a bribe might speed up the process. Rod carefully explained that as a Christian he was unwilling to do that, so she left and the search for the number continued. Finally Rod scraped some rust away and found the vehicle number. We called the inspector back and he grudgingly completed his part of the paperwork. There was still more paperwork to endure, more waiting, more stamping of official stamps. Three and a half hours after we arrived we were finally on our way into Botswana.

To be continued. . .