Roll Up the Rim!!!

For my Zambian viewers there's a little chain of Restaurants called Tim Hortons (of course named after a hockey player) which puts on this extravaganza that gives you the chance to win things if you roll up the rim of your coffee cup. It's the entire reason for my existence in this country!! And it's back! So today I rolled up my rim to find I had won a coffee. The jubilation that filled my heart was immense.

A Cheese Wheel As Big As My Head!!!!!!

The beauty of being back home lies in the cheese. In Zambia dairy products where outrageously expensive and of poor quality...often leaving one confused whether they had just eaten the packaging or the cheese or a combination of both. I recently made my first venture back into the wonderland that is Costco. It was almost too much. I revived myself with the samples.

I'm allergic to dairy...this isn't dairy, is it!?

(I jest, I'm not allergic to dairy. Please send Dairy-o-grams!)

Back Home...in Wendy's/Tim Hortons!!

And so it came to pass that Shannon Storey made it safely into the arms of Canadian fast food for the first time in over a year. This shots were paparazzied the day after my return. I was so excited I was shaking. A spicey chicken and root beer...what more could a girl want!

Here I am with my phantom phriends!

In the flesh!

stay tuned for me with a cheese wheel as big as my head!!!!

I See London

When I left Zambia I extended my stop-over in London for 5 days to visit my friend Sally and her fiance Simon. Oh what a jolly good time it was!

Click here for the scenic tour

Evangel Baptist Church!!

I was so blessed to be part of this great church. I don't know what I would have done without these amazing people!! They were so welcoming to me and welcomed me as one of their own. I was able to be a part of the choir and play guitar for them. I can't say enough about how I felt the love of God through these people. Here are some photos from my last Sunday (when I cried in front of the whole church!)

Here they are!

And this is the choir!

Our Pastor (also a pediatric doctor) Dr. Grave Singogo and his lovely wife Irene

And these are my friends (at least the ones I got photos of):

It was my friend Womba's birthday so we got together after church for lunch. Here I am learning to cook Nshima. It's an art I tell ya! I am horrible at it!!

That's Womba, the birthday girl, in the centre in the light shirt.

This was just a cool bug I found in church. I'm gonna miss seeing cool bugs in church!

Kasupe Goodbyes

I've been back in Canada for almost a week now but am trying to catch up on posting the last few weeks. So here are some of my friends who I will and do miss dearly already from Kasupe , where I lived for the first seven months.

This is Mrs. Sylvia Sakala, part of the Rural Health Committee I worked with. She lost her husband in October and now stays with her daughter in town. I was able to visit her the week before I left, we had such an awesome time. Wow, what a sweet lady!

This is Peter, who I taught guitar to. He just finished grade 9 and should be off to boarding school soon. He is such a great youth and an excellent guitar student. He caught on really quick and I know he will do great things with his new skill. Here we are at our last lesson with his new guitar.

This is my buddy Grandson. Such an awesome kid. We had general good times climbing trees, looking for snakes/scorpions, learning math, etc. I was able to visit his home and his family my last day out there. It was so good to visit his mom and four siblings (his dad was at a funeral but called me to say goodbye, using precious and expensive talktime on his phone...very sweet). His youngest brother, Matthews was burned badly when a pot of boiling water fell on his arm/hand. All the kids sleep in one room on the floor with no mattress and it didn't appear very much in the way of blankets.

This is Jilos Sakala. I met Jilos four years ago when I came. He is a great man who works for ACTION helping to maintain the farm property. He is also part of his church choir and plays piano who I was able to do a bit of recording for. He lives next door with his wife and two adorable little girls.

These are just a few of the faces that I love and will miss so much!!!

Chikankata

A few weeks ago I went along with the team that was here to a village about an hour and a half south of Lusaka called Chikankata. It poured!! There is a rising river that has washed out the bridge so that now half of the village is stranded on the other side. There is an excellent hospital run by the Salvation Army which these people now are stranded from having access to as well. People were still trying to cross the now raging waters...one even carrying a bicycle. We slept on the floor in a mud hut and helped the local women cook a nshima feast. It took about three hours to make a fire in the rain (us girls held a tarp and inhaled smoke while our Californian bushman worked on the fire)...but once it was going...look out! I admit I had little faith the whole time it was being worked on and became less than amused that I was standing for hours holding a tarp and getting lung cancer. But it worked. I take it all back.

Click here for more photos
I took a little tumble on our way back from checking out the washed out bridge.

Chisomo Crew

The word "chisomo" means "grace" in Nyanja and is also the name of the drop-in centre for street kids that I was privileged to work with. Here are some shots of my last day with them.

It's a Sign

A looky into some of my favorite signs around Lusaka...

The "u" vowel is always pronounced "oo" so why waste space with more letters!?

Harveytile is a roofing company that used to come up with these snappy slogans...this is the last of it's kind

This isn't a sign, I know, but it's the norm in scaffolding around the city

Here we make houses out of "Brikes"

Enough said. A "fast" food chain.