Flakes and Snakes

Our brother is finally here! David arrived in Zambia last Thursday and what an adventure it was to get him from the airport! Let us tell you about it. So he was flying into the city of Ndola which is about a 4 hour drive from Solwezi and we decided to make the trip a bit nicer by renting a taxi for the drive. We had negotiated a driver and a price about 2 weeks prior to his arrival so we felt pretty confident that it would work out ok. However the evening before we were to leave we encountered some problems. The taxi driver changed his price on us (of course in his favor) and our reserve taxis flaked out on us. This left us with no transport to get David at about 6 hours before we were to leave. I was a bit frantic and praying for that peace which passes all understanding. Then finally we were able to contact a guy who would take us for a good price, he just had to use his friend's car because his tires were better.

So, 4:00 am rolls around and we were getting into the taxi which was of course on empty. After waking up the attendants at the 24 hour gas station (by pounding on the locked door of the station) we were on our way. About 1 hour into the trip one of the "good tires" went flat. No big deal right?...until we realized that we were already driving on the doughnut! Not to worry there was a spare, sort of good tire we could use. By sort of good I mean that it got us another hour before it blew. So here we were with half the trip to go, David arriving in 2 hours, and a taxi with two flat tires. Fortunately there was a kind Canadian man passing our way at just that moment and he was willing to give us a lift to the nearby town where we could find another taxi. So we got another taxi which took us the remainder of the trip...however David was now arriving in 1.5 hours and Ndola was still about 2 hours away. We asked our taxi driver if he could try to get us there in good time and he took that as 'drive between 80 and 90 mph' -- a bit scary but it worked out because we got to the airport literally 30 seconds before David stepped off the plane.
We were so happy to see David and so glad that we got there in time to meet him at the terminal. The way back to Solwezi was a lot smoother. We found our original taxi driver in the town where he broke down and he took us the remainder of the way. The only problem was that once we got to Solwezi he wanted us to pay more than we agreed...despite his two flat tires. We tried to explain how in the U.S. we probably wouldn't give any money because he didn't get us where we needed to go and that it was hurting development to reward sub-par work. We finally settled on the price and we could at last relax.

It's been really great having David here. We've spent this first week in our village, just relaxing and enjoying the normal bush life. Hopefully he isn't getting too bored. :) He's learning a lot about Zambia and all the villagers have enjoyed having him here. He keeps wanting to find some big snakes so we've gone on some hunts, but haven't spotted any yet. We told him he needed to be here one week earlier.
Just two weeks ago on Sunday we were helping out with the children's church. We were in the middle of singing some songs when all of the sudden the children started shouting "mulolo" or "snake!" There below the benches where they had been sitting and all their little feet had been dangling, was a good sized puff adder snake which happened to be slitering towards my husband. Luckily his ninja skills kicked in and he averted the snake while I was trying to grab as many little kids as I could and run. Then the little old teacher lady lifted up one of the benches and smashed the snake's head in. Praise the Lord! :) It actually was amazing that nobody got bitten because it was inches from the children. We also found out later from our snake book that the puff adder causes the most snake bite deaths in Africa. So it was just another normal Sunday in Zambia. Maybe another snake will visit us this week so David can join in on the fun.

All else here is great. In the next two weeks we will be doing some traveling and site seeing so that should be a lot of fun. After that we will get back to "work". :)
We love you and miss you!
Heather (& Stephen)