Hello Again Family and Friends,
This is my third attempt this week in sending out this email. Just so you know that I have been trying! So just a heads up hear is what we did last week through the beginning of this past week and I will send photos in the order of what I am talking about in a separate email. Since I am taking up to much space with all that I am writing. Sorry this is soooooo long but I wanted to try and get you all as much detail as possible. So here we go!!!
I am writing to update you to what has happened in the past week, beginning Tuesday of last week through Tuesday of this week. Since I had left off with Monday of last week in my last email.
So let us begin!! Tuesday January 14th we were taken on a day long tour and excursion to go see a project called Foundations For Farming were they believe that by farming the land the way god intended and by keeping God your center point you can feed the world. They focus on the proverb you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he will never go hungry. It was quite the beautiful yet simple facility. We toured their compost/mulch area, which is the most important part of farming because it keeps the rain from destroying the ground and eroding and it also absorbs the rain 90% better than with no compost/mulch. It was fascinating. For the compost they used manure, sticks, leaves, and cut grass. All things you would normally find on a forest floor.
Then they showed us their expansive grounds were they grow veggies, herbs, fruits, and even nuts. It is the most lush garden Ive ever seen. After our tour we got to sit in on a lecture with 26 Kenyans that were staying at the facility to learn the Foundations for Farming way of farming to bring back to their villages in Kenya. It was seriously mind blowing at how simple the concept was and just how amazing it worked, and what just astounds me is the fact that Africa holds 30% of the entire worlds natural resources and yet only produces 1.8% of the worlds GDP. Absolutely ridiculous, just shows how much Africa in a whole needs help.
We also tried edible flowers from the herb garden, saw monkeys (which I named the raccoons of Africa, they are literally just like raccoons;sneaky and mischievous) and saw a demonstration on how mulch/compost saves soil from eroding. It was quite a full and eventful day.
Wednesday was a little more of a down day, and we were with out power most of the day, power goes off almost every day for at least 3 hrs to the full day. It is so weird how you just get used to it. Wednesday evening we met some of the youth at the church and we all piled in to the church combi (which is a Japanese 12 passenger van, that is half the size of an american 12 passenger van and it is quite uncomfortable, flat seats and NO leg room, and it is also our personal transportation whenever we go on road trips which is about once a week, hence we took to go to Foundations for farming, seriously it kills your butt:-/ )
Then we headed to Dumbashawa Goma which is a mountain where we were all going to hike and watch the sunset. It was a beautiful hike and the sunset was quite breathtaking! We hung out up there for quite awhile, the youth that came with us were all in the choir at church so they broke out into song and we all sang our little hearts out on top of the mountain for at least an hour:) It was sooooooooooo much fun! The only part is we got a bit carried away and had to climb back down in the dark with the lights off our cell phones, haha it was quite interesting but we made it with no injuries.
Thursday we headed to Mwanga Lodge which is a wild game lodge where we got to go canoeing, ride an elephant named Gonzo, and pet 3 yr old lionesses through the cage. It was an absolutely amazing day, but totally wore us out!! We also went on a safari ride through the game park and saw a warthog, wildebeest, Full grown lions in caged off sections, zebras, an ostrich, and other grazing herbivores native to Africa but I don't know their names. It was crazy you could hear the lion roar from miles away but it felt soooooooo close. It was a day to cross off the bucket list!!!
Friday we went and visited a school called Marlborough High School. We got to visit with high school students and just give them our undivided attention and talk to them and just focus on them and they just loved it. This school is a school that renewal ministries went in and for a whole month worked on fixing it up, painting it, and landscaping the grounds. The high school even after the work looks like a prison to Erinn and I. It is all concrete and bricks, no posters or anything happy in the rooms. So bland and lifeless, and unstimulating. It was quite a reality check, and made you appreciate even the states public schools.
The teachers don't even show up half the time and keep their jobs, it is absolutely insane. Also instead of having a principle and vice principle, they have what they call a head master, and from what we are told he is quite corrupt. He rents out the auditorium and other areas of the property and pockets all the money. Also kids who are very poor and may only live 20 minutes away but their families can't afford to transport them every day, they live there at the school in a hostel and get to go home for one weekend a month. I can't even imagine only seeing my family a weekend a month when I was in highschool. And its not like they can play video games and watch movies on the weekends, they literally have nothing and just do school work and play outside.
It just broke my heart, so much that we went back to Marlborough High the next day on Saturday and hung out with all the kids that don’t get to go home on the weekends. It was the most humbling experience, they were so delighted to have us and just hung on us so we couldn’t leave. We went in the evening for about 3 hours and just split the kids into groups and we each had about 30 kids per person, and we all just took time learning about our girls and letting them ask us all the questions they wanted. Aaaaaaaaaaaand I made the mistake of letting them touch my hair, haha they couldn’t get enough of it they just wanted to touch it and play with it, needless to say I left looking like a hot mess, but it was well worth it.
And I will have you know the power literally just went out as I am writing this!! Ok well I shall pick up where I left off once it is back on.
Ahh well it only took two days! Woohoo;) Not two whole day but it was on when we weren’t home and off when we were! Ha Welcome to Africa. Ok yay we are now into this week!!!
This week we left for Karanda mission hospital for two days starting Monday. It is 4 hrs away, again on the bus that hurts our bums. It was a very interesting trip from start to finish. For one Del had never been before and there really is no GPS in Africa and did I mention that their streets have little to no road signs? But despite all that we ended up making pretty good timing for making 3 wrong turns;-) But then the joke was on us once we were close because this hospital is so remote and in the middle of the bush it took us an hour to go 9 miles on an extremely rocky, pothole/erosion, dirt rode,( again to reiterate we are in a Japanese 12 passenger van).
Whilst driving to the hospital on this ridiculous excuse of a rode we are seeing things I thought were only in national geographics. We are seeing huts, people working in fields with babies strapped to their backs, a kid no older than 7 herding goats and cattle by himself, ox drawn carts, and the list goes on. Once we made it to the hospital we were shown our living quarters which were actually quite nice except there was no running water and no electricity!! They have been with out power for over two weeks, I guess there is a break in one of the main lines, and they only use the generators for the hospital and other pertinent buildings.
Also I need to mention it was hot!!! About ten degrees hotter than what we have been in for the past week in a half, aaaaand we were all covered up from neck to foot, we were required to cover up completely. Once we unpacked we went to tour the grounds, they run a government funded nurse school on the grounds, they take 18 students per year, and they go for three years. So we got to tour the school which was two small plain buildings. Then we toured the hospital, and that was a wake up call. From what we are told by many it is one of the largest and nicest hospitals in the whole country of Zimbabwe. Well to our standards as americans most of you would of fainted. The smell of BO, blood and urine were quite prevalent (especially in the mens ward) it was dirty, you have no privacy what so ever, not a single computer did I see, everything on paper.
Again, it is supposedly one of the nicest facilities! They have 4 different wards; men, women, paediatrics, and maternity. They were all heart wrenching, especially the paediatrics, I lost it and had to walk away and cry. I won’t go into details. They see over 600 to 700 people daily, absolutely amazing. A large part of the people they see are aids and TB, but then they see everything else you could imagine as well. They do have a surgeon there who can do everything from brain down to the feet and he is the head honcho there and just the most selfless person you ever met. Tuesday we went to the different wards and talked and prayed with all the patients in there. It was an absolutely amazing feeling, and sometimes the person didn’t speak a lick of English but somehow we still found ways to communicate. It was one of the most heart wrenching, yet rewarding things I have ever done. It was an amazing two days.
There is so much more that happened but I have to stop somewhere. If you have any questions about anything I have written please just write me and I would happily indulge youJ I also wanted to let you know that Karanda mission hospital is a complete non-profit funded hospital and Most of the people that work there are volunteers and live on the grounds and are funded by sponsors, they do have some paid staff but they have over 200 volunteers including nurses and doctors.I think that is what astounds me most, my hat goes off to all of them, it is not an easy place to live.
Well I think that wraps it up for this time. Sorry it did not come sooner, but with all we are doing and the power outages this is the soonest I could get it out. Also we are still taking donations and would appreciate any extra you could send. Lastly thank you for supporting us and praying us through this amazing journey God has blessed us with. We are so blessed to have each and every one of you in our lives!!
Love You All & God Bless,
Cori & Erinn
