Chicken Eater

We have been officially defeated by the chickens. They have hit us hard this time. Here’s the story… so just last week something snapped inside our cute little kitty Rambo and he became a chicken eater. At first we didn’t think it was much of a problem and were a bit happy that we would have the upper hand on those stinking birds. But then Rambo just went mad about chickens. It was like he could not rest unless he had eaten a chicken. Seriously within 4 days he killed 3 chickens. Well there was definitely no way we could allow this to go on due to the amount of money and food this took away from the villagers. So we talked to our neighbour who also has a cat, and asked her if her cat ate chickens and if not then why. Her explanation to me was that Rambo was a bush cat and her advice was to take him back to where we got him. 0f course we were sceptical about this information. Rambo, a bush cat? Come on, this cat sleeps in our lap all day long, you don’t get more domestic than that. But then we looked in our African animals book and we found the “Wild African Cat” which is the size of the domestic cat and the picture looked identical to our cat. Go figure! Either way the fact was that he was eating chickens and we couldn’t make him stop, so we had to give Rambo away to some friends at the mission hospital (where there are no chickens).
Now we are in mourning because that cat was just such a cool cat. We fully blame the chickens for our loss and our hatred for them and love for chicken sandwiches has increased ten fold.

Aside from that little set back we have been doing pretty well. The church project is really coming along nicely. We really have been so impressed by the way the community is pulling together and working hard at building this church. They have groups of people working there every day of the week and the turn out is usually pretty good. Already they have the full foundation laid and have begun building the walls. We anticipate that at this rate the walls will be completed within the next month. We try to go and help whenever we can and we’ve really been enjoying the time working together. This week we ended up working with a bunch of the guys from Stephen’s English class and they insisted (of course just because we were there) that they would only speak in English for the whole day. It was funny to hear them chatting away in English and trying to use big words because they knew we were listening.

This month Stephen was also given the opportunity to speak to the youth about HIV/AIDS. He was given two weeks to talk about the basics like transmission and prevention. We’ve been encouraged to see that the youth group is continuing to meet and has pretty good attendance. 0ne week we went and although there were no leaders there, the youth had still gathered and began the service on their own.

Some other exciting news is that the Mangoes are coming! The little green nubs are starting to form on the trees and before you know it we’ll be making mango jam again. I’m really excited to help the women kick off the season and begin selling jam. I’m thinking of having a big mango party where we can make a huge batch together and hopefully get them remotivated about the project.
0ther than that life is just moving along at its usual African pace. Surprisingly enough we have been eating quite a bit of pork lately. Some guys in our village have been killing a lot of pigs these past few months and there’s no way we can resist fresh meat. So we have had a good amount of BBQ pork and hobo dinners which has been awesome!
The mornings here have been so beautiful lately and we can tell that the rainy season is on its way. We are excited for the change in weather however we are sad that the beginning of the rains means the end of the weight room. It’s kind of hard to keep a weight room from washing away when all the equipment is made out of dirt. 0h well, it was good while it lasted I guess.

0ne thing we have noticed as we are beginning to wrap up our time here is that there is not much left for us to do, which in a way is a good thing. Most of our projects are at the point where our involvement in them is very minimal. 0ther Zambians have started to take over the projects that we helped to initiate and we are no longer in the forefront. That, however, is the nature of this work and is the way it should be. Yet it makes it really difficult for us to know what our role will be for our last 6 months here. It seems rather counter intuitive to work yourself out of a job but if this wasn’t done then nothing could be sustained here. So please be praying for us as we still seek to make the most of the rest of our time here and to take hold of any opportunities that God brings to us. And if anyone feels like a visit to Zambia, we know of a couple here that knows the area pretty well and has a lot of free time on their hands. J Just let us know.