Thursday May 28, 2015

            This morning we woke up again at 6:00 for 6:30 breakfast. We walked to MICS (Macha International Christian School) and attended their morning chapel time. Kate shared bible verses about their “virtue of the week”, perseverance. We also sang them the song “Ain’t no Rock” as a team. We then did morning clinics with the different grades. A highlight from the morning would be when Coach Frey led the hokey pokey by himself with much enthusiasm…not only once, but 3 times. We have enjoyed building friendships with the students from the school who we have seen each day. They love to play soccer as well as tag and dancing games – we love to see them happy. We especially enjoyed the fresh-fried fritters that Corie brought to us during our break. We then walked back to our dorms and freshened up for lunch.

            Before and after lunch, 2 men came to sell different crafts to us. One man sold beautiful paintings of nature that represented Zambian culture – we all found something we liked! The other man had wood carvings, including wood boxes, spoons, coasters, and figurines. After lunch we were glad to have some down time before the 2^nd annual Macha 5k race. The race started around 4:30 and everyone on the team ran it who could. There were 130 runners who registered for the race, not counting the all of the children who joined for parts and were there to cheer us on (last year only 30 people ran the race). The registration fee was 20 kwacha (around 3 dollars) and all the proceeds from the race went to a local church.

            We aren’t sure if we will be able to fully capture the race in all of its glory, but we will try. The race started from the Rec Center and went on a 5k loop around Macha, ending where it started. Running the course was challenging because parts of the course were sandy, had sharp stones sticking out, had large holes and we would say the most unique part of the course was the herd of cows (around 20 of them, with LARGE horns) were making their way slowly across the running path, causing runners to weave their way in between safely. Although it was a hard run, the course was fun for us and we loved to be a part of the community here in Macha. It was so cool to see the people coming together to cheer one another on and participate in this as one.

            You’re probably wondering the fastest times, right? The fastest man, Lemmy, finished in 17:42. Not only that, he ran barefoot (remember that part about sharp stones?) and was the winner of the race last year as well. For the women, our very own Alicia Kyele Bridel finished first in 21:11….we were all SHOCKED that she won (not really). Some notable runners were the 50 year old man who ran it in 20 minutes, the woman running in a business skirt, Elem (one of our Push the Rock leaders) who came in 2^nd, and the little 5 year old boy who walked the entire race beside one of the participants without saying a word. The winners of each age group received a prize of Messiah gear and random prize winners were chosen as well.

            The race went longer than expected, so we rushed back to the dorms to change into skirts for dinner at MICS with their boarding students. To get to MICS, some rode in a car, some walked, and some almost died riding bicycles in the dark on the sand path. We arrived at MICS and were greeted by the students and teachers. We paired up with one or two students to eat with and talk to. We had beans and sausage, cabbage, rolls, and nshima for dinner and ate around a bonfire outside. We are getting better at eating the nshima correctly, using our hands to mold it into a ball and eat with the other food. It was really cool to get to know the boarding students (there are around 40 of them) who we had interacted with in the mornings but wanted to learn more about. Some of the boys from MICS have a soccer team and will be playing us tomorrow morning, so we exchanged our fair share of smack talk with one another. After dinner, they sang us 2 songs and requested that we teach them “Ain’t no Rock” because they liked it so much in the morning. Then, we said our goodbyes and 18 of us packed into Gil’s (the principal of MICS’s husband) car and drove back. To say we were squished would be an understatement, but we definitely got closer during the ride through ditches and with some funny stories from our driver.

            This day was full of laughs and sweat and sunshine and more laughs. Even though we are tired, we have loved each day here. Zambia is a beautiful place and we can’t believe our time here in Macha is almost done! We will probably be going to bed at 9:30 (as we have for the past couple nights) and will be asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow – a sign of a good day. One prayer request is that a stomach bug has been traveling through our team – for people to be back to full health ASAP! Thank you for all the support and love.

Love, MWS (Riss & Kayla)