Driving out to Simbelele you drove through an extremely poor village. The streets are lined with trash, there’s no work for these people and dozens of half built brick homes sit abandoned. This place makes you appreciate the worst life you could have back in North America. It really hits you hard when you drive past the rock crushing fields, has an eerie vibe that makes you feel like when the Egyptians controls the Jews to build for them, straight out of a movie scene. In a country that has a 75% unemployment rate this is where people without work will crush rocks up to sell piles to construction workers. This doesn’t sound so bad until you realize that the piles of rocks you see in those pictures, that takes a 7 to 10 days to produce and are only worth 8-10 kwatcha. Lets make this more real, the exchange is currently $1 CAD = 7 Kwatcha or $1 US = 10 Kwatcha…means that week + worth of labour is worth about $1 Canadian to $1 US. Out here a pop costs 5 kwatcha, a loaf of bread costs 9 kwatcha. This is sad reality for most of this Country. The ironic part is this country is rich in minerals, gold, copper and even oil, but the industry sector left many years ago and the only real export they have up and running is tourism to Victoria falls area and Copper.

We ended up spending the day in simbelele, and man was it a toasty 35 degrees out! Sun block helps but still getting some good colour. It was good to see the installation of the water pump go in, once the borehole is dug they need about 1.5hrs to install the hand pump then lay down the concrete pad. Sadly the pump isn’t usable for 3 to 4 days while the concrete dries but after that the pump will service the village of about 300 people and their new fruit trees for decades to come.

When we first landed we had saved a few thousand kwatcha on the food we won, well we were able to take that money and purchase a pile of lightly used clothing for the village children. Sadly there were more kids than clothing but our local team will be back after we are gone to bring some for the rest of the children.

So much more to say but not enough time, we are off on a 3hr 4×4 trek to the next village so until the next post I will leave you with this….be grateful for the opportunities we have in Canada, in North America….we are so blessed so take today and be thankful for your opportunities in your life!!