They went to Zambia........

[formergothardite]

......and OMG it was Zambia!

So these people are in Zambia to be missionaries. And it appears that it really isn't living up to the wife's expectations. Sure, she has seen pictures and stuff, but it really isn't as nice as she was hoping it to be.

As we drove from the airport toward Zambia, I kept waiting

for the landscape to change, and look more like South Africa.

But it didn't. Lots of red dirt, lots of people around, and lots of

dirty and small buildings. I thought maybe things would look a

little better than the pictures Jimmy had taken back in February,

but they didn't. When we arrived in Chipata, I must admit I

was a little disappointed. I knew it was a small town, but I

didn't realize it was so much like the Africa everyone pictures

in National Geographic.

;

Stupid Zambia, why couldn't it be nicer for these missionaries!

They don't even sell nice stuff there!

They have all sorts of things for sale down there, but mostly

it is household items, material, chitengas, things from the

chemist, and hardware supplies. Not a huge selection, nothing

REALLY nice, but suitable. Some cheap stuff from China.

I still feel like I have

nothing in my pantry, and I've been to the grocery store

like five times! There are such limited choices here. I miss

PnP Hypermarket with the MANY choices on every shelf

in SA. Here, things are sometimes not even in stock at all,

and the produce is not great.

There are weird trees that just need to be moved and so much dust around that she is going to need a maid:

Soon we will have

to hire a gardener. We don't have a lot of work for someone

to do, but the trees and grass needs tending. Maybe we can

speak to the landlord and get some of the weird trees planted

in the yard moved to another side. The girls have very little

room to play with all of them. We also need to hire someone

to clean a few times a week. It is so dusty here that I could

never keep up with homeschooling, cleaning and cooking

and shopping and even think of doing ministry things

She isn't very comfortable letting a stranger in her home (why exactly is she a missionary then, I thought that was sort of a regular part of showing the love of God in a foreign country?), but since all the other missionaries have maids, she is going to give in a get one.

I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of having a

stranger in my house, but all the missionary families are using

someone

I honestly haven't gotten past this first post, but it doesn't really seem like she is liking being a missionary.

juliemom.blogspot.com/

[Witsec7]

TY. This looks to be a goldmine. I bookmarked it and renamed it 'Rude Awakenings".

[ceg045]

I am completely uncomfortable with the idea of having a stranger black person in my house, but all the missionary families are using someone

Fixed it for her.

[CanadianHippie]

She forgot to end her post with #firstworldproblems!

[BlueChair]

I'm so sorry the real Zambia didn't line up with her daydream of picturesque scenery (where nothing is dirty or cheap) and smiling heathens lined up and ready to be saved. Good lord, what did she expect?? A Zambian Thomas Kinkade scene?

[E Street Fan]

What a spoiled little bitch. I especially like that she says "where the Africans shop." I guess all Africans must be exactly the same, and not from, you know, different ethnic groups and stuff. :evil: How simplistic. I hope she gives up and goes home pronto.

We have a bird delegation that comes to our house every

morning, and chirps me awake. They fight, and clack on

the metal roof. I think some of them may be trying to get

into the small attic space we have. I don't understand it...

why they chose our house...very annoying. I am plotting

ways to get rid of them

Because they are birds? They are doing what comes naturally to them. They didn't do it just to piss you off, Your Holiness. :roll:

[formergothardite]

I'm so sorry the real Zambia didn't line up with her daydream of picturesque scenery (where nothing is dirty or cheap) and smiling heathens lined up and ready to be saved. Good lord, what did she expect?? A Zambian Thomas Kinkade scene?

I think that is exactly what she was expecting. Reminds me of the Poisonwood Bible, and that one didn't end too well for the missionaries.

[deelaem]

:roll: This kind of thing makes me wish so much that I could share my niece-in-law's blog. She tries to play the happy Mormon wifey and mother but fails miserably. She's a super malcontent Mormon wife from a racist Alabama family. They just moved to England and it's become clear the entire nation has conspired to make her life inconvenient. My sister and I have a bet to see how long she'll last there. It's amazing how many Mormon families are moving overseas to "spread the word". Did I say amazing? I meant scary. Anyway, she has posts just like this lady, going on and on about how messed up the English system is. With any luck, she'll be able to straighten the country out while she's there.

[formergothardite]

:roll: This kind of thing makes me wish so much that I could share my niece-in-law's blog. She tries to play the happy Mormon wifey and mother but fails miserably. She's a super malcontent Mormon wife from a racist Alabama family. They just moved to England and it's become clear the entire nation has conspired to make her life inconvenient. My sister and I have a bet to see how long she'll last there. It's amazing how many Mormon families are moving overseas to "spread the word". Did I say amazing? I meant scary. Anyway, she has posts just like this lady, going on and on about how messed up the English system is. With any luck, she'll be able to straighten the country out while she's there.

Well good shopping and better scenery are firsts on the list of must haves in Zambia.

[Turtle]

I think that is exactly what she was expecting. Reminds me of the Poisonwood Bible, and that one didn't end too well for the missionaries.

Poisonwood Bible should be required reading for aspiring American missionaries. I wonder what sort of good she imagines herself doing while in Zambia?

[NurseNell]

Why the hell did she become a missionary? Ugly American missionary. She could learn so much if she had the right attitude.

[bananacat]

Wow, a volunteer who actually cares about people and not just about coercing a religious conversion out of them would get a lot of this experience. One of my college friends joined the Peace Corps for a few years and he would have reacted very differently. Instead of feeling sorry for himself for not having a supermarket, he would understand what people lack and what privileges he grew up with. For the landscaping and cleaning, he would probably just handle it himself but if he couldn't he would see it as an opportunity to provide employment for someone who could use the job. But that kind of attitude would require actually caring about people.

[Hane]

Wow, a volunteer who actually cares about people and not just about coercing a religious conversion out of them would get a lot of this experience. One of my college friends joined the Peace Corps for a few years and he would have reacted very differently. Instead of feeling sorry for himself for not having a supermarket, he would understand what people lack and what privileges he grew up with. For the landscaping and cleaning, he would probably just handle it himself but if he couldn't he would see it as an opportunity to provide employment for someone who could use the job. But that kind of attitude would require actually caring about people.

True. I've read that, in some cultures, it's simply considered common decency for well-to-do (or just not-poor) people to employ others to help with house and yard work, giving them jobs and paying them as a way to share the wealth and improve the quality og life for the community as a whole.

[stum_ble]

What does she think missionaries DO exactly? That they just go and live comfortably among the less fortunate and hope some Godliness will rub off?

[NurseNell]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipata

They aren't out in the bush somewhere, the population is 98,000. It looks like a place I could visit and like. I don't think I'd want to live there but the places where I would live include El Salvador, which is just as poor.

My best friend is married to a Nigerian. The photos of Chipata remind me of the place Waheed is from in Nigeria. It just doesn't seem that awful to me.

[formergothardite]

In the blog post where she annnounces where they will be moving, this is how she feels about moving to Zambia:

It sounds like crazy talk to me. Seriously

So she didn't want to go and now she is stuck in a place she hates and she is supposed to be a missionary. Her husband is deaf or hearing impaired and that is their ministry.

[formergothardite]

juliemom.blogspot.com/2010/01/teaching-child-training-to-others.html :shock:

A single mom of two small children has a child who doesn't sit still in the service, so Julie grabs him without asking the mom and forcible restrains him until he stops squirming. :shock:

[kpmom]

Just looooove the "Unreached People of the Day" button she has on her blog. :roll:

ETA: I'm glad the kid she forcibly restrained beat the shit out of her. Too bad the mom didn't.

[Eva5]

That reads so, so much like a parody. If only...

[Miss M]

I have a dear friend who went straight to the Peace Corps out of college 24 years ago, spent years and years hand digging wells in Africa. He is with the UN now and literally lives in Makaziville. I sent him an email with this blog linked in the email, he replied he would sort of like to "punch this woman in the head"!

M.

[gustava]

True. I've read that, in some cultures, it's simply considered common decency for well-to-do (or just not-poor) people to employ others to help with house and yard work, giving them jobs and paying them as a way to share the wealth and improve the quality og life for the community as a whole.

Quite right. Expat families and better-off African families are expected to have a cook, a housekeeper, and a yard person. She needs to go home.

[Witsec7]

Perhaps she expected to live in a compound like Jenny, while her husband smoked Havanas under the watchful eyes of two pistoleros?

[thoughtful]

Good lord, what did she expect?? A Zambian Thomas Kinkade scene?

Someone with Photoshop, please work on this idea! :lol:

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I can't really fault her for wanting a maid, if they can afford one - if everything is completely different from the food to the plants to the cleaning products and routines, probably the easiest thing to do is hire someone to show her in person how people do stuff there, how to cook the local popular normal foods, rather than her trying to fake like she's still living back home (which will just be pricey) plus she'll have at least one local person to talk to. That's even before considering that in many places yeah maids are a "thing" everyone of means does.

But people moving abroad for any reason really need to go expecting that THEY will be learning from the local people, even if they're also going explicitly to help out with projects or whatever it is (religious or not). It's a mindset more than anything else, and if she's just going to be grousing about things not being at home, it's a waste.

Though I suppose if she honestly didn't have any desire to go be a foreign missionary and her husband basically dragged her along, I'll admit that probably does suck but she shouldn't take it out on the locals... :)

[formergothardite]

Quite right. Expat families and better-off African families are expected to have a cook, a housekeeper, and a yard person. She needs to go home.

Well, if she hires a housekeeper she is going to have to let those strange people into her house, you know, the strange people she is supposed to be there to minister to. :roll:

I still can't figure out what exactly they are going to be doing to help the deaf people in Zambia.