What a week we had in Zambia!!
Because we have one group that has decided to focus on clean water projects this year, and because we had another friend chip in for an entire project, we did TWO projects this week. Both in very rural areas in Mambwe. I hope to have pics or videos to share next week. For now, all I have seen are videos of our terrified team riding on the drilling rig because the road was too difficult for their car to pass! We have proven two things with this month’s experiment: we CAN do more than one project in a month, and the drilling company will give us a discount if they can do two projects without traveling too far in between them. So let’s see how many of these projects we can get done!
While completing two boreholes in Mambwe, the team that traveled there were also distributing funds to our partners there for the harvest acquisition process. We also sent funds north to Josh in Solwezi for the harvest acquisition process up there. Finally, the travel team spent a couple days in Petauke on the way to Mambwe actually harvesting themselves both at the demonstration plot that Tracy oversaw AND at a one hectare plot we designated as the S2S field. Much more to come from the Petauke harvest. For now, just know that we have some very tired Zambian teammates after a very busy week.
Here in Iowa, we collected another $5,000 towards theharvest effort, bringing the total donated so far to $123,000. The funds I wired this month anticipated just a few more donations to this effort, but we can purchase more if we collect more!
After singing at my aunt Alice’s funeral last Saturday, my other cousin has arrived in town for her mother’s funeral in two days. I’m speaking at this funeral for my aunt Karen – my first ever opportunity to officiate a funeral, after attending what seems like so many in recent years. I think there is likely a blog post from my studies leading up to that effort, but I’m going to wait until after Tuesday to write it out. I don’t want to spoil it for those attending. You might imagine it is about LOVE…
