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Someone told me that our trip sounds like the Amazing Race, and in some ways that is true. Each leg of our journey brings about its own set of adventures requiring creativity, patience, humor, and some collaboration between Brent and me and with locals who continually prove to be extremely gracious and helpful. Eventually, there’s a reward when we get to where we’re going, even if the reward is that we get to take our packs off and take a cold shower. A recent leg took us from Blantyre, Malawi through Mozambique and onto Harare, Zimbabwe.
Monday, September 20 we met up with Reverend Nedson Zulu, a wonderful man who works for the Outreach Foundation; an organization seeking to connect Presbyterian churches in the US to Christians in developing countries. Nedson, a Zambian by birth, works specifically in the Tete region of Mozambique, located in the northwest corner of a rather large country. Nedson graciously offered to show us some of what he has been up to for the past ten years, as well as take us to eastern Mozambique where we visited some folks who work with New Tribes Mission.
Our road to Harare ... and photos
We are two weeks into our trip and are having an incredible time! We have encountered gracious hospitality, glimpses into how God is at work in Malawi, spontaneous adventure and the joys and challenges of travel in Africa.
We arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi on September 7 and met up with David Chimgama, a man whom we met during our time at Princeton Seminary. Although we had met David, we didn’t know very much about the ministry he was involved in and were surprised to hear that we would be partaking in what he explained as a mission; a week long effort to evangelize Area 25, a neighborhood in Lilongwe. This meant loading 15-20 people in the back of a pick-up, along with a PA system playing loud music, and cruising the streets of Area 25 occasionally stopping to preach a 10 – 15 minute sermon. Both Brent and I were uncomfortable with this and as we were riding along in the pick-up looked at each other and said, “Is this really happening?” However, it was helpful to be exposed to what others are doing and how God is active – we certainly don’t want to limit God and how God is at work. David was a gracious host and we enjoyed the time we spent at his home and getting to know his family.
Photos and more on our two weeks in Malawi
Our year in Zambia has come to the end, and what an amazing year it has been, full of all kinds of experiences and adventures. We will truly miss all of our friends here and of course we will miss deeply the TEEZ staff; they were so good to us. The new Global Ministry Fellows, Molly and Ryan Dowell Baum, arrived on Wednesday. They are great people and we enjoyed the short time we spent with them. Over the past few days we handed off the baton to Ryan and Molly, and are thankful that the baton is going to such beautiful people. We know they will love their year here. On Sunday night TEEZ hosted a farewell and welcome dinner for us and Ryan and Molly. It was a wonderful evening shared with our closest friends and the whole TEEZ staff —it was a perfect way to end our time in Zambia.We left Kitwe yesterday morning and our hearts broke as we said a final good-bye to our friends and the neighbor kids. About ten kids were there to see us off and some tears were shed as we drove off. It was a long and sad drive to Lusaka. We will really miss Kitwe.
We head to Malawi this morning Tuesday September 7, as we begin our two months of travel. We will pas through Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Madagascar, and Egypt. We will try to update our blog as much as we can while we travel. I also forgot to mention that one of our neighbors had a baby girl last week and named here Erin Rebekah after Erin (the letter “r” isn’t found in Bemba, so little Erin is spelled and pronounced as “Elin”.) She is a beautiful little baby and Erin was honored by the family’s request. Below are several pictures of our last couple of weeks in Kitwe.
Last week, we conducted our last TEEZ course, in the small village of Kakwalesa. Kakwalesa is a typical rural village in central Zambia and is about 45 km outside the town of Kabwe, into the bush. This last course was filled with all kinds of experiences and was quite an eventful way to end our time in Zambia. We arrived in Kakwalesa around 6:30 pm on Monday night which by this time the sun had set and because we were in the bush it was pitch black – which made for a beautiful starry sky. Oddly, we found that the hosts were no where to be found. Zambians are incredible hosts and hospitality is something they are very proud of, thus the strangeness of this experience. There was a group of 10 people that traveled in a big flat bed truck from Kabwe who were also wondering where the hosts were who would tell us where we could sleep, eat etc. All of us were assured that all of the food, accommodation and other arrangements were planned, but in reality nothing was put in place. The grass huts that we were supposed to stay in had not been cleaned out, there were no mattresses, and one of the huts did not have a door which is dangerous because you never know who could join you in the night, i.e. snakes! Because nothing was organized we were told to drive the one hour back to Kabwe and stay in a guest house.
Our last TEEZ course and photos ...
Two weeks ago we set out on another long journey, this time to Shang’ombo. Shang’ombo is a small district in the far western part of Zambia, and referred to by most people as the most remote place in Zambia. On Monday we drove 5 1/2 hours to Lusaka, Tuesday 6 hours to Mongu and Wednesday we drove another 6 hours to Shang’ombo for a total of 17.5 hours! The last stretch of road from Mongu to Shang’ombo meandered through the sandy desert with parts of it requiring a 4×4. In Mongu, we swapped our 2×4 truck for a 4×4 and were even provided with a local driver who knew which diverted path to take around the washed out roads and bridges caused by the annual flooding.
Author: The Raskas
Created: March 5, 2010
A tale of the Raskas' journeys
