Road Trippin' with the In-laws...

Missing the Point
Caregiver (rt) and family
New Well
Most sane people would not consider a 6 day road trip with their wife, three kids and in-laws under the best of circumstances, e.g. paved roads, AAA, restaurants along the road side etc. Fewer still would try to pull this off without the aforementioned amenities. I’m proud to count myself amongst this latter group.

Actually, It is Molly’s parents who win the award for daring to get into our over-loaded Montero and drive across Zambia to reach South Luangwa, one of Africa’s best wilderness areas – 5,000 sq. miles and millions of animals in the middle of nowhere. Most people fly there.

We left on Good Friday and enjoyed a beautiful drive to Eastern Zambia. We learned that our fully loaded car actually can overheat going up steep hills (but fortunately we had stopped at a particularly scenic overview and heard the boiling coolant before things got bad.) Ed and Berrie witnessed the sick game we play with the kids that goes something like this: “Hey, where do you guys want to stop for lunch, Noodles or Chipoltle?” The kids have learned to shoot back with something like, “Where do you want to get your next Latte, Starbucks or Caribou?” Of course none of these options exist, in fact most of the drive no options exist, unless you like eating grass. (What is a road trip with out food?) We arrived in Chipata and stayed at Mama Rula’s a nice guest house on the edge of town and were rewarded with one of the best steaks any of us had ever had. All in all a good day one.

The next morning we stocked up on groceries and left for what appears on the map as a short 125 kilometer (80 mile) drive. While it is all dirt road, I was actually impressed with the quality of the road as we clicked of the first 50k – until I heard the unmistakable sound of a flat tire. No problem, flat tires are in some way a part of life here so I pulled over and we unloaded. Molly and Berrie and the kids found a comfortable spot on the shady hillside next to the road from which they were able to watch the circus unfold over the next hour plus. As this was the first flat in Molly’s car, it took Ed and I awhile to find all the tools. By the way, it is about 11:30 a.m. and it a perfect African clear blue sky day and the temperature is approaching 90 degrees. We finally found everything, removed the spare off the back and began to loosen the bolts on the flat with our short tire iron. They would not budge. Here is where the circus began. Ed and Jeff jumping, pushing, pulling, cursing and nothing moving. Mackenzie started leading prayers up on the hillside. A small crowd of Zambian children gathered around, you could see it in their faces, “Now this does not happen everyday…” Despite the language barrier, I was able to communicate with one of them let him know we needed a big hammer. He disappeared and less than 5 minutes later, amazingly, came back with a big hammer.

With out new found tool we began banging away and much to our surprise finally loosened one of the bolts. The bad news was we were shot at this point and we had 5 bolts left. Mackenzie’s prayer was answered in the form of a bike riding Zambian who was clearly familiar with the story of the good Samaritan. With his help we were able to, over the next 20-30 minutes, get two more bolts loosened. 3 down, 3 to go. As the vultures started to circle (really), our new friend mentioned the obvious - that our tire iron was too short and we were not getting enough leverage. Hearing this spoken inspired me to go look one last time for some sort of extension and, thank you Lord, there it was in a trap door under the seat. With this we whipped off the rest of the bolts, got the new tire on and, 1.5 hours later and “jump in the swimming pool wet” with sweat we were on our way.

Now, the bad news is we were out of spares and still had the worst roads left to travel. We were told that there was a small village with a tire shop about 10k ahead and that perhaps we could get our tire fixed there. We traveled on and did find the tire “shop” – seven guys sitting under a tree with a bicycle pump and a hammer. They were not able to fix our tire, but they did use the bicycle pump to top off our tires. Even more importantly, one of them had a motorcycle and allowed us to hire him to follow us the rest of the way to our lodge in case we had another flat. This was our insurance policy.

Running parallel to the tire problems was a roof rack issue. As we traveled the rough roads we were learning that our rack, which does fine in town when it is not loaded, was not doing fine fully loaded on 4 wheel drive roads – in fact it totally sucked and was falling off, damaging our roof, and ended up being abandoned at Wenzy’s shop by the swamp near Mfuwe – but I am getting ahead of myself.

Not far after getting our tires pumped up with the bicycle pump and hiring our insurance policy, we had to pull everything off the roof and somehow fit it into our fully loaded car with the seven of us. Somehow this happened, loaves and fishes in reverse? – It was at this point I was wondering, was this my idea?

We finally arrived and were rewarded with an incredible three days seeing thousands of animals and birds including a leopard stalking impalas at night, a hippo ten feet from our tent, elephant babies and much more. The kids hunted for Easter eggs hidden on termite mounds while monkeys and baboons competed with them to find the eggs. Amazing.

The trip back was less eventful, although we did have one more flat that we were able to change almost as fast as a pit crew. (I was able to get our orginal flat tire fixed under another tree shop near our lodge. There is something magical in the ingenuity and resourcefulness that exsist in places like Zambia.) A Dutch family we met that lives in the Congo agreed to take some of our stuff back to Lusaka on their well designed, sturdy, dependable roof rack.

On the way home we visited some of World Vision’s work. As always, I was impressed with and proud of the work that is happening in the field. We met with 25 trained volunteer caregivers who each week are out meeting the needs of orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS in their community. (There are 12,000 caregivers across Zambia just like them...)

We went with one caregiver to visit one of her clients, a 38 year old widow who is HIV/AIDS positive, and the mother of 4 beautiful girls under the age of eight. (Pictured above) Her caregiver began visiting her when she was very ill, she encouraged her to get tested and when the hard truth of her HIV+ status was revealed, encouraged and helped her get on life saving drugs (ARVs). The woman told us that if it were not for her caregiver, she would be dead. This caregiver’s work not only saved a life, but prevented there from being 4 more orphans added to Zambia’s 1 million orphans.

We also visited a well that some U.S. donors funded (pictured above) but that the community built and fully owns. They have a trained volunteer manager and water committee that is overseeing how the water is used and keeping the well in perfect working order. The well has only been in seven months, but the village has watched water born disease incindents among children drop from 15+ per month to under 2 per month. In addition, the women who previously spent most of their time walking back and forth to gather water, now have more time to care for their children, tend their crops and to start income generating projects and businesses.

To the many of you reading this who support World Vision’s work thank you and be encouraged by the life saving and improving deeds being done with your resources. On behalf of the people here, thank you.

Our time away from home continues to remind us how grateful we are for friendships and relationships – they sustain us while we are here. Thank you for your continued love and prayers. God is good and we are grateful.

p.s. Our Mac is down (they don't work when you put in 2 DVDs at one time, ask Bennett) our internet at home is spotty at best and our Vonage phone does not have the bandwidth to work even when our internet is working...So, needless to say, our communication is not what we wish it was.