Hello everyone,
Its Monday morning here in Lusaka and its like an Irish summer dull day!! I seem to have a lot of photos in this blog so please bear with me!!
I spent 8 days in Livingstone in the South of Zambia where I was invited to help two of our congregations who hope to open two ECD centres in January 2018. Livingstone is the home of the famous Victoria Falls – unfortunately this trip I did not manage to visit but I have been there before and hopefully will be there again!
Flamboyant trees are just about over in Lusaka but are still in bloom in Livingstone – such incredible colour!
Not to be outdone are the Frangipani trees too…
Of course in our training, I try to use as many locally available materials as possible! One of the students, Richard, found this duckling outside and the child of one of the cooks really enjoyed him telling her about it!
We had two wonderful cooks during the time in Livingstone – the food was really delicious!
While I had no time off during the day, I was able to take a cruise down the Zambezi on my last evening there (not on this boat I might add)! It was a lovely cool evening and there were a lot of hippos, a few crocodiles and lots of birds on the river. Met some lovely folk too.
And as usual, there was a lovely sunset. The vessel you see in the picture below is from Zimbabwe as the falls is the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
So, after the week in Livingstone, its back to work in Lusaka. I had a meeting with Rev G Phiri (my church minister and clerk of Midlands East Presbytery) and Rev S Kabaghe (the General Secretary) as we look at the way forward for ECD in Midlands East Presbytery. We had a really good discussion and the Presbytery really want to support ECD which is great!
The two schools I am working with are doing quite well with the limited knowledge of the teachers. I am having another workshop with the teachers in December for a week during their school holidays. We will focus on Pre-maths and Pre-literacy which will be interesting!
On the outskirts of Lusaka we have an elephant orphanage which I think I have mentioned before! I went for a visit one Saturday morning as I love to watch these young elephants. Right now there are 5, but when I was there one was in intensive care as he had only been brought in a couple of weeks previously and was quite ill. I hear he is now out with the other four which is good news. The keepers bring feed the elephants every four hours so its a full time job. The elephants are kept until they are about 3 years in this facility and are then moved to Kafue national park where they have a rehabilitation facility – its takes about 15 years before an elephant can go back into the wild and hopefully will be accepted by another herd. Most of these baby elephants are in this facility due to their mothers being poached! The rangers do an amazing job.
Thankfully I have had no more snakes in the house but there is always some sort of wildlife around. Here is a gecko, a Blue Waxbill and an interesting bug….
Yesterday was the farewell service for Rev and Mrs Joseph Chilenje who are leaving Chilenje congregation to go to Kalulushi in the Copperbelt area. Rev Chilenje was a great support to me in ECD and I will miss him and his family in Lusaka but I know he will do a good job in Kalulushi!
There was a lot of singing and dancing and gift giving as people said farewell. In the picture below you can see members of the Presbytery coming to say bye! I also had my turn to dance and give a gift (thankfully there are no photos of that!)
So, I come to the end of another blog. I have been suffering from rotator cuff in my left shoulder for the past 6 weeks or so. Its really painful and even with exercises, physiotherapy and medication it has not improved much. I would appreciate your prayers!
From some of the children of Chilenje ECD…bye for now..and for those of you using the Youth and Children’s project information from PCI for the 2017/2018 year…you can see our featured child Bessy, third from the right in the front!
Blessings,
Diane x
November 27, 2017
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