more fun at the lab and camping stories

Oct 5th
Ngambo and I have been singing hymns in the back PCR room - lots of fun! I will sing "How Great thou Art" in English and then she sings it in Nyanga and Bemba. And its so beautiful, i love listening to it. She always wants me to sing high -she says "sing hiiiiigh it is niiiiice". Its funny b/c im never comfortable singing for others in my singing voice, but for ngambo, i dont even have one fiber in me that feels self concious - i feel completely myself around her... and she wants to hear everything, and then she wants to hear it again. And then she says you sing and i will be behind you, meaning she will join in, in harmony but then sometimes she doesnt and i stop and shes like im coming im coming! I keep singing and she still doesnt and shes smiling and she says, I just wanted to hear you sing. Ngambo is really funny because when she is laughing at something, she can't talk...at all! We were laughing the other day and some guy came in to ask us about the machines and she was like "ohh noooo" and just put her papers in front of her face and they were shaking. I had to try to be serious and talk myself, so that turned out as explaining the ampli-prep while laughing, i was happy to even just get a fragment of a sentence out and soon the man that came was laughing with us, my eyes were watering I was laughing so hard. Later on that day I was going to take an alternate route to the kitchen so as to not bump into the same guy again, and Ngambo was like, "you are leaving the room? walk this way!" and I was like why this way? and she was like "I want to see you pass that man, I wish to see your faces" haha she really is a funny one.

Zambia has been so wonderful. to tell you the truth sometimes i cant sleep at night because i am so happy and i just lay in my bed on top of my sheets and stare at the glow of the curtain in my room. Sometimes i walk home from work and i just don't know how to thank God enough for this. You know the people here, you don't hear "I feel like this" statements, or like " I am upset because..." you don't hear those things at all. You just see people with their families and friends, living communally and sharing anything they do have. I believe they have a strength others haven't have the opportunity to have elsewhere where people don't have to worry about what they will eat the next day. I played this Gospel version of the U2 song "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" for Ngambo one day and she must have listened to it on repeat, probably 15 times before we had to go home from work. There is one line that is my fav, "I believe in the Kingdom Come, then all the colors, bleed into one, you know I believe it. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for" I like how they dont say he knows what he is looking for, but he knows he hasnt found it yet, and he knows it has not come yet, because in his inner most hearts he knows there is more than these human pleasures. And looking past these human characteristics, our colors bleed into one, we are all the same, and it makes me think of Ngambo when we compare skin colors and she says she likes the hairs on my arms and wants them (yes she says this, and when i asked why on earth do you want my arm hair, her repsonse is, because I like hair and I don't have any on my arms, it's nice to look at you know) i think about how we look differently on the outside and the way we talk and form sentences is different, how there are so many differences in our upbringing, but how we are both so similiar on the inside it's scary.
Also, I have been visiting the Kalingalinga school a lot and reading to grades 2-5 on lunch breaks once a week. The kids are great and i am still learning how best to try to explain some things in the book to them, because I can see how some of the word choice is definitely hard to understand if English is not your first language. Also, I made spanikopita for the people in the lab so everyone could try it. People are always giving me some of their African food and so I wanted to show them some of my cultural background as well!

We went camping about 45 minutes from my house friday night! There was a music festival, and it kind of reminded me of halloween with the decorations(and choice of music in some cases haha) It was really cool. There was a camping site and then we walked to the festival. It was so incredibly dusty however, the toilets had cornstalk type things around them and the whole place was encased in that same walling, and even just touching it let out a puff of dust. We danced till about 2 and when we woke up the next morning we were beyond dirty. Also, the temperature must have gone up 10 degrees because it was soooooooooo HOTTT. We took a cab back and I went into the lab for a few hours and then headed home...to find we have no water!! We usually boil our water the night before but since we were camping no one did that so we didn't even have much of a supply to fall back on. The pump was broken and the water was empty from the tank! ahhhh so I went to the store and bought some large bottles of water to use. On the way back luckily this guy from work picked me up and gave me a lift home, he said I looked like I was struggling haha. Laura went to work to take a bath, which I found extremely funny!

Sunday I woke up and went to the gym and showered there before church. There was this amazing sermon It was about parenting actually and in the beginning i was thinking, ummm i dunno about this, i wont be able to relate. But the topic of the sermon was "we live in a fatherless generation" meaning, many of the families here, the kids have never met their fathers, or their parents are dead, etc but also meaning people are not looking to the father, who is God. We all have a family, and if our biological family is not here for whatever reason, God provides people in your life to insert in that place for you, to show you, and to love you. The pastor was saying that when he was 8, his parents were divorced and he never met his dad, until he was in his late teens. he said he grew up with no father figure b/c his mother never had male friends and he only had sisters. there was this guy at church who didnt have a son and he started taking him to his house to watch sports each night after church. he never preached to him, but he was there for him. the pastor said at age 13, he was feeling love from someone, and he didnt understand what that was because he was not related to him. but he said this older guy who was married and had children, invested in him, invested in him. he said, when you think no one is there, there is. God has picked people out for you, and when you need that love it will come from a venue. I started thinking about some of my roomates and myself here in zambia, and how God uses people in different ways. My roomate laura has been so passionate about going to the orphanage every saturday morning, just so drawn to it. Erik, has reached out to the schools and has been teaching groups of kids there about HIV. and he does this every week. It's incredible because like our passions, God has created us differently, but He has made sure people cover others, there is someone for everyone. How bad would it be if we all wanted to help the school but there was no one for the orphanage,etc

Also, the sermon was about parenting and how your job as a parent is to believe in your kids not for the mistakes they make now, but for the people YOU believe they CAN become. At the end when the pastor asked if there was anyone who wanted to accept Jesus (I have found they do this every week in the pentacostal church) this boy, i think he looked about 16, he walks up, and hes just crying, and hes using his little handout for a towel to wipe his eyes. He walks up and he just buries his face in the pastor's robes and the pastor put his hand on him, and the boy just kept crying and you just knew, you just knew that he didnt have a father, the way he looked at the pastor.

Finally on tuesday the water was fixed!!! Laura, Nikki and I went to work trying to finialize plans for this trip to the lower zambezi to see some animals and go camping! We met with this guy twice to talk about details and he invited us to his house thursday night for dinner. Everything was going great, but he ended up saying something pretty inappropriate to me with his friends, which was completely uncalled for. The conversation we were having should not have in any way lead to that and I was so upset that I told him that what he said extremely offended me and that I have never heard that come out of someone's mouth before. he apologized profusely, but it still did not sit well with me, that this is the guy we are trusting to take us on this trip, and he can so easily have something like that fly out of his mouth. I lost my appetite completely and wanted to go home so badly but we had to wait for a cab for a really long time. The next day after talking to my mom, I still didn't feel right about how he acted and so as annoying as it was, I told my friends I would not be going on the trip with them. I was really upset about this because I knew they would have a great time, but I just did not want to be around this guy.

Everyone was very understanding about it and said they understood, and actually a little later in the day, the entire trip was cancelled, because two of my friends found out some other stuff about him, things that were inconsistent with what he originally told us. Now we are trying to get at least some of our money back, but he claims he already used it to buy food for the trip, so he can only give us some. I think it was a valuable lesson to learn and from now on, I will only be traveling with people who I personally know or who have been recommended by people I trust. I told Ngambo about this and as always I can count on her for a great statement: "kristen, you have seen these potentially dangerous blood samples we work with everyday. you must treat all men like these samples, you must treat all men as if they were infectious" haha well put.

Sooooo since we didn't have to wake up early for the trip, we had even more time to spend at our roomate's surprise birthday party!! It was so much fun, he always says "when in rome" from anchorman and so alanna and nikki thought up this theme to have a toga party! lots of fun, dancing till 3 and I just woke up today at 12 :D so finally catch up on emails and blogging.

thanks for reading :)

ps - other interesting names: fattress banda and my all-time favorite i think rubba banda! banda is a very common last name, from a tribe in eastern province.