whoops I guess it was just the flu

Hello, back again,

First of all no one has commented on my posts in a while, hello is anyone out there?
Secondly as you might be able to tell by the blog post title, Chris our host does not have malaria, the blood tests came back and they didn't find it, he still feels a little sick so they think that he has the flu, and it is possible I guess that he also had malaria, but it is pretty unlikely, so he was belly aching and complaining and it was the common flu, which really isn't anything to laugh at I guess, but I felt like telling Chris that he is big over exaggerator.  But oh well he was feeling better today sort of, he woke up fine but late morning had a little bit of a fever but it has come down and he is feeling, better hopefully he'll be all good tomorrow and the 3 of us can head out to Lusaka for a couple of days at the seminary there and to see the sights of the big city.  Here is a picture that Josh took of the Plugers today, they wanted him to take their picture for some publicity stuff, I thought I'd share it.

Okay lets see today we took it easy here around the area.  You know its the smells and the sounds that are really impressive about Zambia, there is always the sound of chickens, everywhere you go roasters are crowing and the smell of smoke, everyone cooks on charcoal, so there is always that pleasant smoke smell in the air.  But anyway, we went for a short ride w/ Jeanine today to a rural school to pay some school fees for some kid that goes there, but it was way out in the bush and I'll attach a few pictures of some really rural areas in Africa.  The grass thatched roofs are very common in the villages and rural areas, you really wonder how mcuh that helps in the rain, but of course it is cheap.

There was no one at the school so the trip was kind of pointless but right next to the school in this teeny tiny village there was a huge catholic church and it just seemed so strange to be there, the doors were open and Josh and I walked around it and explored it, it must have sat a few hundred people and we wondered if it filled up on Sundays, I think it pretty unlikely.

Out there in the village we saw a woman (in the red shirt below) with a hammer hitting big rocks to make gravel and she was selling little piles of gravel.  It looked like insanely hard work to be doing that in the heat with a hammer but she was really going at it.  Josh went up to her and asked her if she was making rocks, she responded no, I'm making money.  So that was funny the lady pulled one over on Josh.

On the way back from the little village Jeanine got a call that one their friends (who lived in Chipata, 2 hours away) their car broke down near Chris and Jeanine's house, so Jeanine headed on over and picked up her friend's kids while a mechanic towed her car and was going to fix the breaks.  Not having really good breaks on these roads would be a terrible idea, you are constantly slamming on the breaks because of goats and pigs and ox carts and cattle crossing major high ways, its nuts so you definitely want good breaks.  Well we stopped and got gas, the person before us had 3 55 gallon drums in the back of their pick up and they were filling them with diesel, we figured it would be worth over $1000, which is an insane amount of money out here.  Josh and I figured we had time to do some shopping while we waited for diesel.  We bought some chechengwe (the wraps that women wear around their waists) and I also saw a man fixing watches on the sidewalk, my watch has been missing a pin this whole trip and I keep thinking when I get back to the states I'll get it fixed, but I thought this guy could help, for less than $2 he got my watch going again.  It was impressive to see him work with these mechanical watches and fixing the tiny pieces.

Well after that we headed back to the house and had lunch, left over pasties from the night before they were good.  The friend eventually got her brakes working and she came and picked up her kids, Sean appreciated having some company for a couple of hours.  The rest of the day we just hung out and played games, Settlers of Catan and up and down the river we had homemade pizza for supper, Josh brought along some pepperoni so that was pretty tasty.

It is getting to the point were I'm really missing my family, and I'm enjoying it here but also miss being with them, it'll be good that tomorrow we travel to the big city of Lusaka, and we will be closer to going home.  It's been a really fun trip and extremely eye opening.  But will also be happy to be back with those whom I love.  Good night everyone, and leave some comments!