moments

Waking up in the morning to the smell of wood fire

The fresh cool early morning breeze

Ice cold water

Toasting bread over an mbaula

The kettle whistling softly on the fire

Fresh food straight from the garden

The well thought out water system- water for washing, water for dishes, water for drinking, water for cooking

Hand washing clothes over a scrub board

The quaint house with its thatched roof

Hearing stories about her life in Zambia

The red dirt all over, soft and warm

The hot sun beating down, and the coolness of the grass thatched little home

The bright sky at night lit by moon and stars

The people

Their openness and friendliness

The shy attempts at communication and the laughter that results

The excitement when I recognise a word or understand and reply correctly to a sentence

The fun of being two again and trying to make these unfamiliar sounds become words

Sounds to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs until at last we are able to communicate

Language – Zambish, and broken Enlgish, and attempts at Lunda and laughter and smiles and handshakes and hugs
practicing my vowels Lunda style

Sitting in the sand beside my new friend holding her baby and singing “head and shoulders”

       Mutu, chifwiji

       Inuŋu ninyinu

       Mesu, matu, kanwa nimuzulu

Cuddling baby

The fun of the chase

Receiving a chicken as a gift of kindness

Trying to figure out how to get this chicken home without it biting me and what will she say!

Laughing uncontrollably as he tries to explain for about the 10^th time the difference in the words between the cassava root direct from the ground and the peeled, soaked and then dried root that is just about ready to be made into nshima

Limited internet access, no indoor plumbing, water pumped up from the river, the ants crawling everywhere all these add to the uniqueness of this place