After exactly one month, I have a first impression to share with you.  Zambian people are kind and gracious, and very welcoming to outsiders who desire to care for their children.  We have been shown directions, helped with language, given insight into culture, and generally treated much better than we could have anticipated.  Tonight a woman actually hopped into my vehicle to show me exactly where to go to get cheaper eggs!  We had been paying 24,000KW (Zambian Kwacha) for 30 eggs, and had bargained the seller down to 22,000KW after MUCH bargaining, and then I heard that was because I was a “muzungu”, and that the better price is 16,000KW!!!  So, I was following directions, which I am usually quite good at, but am not doing a good job here with at all.  Most of the reason for this is because only the main paved roads are labeled, and only some of them have signs. The maps are even worse, just giving general “impressions”, and very few labeled roads.   The directions I was following were to turn off the main road, follow the dirt road to the end, and the egg lady would be at the last house on the left, which seemed easy enough.  Turns out it wasn’t.  So, I asked a woman walking (everyone walks, everywhere) where the egg lady lives.  She didn’t know, but offered to hop in the car and take me to a market where the eggs are 16,000KW per tray.  After showing me, she made sure I knew how to get back home again!  Boy, I am not in America anymore….and people are worried about my safety in Africa!  I think we are in good hands here.  First God’s, and then the warm-hearted Zambian people.

Today started out with a wonderful, useful beginning.  Special Hope Network is trying to use all the networking skills we possibly can to find and link up people with needs to the organizations that have services to meet their needs.  After asking everyone we met who has been here for awhile, and has needed any kind of help with walking, therapies, braces or supports, or any kind of rehabilitation after surgery or illness, we kept hearing the name “The Italian Hospital”.  So, we looked it up.  It is an orthopaedic hospital!  I also was given a name, “Isaac”, who makes braces, supports, and prosthetic limbs.

This morning I took a four-year old, and his Mom to the Italian Orthopaedic Hospital at 8 am, walked in, asked for Isaac, was directed to the Workshop, called for Isaac, and was heartily welcomed by 8:30!  All this with no appointment.  We aren’t in America anymore!  He put aside what he was working on, and took us to an examination room, and by 10:30 our little fellow had been interviewed, examined, casted, and fitted for supports!!!  Amazing.  This brings us to our first request of you, our reader.  This family earns approximately $5 per day.  Dad is a driver for a family, but hasn’t been paid yet this month, or last month.  Mom collects charcoal for cooking and sells it for about $5 each day.  They live in one of the homes I described to you earlier, cement block walls, dirt floor, in a compound, and have extra family living with them.  These supports will cost $150,000KW for each leg, so $300,000 KW for two supports, which is approximately $100.  Would you prayerfully consider covering the cost of these supports for this little guy who has so little?  He might also need new shoes, if the supports are too big for his current ones.  They would cost about $30.  If you are interested in donating toward this need, please give online, and write Supports for Boy in an email to our home email (currently the website ones aren’t working), which is magmolsam@gmail.com.  The family is encouraged, grateful, and fairly speechless. And, a boy who can’t walk, soon might be able to, which would open up the possibility of his attending school, and playing with his peers.

Who knew that the Networking part of our name would come in so handy, so soon?  I sure didn’t expect this.  I will try to post the video of the casting here, if I can.

Today was a day of so many small fulfilled steps, I’m not sure how to write them so you’ll be able to get the full effect of what occurred.  This morning, I (Holly) went to a Physical Therapy appointment with one of the children we have had the pleasure of working with.  It was at one of the nine clinics like it in Lusaka, run by the Ministry of Health.  Each clinic is spread out over the city, and is the only place for medical care that is free, or affordable for 99% of the population.  They have maternity, therapies, mortuary (!!), feeding, and other services at each one.  As I drove up at 8 am, there was an enormous line to get to the desk at the front of the building, and a sea of mothers and babies inside sitting on long benches with no backs, waiting for something.  It was striking.  Nothing like an American doctor’s office at all.  When I inquired about their Physiotherapy area, I was instructed to a room no bigger than 8 ft x 8 ft. FILLED with mothers and small children, as well as three volunteer (!!!) physical therapists, a father of a child with disabilities who ‘happens’ to also be a Pastor, volunteering, and me, the lone light-skinned person, and so clearly an oddball.  When I say the floor was filled, I truly do mean that the floor was filled, with bodies of children being stretched and exercised, mothers sitting watching the therapists so they could learn what to do at home (most of them were also nursing while watching), therapists working, and about 20 legos, one truck and two small cups that fit together split between those that could play using their hands.  It was a tremendous experience, quite the sensory overload, crying children as tight muscles were stretched, colorful cloths on each woman, excited squeals from children playing, and mothers visiting.  Each of the volunteers was also a parent (except maybe one, I’m not sure about him), and really loves the kids.

I told them why we are here, and what we feel God calling us to do.  Their faces lit up.  It was a picture I won’t soon forget, and I wish I had my camera (where is my photojournalism team when I need one?).  I asked them, if they could tell us what our ministry should look like, what would they need from us? They started to tell me what they would love, what they need, and how Special Hope could best serve them.  It took some prodding on my part to get them there, because they are used to so little in the way of services, care for their children, or even food.  Each Mom is so thin, and looks so tired! They walk long distances with their children wrapped to their back (none of the children in this room could walk on their own) to get to the therapy, and some have to pay for a bus to get there.  But they come, for 3 hours on Monday and 2 hours on Fridays.  For awhile they had so many children show up and wait in the hallway for a spot on that rug that each family could only come once each week. None of these children goes to school, because there is no class for any of them that will take them.

So, to get back to what they said about their needs:  Please make a classroom for our children that we could bring them to each day to learn!  Please come up with something to motivate teachers who have a special education certificate to stay teaching special education classrooms!  Please stay in Chelstone! We need you here!  And, they went on and on.  It was like opening floodgates of need, with a small ray of hope that someone would do something for the child that they love more than life.

You can understand that, can’t you?  I sure can.  And at that moment, I thanked God for bringing us to this place, where my skills and how God has specifically gifted me, the parts that come as naturally to me as breathing can bring encouragement and joy to mothers in a foreign land, who have the same heart as I do for my children.   From today we have connections to a Physical Therapist who goes to all the clinics in Lusaka, and knows all the children who have needs, and all the doctors who work with them.  He knows who makes supports for feet and legs, and which carpenters can make standing devices for weak legs.  We have a connection to a kind woman who had a child with CP who died, and who now volunteers with others, loves Jesus, and wants to work with us, wherever we go.  We have a connection to a Pastor who loves to sing, whose son is 1.6 years, and would love to work with us.  We have an appointment to go with a family to the Italian Hospital in town, the best place for supports to be made.  We have phone numbers for a few of the mothers who would like to be a part of whatever we do, especially if it would mean that they could work with us in a classroom, so they could benefit other children, as long as they are home with their own child anyway (and can’t work to support themselves outside the home).  We have been offered an open door to go back to visit the physiotherapy clinic whenever we want.  We are continuing to build relationships.

All of this is more than we ever could have hoped for in the first three weeks.  I don’t know what I expected, but this certainly isn’t it, but is so much more!  And, we ended the day with a full-blown 17 year old tantrum, just to keep us humble, and not to have a shred of pride that any of this is our own doing, which it clearly is not. (Thank you, Maggie!) God is working, and we are joining Him in what He already is doing.  Thank you for reading, and for caring about children who have intellectual disabilities.  We’ll keep plodding along, and trying to keep you updated as best we can.

Oh, yes, and on the day when I was forcefully requested to please acquire walkers, gait trainers, and wheelchairs from America because they are not readily available here, and if they are procurable, they are prohibitively expensive…….a friend in the US wrote, TODAY, about a physical therapist friend of hers in the US who would like to donate her supplies she is no longer going to need.  She asked if we need gait trainers, walkers, and other physical therapy supplies, and if she could get them to Charlottesville to put on our container.  Is that miraculous, or what??? Another miracle, on another ordinary day.  Amazing.  Thank you, God.

Yesterday we went to a compound called Chunga, where tens of  thousands of people live in cement block homes no bigger than 15 feet by 15 feet, and sometimes smaller, like 10 feet by 10 feet.  We had appointments at three homes where children with intellectual disabilities live with their families, so none were orphans.  When we got to each home, they had clearly cleaned, and put out their best linens in preparation for our arrival, and when we walked in, we absolutely filled the room.  Even with four-six of us on the floor.  But, we were welcomed more than we’ve been sometimes in homes that are significantly larger, so it was funny, but we didn’t really even notice or mind the size.

At the first home was a child who we were told had Down syndrome, and needed us to come for help.  It did not seem, after our assessment, that she had Down syndrome, but does seem to have significant cognitive delay, including some behaviors.  She was only in school from 5-6 years old, and then wasn’t let back in.  They said it was her behaviors that limited her involvement, and so, I asked whether other children provoked her (because I was thinking through the staring and making fun of OUR kids I’ve seen already), and her sister said that she was definitely laughed at and provoked, and then she’d fight back.  But it was sad to hear that the school and teachers wouldn’t work with the family, even a little bit.  They said she should go to a boarding school because they deal with children like her, yet when they went to the boarding school, she didn’t have severe enough needs for attending there.  So, she’s been home ever since, and she is 15 years old.

The second child we saw had some language, very little vision, cognitive delay, and some curvature in her legs.  She has a doting Mom, and three brothers, and has no therapy, and no schooling at all.  Her Mom didn’t have the money for an assessment, so we gave her the money to apply for the assessment, and she will get hearing, vision, speech, cognition, and her physical development checked out.  We may drive her, but will definitely cover the cost of the assessment, which is required to get her into a program.

The third child we saw wasn’t a child at all, when we finally met her.  She was 25! She has a wonderful Mom who loves her, as well as a bunch of siblings and cousins.  In one, very informal interview and assessment, it seems that she has autism, and, yet, her Mom didn’t know what made her “different from other kids”, and has never heard of autism at all.  She doesn’t have internet, so I will print off some helpful tools, and take them back to her, in lieu of loaning her my good books on it, which are in the US, and not here where I need them!  I was also able to help her with one of her biggest questions, which produced tears of joy, which, somehow I miraculously caught on camera, and will post on here shortly.  the uploading isn’t working at this moment.

So, it was a busy, productive day.  By the end, we were so tired!  It was sunny and warm, and we had walked from house to house.  By the time we got to our Nyanja lesson, we were thirsty, and, of course, Maggie was “HUNGRY!!!”, which is not the way to arrive at a home where you are trying not to be a burden to those who have so little!  So, when they brought out steaming hot cups of milk, with tea bags, and sugar, and a treat for us, under a tin plate, each of our kids broke out into their delighted sounds, and full-body excited dance/wiggle/clapping, and that was before they saw that the plate held fried sweet potatoes!  We were able to have our language lesson after that, because the troops were rejuvenated.  Ah, what a cup of steaming tea and a fried sweet potato can do to soothe a rough attitude.

Today, Saturday, we met with a four year old child who was an absolute delight.  He can’t walk, or sit alone, or crawl, and has a variety of physical issues that were “different”, including an interesting head shape, bent legs, and hands with very low tone.  We worked with him educationally, and, on first observation, it seems he is not very cognitively delayed, if he is even delayed, at all.  He was very shy and quiet, but clearly engaged and interested in our toys and books.  He was able to copy patterns we made with pattern blocks, and loved playing with us.  He definitely needs supports for his feet, since his legs and feet turn in so completely that he stands on his inner ankles.  We are going to go with them to their next Physical Therapy appointment, and will need a US supporter for his supports, and shoes to go in them.  From what they told us, this will cost $150,000 Kwacha, which is approximately $32.60, plus the cost of the shoes to put the inserts in.  We will help them, and try to be a support to them through this.  We sent them home with some toys, some books, and balls.  They were beyond thrilled, and seemed, in the understated way of a Zambian, very moved.  We will follow up with them this week.

Next, we went to a carpenter to see whether he could handcraft a Rifton chair for support for the two boys we met with on Tuesday of last week, boys who both have Cerebral Palsy.  Rifton chairs provide support for a body that needs structure, and help to just sit up to eat, or work, or even breathe well.  They are wonderful, but are fairly expensive, and then we would need to add shipping, so if we could have a Zambian carpenter make them, we could customize the size for each child, get them within a week or two, provide jobs for Zambian workers, and have less US to Zambia shipping of things.  So, for about 1/4 the price of a true Rifton chair, we’ll see what happens.  He will make us one prototype, and we’ll see how it works out.  If it works, we’ll be so excited, and will be in business, since so far, we have met three children who need seating, and we’ve only assessed three children! At this rate, we couldn’t bring enough from the US to keep up!

The last part of our day was a trip to the compound called Mtendere, where our first little boy lives.  We surprised his family, since their cellphone wasn’t working (which happens often here, because you buy cards worth about $10, and depending on the number you call, the minutes are used up fast, faster, or lickety-split!), so we just went.  They had left his shoes at our home the other day, and since he only has one pair, we didn’t want to keep them too long.  He can’t walk, but, still, they have so little.  We had some books, balls, and toys for him, and they were so pleased to see us.  He has no friends, and sits (lies, really) on the couch all day.  His Mom said that since he had come to our home the other day, he has been asking to go back.  So, the thought that he now has friends that come just to see and play with him was very novel and exciting for him.  We completely filled the room.  All six of us entered, where there were already four people, and the room could not have been bigger than 6 ft. x 7 ft.  We had a great time, and then made sure we left before they would feel the need to offer all of us dinner, which is the Zambian way.  They, as most people we’ve met, are extremely poor, and eat nshima for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Nshima is a pulverized cornmeal that is cooked with water, and then a “relish” is put on top, depending on the meal.  Breakfast might have milk put on top, lunch might have dried fish, and the relish is any mixture of greens sauteed with tomatoes, onions and other veggies.  I made it yesterday morning, and the faces around our breakfast table were memorable.  Our kids don’t turn their noses up at anything, but the texture of this wasn’t like polenta, or grits, it was a little bit like sandy-textured cereal- a bit gritty.  They would have a hard time eating Nshima at every meal.  But some folks don’t have an option.  A huge bag of mealie meal, which is used to make nshima, is between $4-10, so you can see why everyone eats it for every meal.

So, a new child to serve, a new family to minister to, a possible answer to the seating/positioning issue, and a follow-up visit to our first family.  A good day.  Exactly two weeks from our exhausted arrival, and God is bringing kids.  We haven’t gone looking, they are finding us!  Please continue to pray for wisdom for how we care for each child.  These families are lonely and hurting, so the ministry is to the parents, almost more than the children.  The children are clean, loved, and cared for, but the parents are isolated, with no supports.  Please pray that we would have wisdom, and that they would be encouraged.

Accompanying our transition to Zambia, we are also migrating all of our online giving to an newer, more efficient system.  We apologize for the delay in getting the new system in place, and for any troubles you may come across while we are in progress.  Please let us know if you have any specific issues, and we will work to address them right away!  We will update you when everything has been migrated and the new system is up and running.  Thanks for being patient with us and for your continued support of Special Hope.

Also, we want to make sure to point you to our ‘e-News and Updates’ page, where we will be recording a daily (or almost daily )  log of our activities.  Check out quick details of what the Lord is doing!

May 12, 2010 is a day Special Hope will not soon forget.  We had two home visits with boys who each have Cerebral Palsy, one 14 years old, and one 8 years old.  Neither one EVER leaves their home.  Neither one has a special chair for sitting up, or a wheelchair, walker or gait trainer to move about  Both are carried everywhere they go by their mothers.  One had significant cognitive delay, and one did not.  Being in their homes, and seeing what little they had to work with for positioning their bodies and working their muscles was humbling to me.  My favorite Occupational Therapist, Gay, in Virginia can use just about anything to make creative seating options for children who need them, but in these homes even her creativity would have been pushed to its limit (yesterday I was wishing I could just beam her here instantaneously).  They have cement floors, and old, sagging couches, and that is basically it.  No chairs with slats for wrapping a child upright into a chair, or any other seating possibilities, so parents hold the child on their lap to eat, and due to this set-up, the child can’t learn to eat by themselves, because there isn’t a table in front of them.  There is only Mom or Dad’s lap, so they are fed by their parent, with no hope of increasing independence.

We are now going to try to find a carpenter today to make some Rifton-like chairs.  We are also going to try out the Network part of our name, and work hard in the coming weeks to figure out if there are any wheelchairs, walkers, or gait trainers anywhere in Lusaka sitting and not being used.  We have pictures and video from yesterday, and after we get permission from the parents, we will post their names and pictures. And, hopefully some video.

Rosemary Camp, I am sorry to not post names here, but we will whenever the Moms and Dads say it is ok.  For now, you can pray for them, since Jesus knows their names, ok?  Just like if Miss Holly prayed to Jesus for you, and didn’t know your name, Jesus knows you, and each little hair on your head.  We miss you, Rosemary!

So, I suppose the answer to the question we asked ourselves many times, is, YES, this ministry is needed.  Yes, parents and children are isolated with no resources.  Yes, our interaction with these parents is an encouragement and helps them to feel they have someone looking out for their child besides themselves.  Yes, we are already being used by God, in the ways that He has gifted and trained us.  Yes, we are encouraged ourselves that all the months of work, selling homes, packing boxes, getting medicine and supplies, packing more boxes, and moving across the world IS WORTH IT.

Please pray for us to be able to find seating, wheelchairs, walkers and other therapeutic equipment if it is here in Lusaka unused.  Please be praying for your involvement in these children’s lives.  Neither home had any books, toys, playdough, paper or writing implement, or anything for the boys to do all day.  Each parent said they just sat all day on a couch or lap.  Can you imagine?  One of the boys was so taken with our books, he could have stayed all day.  Please pray about whether you should purchase board books, and paperback books for us, and playdough, and simple toys as well as large therapy balls for muscle work, before our container leaves in a month or two, that we can give to these children for playing and working at home.  What we have purchased up to this point is for the classrooms, but we have just come across a new need.  Please pray!  Thank you for your care for the children we are ministering to.  Please also pray for the Moms who are completely isolated, and made fun of.

Today was a day of fulfilled God-given dreams of usefulness for His Kingdom.  We went to Chunga Compound to learn Nyanga with our teacher Nancy at her home.  This saves her two hours of travel time, bus fare, and the lost time with her children.  So, once a week we will travel to her house, and once a week, she will travel to us.  As we were learning our vocabulary words, right in the middle of the lesson, Nancy stopped to tell us that she has told many people about our ministry to children who have intellectual disabilities.  One of the friends she told, Rosemary, has a girl who has Down syndrome who is 25, and never leaves her home.  She sent her son to go see whether she would come, see how interactive our children are, and what they are able to do.  She came, and only spoke Nyanga (which made learning it today all the more important, not just a fun side thing to do with our ’spare’ time).  She was patient while we greeted her in Nyanga, and the kids did too.  Muli bwanji is the word for hello, how are you?  And Sam says a loose variation of it, something like moody bwanch, and everyone cheered!  “He knows Nyanga! they said.  Then Mollie, grinning, and holding her hands said mooey bwanch, to more cheering.  Then Maggie, moody hello, which sent folks into fits of giggles.

This Mom was so choked up the entire time she  was visiting, she could barely speak.  Then Mollie sang “great is Thy faithfulness” and Sam said a few verses, and she turned into a puddle on the floor.  She was surprised, flabbergasted, unabashedly joyful, and emotionally overcome.  Nancy also mentioned that they have another friend with a 15 year old who has Down syndrome, who also doens’t leave the house.  They, in turn, knew one more child who has a cognitive disability that we could go see. They asked if we would please come back and see their children.  And, it was at that moment, we could clearly see God’s hand on us through these past two years, preparing us for just that moment, when His gifting in our lives, and the experiences He has provided to us, came together to support, encourage, and meet the needs of three parents, on an unmarked “street” (rutted dirt path), in a little-known or respected area of a large and very poor city in the middle of central Africa.  So, we will go back on Tuesday to meet these children, and support these wonderful parents, who have so little. What a remarkable day!

God is certainly providing us with experiences this week to confirm our calling here in Zambia, and the need for folks to minister to children who have intellectual disabilities.  When our family was out shopping for Mother’s Day ingredients (of course, this clandestine act was not done with the Mom in the family!), not one, but two men came up to Eric and Beth and started asking all kinds of questions about who they are, and what they do with children who are “different”.  Each one is a parent of a boy, one 15 and one 8, who have Cerebral Palsy, and from their descriptions, one has a cognitive delay, and one does not. It seems we will meet them this week.  Both invited us to their homes right away to help them to know how to teach their boys.

In one of the conversations going on simultaneously while our kids milled about, singing, happy groaning, swirling dollies, and making other noises while everyone in a quarter mile vicinity stared shockingly and shamelessly, the Special Hope team member speaking said that we are very new to Zambia, and that we’ve only been here one week.  The father asked when we are leaving, seemingly wanting to get us to help him right away, and the SHN team member being spoken to said that we aren’t leaving, but that we are here to stay.   He then asserted, “We are very glad you are here, you are welcome in this country!”.

At this point, we realized that our human plans aren’t the way God has planned our time here (why do we keep thinking they are OUR plans, when they are so clearly NOT??).  We thought we’d figure out driving on the opposite side of the road, then get a vehicle (we are generously being loaned one currently by some very wonderful and generous folks), get our visa, find a permanent home (we have been in four since late January, 2010), learn Nyanga, figure out the money (the Zambian Kwacha is 4600= $1), and then get to work finding and serving orphans with intellectual disabilities, and be off and running.  But, God had different plans.  Every single time we have gone out, we have been spoken to about our children, and every day but one, the conversations have also included going to someone’s home to give them wisdom on what to do with their child who has a special need.  The one day we weren’t spoken to about someone else’s child, we were stopped several times about the uniqueness of our girls.  It seems twins are rare in this country, and since children who have intellectual disabilities are hidden away (we have yet to see even one child that isn’t typically-developing), you can imagine that twins who have Down syndrome, shopping out in an open-air market is a sight to behold that might only come along once in a lifetime.  So, the stares….

On Monday of this past week, we went to a Market where there are small stalls selling absolutely anything you could want to buy.  The smells were incredible.  I wish I could convey them on a computer screen to you- burning charcoal fires, tiny “restaurants” with stools to sit on, where fish and chicken were grilling, adding to the charcoal fires, hot pavement, wet mud puddles, acrid rotten food smells, and heady tropical fruit sitting in the sun ripening, and wafting their sweet fragrance lightly throughout the market.

On this day, the stares were so unabashed that we ACTUALLY stopped traffic. We have joked about this before, but, as far as we know we have never actually done it.  We were teamed up, one adult holding hands with one of our children, and the sidewalks were so full of people that we were in a long train, 2 by 2 by 2.  At one point, the horns in the cars near us started beeping, and became quite loud.  I was last in the “train” with Maggie, and when I looked left at the cars, the cause of the traffic jam wasn’t a red light, or an accident, but was US.  The drivers in the two front cars were so busy staring at us (gawking with jaws dropped open might be a better description), they hadn’t even noticed that the light had turned green, so they hadn’t moved, and then they were so taken with watching us, they didn’t even realize that the  cars behind them were honking at THEM.   That was our first day out in public with our kids.  Hmmmm.  This could be a VERY  interesting couple of years ahead of us.

Yesterday we met with our cultural and language tutor, who also, in God’s providence, just “happens” to be a teacher, trained in Special Education!!!  She is the sister-in-law of a man who works for the missionary organization we are renting our temporary housing from.  So, to see the miracle of God’s provision, we only knew one contact here in Lusaka, who knew one missionary on home leave for a few months who could rent us her home, and this missionary has one man working for her, who, when we asked about a language tutor, had one person he could think of who could train us….his sister-in-law… who “happens” to be a Special Education Teacher here.  Amazing, don’t you think?

So as we met with her, we told her what we felt God calling us to do- to search out children who have intellectual disability of one kind or another, cognitive delay, autism, Down syndrome, and any other developmental disabilities that aren’t just physical.  At this point, she went on to tell us that in her classes at the University of Zambia, she and her fellow students were required to go into the ‘compounds’ (where the poorest live, where thousands of people live in tiny shacks made from recycled products like corrugated tin, plywood, cardboard and or handbricks) to look for children with intellectual disabilities.  They had a terrible time even finding kids who had needs, due to the parent’s shame and resultant hiding of them.  When they did find them, often they were very sick, due to the lack of taking the child out to the doctor.  In a compound not far from where we live (maybe a 20 minute drive, though a 1 1/2 hour walk), there is a large compound that actually has a class for children who have special needs, and, yet, it only has three children in that class.  Can you even comprehend that?

So, Nancy, our tutor, is teaching us Nyanga, so we can be more useful wherever we go.  Hopefully when we go to the compounds, we’ll be able to find the kids who are hidden, and that Maggie, and Mollie and Samuel will bring them out with their engaging and winsome (and very LOUD) ways!