Senanga and Mongu

Bible distribution began in earnest in the town of Senanga. This is a three-wheeled taxi.

Prospective customers

My cousin Candace made a sign to put on the front of our table by writing on a piece of cardboard with a marker.

A familiar ox cart.

I worked with Candace, Nathaniel, Samuel and Kone the first morning. Kone is advertising in this picture!

Some folks carrying reed mats on their heads. These ladies had long pieces of fabric wrapped around them like a skirt, which is common.

While in Senanga, we stayed in this little house, made available from Pastor Enoch, whose church we ministered in the Sunday we were there. This is the only picture I have of inside the house, while we were packing to move to our next location.

When we arrived in Mongu, the boys set up tents. The accommodations proved to be less than desirable, forcing Oom Piet to find other quarters. Fortunately, he found rooms at a Catholic Youth Centre, which were actually pretty nice considering how low of a price we paid to stay there. At least we had running water!

Some shops along the main road in Mongu.

Getting ready to leave for the market one morning.

A marimba made with gourds.

In Mongu, we were only allowed one table. Here is our table and all of my cousins that came on the trip. It was lunchtime, and Samuel (on the far left) was trying some cassava root. I never tried any, but the cousins who did try it said it tasted like something between a raw potato and a coconut!

A mother with her baby on her back.

This is the only top hat we have ever seen in Africa!

The scene down from our table.

Sometimes we would go around to the shops and markets and try to sell Bibles.

Sometimes people would stop us and ask about Bibles.

Rice spread on a tarp.

Some interested folks in the market.

This market was very squalid and dirty. 

There was quite a bit of interest, but no customers.

These ladies had rice for sale.

Women gathered around a three-wheeled taxi.

Many ladies had umbrellas up to help shade them from the hot sun. They sold anything from papayas to bananas to tomatoes.

Vendors with their wares.

This is the perfect shopping center! At least whoever named it seems to think so.

Kone jokingly called this the "Zambezi River".

As we left Mongu, we passed these ladies carrying loads on their heads, a common mode of carrying things in Africa.

At this spot, a bunch of children were hanging out.

A grass hut.

Sioma Bridge and Livingstone

On our way to Livingstone, we stopped to fill our drinking water tanks from a well. The boys let me take a turn at pumping!

Kone being very gentlemanly and bowing as he pumped water.

That night, we stayed with missionaries near Sioma. We spent a few minutes on the bank of the Zambezi river.

We young people decided to take a little walk and go over the Sioma bridge, which had been built only a few years ago. This view is from the bridge.

I snapped this picture of a bird on the bridge railing.

The view on the other side of the bridge, when we were about in the middle.

We found our way down underneath the bridge and climbed around on the rocks. 

On the way back, we saw the sunset. My camera doesn't take the best sunset pictures, but this is what I got!

I don't think anyone took pictures of where we stayed. We girls and the Marais's got the two cute chalets to stay in, and the boys slept in some tents that were already there. The missionaries have a lot of guests come through, so they have extra lodging for people just like us! In the morning, I saw these long-legged birds in the sand.

Then we made the trip to Livingstone! This picture doesn't do the potholes justice! We had to crawl along at about twenty miles an hour to keep from damaging the vehicles. It took us six hours to travel a distance that could have been traveled in two hours if the road had been good.

The first day we set up in Livingstone, I watched two people buying chickens right in front of our table! The chickens are inside a rope cage on the back of a bicycle. The chicken's feet are tied and the person who bought it will carry the chicken by its wings until butchering time. 

Some prospective customers.

More curious passers-by.

We set up in front of the entrance to a market. These big wheelbarrows are used to transport merchandise such as...

coal! You can see in the picture the long bags full of charcoal for burning. Just past that is a whole row of wheelbarrows.

A couple nights we made fruit salad. This is a guava that we cut up to put in.

The boys strung a clothesline. Samuel is in the tree, and Nathaniel and Ezra are helping to pull the rope taut.

In Africa, you use what's handy! Ezra ties the end of the rope while Nathaniel keeps it taut.

One night, we had "biscuits and gravy" for supper. Candace made gravy using ground beef, and we used some small rolls instead of biscuits. It actually turned out to be pretty good!

Victoria Falls

A highlight of our time in Africa was our visit to Victoria Falls.  There are several trails, so we decided to first try the trail to Boiling Pot, named because of two currents colliding at the base of the falls. I didn't make it very far down the steep trail before I realized that it was going to be too much for me. I was feeling under the weather, so I found a bench where I could sit and wait for the others. This little bird kept me company for a while.

Our first sight of Victoria Falls proper!

In the parking lot and the trees that are above the falls, the baboons were everywhere! They are not shy at all, letting you get quite close. We had to watch that we did not have anything loose that they could grab! After recovering my package of hand wipes that they stole, we didn't have any more robberies! Can you find the baboons in this picture?

My cousin Samuel and a baboon!

The last trail we took is further from the falls. This picture is of the bridge that we had walked across earlier. 

The same bridge with a better view of the Falls.The mist made it hard to see much.

Later in the afternoon, we went to the small airport where microlights and helicopters take off to give tours over Victoria Falls. It is expensive, so we just enjoyed watching the microlights and helicopters take off and land. Our host in Livingstone, Heiko is one of the microlight pilots. Here he is preparing his microlight for a flight. Only one passenger can go at a time on the microlights.

I am going ahead and posting my pictures that I took. I am not sure if I'll get around to adding some of the pictures my cousins took-- I've started college again so it may be difficult to find the time!

Back to South Africa and Home

I am posting from end to beginning so that when all the posts are on the blog, they will be in order from the beginning of the trip to the end. I may be adding some more pictures that my cousins took, once they send them to me. 

This is just one example of the strange sights a person might see in Africa! This was taken in Namibia on our way back to South Africa.We stayed in Namibia for a day to do some shopping and offload the boxes of Bibles that were left.

Yours truly frying eggs for the next day's sandwiches. We would put a fried egg and some tinned meat on bread and toast the sandwiches. That was what we ate as we drove. They were pretty good!

Our little caravan getting ready to leave the lovely campground in Namibia, where we had waited several days on the way up for paperwork to be processed. 

After a couple days of driving, we met Phil Geise in South Africa. Here the guys are loading all our suitcases into Phil's trailer (we had left all our hard suitcases with a friend in Pretoria, taking only our duffel bags on the Bible trip). Phil had picked up another American visitor, Daniel, who was also coming to visit the family that Geises work with. After we loaded up, we said our goodbyes to Oom Piet, Tanni Hester, and Kone. Then we set out for Mangusi, where the Geises live. After ten hours and many kilometers, we arrived safe and sound about eleven at night!

The Geises have a house on the same property as do the Blignauts, the missionary family they work with. The Blignauts have ten children. The Geises' house is not completely finished yet, so meals were eaten at the Blignauts' house. Besides all of us, there was a gentleman and a young family visiting from another mission the first few days, making a total of 28 people to cook for! The Blignauts love having visitors, so they didn't seem to mind all the people too much! The younger children loved playing Uno, which is what they are doing in this picture.

The boys helped hand-mix concrete and pour a sidewalk in front of the Geises' house, worked on puttying window panes, and helped prepare a platform to lift a water tank for the Geises. My cousin Candace and I were both not feeling well, but we did help paint linseed oil onto the wooden window frames to seal them from weather. We also enjoyed reading books to the little ones. The kids even convinced me to play a couple games of Uno! The day before we left them, the Blignauts and Geises took us to the beach. We had to make a couple stops on the way to add more water to the Blignauts' Land Cruiser. I was in Geises' vehicle behind them, and I just loved the faces peering out at us from the back of the Land Cruiser! The little boy on the right and the little girl on the left are the two youngest Blignaut children. The girl in the middle is one of their older sisters.

The Indian Ocean was beautiful! The picture doesn't do it justice. We even caught some glimpses of dolphins!

After playing around in the water and eating some lunch, we walked down the beach. Phil climbed up on this rock. See if you can find the two little boys beside the rock!

The sand dunes were the best part! Climbing up was a little hard, but running down was fun!

Walking back to where we had parked. 

The next day we said more goodbyes and headed for Pretoria with Phil and his little girl. We gave ourselves an extra day just to be sure any unexpected problems wouldn't make us miss our flight. Thankfully, we had no problems and made good time. We stayed overnight with friends in Pretoria  and had a few hours the next day for shopping before we went to the airport. We flew all night from Johannesburg to Zurich. As we neared Zurich, we saw mountains out the window! We figured they must be the Alps. The view was breathtaking!

 Thank the Lord for good connections and safe flights! After we got through customs at JFK, my cousins were picked up to go home, and I boarded one last flight to Denver, arriving home about midnight. And that, my friends, is the end of the story for TAT III (The African Travelers, third time)! We were invited to come back by several people, so maybe someday there will be TAT IV! You never know!  

Home Again!

Yes, I got home safe and sound.  We had quite the adventures and I have a lot of pictures! Right now I am trying to recover from a nasty cold, so I may or may not have more time to post! The header picture is of Victoria Falls, which we were delighted to get to visit. And until I post again, here is a picture of our group name. We dubbed ourselves TAT III, which stands for The African Travelers, 3rd trip. My cousin Candace wrote this in the sand by the Zambezi River, at a place we stayed. 

Now that you're all excited about sand (ha ha!) I will leave you in suspense till the next post!