Monday, July 19, 2010
Today started bright and early. The “A Team” (advance team) needed to eat and be ready to start accepting luggage and sleeping bags by 7:30. The “A Team” actually goes out to the clinic site before anyone else and gets the tents all set up. Everyone’s “stuff” has to have three pieces of duct tape displayed…gray tape shows your name, white or red tape with a number indicates whether you are staying at Eureka or the main campus with the house number, and yellow tape indicates your tent assignment when we are out in the bush. That tent number really helps the rest of the team because once the “A” team has set up all of the tents, they actually deliver our luggage, sleeping bags, etc. to our tents…that’s better than the Marriott because we don’t even have to tip them. :-)
We headed out right on time…which translates to less than an hour after the scheduled departure. When you are moving a team of over 225 with everything it takes to run clinics for medical, dental, wound care, HIV testing and our well-stocked pharmacy, you get an A+ for making it within an hour time-frame.
Next stop was the Calder’s for a wonderful South African meal of Poiky (that’s how it sounds…I have NO clue how to spell it. But it is a stew made with a mixture of game meat. It had kudu, eland and impala. It was very tasty!! Dr. John Estes even asked for a couple of to-go containers. He couldn’t get enough of it. Sue Calder also made her wonderful shortbread and milk tarte (which is also probably not how that is spelled). It was time to leave there so everyone had to be dragged from the baby area. Going to the Calders is always one of the highlights…great food and babies to play with.
One thing I found humorous was the fact that we were driving about 20 MPH on the Kabanga road. When we passed through Kapaulu we had to slow down for the speed bumps. :-)
Today started bright and early. The “A Team” (advance team) needed to eat and be ready to start accepting luggage and sleeping bags by 7:30. The “A Team” actually goes out to the clinic site before anyone else and gets the tents all set up. Everyone’s “stuff” has to have three pieces of duct tape displayed…gray tape shows your name, white or red tape with a number indicates whether you are staying at Eureka or the main campus with the house number, and yellow tape indicates your tent assignment when we are out in the bush. That tent number really helps the rest of the team because once the “A” team has set up all of the tents, they actually deliver our luggage, sleeping bags, etc. to our tents…that’s better than the Marriott because we don’t even have to tip them. :-)
We headed out right on time…which translates to less than an hour after the scheduled departure. When you are moving a team of over 225 with everything it takes to run clinics for medical, dental, wound care, HIV testing and our well-stocked pharmacy, you get an A+ for making it within an hour time-frame.
Next stop was the Calder’s for a wonderful South African meal of Poiky (that’s how it sounds…I have NO clue how to spell it. But it is a stew made with a mixture of game meat. It had kudu, eland and impala. It was very tasty!! Dr. John Estes even asked for a couple of to-go containers. He couldn’t get enough of it. Sue Calder also made her wonderful shortbread and milk tarte (which is also probably not how that is spelled). It was time to leave there so everyone had to be dragged from the baby area. Going to the Calders is always one of the highlights…great food and babies to play with.
One thing I found humorous was the fact that we were driving about 20 MPH on the Kabanga road. When we passed through Kapaulu we had to slow down for the speed bumps. :-)
On the last blog I said it would take 5 to 6 hours…maybe more to get to Simalundu. Well it took 6 hours and 45 minutes of travel time. We had just made a geography stop and Ellie commented that we hadn’t had any breakdowns. I told her she shouldn’t have said that…that’s like talking to a pitcher who has a no-hitter going. A few more kilometers down the road, the coaster bus in front of us broke down. The people were off-loaded from the coaster bus and were shuttled in two loads to another bus that was further up the road. Michael Prather, a 1st timer, said it was quite an adventure and he didn’t even have to pay extra for it. :-)
As we got further down the road, we found that the “A Team” had also had some difficulties. The trailer on the logistics’ lorry had broken down so they had to make trips shuttling those items back to Simalundu.
Even though it was after dark when we finally made it to Simalundu, the people were still gathered singing, clapping and dancing to welcome us. The spiritual team preached into the night and we all fell to sleep with the Zambians singing praises to our Lord.
