Good to be back

It's good to be back in Zambia. We arrived in Luanshya on Thursday the 4th, and the highlight of our time so far has just been reconnecting with our Hands at Work family here. We had a huge braai on Saturday night at Kachele Farm with 31 of us, including everybody's children. We enjoyed boerwors (South Africa sausages), chicken, coleslaw, beet salad, pasta salad, green beans, and juice. And we played games like hot potato and "shoot shoot bang." We've really enjoyed staying at the farm with Andrew from Zimbabwe and Jaap from Holland. They are both long-term volunteers for Hands, and we've cooked together, played spoons, watched movies, and mostly just hung out.

On Sunday we took the bus two hours south to Kabwe, where we spent most of our time during our 6 week visit in 2008. It's my 5th time in Zambia now, so you can imagine the feelings of being here are much different now that we know our way around and how things work and what to expect. Jed will return to Luanshya probably tomorrow and I will return probably Friday. On Thursday the 25th we will fly from Lusaka back to Johannesburg and arrive home late that night.

Some of the things we've been working on are re-registering Hands at Work in Zambia, training a new bookkeeper, assessing options for Internet, organizing visas and work permits for volunteers, reviewing project plans, and planning for 2010. We make many plans each day, but things always move at a different pace here. Some of the things that have "come up" in the past week-and-a-half are numerous police stops/tickets/bribes asked for, unexpected rains, 3 coworkers coming down with awful cases of malaria, the vehicle breaking down at least every other day...welcome to Zambia. The good news is that all that waiting allows for lots of time for visiting and building relationship. We love our friends here, and we've really enjoyed being with them.

I hope we'll have other chances to blog before we leave, we'll see. We miss you all very much!