Salsa Adventures

A few days ago Steve and Stephanie asked me what foods I was starting to miss from back in the states. At the time I wasn't quite sure, but maybe thinking about it for a couple of days helped to clarify things. So today, as I was walking through the grocery store, I realized that I had a craving for corn chips and salsa. Which are delicious.

So I went to the chip aisle. The only corn chips they had were Doritos (in the super-sweet, non-U.S. flavors, of course), but that isn't really what I was looking for. Failure #1. Then I walked over to the aisle where there theoretically ought to be salsa. I wasn't expecting a grand selection or anything, but all they had was mango salsa. Delicious, but not what I was looking for... Failure #2.

On my way out of the store, however, I came across a pack of "chapaties," which looked strangely identical to tortillas, and an idea sparked into my head -- why not make chips and salsa?!? What could possibly be more delicious? What could possibly go wrong? How hard can it be? So I got a bunch of veggies and headed home.

Kamryn and I decided that we wanted to make our treat as a surprise for dinner, and Bradyn joined in a little bit later. Jennifer Rhoda hung out with us for a while taking pictures with my camera, talking on my phone, and wearing my backpack.



Anyways, the girls and I chopped up tons of tomatoes and onions and garlic and green/red peppers for the salsa, and we got the tortillas cut up into "chip" shapes. The recipe we found said that we needed to brush the chips with veggetable oil before baking them, so as I was working on chopping stuff, Bradyn and Kamryn found some oil in a cool little spray bottle, and we put it on the chips. I used three red peppers in the salsa, but made sure to take the seeds out first.

We finished up the first batch of chips, and the salsa, just as dinner was ready. But as we started to try out the goods, we quickly realized that some things were amiss:

1) First of all, the stuff that the girls sprayed on the chips is not what we thought it was. Somehow it made the chips really hot (as in spicy), so that as Kamryn tried her first chip, she started coughing and needed to drink a ton of water.

2) When I tasted my first chip, I realized that the salsa was VERY hot. I mean, hotter than Seattle weather right now. :) I was ok with it, but Bradyn could only have a little bit before needing a big glass of water. Soon the girls were actually crying because their mouths were burning so much. When we went back to the Allen's house Stephanie googled "chili pepper burns" and was able to soothe things a bit, but then at dinner Kamryn rubbed her eyes with some pepper juice on her hands. Ouch. That hurts like the dickens, so dinner was interrupted with some more crying.

So all that being said, an innocent chips and salsa surprise turned into a massive crisis with on-the-fly medical care administered via milk and yogurt and olive oil. Maybe next time I can try to avoid using the hottest peppers in the universe for a makeshift corn chip dip. Or maybe we can search for a "mild" recipe :)

Thoughts on Church

So far it has been interesting to visit the compound churches here in Zambia. I have been privileged to visit five congregations so far, each from a different suburb of Lusaka, ranging from 20 people in attendance to more than 300. Each experience has been different, but I have noticed some interesting common denominators that each church has shared so far.

(1) Church is between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 hours long. One of the services I went to began at 9:00 and ended at around 1:00.

(2) When the leader of the congregation says, "Let us pray now for..." or "we are going to pray that...", what he/she means is that EVERYONE is going to pray out loud to God at the same time. So everyone audibly speaks their prayer to God together at the same time, the effect of which is a sort of a loud amalgam of voices.

(3) Visitors (or maybe just Muzungu's?) are given seats at the front of the congregation, sometimes with their own small table, and bottled water.

(4) When church is over, the pastor (or "man of God") exits first and stands at the front door of the church. Then the guests/muzungu's exit, shaking the pastor's hand, and form a line behind the pastor so that everyone in the congregation shakes everyone else's hand.

(5) Services are divided up into different chunks, and not everyone comes to everything. The first part is usually intercession -- church leaders meeting before the service to pray for the day, for the people as they make their way to church, and so on. Sometimes there is a Bible study after intersession, which is a time for the pastor or teacher/elder to lead the core of the church in a more personal "teaching" environment. There aren't a lot of kids or families at this if it happens. Then, as the women and children begin to arrive, there is a time of worship (sometimes led by a choir, if there is one), an offering, and a set of announcements (just like in the states) in no particular order. At around 11:30 there is a sermon... or two. The day's offering is usually announced at the end of the service.

(6) At one of the churches I went to there was a separate youth church, but it took place during the teaching time before worship. For the most part, the kids just hang out with the rest of the congregation for all three hours of church.

(7) Worship is usually in Nyanja and English. Sometimes the pastor will give the sermon in both languages at once -- speaking one sentence at a time in each language -- and sometimes the pastor will have an interpreter. Worship music may or may not have instrumentation apart from clapping.

(8) I have not yet had communion with a congregation here. Luke mentioned to me that there is often an afternoon service where the congregation will break bread together, but it is hard to tell if this happens in smaller, more impoverished congregations. If they do take communion, I have yet to determine the frequency -- is it once per month like in my congregation back in the States? Or only if/when they can afford bread and drink for an entire congregation? An issue like this is very interesting to think about in the context of poverty,

(9) There has not been as much "crazy stuff" as I expected, even in the pentecostal churches. No one has been slain in the spirit or anything like that -- the most common thing has been speaking in tongues. Women will occasionally holler during prayer times.

(10) There is no problem at all here with women pastors. It is very interesting to me how this happens everywhere in the world, when God's word is so clear on the issue. Just like in the States, I have seen far more women in the churches than men.

God is good... (echo: all the time!). All the time... (echo: God is good!).

Grasshopper

I took this video on my third or fourth day here, when I was in Makeni with Tyler.

4th of July

“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

Today is the 4th of July. Of course that means just about nothing here in Zambia, except that it is Saturday, and on Saturday the malls are full of Westerners. So after spending the morning in the office reading (while a pastor and a couple of his employees put some windows into our classroom) I decided to just walk around the city. All day long.

So in the early afternoon I set out from the office on foot. When I got downtown I grabbed lunch at a cafe where they had an "Obama Special," which turned out to be fried chicken and french fries. Not a bad spread for $4, eh?

Then I just wandered up and down the streets of the city for the next three hours. I saw a couple of things that made me chuckle -- a minibus pulling another minibus with a plastic pipe and a string, a gal in a Huskies sweatshirt (I had a Huskies hat on, so we talked for a minute or so), and the Zambian equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I walked a ways down Cairo Road (the main North/South street) behind some ladies with stuff balanced on their heads. I feel like there are things that I see periodically that really remind me I'm in Africa.

Fun interaction of the day: at one point I took a picture of gas prices, and all of a sudden a guy ran up to me from across the street and asked me some sort of a question in ragged english. After a minute or two I figured out that he was asking if I had a permit to take photos (of course I didn't), and he wanted me to come with him to the police station. Since the guy was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt I decided I didn't believe him, so I asked to see his badge. "No, don't ask me that," he said. "Let's go, let's go." The guy was obviously full of it, so I took my camera out and showed him as I deleted the picture. I probably didn't even need to do that. Anyways, I told him I wouldn't take any more pictures and then just walked away.

Towards the end of the day I rested by the Freedom Statue (above, courtesy this guy), which was erected on the 10th anniversary of Zambia's independance. It struck me that I was there on my country's independance day, half way across the world... I'm not quite sure if that's significant at all, but it was cool nonetheless. I talked with some street kids and bus drivers there for a bit before heading over to the US embassy for the evening and eating burgers with Tracy and Karen. It was interesting to be around so many Americans in the evening after having been the only white person in sight all day long.

I'm going to try to go to a pentecostal church tomorrow that I hear has 3+ hour church services. Should be fun :)

So... I'm in Africa

Hey there!

Today marks the three week mark of my time in Zambia. It has been really good. Here's a brief synopsis:

(1) Week One - All my flights went as smooth as they possibly could have. I got into Lusaka and was greeted at the airport by the smiles of Steve and Tyler before being shuttled around town for a bit. I stayed the first night with Tyler at a house in Makeni, which is a suburb of Lusaka, and was able to get a full night's rest, which was great. My first real experience with JetLag wasn't too bad, and I was ok on day three.

The rest of the week was spent with Tyler and Steve and Megan, just learning the city and learning what Action Zambia is doing in its various ministries. Public transportation here is pretty interesting, and I've got some great stories that I'll have to post later. All the missionaries here have been very gracious and generous with me so far; I had dinner with all but one of the families my first week here.

(2) Week Two - A short-term team from Vacaville, CA, came into town a couple of weeks ago to do some work with a farm we have called Cianjano ("Fellowship" in Nyanja). I hung with them for the week just digging 5' x 16' x 9' pit latrines, planting trees, and hanging out with kids from the local villiages. I love that stuff: kids are the same everywhere, it doesn't matter what culture they grow up in or what language they speak. We also tore down an Insaka (an African gazebo), and watched as ladies came from the villiage to make brooms from the straw roof as we tore it down. They'll sell them in the market later for 1,000 to 2,000 kwacha (20 to 40 cents).

(3) Week Three - The team took a trip down to Livingstone to see

Victoria Falls and catch a safari, but I decided not to go with them... instead I moved into Steve and Stephanie's guest room last weekend, and have been spending time getting to know the projects that I'll be working on the rest of the way out. I'm excited for this next month, as I'll hopefully be diving into the lives of 15 local pastors, getting to know them and their congregations, and just helping out the Action office wherever I'm needed.

More to come!