Stories from Zambia

First of all I want to start this blog by clarifying something. While the previous blog post might have suggested otherwise, I have completely recovered from my illness in the Zambian wilderness and am now completely healthy. This past week my Mom and I took a trip to Tanzania. My Mom was working with an organization called Mainsprings and I was coming along to help (but mostly just for fun). Visiting Tanzania was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. One of the main reasons why my parents moved us half way across the world to live in sub saharan Africa was so that we could experience true African people and culture, and I think that that trip has done that in every way.  Mainsprings is a non-profit that aims to end rural poverty in Tanzania. They have a 4 pillar system that involves primary and secondary schooling, a refuge for girls who were in extreme poverty or who were not in a safe home environment, free healthcare, and training in effective permaculture/farming tec...

  This thanksgiving was one for the books. We decided to go all out this year and make a crazy Zambian thanksgiving. We lined up all of our tables outside and collected all of the most beautiful flowers from the garden to decorate the table. We invited some friends from the embassy who were able to get two small turkey's sent to Zambia from the US, I say small lightly because they both weighed 9 pounds.  We also decided to invite some Zambian families including some of our housekeeper Winnie's family along with a family of 7 from the American International School. Having grown up in Zambia most of them had no idea of what to expect in a thanksgiving dinner. So we made a ton of food to give them the best first thanksgiving we possibly could. We were glad that we made so much food because there ended up being 22 people.    

This past week our neighbor from the US came out to see us in Zambia. In true Lanfer style we took her far down leopards hill road to see the famous Zambian bat caves. We asked the locals where the cave was expecting a big parking lot for what should have been a popular tourist attraction, but we were lead by the local children down a thin dirt road through a village until arriving at the side of a steep hill. They then lead us into the cave entrance where we were soon able to see thousands and thousands of bats all over the sealing and flying around us. I could not photograph the bats as much as I would have liked to but your can see some of the amazing cave. I have never see that many bats in one place, it was quite overwhelming, loud and dark. So after a while in the cave we headed out. Some of us (Mommy) were not satisfied with the level of adventure so far so we decided to scale the mountain on top of the cave. It turns out that climbing that kind of a steep slope is no small task...

  Just after 2am on the morning of Day 5, Maya sits up a bit in her sleeping bag and informs me there is going to be an explosion. Her blue-green sweater is balled up into a pillow. It is a few inches away from her headlamp, which I put right next to her so she can grab it and run when she needs to. The moon is directly above our heads, one day past full. Pale white light pours through the thin mesh of our tent, across my child’s body. I did not bother with the rainfly. Zambia is still a few weeks away from the start of the rainy season, and I am hoping the air flow will help bring down her fever. “The game is starting,” she says, so softly I am not sure I heard her right. I fumble for my glasses. In the moonlight, I can see her eyes are open, staring straight ahead. I lean closer in. “What honey?” “I think it’s going to explode,” she says in a whisper. I put my hand on her head. She is still hot. Still burning. We are still at least a day’s walk from base camp. And with ev...

 During our week off off school we visited the beautiful kundalila falls in northern Zambia. The people we talked to before hand said that it was their favorite waterfall in all of Zambia including Victoria falls. The falls defiantly did not disappoint, even though we are in the midst of the dry season we were still able to see the waterfall in all of its glory. I have not been to Victoria yet but I hope it is as amazing as this. Maya was surrounded by locals who wanted pictures of her at the waterfall, they were nice enough to even send us some of them afterwards. Along with the beautiful falls there are amazing sunrises that you can see in the valley.