Mozart?

I was working on some simple flute arrangements of hymns that I want to play at church for a special service. While I was sitting at the piano picking out the notes and drawing them them on score paper, Becky was watching me. Then she got some paper and started composing her own song. In the picture, I think she is trying to draw a treble cleff, but it ended up looking like a capital B. She also loves to sit at the piano and "practice for her piano lesson". She is not taking lessons, but some of her MK friends are, so she hears them talk about it.

Then Caleb was inspired and was not to be outdone by his little sister. His song is quite lengthy and is called "Boy ABC". He even plays it on the piano - he thinks. Some of the notes appear to be lower than the range of the piano keyboard however.

The kids are young, Caleb at 6 and Becky at 4, but I think there are musicians in there somewhere.

Garden

There is not a great deal of room in our backyard for a garden, but we have managed to grow a few edible things. The strawberries are the Hafler's and I was instructed to take care of them. I'm doing my best and they do taste really good! We were given a dozen or so tomato plants from another family who was thinning out seedlings. We are still waiting for our tomato crop to ripen. We were also given lettuce seedlings from a third family. The lettuce is very good and we are enjoying salad frequently. Thankfully, the kids all like salad too. Farthest away in the plot is some chinese lettuce which is cooked by our workers for part of their lunch. There are some raspberries in the middle along the wall which we are looking forward to.

From our backyard

The kids made a rather alarming discovery in our backyard. They found this water scorpion. It actually is an insect, but takes its name from its similar appearance to a scorpion.

From what I read, they are not harmful, but may pinch if provoked. We released it in a lake about 30 minutes away when we were there for a picnic last week.

Fun with little friends

Earlier this week we enjoyed watching a couple of younger MKs for the day. The kids had great fun playing together. They pretended to be ferocious animals, built churches with wooden blocks (the boys each tried to make the tallest steeple), and lots of other things kids love to do. I even got them to play a game of "dust the furniture" for a while!

A special activity for our guests was the "jumpoline" that the Hafler's kindly left up for us to utilize during their absence. Becky's hairdo was the envy of the day.

Central Africa Baptist Radio under construction

John is excited to be able to be a part of a Christian radio station here in Africa. Actually being in charge of setting one up is a bit overwhelming though. The radio room, recording studio and control room are located on the third floor of Central Africa Baptist College's new building. The radio room is pretty much finished, complete with carpet on the ceiling and bamboo mats on the walls to help with sound absorption. This room will house the computers from which the broadcast will originate.

The recording studio will be used to obtain some material to air on the radio, Lord willing. This may include choirs, individual musicians, scripture readings, and other recordings. In order to keep out the noise from the lower floors of the building and also the noise from outside , John made this room with a double floor and special sound resistant walls. The walls are actually two walls thick and filled with foam. There is a bar in front of the college and a large public university adjacent to the property, so there is quite a bit of noise pollution around. I think more than one of the dorm men have invested in ear plugs.

In order to transmit the radio signal from the college building to the tower site, which is at another location, John has to install an antenna on top of the building. He has secured the pole already. That was a delicate job since the peak of the roof is about 12 meters up. They had to buy an extra long extension ladder and made sure it was securely tied. The internet receiver for the college is also attached to this pole.







After the radio signal leaves the college building, it travels to the tower site. The radio station is renting space on the tower to put up their antennas to broadcast throughout Kitwe and beyond. Some equipment has to be located at this site, so a small building is being constructed at the base of the tower.






I (Sophie) obviously do not know all the ins and outs of this radio thing, but I wanted to share some pictures with you and give you the basic idea of what is going on. For those of you who are cringing at my ignorance, please forgive me.

Zambian kids at play

Our children like to play with the children of the caretaker at the new college building. They play football (soccer) with a ball made of plastic string from mealie meal bags. Here are some of the Zambian kids playing before our kids arrived. Joshua and Caleb joined in the game upon arrival.

Tires are another fun toy. Joshua and Caleb are still trying to master the art of rolling a tire around without it falling over every few seconds. They have fun watching the other children and trying to get the tires rolling themselves.











We let Becky give one of the little girls a dress that she had outgrown. Shortly after giving her the dress, we walked to a store a short distance away from the college to get some bread and water that we needed. (Our menu does include more than this.) When we were returning on the road, I saw the little girl wearing the "new" dress. But when the Zambian children saw us coming back, the little girl ran into the house and changed back into her old dress. I thought this was interesting. Zambian culture treats gifts in a unique way, putting an emphasis on the giver instead of the actual gift. If you give someone a wrapped gift, they will probably not open it in your presence, but will simply say thank you. It does not matter what the gift is - they are thankful that you gave them a gift. I tried to talk with the older girl about why the younger one changed back into her other dress, but she doesn't speak much English so either didn't understand or couldn't respond.

Chalk Art

All three children had fun using the sidewalk chalk that Joshua got for memorizing verses at Junior Camp. The small patio in front of our house became the canvas. This picture was taken after it had gone beyond the masterpiece stage, but you can still see the red fire truck, blue sky, and yellow sun.

After a few days of continued additions some of the art looked more like Bert's chalk drawings on "Mary Poppins" after it started raining, but the kids had fun and were only partially covered in chalk dust.