Mutende mwane from Mukinge!

Much has happened since our last post a couple of weeks ago. Our final days in Lusaka were fairly busy, as we made our final preparations for the journey to Mukinge.

Monday, May 28 - Mary spent a jam-packed afternoon with a misso with over 39 years experience here in Zambia, doing the shopping for the next couple of months. Although it seems strange to spend “millions” of kwacha on the shopping – we do have a good supply of food at the moment.

Tuesday, May 29 - I had to go to the medical school in town to sit my medical registration exams. Praise the Lord these also went well, and we’re now in the process of waiting for my final registration paperwork to come through.

Wednesday, May 30 – What a day! We had an early start as our flight to Mukinge was to be at 7am. We had been informed that we were going to be flying in a small plane, but it wasn’t until we got onto the tarmac with our pilot that we got a real sense of what “small” actually means (our plane is the one on the right of the yellow plane!) 

Earlier in the week Zeke had been asking what the flight attendants were going to be serving him on this flight. Unfortunately for him the only flight attendant for him was Mum, and the only thing she was serving was phenergan (which worked rather well!)

The flight itself was really spectacular, and helped us to get a real sense of just how far into the bush we are here. The flight took about 1.5hrs in total and much of that was over complete bush – no houses, roads or signs of habitation.

We arrived uneventfully on the dirt airstrip at the back of the hospital, and were greeted by a number of our fellow missionaries, which was a great encouragement. A few of them then showed us to our new house (“the Pool House”), which Mary has been doing a great job of making our home.

Since then we’ve been settling into life here quite well. We’ve been getting to know the other missionaries who are based here, and have been warmly welcomed by the Mukinge community. Mary has been getting the household organised, and has really enjoyed getting to know a few locals who come and help us around the house with various jobs. The boys have been enjoying getting dirty (it’s dry season here, so the dust goes literally everywhere). And I’ve been getting into the swing of things at the hospital.

Life here is not without it’s challenges at times - we regularly have power outages for hours at a time, the internet can be rather intermittent (it seems that from now on these blog posts will be sent via e-mail to Australia and then uploaded – thanks Beno!), and we’re adjusting to having all manner of small insects and rodents in the house (fortunately no snakes as yet!). 

However, we are really enjoying getting to know our fellow missionaries and some of the locals. It is a privilege to be working at the hospital and to be experiencing life in the Zambian bush.  Yesterday we had monkeys playing in our backyard and on our roof. God has been faithful in bringing us this far, and we look forward to the days ahead. D