…” First - First Day at Work in 11 Years”…

An African airport firetruck

 We arrived in Choma at 3:30pm South African Standard time yesterday afternoon.  Over thirty hours of travel can be pretty exhausting, but we were able to rest as soon as we got in.  Our flights were fairly uneventful…we had firetrucks meet us at our landing in Johannesburg because the front wheel steering was not working.  The pilot landed us safely and everyone on the plane applauded him for his skills!  That led to a very short layover in Johannesburg so we took just a quick walk around the terminal to get some water and catch our flight to Livingstone.

At Erin's desk in the Hope Corps Office

Today is our first day in the office.  We started with staff devotionals with the World Hope International Zambia (WHIZ) staff.  Wow, can they sing!  No instruments, just voices.  We even sang a song in Tonga and did okay…(luckily, the words were right in front of us).  Jon shared on behalf of us how excited we are to be here.

Now, after a quick trip to town to get cell phones (which we have yet to figure out), we are getting settled into our office on the WHIZ compound.  Jon laughed as he said, “This is my first - first day on the job in 11 years.” It’s funny the things that come to mind as we start our new jobs at WHIZ: changing time settings on a computer, wondering where the best place is to buy a printer or paper, staples, etc; how do you figure out a cell phone that comes with no manual???  All these small things add up and can be overwhelming. 

We had an orientation meeting with the Country Director, Finance Director & Program Director today.  It was good to hear from them about their expectations for us and has hopefully opened discussion for the future as we work through cultural differences & understanding.

Our schedule, we realize, is one to be envied…8pm-5pm work days with a one hour lunch…with the exception of Fridays when we work until 2pm (no lunch break on those days…).

As we look at the walls of our office, we see pictures of previous teams that have come under the direction of Dave & Beth Watters.  We hope and anticipate the same smiling faces as we host teams in the next 11 months.  We hope that the teams we lead will enjoy their time in Zambia, that they will love the people and the culture.  We hope that they will experience their pain and sadness.  We hope that they will experience the real joy that Zambians have in the midst of suffering.  We hope that after they leave they will not forget this place or its people.

Jon and Erin

Thanks so much to all of our supporters – monthly, one time & prayer.  We appreciate your generosity and heart for the work we are doing. To make things simple for our monthly financial supporters, we have added a link to our WHI account at the bottom of this page.