Tour of Sikalongo Mission

Today Innocent took me on a tour of the Sikalongo Mission Station. I saw the administrative center, the classroom buildings, the dormatories, the secondary school, the church, and the dining hall. As I mentioned earlier, there is a Pastor's retreat so Ba-Mweene took me in front of the congregation in the church after prayer and introduced me by my American and Zambian names. He said some other things in Tonga that prompted laughter, but I'm sure it was endearing, he has a good sense of humor and gave me my first name, Siantele. I had the opportunity to meet the Bishop of the Zambian Brethren in Christ Church Bishop Hamukang'andu

Bina Doris gave me my first taste of Zambian food today. I had nshima, which is a cornmeal porridge kind of like grits, and relish, which was made out of Rape, which is like spinach, and tomato. I learned how to properly eat it by rolling the nshima (N shee ma) around in my hand and making a dimple in it to use as a scoop for the relish. I also tried Sweet Beer, which is a drink made of ground corn meal and, if you want, sugar. It was sweet indeed, and a bit chunky, but good.

Dr. Thomas was certainly the right person to come to Zambia with. As a student of history I can really appreciate his knowledge of the history of the Zambian church and culture. He seems to know EVERYONE and thier families, what village they are from and if they have moved recently. He has a love for MANY cultures around the world and tries his best to look at them from a historical perspective in order to determine why they may or may not behave in a certain manner. This is very similar to how I understand the world, so we seem to work well together and understand what each other are saying.

We have to be up early tomorrow morning to travel to Lusaka, the capital city. There Dr. Thomas has some meetings and I will be exploring the city looking for places that sell electronics and will be meeting with some people that have IT experience and a few that have some computer knowledge in order to help build a team that can support ZACU (Zambian Christian University) in the future. My next few posts will be attempts at posting and labeling pictures from my phone.

-Siantele Mudenda