Pictures, Pictures, Pictures Part II

A few more pictures chosen at random...

Africans love Uno. Fact.

Fortune and his train. This goofy six-year-old is the child of the girls' caretaker. He's tiny and has quite a gap in-between his two front teeth. They don't get much cuter than this.

The Baobab Tree. It's a monster. It stands on the Namumu complex just outside of the main office. I wish I had a picture with somebody standing beside it so that you could get an idea of how big it actually is. I climbed it once. No big deal. I didn't make it that high, though, because Esther yelled at me and told me that if I didn't come down she'd give me a spanking. Yikes.

I think that paying to use the toilet is a ridiculous concept. I would have pee'd all over this sign if I could have reached it. But hey, I'm no Will Duke...

The blue van, called a "minibus", taxis people from city to city within Zambia. This is how you travel from Lusaka, the capital city, to Siavonga, where you find Namumu. It's tight. It smells. TIA.

Munjongo, Esther and their youngest daughter, Ndandula, kicking back in the living room. Their place is nice. They have a TV (where we watched professional wrestling three nights a week), a DVD player (where we watched professional wrestling videos on the nights when professional wrestling wasn't on TV), and a laptop computer (where we downloaded wrestling clips from the internet so that we could watch professional wrestling when we were somewhere other than the living room. Just kidding. This is where Munjongo does work. Although I'm sure that he would certainly download professional wrestling highlights to his computer if Namumu had a faster internet connection.).

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

And now, a random smattering of pictures from Siavonga...

Here's a pretty typical scene around the Namumu complex, with girls sitting, laughing and hair braiding (from left to right, beginning with the hair-braidee, as opposed to the hair-braider, we have Wendy, Susan, Florence, Moonde and Kabuba). I showed a few Africa pictures to my middle school African boys in Crestwood's ESL program and they all want to holler at Kabuba. I don't blame them. She's a cutie.

There are more than a few dogs roaming around the villages of Siavonga. I think the villagers fed them from time to time because they all looked relatively healthy. They always have very sad eyes, though. And they just lay around in the shade all...day...long. Get a job, you bums.

A big-time drafts game (like checkers with a few more rules) going on here between Kebby (left), the boys care taker, and John (right). I played once or twice and got worked. The boys laughed at me. Jerks. If only I could challenge them in Call of Duty on Xbox I'd show them...

Patricia is in her early twenties and is a Namumu secretary. She handles some of the Namumu financial accounts and does a number of other tasks as well. Don't forget the cover letter to that TPS report, Patricia!

One Saturday Munjongo asked me to help build an outdoor toilet behind the Presbyterian Church. They were having a Presbyterian Women's conference in the church and around 30 ladies came to spend the night at the church. Since the church is still under construction and bathroom-less I had to get to work. I have since added "bathroom construction" to my resume, which I think will be very appealing for employers in a number of fields.

It never hurts to include a picture of the Namumu children looking cute. Here they are gathered around the leftover nsima after lunch. I'm telling you, they love that stuff. (Clockwise from bottom left: Tazwey, Fortune, Luando, Bickel, Michael, Veronica, Purity and Charity). Rascals.

Munjongo

While a number of people and organizations have contributed to the development of the Namumu Orphanage Centre, Munjongo Namuyamba is the man behind it all. He is Namumu's fearless leader.

It all started more than 10 years ago when Munjongo was working for the Zambian power company ZESCO. He and his wife, Esther, began welcoming orphans from the surrounding villages to stay in their home with them. They fed them and, in some cases, helped to pay for their schooling. They gave support and direction to a number of children over the years.

God soon led Munjongo to take things to the next level and create Namumu. With the assistance of Esther and a few others, Munjongo worked out the details, sought and secured funding, and picked the site in Siavonga. Less than a decade later Namumu is up and running. It offers housing, meals, education and health care to 80 children on a large complex that only 10 years ago was covered in bushes.

Today, Munjongo remains Namumu's executive director, overseeing all operations. He has a hand in everything that goes on at Namumu, from the production levels of the income-generating projects to the nutritional content of the children's meals. He deals with government agencies, international aid organizations and American churches. Perhaps his greatest talent is his ability to communicate well with anyone, whether it be an impoverished villager in Siavonga or a wealthy businessman in Houston, Texas.

He is so good at his job that the Outreach Foundation, a U.S.-based missions organization and one of Namumu's main backers, will not let him retire despite his repeated attempts to do so.

Now, I've lived with Munjongo. Yes, he's healthy. I've even seen him dance. Yes, he's spry. But he won't be around forever. Please take a moment today to pray that God will raise up a new leader that will take over for Munjongo soon and that will do the job well.

Worship

The vast majority of Zambians are Christians, so on Sunday morning there ain't a whole lot going on besides church, church and more church. Although Siavonga is a small town there are a number of churches and denominations to choose from.

Munjongo Namuyamba, in addition to being a driving force behind the creation of the Namumu Orphanage Centre, has also been a key player in raising up the Presbyterian Church of Siavonga. With a membership of around 50 people the Presbyterian Church is young but growing. 

The building ain't much to look at. An entire section of the concrete wall is missing (you know when the Kool-Aid man bursts through and says, "Oh yeah!"?...yeah, like that). The floor is concrete with dirt here and there. The pews are wooden benches that rise no more than a foot off the ground. But man oh man you should see that place rockin' on a Sunday morning.

The services are long and your butt gets sore, but it is a powerful experience. It's not altogether different from the services I've experienced my whole life at Crestwood Presbyterian Church. Munjongo delivers the sermon. They pray. They recite creeds. They sing. They sing a lot.

The singing is unbelievable. No instruments. No background music. Different groups of around 5-10 people get up and harmonize like you would not believe. It's beautiful.

One Namumu resident, Malaki (right), stepped in as the guest preacher once or twice. He would read a verse and deliver a 5 to 10 minute sermon to the entire congregation. He is 12 years old.

God is working in Siavonga. No doubt about it.

Food in Siavonga

It seemed as though the question I fielded most frequently upon my return from Zambia this summer was, "How was the food?" My answer would be, ""Good. Plain. The same every...single...day." There wasn't much variety, but it wasn't too bad at all.

The most common and most loved food of the region is nsima (pronounced shee-mah. Why the preceding "n"? It's a mystery to me as well). Nsima is made by mixing boiling water and corn-meal, or what is known there as "mealie-meal", the staple crop for the region. It's plain, white, tastes something like grits and has the consistency of mashed potatoes. It was baffling to me how much they love it. They eat it every single day of their lives and never get tired of it. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

Here's my man, Bickel, serving up everyone's nsima. Bickel is 9, loves Sponge Bob Square Pants and bears an uncanny resemblance to the late great rapper slash actor Tupac Shakur. Fact.

For every lunch and dinner the children of Namumu are served a heaping helping of nsima with a serving of either fish, chicken, beef, cabbage or rape. Every now and then there's some other fruit or vegetable, too. For breakfast they eat porridge. The Namumu directors fully understand the importance of a healthy diet for these growing children and they keep them well-fed, no matter how tight the budget gets.

During my stay this summer I ate with the Namumu executive director, Munjongo, and his wife, Esther, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They hooked it up. I got fatter. It was always chicken, beef or fish with nsima, nsima and more nsima, but it was always good.

Here's a pretty standard meal of (clockwise, from the very top) fish, rape, soup, nsima and beef. Esther was very grandma-ish and made me eat plate after plate until it was all gone. Needless to say, it was not good for my girlish figure.

If you are a friend to me at all you will have already asked yourself, "What did he do about hot sauce? Did he have any?" Unfortunately, I did not. As a guest I did not want to be pushy and seek it out. I had to quit cold turkey. After a week or so of breaking out into cold sweats, head-splitting headaches and full-body convulsions I managed to conquer my addiction and do without hot sauce for every meal.

As of right now, my plan is to grow peppers in the garden and make my own hot sauce. However, if you would like to find a special place in my heart from now until the end of time, you can feel free to ship any and all tabasco products to:

The Namumu Orphanage Centre

Siavonga, Zambia

P.O. Box 50

School at Namumu

Towards the back end of the Namumu lot sits the orphanage's school, where approximately 280 students come for classes five days a week. The school holds classes for grades 1 through 8. The majority of the 80 children living in Namumu's dormitories attend school here (a few are old enough to walk to the school in town, a 20 minute trip). The other 200 or so students that attend the school live in the surrounding villages with their families.

There are a handful of dedicated teachers that teach in the four Namumu classrooms. I had the opportunity to meet with the teachers a number of times last summer. They are all well-educated and bright. 

There are many students to a room and things are a bit tight, but nobody seems to mind. They are well-behaved and attentive. Except for, that is, when white guys with cameras walk around taking pictures. Then they get distracted. Other than that they're little angels.

Group work.

Upon visiting the school one day I was handed the chalk and given an opportunity to teach in a 3rd grade class. As a former high school physics teacher I decided to center my lesson around some of my favorite topics: the mathematics of Einstein's theory of general relativity, super-string theory and quantum mechanics. Based on the children's responses I decided to switch it up and go with basic addition and subtraction instead.

Businesses of Namumu

As much as I would enjoy spending all my time frolicking across the African Savannah, there's a fair amount of work to be done. Namumu currently runs five income-generating operations: fishing, carpentry, metal fabrication, farming and pig-rearing. The businesses are young but are off to a decent start. My job will be to help supervise them and make them better.

What's that, you ask? What makes me qualified to do this job? Well, that's a good question. I have a degree in Economics, and it seems as though that was qualification enough for them. Real world business experience is over-rated anyway if you ask me...

Here are a few pictures along with descriptions of each operation:

As of right now,  fishing is the most profitable business for Namumu. The orphanage owns two boats (one of which is pictured on the right). At night, eight fishermen, four on each boat, all employees of Namumu, take the boats out on the lake, Lake Kariba, and haul in as many Kapenta fish as they can. Kapenta fish are very small, no more than a few inches in length. On a good night they can haul in 50 kg's of fish. While this boat does not currently have a name, my vote will be for "Jenny". Forrest would have wanted it that way. Other suggestions are welcome.

Farming appears to be the Namumu operation with the most potential for growth. While they currently employ a head gardener and have about seven or eight acre's of farmable land, they are not yet farming to their full potential. Thanks to my months toiling away under the sun, prodded on by the cracking whip of Rob (or is it Nelson?) and Jo Pendergraph on their farm in Powhatan, I feel like I will be able to contribute a few new ideas and methods to the Namumu operation. We're really going to step things up. Here you see a Namumu student doing the daily watering. Stop mugging for the camera and get back to work, you lazy bum!

Note: The Pendergraphs are actually very nice people and run a heck of an operation. Check them out here.

Carpentry is doing well at Namumu, and thanks to the large demand for its products from people in the surrounding villages and in the town of Siavonga it is likely to expand. Here, Namumu's lone carpenter, Rafiki (not only did he share a name with the monkey from Disney's the Lion King, but also his demeanor and general outlook on life as well), is hard at work. He crafts tables, chairs, bed frames and a variety of other pieces. Here I believe he is constructing a wedding altar...or what Gaylord Focker might refer to as a "Hoopa". 

Nearby you will find the metal fabrication area.  A good demand exists for these metal products as well. The main welder and his assistant, Vincent, seen here, make door frames, window frames, chairs and desks. And, interestingly enough, the Namumu metal workers were the ones that designed Shaquille O'Neill's metal suit in the hit movie "Steel". Bizarre, but true.

Finally, there's pig-rearing, an operation that is, in all honestly, barely breaking even. Namumu sells whole pigs to surrounding villagers, or slices them up and sells pig products in the nearby markets. There are a few large, older pigs that do the breeding, and somwhere around 40 smaller pigs that will eventually be sold, some of which you see here. They smell bad.

Children of Namumu

Go ahead and grab a trash can, because the Namumu children are so cute that it will probably make you throw up. Everywhere.

Namumu is home to 80 children, 40 boys and 40 girls, ages 5 to 18, most of whom have lost parents to AIDS. They were chosen to enter the orphanage from right out of the surrounding villages. The orphanage directors simply went around to neighboring villages, asked the village leaders where they could find the neediest children, and brought them in to stay at Namumu.

But put away your tissues, folks, these kids are doing just fine. At Namumu they live in a dormitory and receive food, clothes, education and health care. Not a bad deal at all. Here are a few pictures that I snapped this past summer (don't forget your trash cans):

Rascally boys playing in a sand pit. The kid doing the Karate Kid Crane's name is Gift. Pretty much one in four boys in Zambia are named Gift. Fact.

Study Study Study.

Those Namumu girls are hair-braiding fools, I'll tell you what. Gotta stay fly.

The children are loved and taken care of. What a nice place to grow up, huh?

Welcome

Welcome, one and all, to my blog. Make yourselves at home.

In a few short days I will be off, on my way to my new job at the Namumu Orphanage Centre in Siavonga, Zambia, a small town in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, on this blog, you will find my stories, thoughts, ideas, and incoherent ramblings on everything I see and hear along the way. 

Will what you read here change your life? Probably not. I only hope that, from time to time, in between your obsessive e-mail checking and stalker-esque facebook picture perusing, you might stop in to hear an update.

Wait. What's that you say? You can't even wait a whole week for me to get started? You want to hear about Namumu right now? Well, my friend, you're in luck. Seeing as how I have already spent a few weeks at Namumu and have a story or two to tell, I will be posting every day this week to start things off. Think of it as a warm-up.

In short, I think it will be worth your time to experience this trip with me. Namumu is a wonderful place. Everyone there has a story to tell. I am going to tell you their stories and mine. I hope you will listen.