Loading Thatch

Dave and Jessica Bonvillian came to spend some time with us this last week. It was a blessing to see them. We were only able to get in one teaching session in Vincent's village because, as you can see by the pictures, we were interrupted by other plans (this is the way things go here in Zambia!).

After we arrived at our campsite, our friend Dominic informed us that the people from the village across the river were delivering the grass bundles in their mukolos (canoes) to the village of Mutanda on our side and that we needed to go and fetch them quickly because they were waiting. Oh dear.

So we dropped everything, sent a hasty text message to our friend Gavin Johnson and asked him if we could borrow a trailer. He was very gracious in lending us a spare boat trailer which we rigged (and I do mean "rigged"!) to carry three loads of 4-inch-thick, long grass bundles (600 bundles total). It was pretty funny because the trailer was designed for boats, not bundles of grass. It reminded me of some kind of team building exercise - a design your own hauling trailer competition! We changed our design three times and the by the very end of the second day, we got it right!

So what's up with all the grass you may ask? Well, this is what we will use to build the thatch roof on our base camp pavilion. A camp pavilion is a shelter (like the kind you see at state park campgrounds), that will house a kitchen, bathroom, and storage for each of the two
families. We will use this pavilion the whole time we are building our permanent homes. Then it will be for guests and teams to use when they come to visit.

We submitted to the Lord's change of plans over the next two days and it felt good to take the first real step to getting established out in the bush. We are hoping to have the pavilion finished before the rains begin at the end of October. Then we can stay for longer periods of time and really devote our time and energy to learning Lozi!