Zambulance Delivery Adventure.

0Matt • 14th Jul 2009 • Zambikes

[Note: Check out the accompanying photo album to get the full zest from this post!]

Vaughn and I left with the Zambikes Canter on Thursday morning, loaded up with 8 Zambikes and 8 Zambulances.  We went with Nathan, our connection with ZNARVS, an organization that facilitates support groups for people who are take Anti Retro Viral drugs (HIV medicine).  The problem that ZNARVS has is that their group members are often too sick to come to their treatments and checkups.  This delivery of 8 Zambulances/Zambikes to the Eastern district of Zambia is the first of a total of 4 deliveries that will hit each of 41 similar support groups all over Zambia.  Now that these support groups will be able to pick up their members for their treatments (some of the “members” had never even made it to a treatment before), the support groups’  effectiveness will grow exponentially.  It’s a joy to be apart of this organization.

The interesting part of the trip was an unexpected detour that we took off the main road.  From Katete we took a dirt road North somewhere between 40 and 50 kilometers.  This took us to Msoro, which is the village where Benjamin Banda, the Zambikes farm caretaker, and Jason Sakaala, our Zambikes office groundskeeper, grew up.  We were picking up some pig feed that Vaughn and Benjamin had procured at a cheap price out in the bush to bring back to town.  It was such a great experience being there in the village with Benjamin’s family.  Allow me to explain.

We arrived after it was completely dark, but everyone greeted us, and they brought out what they called the “respect mat.”  It was a pretty standard straw floormat, 7 ft x 5 ft and they laid it out for us to sit on out in the dirt courtyard of the village.  After introductions and chatting and plenty of jokes by Vaughn, a bowl of warm water was brought and we washed our hands.  Next thing we knew there were three bowls in front of us: a bowl of nshima (cornmeal mush- the main food staple of Zambia, for my infrequent readers), a bowl of okra leaf juice, and a bowl of grilled bush mice.  After a prayer, we dug in.  To be honest, the bush mice tasted better than the okra leaf juice, and their texture was oddly amusing… from what I could gather in the dark it was a mixture of meat, cartilage, and hair (I think?) that was borderline gross but my mental fortitude kept me enjoying it.  We finished the first three bowls just in time to receive another three bowls: more nshima (the stuff is SERIOUSLY filling), a bowl of some unnamed, really nasty vegetables, and a bowl of ‘chimponde,’ which was basically just village peanut butter made from the ground nuts that they grow there and it was REALLY good.

Being that it was dark as dark could be outside (no electricity), we went to bed pretty quick after that, and Vaughn, Vieri, Benjamin, and I slept in a small round village house that, as it turns out, Jason my good Zambian friend built when he got married.  I think, actually, he had to build it before he got married to prove himself as a man to his wife’s father, who’s named Smart and is the “head man” of the village.”

We slept as you might expect, sleeping on a HARD dirt floor in our sleeping bags, and woke up at 6:30 the next morning.  We had a little face wash and then had boiled sweet potatoes for breakfast before heading home (8 hour truck ride… awesome).

All in all, the village experience was a really really great one and it was humbling to see the respect that we were given as visitors (“strangers” as they said).  I think the fact that we were white factored into the respect a bit, but I know there would have been tremendous respect given to any stranger.  Benjamin told us afterward that they kept talking about what more they could do to meet and exceed our expectations and to make sure that we were comfortable.  It’s funny that they thought we would have expectations of comfort– that’s not why we were there but apparently they were thoroughly impressed by us and our humility and our easygoingness.  I think the only white people that they knew were catholic missionaries and safari tourists or something so they expected something different than what Vaughn and I ended up being.

It’s nice to be myself and for that to be something pleasing to other people…. especially incredibly humble and loving people like the ones I spent time with there.