Zambia: A How to Guide

*Disclaimer: This guide was written by a person who has only lived in Zambia for about 21 days, so minor (or major) inaccuracies may exist.

HOW TO….

…survive the minibus.

Step 1: Find a minibus. Or a regular bus. It doesn’t really matter—they’ll be equally as crowded and will both have wheels.

Step 2: Make sure that the minibus is pointed in the direction you want to go. If the minibus turns off on a side road, don’t be alarmed! The minibus driver probably noticed that you look lonely and wants to put a person in your single seat along with you.

Step 3: Pay the person who convinced you to get on the minibus. If you look like you may be a tourist, consider watching the amount that other people pay before coughing up a few extra kwacha for the opportunistic payment collection person.

Step 4: Observe your surroundings. You may notice visual gems such as stickers of Jesus and Justin Bieber next to one another on the front dashboard!

Step 5: Get off at the right stop! For example, there might be two Engen gas stations: one before a roundabout with a giant chicken statue and one after it. If you use the wrong Engen gas station as a visual cue, you might end up walking for 40 minutes to your house and obtaining an excellent sunburn. Not that we’d know from experience…

…tie a chitenge.

Step 1: Learn what a chitenge is.

Step 2: After learning that a chitenge is a 2 meter piece of colorful fabric used by Zambian women to—among other things—carry babies on their backs and cover their clothes from dirt, purchase a chitenge that you like. It should not match your clothes in any way. There are too many great patterns for you to pick something boring.

Step 3: Pick up your new chitenge and marvel at it.

Step 4: Try to wrap the chitenge around your waist and tie it. If you don’t look like you accidentally woke up with your bed sheet wrapped around your legs, that’s a good thing.

Step 5: When the chitenge inevitably looks terrible on you due to your inadequate tying skills, ask one of your wise, motherly English students to help you tie it.

Step 6: The chitenge will come untied. When this happens, you may want to cry because you cannot make the knot as tightly as your wise, motherly English student. However, it will be easy for you to keep practicing your tying and wrapping because the chitenge will keep falling off until you are good at putting it on!

…make a perfect sorbet!

Step 1: Search around your kitchen until you find a discontinued Cuisinart ice cream/sorbet maker.

Step 2: Thoroughly wash the sorbet maker.

Step 3: Create a simple syrup using sugar and water. When cool, add the zest and juice of lemons, limes, and oranges.

Step 4: Put the mixture into the ice cream/sorbet maker.

Step 5: Plug in the machine and turn it on.

Step 6: Listen for a loud popping noise and look for a puff of smoke. This means that you have successfully destroyed your sorbet maker’s motor capabilities because you forgot to use a transformer for an American-made device.

Step 7: Fan away the smoke and terrible smell. Then, crank the sorbet by hand for twenty minutes.

Step 8: Enjoy with friends in front of an episode of your favorite network drama.

…make preschoolers ready for a nap.

Step 1: Sing lots of songs that involve jumping.

Step 2: Repeat.

…say “Stop throwing rocks at your friends and come learn about letter sounds” in Nyanja. 

We have no idea.

 

This concludes our first installment of “Zambia: A How to Guide”. Stay tuned for more helpful tips and tricks for survival in the country that starts with a Z and isn’t Zimbabwe!

 

Lydia Harbach and Jenny Tenyer currently are volunteering with the Zambia mission. Lydia and Jenny both recently completed their student teaching and undergraduate programs through Wisconsin Lutheran College. Jenny is a secondary education, broad-field social sciences, and history major and Lydia is a wide range music education major.

In their third year of college, Lydia and Jenny were approached by their college professor about the opportunity to go to Africa to teach English to women and children at their church synod’s compound in Zambia where men go to become pastors. It seemed a bit crazy to think about something so far in the future, but they both knew it was something they wanted to do. Since Lydia and Jenny would both finish their student teaching in the Fall semester of 2017, it would leave them with a smaller opportunity to find a job. However, the opportunity to live in Zambia for four months would bring so much into their future classrooms: perspective, experiences, and stories to share with their students.

Leading up to their journey, Lydia and Jenny have been fundraising in order to pay for traveling and living expenses. This trip would not have been possible without the gracious hearts of the family, friends, and church groups that donated to help them pay for their trip!

To keep family and friends up to date on the latest and greatest from Zambia, they have created a blog at https://zambiamissiontrip583865213.wordpress.com/  Allow us to share one of their recent posts about adapting to life in Africa.

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts  https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa