In Our Element

I posted the pictures for my last blog as well as this one.

[ Tuesday June 9th ]

Murundu
The orphanage at Murundu is really large. It houses a number of different buildings, farm land, broken pools, and has much labor to be had. Justin, who is the leader of the orphanage, gave us some brief history about the complex. The complex is being uplifted from brokenness. Even though the complex is falling apart slowly due to its age it is a lot nicer than all of the huts and shops in the slums surrounding it. Justin explained that during British rule how ever long ago the white people would come and live in the land for the transportation of slaves. They would venture across Africa with the supplies needed to build really nice residences. Once slavery was abolished in Zambia the white people would leave the nice abandoned buildings selling them to whoever. The Murundu orphanage bought some land that was used by white people. The old colonial building stands creaking and bantered. The sad thing is that it has been a long time since British ruled over the land and yet still over 80% of the population of Mufulira in the surrounding slums haven’t made houses even close to what the orphanage has now. People in the surrounding slum area have nothing and are looking to this orphanage as something that is excellent and sound in structure. The people live in grass and mud huts and they have trashbag protected toilets. They run across the dry ground with no shoes and little clothes. It is very sad to see the living conditions of this area in Mufulira. Although the somewhat modern orphanage is falling apart it remains a stronghold to what the surrounding slums are in. Eight strong men have found our way to this broken orphanage and we very much are into the fixing business. So slavery is back, just not what you would expect to see in Africa. We have been doing a number of jobs over the past week. Justin has put together a list of big projects that they wanted to accomplish in the next few years. Our presence and resources have definitely sped up that process.

Behind the Zambian Wheel
We drive from our guest house to the Murundu orphanage everyday to serve. Kennedy rents a car for us to transport and drive us there. Usually we need to make two trips because we only have a five person car and there are eight of us. Today Kennedy asked if anyone wanted to drive the patchy dirty roads leading to Murundu. Without a second of thought I volunteered myself after Carter gave me his spot. Imagine rally car racing utilizing quick decisions and a steady hand combined with off roading and abrupt stops all with a little dinky Toyota Corolla. My team members in the car grasped the sides of the car at first while I got familiar with driving on the left side of the road. When you are driving a car with no seatbelts screaming down a randomly paved road at 70mph you have to be careful and quick. After proving myself with some quick hand-eye coordination and dodging massive pot holes with ease and style. As my pride caught up with my driving I asked them to count how many scrapes happen on the way to Murundu. Usually there are between three to six scrapes that occur on the sketchy road. I knew that they would want a chance to drive someday so I would have to perform well. Upon our arrival at Murundu I can proudly say that I only scraped the car a whopping one time! I love driving here because of the adventure and randomness to the roads. It feels so very James Bond to barely miss a flat tire pot hole every 15 seconds. The scariest aspect to it is chicken fighting with busses over good ground. As the bus teeters towards my vehicle it becomes more of a first come first serve in relation to who get the pavement. Although it is crazy and scary it is so very adventurous and right down my ally.



Corrupt Police
Kennedy, Christian, and Justin all went back into town while the rest of the team was in Murundu. They went back into town to get wood so we could make the orphanage benches. They came back three to four hours later with quite the story. Apparently they were stopped at a police barricade by a local police officer. He asked Christian a couple of questions while Kennedy was showing another officer the car’s triangles (you are required to have triangles for when you pull over to show cars that you are on the side of the street). After questioning Christian he went back and talked to Kennedy and completely twisted Christian’s words. He made up a couple of imaginary violations and made Kennedy give him the keys and sit in the back of his vehicle. The police officer then got in the driver seat and threatened to take them to the station. He drove 20 kilometers in the direction of the station in hopes of a scare that would result in a bribe. The government can not afford to pay the officers very much so they become corrupt and find other means in using their power to get money. The police officer takes Christian’s name and starts scolding him for not being one. He asks Christian why a Christian would lie to an officer and say that this vehicle belonged to him. He says that Jesus wouldn’t lie to him so why should he? He threatens that the ticket they would have to pay would be about $200. So the officer drove back and forth from the station to the barricade talking and attempting to scare the group. After three times of going back and fourth Kennedy takes control and offers 20,000 Quatcha (four US dollars). After a lot of debating the cop takes it because he got scared that they would take this situation to a higher level of authority. And it would have taken them all day to go through the station. So Kennedy gave them four bucks and left. The real sad thing is that later we found out that the corrupt cop they ran into is a pastor at a church. That is so horrible.

Cooking
Since we have been at Mufulira we have begun cooking and providing for each and every meal. We had a really bad experience at a local food store and decided that it would be more fun to give cooking a go and pick up supplies at a local SHOPRITE every other day. It has been a really great bonding experience. Carter, Bret, Brice and myself have kind of taken the reins for destroying the hunger on the team. We have made a lot of dishes and had plenty of successes. I pretty much wrote this whole section to impress my mom…

[ Wednesday June 10th ]

Orphans and Machetes
The sun is beating down on the dirt covered ground of Africa. The battle of bug-spray and sun-block begins as the skirmish for our nostrils as the fragrance follows us out into the barren fields of Murundu. A devil weed grows on this orphanage. A weed that is not common to the west. It is a combination of a bamboo-like weed and grasping thorns. This weed grows overhead for about six feet as it tries to grasp the sky. We grit our teeth as we look onward towards our prize with hidden ambition. Following our unique perfume of repellent orphans run to catch up with the crazy Musungu attempting to tame the thorny beast. As we firmly grip our blades we remember when our hands were unfamiliar with its unique handle. Our shadows are becoming friendly with the local orphans of Murundu as they follow in our footsteps towards the grippy beast. As we step upon the fallen comrades of the retreating beast the children use the fallen sticks to play with and imitate our machete moves. As we reached our yesterdays mark of war with the weeds we see the tree we are trying to free. Glendale is the name we gave the tree in the middle of the thornbrush. Our objective is to set her free so that she can provide shade for the garden that will be made once all the weeds are non-existent. We run the blade across the bottoms of the vines and thorns to add to the weed graveyard we are trotting upon. The children keep us company as they teach us songs and the Bembia language. That is when I realized something these children are so very captivated with us that no matter what we are doing they will follow. Even if we are swinging a silver blade close to them. Yet we hear sad stories of Africans getting cut to pieces by rebel forces with the same type of machete. The difference between us and them is simply who we follow. And because of our purpose that same dangerous machete instantly becomes the best friend of the orphans as we carve away weeds to create a beautiful garden to provide unlimited food for generations to come. Sweat lurks on our forehead ready to pounce on the eyes as we finish up our cutting. At the end of the day I can smile as I put Aloe Vera on my red hot skin because we have successfully cut what would be years of Zambian orphan chores down to three days.



MUSUNGU The Theme Park
Today we served the Murundu orphanage a little differently. Normally we focus on work and relationship but work definitely look the forefront. So today a lot of the guys felt we should take a break from work and hang and serve the children. Usually when we do labor we focus mostly on that work instead of the children as they kind of clump up on the sides of our projects. So today right when we stepped afoot on the land we ran right into the children’s arms. The children that were around when we arrived were the two to four year olds. The children are so adorable and cute. They ran to us screaming “Musungu! Musungu! Musungu!” Their smiles greeted us first as I tried my best to snap a couple of pictures of the barrage of hands trying to grasp us. At first we just held and sat with the children. I took plenty of pictures of their lovable faces. After about ten minutes of casual playing Brice decided to throw a kid up in the air and catch him. So most of the team followed pursuit. We all started thrusting children in the air, putting children on our shoulders, spinning them around in circles, and being very active with the orphans. For every orphan that went airborne on the decent another eight arms grasped my hands for their turn. The common chanting of “And Me, And Me, And Me!” was something that got tiring in itself not to mention doing an orphan workout. I remember at one time having one child on my shoulders, and holding two orphans per arm spinning them all in a circle. I dropped the four smiling children to pick up another four. When you are normally in a situation like this you would stop, unfortunately these children are far to cute to say no to. So instead of choosing labor of the ground we chose labor of the children. They completely drained us just as if we were working labor all day. But not only was is physically draining but emotionally. We got to serve them their proverbial meal of Sheema, rape (a Zambian cabbage), and a small boney fish. This is the same exact meal that has been served to them for their entire orphan life at Murundu. This meal being a very good one to be able to have two times a day. Many of the people in the slums grow jealous of the food that the orphanage can provide. A lot of the team got hit emotionally as we served them their food and washed their hands for it. Bret & Chris both broke down during the day. Kennedy helped out Bret with encouraging words and prayer. After that Bret and myself helped out Chris when he was down. Chris asked us the same questions that I have for God. Why do these children live like this? They didn’t ask for this life nor deserve it! Why do they belong in this poverty and disease? And what is my part in all of this? What can I really do? After Bret’s encouraging words and prayer I told Chris that I have no clue how to even begin to answer those questions. I don’t know why God puts people in these predicaments. In fact I don’t think we are even capable of understanding. But all I do know is that the God we serve is a just and powerful God. His throne is founded on righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14). He relieves his children of their suffering and pains. We many never understand why things work the way they do but we can understand that there is no one better to leave these situations in the hands of but Him. We can rest in the fact that God is a God of righteousness and justice. Amen.




(This is the orphans meal)

[ Thursday June 11th ]

The Needy
My mind works in a very crazy hectic way. It processes information so quickly and can randomly switch thoughts within milliseconds. My creativity at times can take over and I easily venture into the land of day dreams. I am currently processing my thoughts on the needy in Zambia. The poverty issue in Zambia is very sticky situation for our team. We are working with the needy and finding that it is harder than just giving them what they say they need. For example we brought a lot extra bags with clothes in it for the children in need. We decided to divide the clothes amongst the orphans and children that are in most need. But how do we really determine who really needs what they say they do? We are dealing with 130 orphans, all who need some sort of support, whether that is sustenance, clothing, or even love. 38 of the 130 are double orphans who may or many not even need more. We found that the necessities are different for every child and we really want to make our clothing to make the biggest impact for those who really need it. But how are we supposed to know how to divide up our aid? So we decided to ask Justin (the orphanage leader) for some help in identifying the children in need. He knows the children that who need certain necessities. So the first day at Murundu we did just that. We followed Justin’s lead and gave accordingly. The second day we followed the same schedule for passing out gear. These children in need with do just about anything to get something new. On the third day we found out that some of the children lied about not getting clothes the first day and took more from us on the second. We also found them stealing clothes from the younger children. These children will try anything to get stuff from us… let alone attention from a Musungu. These children have been treated as trash their whole lives and when attention and supplies are being divided amongst themselves they will do anything to get that small amount of attention. One verses 129 isn’t good odds unless some form of cheating is involved. This is really hard to understand and even harder to see. We don’t have something for every child and yet we are forced to selectively give. What I think is most difficult for me is that Jesus’ example provided for all he encountered. How can we effectively represent him in such a situation? We are in prayer about opportunity, necessity, and timing for all of these things yet we still have kids who purposely do not wear shoes to beg and ask for a new pair. The orphans are taught not to beg but when a Musungu comes along those lessons fly out the window. It is very troublesome to try and discern what to do in our predicament. It is so hard to have to turn down beggars who aren’t truly thankful. We don’t want to give with a cautious doubtful heart but with a generous and delightful one… but doing that in actuality is becoming pretty hard.


(The orphans waiting outside to receive clothes.)

Bandage my Bandages
Calices are being formed and blisters are becoming familiar as we do work in Mufulira. We have completed a lot of work. We completed a 6 feet deep trash hole. Which took two full days to complete. We then macheted our way through a majority of brush so that the orphanage could create a garden for food. We also made tables and benches so the children wouldn’t have to eat on the floor. We also bought $300 dollars of meal that will supply 130 orphans for one month of food. We also painted a side of a house for the high school guys. Our work has already shown fruit and smiles. Justin has been completely floored at our service and speed. He gave us a full list of projects and we have been able to complete all of them with haste. We have a lot more to do and unfortunately are beat and bruised. Some of our fire has been dipped in water and our patience has been trsted at times. We are beginning to feel burned. Today we talked about the importance to preserver through it all. Our pain is only temporary and our torment is only conditional. We will only be here for so long and in three weeks we will be able to really rest. We have come to serve and serve we will. We will endure until our body simply cannot. We are being stretched by God and have realized that we truly need him to be our strength. And he is… he has kept us together as the glue of the team. In everything we do in His name has been enough. For example my wrist has been able to handle just enough to do what it needs to. So praise God! I look across this orphanage and see only volunteers who don’t really help out in labor. The stuff we are doing, by Justin’s reactions, take a lot longer for them to do. We are eight strong God-fearing men who have come here able to serve orphans and do labor. The stuff we are doing here will have such long term affects. That only excites us more and more to do more. So now I will bandage my bloody bandages and get some rest for tomorrow. Because I don’t ever want to go back to the US regretting the things I will do here.

[ Saturday June 13th ]


Bushfire
Yesterday we mixed up the day and got a chance to visit another orphanage called Bushfire. It is kind of an offspring of Murundu. How it was birthed was due to corruption of the Murundu orphanage. What happened was that Zambians were put in charge of the leadership of Murundu and when sponsors donated money they would just pocket it leaving little for the orphans. So the leadership fired a couple of the corrupt Zambian leaders and replaced them with an American couple. Due to the corruption those American leaders split from Murundu and started Bushfire. Bushfire is a lot more modernized and has kept the supporters by not misusing the money. Murundu is still fighting off corruption and now has Justin in charge. Bushfire has been going strong in support and we found out that Kennedy was raised on this ground. He told stories and showed us his rickety bridge he made across a river. It is still standing and has been used by the whole community. The bridge is exactly what you would think if you thought of an African stick bridge.

Change
As we tread on African soil and mingle with its people, similarities are far and few between. But there seems to be something that us Americans have in connection to the people of Africa. As the cover of the familiar Time magazine reads “Great Expectations” with a picture of Obama’s face floods the plains of this land the word “change” comes to mind. It sours the tip of your tongue, its taste too known, like the greens your mom made you eat. Sitting at home from the couch its hard to imagine the weight of such a one word promise, but here, in a place largely ignored by recent America, you can see the rare offering of a second chance on the tip of every African tongue. “Obama!” is a common word to jump start conversation with the white Americans here in Zambia. It looks as if this change deal might be a living, breathing thing after all. Yet there are some, mostly those who are Zambian pastors, who are in disbelief. It is interesting to walk in the divide watching the reactions of everything here that one man is doing back at home. Our president. Our history. An idle profile of a man that, despite what he may do or not do for our problems at home, has already changed things for those of us who venture abroad. Standing here in the middle of a Zambian town, you can feel a sort of acceptance without distrust. Respect without reservations. No matter what stance you have on our president or what political background you support… that promise of change has begun whether or not we see it in our boarders.

Zambia College Life
Today we got to visit Copperbelt University in Zambia. It is the #2 school in all of Zambia. It was quite an experience and made me really appreciate all of the housing we have at our own universities. Amos, who is one of Kennedy’s friends, plays soccer for CBU. He lives on campus and is paying for his own schooling in which he can not afford. So he got to show us around his campus and give us a day in the life of a CBU student. The campus is pretty big and the first thing that stood out to me was the amount of clothes EVERYWHERE. There are no washers nor dryers so they wash their clothes in sinks then dry them outside. So laundry is a constant on this campus. Then we went up a couple of stairs to visit his room and found some people in his room. The size of his room is one that is comparable to an American bathroom. Not only that but it is four people to every room. And what got me was that there is no bunkbeds… two to a single sized bed. They share a bed with some stranger. That is incredible. Not only that but they have a stove underneath their one desk to make all three meals for each and every person in the room. Then on top of that they are a fulltime students doing homework all of the time leaving not a whole lot of time for socialization. These are the elite of Zambia, the ones who will make a future impact, those who will be the next gen of leaders in this country. All in all it seems to be a pretty good campus and some of the people were great. The thing that messed me up was what happened after. We essentially went to see Amos’ game. So we went out to the field when it was time and were greeted by a assembly of “friendly people.” We were rudely interrupted about twelve times throughout the game by drunks. We thought that they would come just for the game but Amos told us a different story. After identifying the vice principle of the school amongst the drunks he told us that drinking is the only thing to do for these students. He told us that they would spend hour upon hours wasting their time fondling alcohol. They would just abuse the wealth that has been passed down to them. Amos said that there are a bit of people who’s main drive is school and education but usually are drowned out by the drunk folk. This seems so sad to me. I look around in Zambia and want to make a difference and want to help in any way I can but the future of this country can’t even look me back in the eyes let alone stand up strait. This hit me hard when I saw the #2 campus of Zambia in a drunken scamper. It is so hard for me, even at home, to see people waste money in a fashion that demonstrates unthankfulness for what they have been given. It kills me to see the future being handed down to people who will only want self-gratification and personal glory instead of giving people like Amos a chance. People who are hardworking and giving, people like Amos, who can’t even afford to finish all the way through college because of funding. It tears me up inside.



[ Sunday June 14th ]

Oh Hello! Welcome to Your Church.
Last night Pastor Jack drove in from Livingstone with an elder from his church “Light of Life.” Pastor Jack is the high pastor in his church and has a church branch here in Mufulira. So he drove all the way up here to properly introduce us to his church branch. Pastor Jack is a funny fellow. He is a short African that has a lot of energy and says “Praise God!” every 35 seconds. He always has a smile on his face and goes above and beyond in everything he is apart of. Anyways he arrived on Saturday at our guest house after dinner with a surprise greeting. He expressed how happy he was and honored that we could be apart of his church service tomorrow. He was quick to talk about the church and about his travels then he opened our itinerary… We don’t have an itinerary. The team looked unsuspectfully around the room exchanging eye contact with one another. We then looked towards our leaders to see if they shared in the shock. They surely were just as confused as we were as they followed along with Pastor Jacks motions. Our schedule has been planned out to help out the orphanage for the next three days. Yet Pastor Jack had other things in mind apparently. Pastor Jack was so ecstatic about us being here that he planned the rest of our time in Mufulira for us. He was also very ambitious on what we were going to do for the service tomorrow. What?! Is this some sort of sick joke… screamed the looks on our faces. He planned us to put on a Sunday service and to teach on Monday and Tuesday without our knowledge. So now I find myself the C.E. major in a small school building greeting the Mufulira people to their very own church giving a sermon that I did not have yesterday. Little did we know that the whole church had been waiting for our arrival and had a huge sign greeting us in as we got flowers to pin on our shirts. God has been speaking a lot to me about these people and the trials that they go through so I spoke on that. God used and stretched our team this Sunday. Brice played the guitar and we all sang along to two favorite songs while Kennedy and Christian gave our team testimony and I gave the sermon about joy through trials. The night before we weren’t so put together but after a long talk and some good worship we gave the situation to him and he used us to orchestrate exactly what he had planned this Sunday. The sermon I gave had confirmation through out the jammed packed classroom of 70 and left me refreshed to know that God had his plan in it all. It was relieving to let him have full control and glory. Leaving us just enough to give him trust in our situation. God is so good!



[ Wednesday June 17th ]

Musombo 1340ml Shaft
Today was a true Zambian coppermining experience! Pastor Jack arranged for us to go underground and check out a copper mine. Normally an experience like this would cost about $30 per person but because of Pastor Jack’s connections we got in free. So we woke up at 5:30 to be there at 6:00 to start our decent. We got geared up in full suits which consisted of hard hat, earplugs, eyewear, gasmask, white jump suit, rubber boots and head light. It was legit! We went down the first elevator shaft for 500ml then lit up and walked to the next shaft that took us down to 1340ml. We then toured all the of niks and grannies of how the copper mine works. The deeper we went the hotter it got. We were completely covered in sweat at the bottom of the mines. It was so cool to actually see how the process works and how non-envious I was of the workers in the mine. It looks like really hard work for bad pay. But every face we met greeted us with a smile. I was so impressed with how sophisticated the whole process is and how much machinery it truly takes to get a mine up and running! It was an all day exhausting experience… but it was one I will never forget!



[ Thursday June 18th ]

We are now heading back to Lusaka for a day of rest and a prayer request to be answered. Atila will be flying in at 6:00am on Saturday to complete our team here in Zambia. His passport came through and he is on his way! The team is stoked!


(Making the best of our 3rd blackout at our guest house by doing some lightwriting.)


(Always Love in Africa: Wilson one of Kennedy’s friends that the team became really good friends with. I gave him my shirt in remembrance of us and to always love.)


In His Grip,
Jeremy Dennis Pedron