Our Zambian holiday.

Today is an agricultural holiday in Zambia, celebrating the harvest. Government offices & many stores were closed and there was a state fair type atmosphere near town. Kids were getting their faces painted, playing in the “jumping castle” (bounce house), and wearing visors and other cheap “buy them daddy” fair-give-aways. We did not go, but just saw it from our taxi as we went through town. We were with our “other” driver Chanza, who left his family at the fair to drive us this AM, and then when he came back for us, he wanted us to go and meet his “madam” (wife) & 2 children – referred to as his “first-born & last-born”. He then wanted us to take a picture with them, even with their face-paint. Chanza has a wonderful laugh & sense of humor, which we could see passed onto his son (age 4) – who blew a small horn the entire time we were with them (all done with a smirk on his face). He also gave me a pretty sweet belt, w/ the Zambian flag stitched into. Zeke quickly appropriated it since we forgot to pack him a belt; and unless he had taken one of the bungee ropes his Aunt Jennifer gave to us for the kids here (google – “Chinese jump rope”) his jeans would continually be around his ankles – which seems to be fine for the kids at the pre-school home, just not for the streets of Lusaka.
We spent a good chunk of our time today at the house of the other couple from the U.S. that is adopting a girl. Each of us had our “soon to be child” with us. We broke bread together (grilled cheese and soup, yum), swapped kid stories (how do you get a urine sample from a kid in diapers?), and then talked at length about the most strategic and efficient way to get a child’s physical, passport, visa, etc. It is quite a maze and it has been greatly beneficial to talk w/ them, as well as to receive email tips from another couple who just adopted from here a couple months ago.
The Lemmonds ate dinner tonight at our guesthouse. We have a nice table, w/ only 4 chairs (and at least 2 of them are more like rocking chairs b/c of the way they wiggle back-n-forth). There are usually only enough place settings for 3, and it has a beach house mish-mash feel to it. The menu for this eve was hard-boiled eggs, peeled green apples (they highly recommend not eating any fruit you don’t peel), and baby corn cobs. Our dinner menus have always been a little interesting, as we could not pack enough food for a month & shopping in Lusaka is a mix of inconvenience & lack of variety. For instance we have had spaghetti w/ pizza sauce; taco meat w/ provolone cheese (though it tastes & feels an awful lot like parmesan) rolled into some sort of chapatti that tears apart when you look at it; & for a stand-by, carrots dipped in peanut butter. We have had success with potatoes & other cooked vegetables, as well as with carrots dipped in peanut butter. Mandi has overachieved in baking, fighting the oven with no numbers & the kitchen with no measuring cups to make…banana bread cookies! Necessity is the mother of dessert.”
Laundry is a whole other tub to wash. We went through our 1st set of clothes pretty quick b/c of the mix of outside play/walking & with being in the crawlers’ room. The fee for having our laundry done at the guesthouse (otherwise titled “why is my underwear blowing across the yard”) was a bit high & they were stumped by our new-fangled concentrated laundry detergent bottle (they used over 2/3 of the bottle for about 2 loads). The other couple might have use of a laundry room in a couple of days, until then…see Zeke’s solution (pictured during his shower). At this time we only have 2 outfits for the kid, because the selection was so limited & we had no idea when we were originally packing what age or size he would be (although somehow Mandi smuggled a 3-6 mos. jumper in a suitcase - any takers?). We’ll be taking passport photos for the kid tomorrow, and have a chance to buy him something to wear that doesn’t have a sweet mix of nshima & banana on it.
Tomorrow we will call our social worker in the AM to see if we need to take the boy back to the HOM. The “fostering process” began when we took him home on Friday (plus we received an extra day b/c of the holiday). It has not been made clear whether we will only have him with us on weekends, or we will have custody of him daily until our adoption decree court date. We dread the idea of taking him back to the HOM to stay, even if it is only temporary. He ate one of the banana bread cookies (Rayna championed that for him), and has no desire to go back to pure nshima. It has not taken us long at all to become attached to the little guy. His 1st day was mostly quiet and mellow. We wonder a little if that was the result of him not being able to really process all that happened so quickly. On Sunday he began to buck the sleeping system a bit. As the days pass we believe he has started to show more comfort with us, and we see more of his personality coming out. His smiles & laughs are more frequent, he plays more often with just one of our kids & has even convinced Mandi & the kids that he can say “ball.”