Just Another Tuesday

I have been thinking about writing a blog entry describing a typical day in Zambia. The difficulty is finding any day that is typical. Instead I’ll just describe last Tuesday.

I was up at 5:00 for quiet time and study. I teach a college women’s class on Tuesday nights, so I spent some time preparing for that. At around 7:00 I was in the kitchen to fix hot water for tea. I opened the kitchen curtains and waved at Bernard, one of the workers who is finishing the water tower in the back yard. We’ve learned to be up and dressed early here! Other men who are working on the fence and water tower began coming in.

At 8:00 I gathered some paperwork for sponsored students and started the rounds of the campus to try to locate the people I needed to talk to. The finance office was still locked, so I went across to the opposite end of the campus to the secondary school and had a meeting with the headmaster and one of the teachers. We finished our meeting in time for me to catch two of the secondary students who need sponsors as they were leaving chapel. I took their pictures and got their information for an upcoming issue of the Kalomo Reporter.

Chapel for the college students was at 9:00. When it ended at 9:30 David and I headed back to the house. We were expecting guests that night, so I spent some time getting the guest bedroom organized and in order. At 10:30 I gathered up more paperwork and met with the principal of the college about sponsored students.

The power went off around noon, so one of the workers built a fire in the backyard to cook nshima and cabbage for lunch. We joined the five workers and ate outside on the veranda.

The afternoon was filled with a steady stream of college students coming to the door and asking what to do about paying the balances due on their accounts. I gave whatever advice I could and promised to try to find help for them to pay for this term if they could work on paying off what they owed for the last two terms. In between students, David and I hung mosquito nets in the guest room and got rid of the last of the packing boxes.

At 4:00 one of the students in David’s Bible class came by. I had meetings scheduled with sponsored students, so David took him back to one of the bedrooms and had a Bible study with him while I met with individual students in the living room and others waited on our veranda. At 5:00 there was a break. The power was still off, so I looked through the refrigerator to find something we could eat that wouldn’t require cooking. We started gathering candles and flashlights. At 5:30 another group of students came by and we talked to them. At 6:00 Patson came by to pick up some papers and luggage for his trip to the US.

The power came on briefly, so we thought we would still be able to have our Bible studies that evening. After my 7:00 class at the college, David was planning to host a Bible study for faculty and staff at our house at 8:00. Around 6:45 the power started to fade again and by 7:00 we were in total darkness. There would be no Bible studies.

We took our flashlights and sat outside on the veranda and watched what little we could see of the darkened campus. A few minutes later the Andrew, the maintenance supervisor, rode up on his motorcycle. There was an electrical line down in Kalomo, he said, and no one in town had flashlights so that they could see to work on it. Could we help? We rounded up our biggest and brightest flashlights to give him and he headed back into town. One of the clinic workers arrived a few minutes later. The power was on at his house, so he thought we would be having our Bible study. He stayed to visit with us for a few minutes.

At 8:30 Brian and Sondra Davis arrived with their two little boys. Brian and Sondra are in the process of moving from Cape Town, South Africa, to northern Zambia to open a new mission work there. We showed them around our darkened house by candlelight and helped them bring in their luggage and start getting settled for the night.

At 9:00 there was a knock on the door. The student David studied with had come to be baptized and had brought seven of his friends with him. We grabbed flashlights and candles and headed out to the backyard. Our brick and concrete in-ground water cistern had just been filled with water. It was big enough for David and his student to climb down into for the baptism. We sang and prayed together after the baptism, and the guys went back to their dorm.

At 10:00 the maintenance supervisor called. The flashlights had worked great, he reported, and the power should be back on in five minutes. We had just climbed into bed when the house flooded with light. Best of all, the electric fans came on again to cool off the hot night. We gave thanks for another day. If we ever have a typical day, I’ll write about that one, too.