Yesterday we spent the day in the Village of Magrimund, a village that Berea Baptist has been working with for years. It was amazing to see the 6 houses they built and 2 bore holes they drilled. The way this has Changed lives out here is inspiring! We were there all day Saturday to work with the village children in the local church, but what a crazy day!
First thing I need to explain is “Makuwa” means white person out here, so everywhere we go that’s all you here. Funny thing is that a couple team members are Malaysian and from Grenada yet they are still called Makuwa. In Canada this is definitely more of a racist thing but out here we just don’t care because we know they’re just curious and never see white people, at least in the villages. Nothing you do will prepare you for being surrounded by a sea of 50+ village children yelling at you to get your attention, trying to grab your hands, arms, hair, waist….basically any part of you. they would grab my arms and just rub them or poke them to watch the skin colour change as they let go, or to see if the white maybe would come off. They fought over who would hold my hand or be under my arms. Then there’s my longer light brown hair, that just fascinated them that hair could be long and run your hands through it. They kept trying to get me too sit, and once I did crouch be then almost got trampled as they all wanted to grab my hair. I had to stabilise myself a few times to not fall over on them and could walk anywhere without a following. If this is what a celebrity feels like I didn’t like it, it’s unbelievably overwhelming. The kids were awesome and so cute! It’s unreal how self sufficient a child is here from 2+. You would never see these young children along without an adult at home, but here you have 5-6year old looking after 2-3 year olds. The walk KMs to get around the dirt road, mud hut village, pump the water well and wash dishes by themselves. Its insane to see the difference from Zambia to Canada on child raising. A bit thing I notice is these children sing and dance constantly, play in large groups and break out into random songs. They don’t fuss when a parent is holding them and listen, majority of the time, when told what to do. They also have survival skills ingrained in them, when we fed them we had lots of them eat quickly, wash their bowls and try to sneak back in for a second round of food. When we had over 200+ children to work with this wasn’t an easy task.
The day was great bit exhausting, we played games, crafts, did Bible story telling and did a skit with them. It was a thankful break when the rains came later in the afternoon and the soccer game had to be cancelled. We all needed the break. Especially since I was still recovering from Heat exhaustion and ingesting the Zambezi river. Then to add to it we brought Rylan back to the Lodge to sleep off him being sick with the same problems the night before. He came back in the afternoon to help but was a bit to quick of a push I think for him.
All I have to say is without out wonderful translators and helpers cooking the food this would not of been possible.
As we left we had to bring a few people to their homes on the other side of the village , so we packed 25 people into a 13 seater bus…true Zambian style transportation! suspension is really tested out here between the dirt roads and the over capacity vehicles! We tried taking a picture of a few of us packed in, haha fun times!!
When your in Africa and get the chance to hear them sing, I mean real get into a natural harmony as a large group,its a sound that is unbelievable! As someone who isn’t blessed with a great singing ability I wonder how this comes so naturally and have told a few friends here they must teach me how to sing before I leave. This is their culture, their life, their communication. They live through the beat, make beats and music any way they can and don’t have any inhibitions. I know I shouldn’t but im a bit jealous of this, I want to not care what others think and just express myself. Guess I still have a lot to learn!
So now it’s Sunday and we went to a wonderful church service and had a chance to do our skit from the children in front of the church. It went pretty well I think. I’m pretty sure church lasted about 3 hours or so, with a couple sermons, the skit, communion and lots of singing. Again I can’t tell you how fluid and free these people all look and sound as they sing and worship! They could teach us Canadians a few things. Its been a pretty relax day otherwise, besides the fact the powers been out most of the day. This is normal out here, maybe one day we’ll get used to it.
So I’m still not quite 100% better yet, I really can’t stomach much food and it’s been 3 days now, I’m eating enough but nothings overly appetizing and not feeling great after I eat. Praying this gets healed soon! Tomorrow we start prepping for the 101 sponsored children and getting them ready for the next school year!
God Bless!