2010 November « To Zambia and Beyond

Archive for November, 2010

Egypt and Returning Home

November 24, 2010

After spending one year in Zambia and travelling throughout Southern Africa for two and a half months it is nice to be in our home town of Spokane, Washington. Our last stop, prior to flying back to the US, was Egypt where spent four days in Cairo, with Ben and Emily Robinson. Ben is a PCUSA minister working at an Anglican Church in Cairo while Emily is a nurse at the American Embassy. It was great to be with friends and to see their life and ministry in Cairo. We were also thankful to have local hosts to show us around Cairo, a massive city of 20 million people. We first went to Coptic Cairo and visited some of the oldest churches in the world. With Ben and Emily, we wandered the old narrow streets of Islamic Cairo and climbed to the top of several minarets. These beautiful structures were fun to explore and provided incredible views of the city. We also visited the Egyptian Museum, the famous pyramids of Giza as well as the Sakkara and Dashur pyramids.

From Cairo, we traveled six hours to the Sinai Peninsula and climbed Mt. Sinai. At 1:00 p.m., we began our hike up the old pilgrimage trail and along the way visited a 4^th century hermit cave and church. At about 5:00 p.m., we arrived at Elijah’s Basin, our camp site about 40 minutes from the top of Mt. Sinai. We had a delicious fire side dinner under the stars and went to bed at 8:00 p.m. We woke up at 4:30 a.m. and started our hike to the summit, along with hundreds of other people also making there way to the top. The sun rose at about 6:00 a.m. and we enjoyed a beautiful morning in the presence of God. There are debates as to if this mountain is the actual Mt. Sinai spoken of in the Old Testament, but regardless we felt blessed to be in the same area that Moses and the Israelites encountered God’s presence thousands of years ago. After descending Mt. Sinai, down the steps of repentance (3000 steps), we took a tour of oldest working Christian monastery, St. Catherines. Built in the 6^th century, St Catherines was constructed around the supposed site of the burning bush and also contained the Sinaticus, one of the oldest Greek manuscripts of the Bible.

The last day and a half of our trip was spent relaxing on the beach next to the Red Sea in Sharm el Sheikh. As I sit at my dad’s house in Spokane, Washington looking out to about four inches of snow it is hard to believe that I was snorkeling in the Red Sea just one week ago. k

Spokane is a familiar place with familiar faces, so we haven’t yet experienced too much of the “cultural shock” that is expected. However, here are a few “shocking” observations from the past week. It’s cold! (13 degrees at 3:00pm); seeing a drinking fountain in the airport; not sleeping under a mosquito net; driving on the right hand side of the road; not using a plug in adapter for our electronics; in a hotel room in Seattle I found myself looking around for bugs and cockroaches; a local news story about a lady rescuing ferrets seemed a bit bizarre!

We are so happy to be back home with our friends and family in Spokane, with whom we will celebrate Thanksgiving. We are also looking forward to next week when we’ll see our friends at MAPC, in New York. This Thanksgiving we are ever grateful for the year we spent in Zambia and for the last two and a half months we spent travelling throughout Southern Africa. We had an incredible trip and we will continue to reflect on this experience for the rest of our lives (our 15,000 pictures will help with this process). Thank you all for all of your prayers and encouragement and we wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

The Anglican Church where Ben works

Yes, there is a truck under there

Satelite dishes in Garbage City

Downtown Cairo at sunset

The bent pyramid in Dashur

The pyramids at Giza

The Sphynx

View from the minerets in downtown Cairo

The minarets we climbed in Islamic Cairo

Downtown Cairo

Ben, Emily, Erin, and I in downtown Cairo

Erin climbing over to the hermit cave

A 4th century hermit cave

Our camp site on Mt. Sinai

Mt. Sinai at Sunrise

Sunrise on Mt. Sinai

St. Catherines Monastary at the base of Mt. Sinai

The "burning bush" looking good for being thousands of years old

Our last day in Sharm el Sheikh

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The Island of Madagascar

November 11, 2010

When we moved to Zambia, fifteen months ago, we knew four people on the entire continent. I find it incredible that for the past nine weeks we have been hosted by eleven families, one of which we knew prior to arriving on the African continent. To further put this in context we have stayed in fifteen hostels/hotels since leaving Zambia meaning that over forty percent of the time we were being hosted people we had never met before. I told the Dimmocks who live in Lesotho that we may never be able to return their hospitality, but will show the generosity they showed to us to those we host in the future.

The Asukile family hosted us while in Madagascar and once again we were humbled by incredible hospitality. The Asukiles are Zambians working for Christian World Mission, formerly known as the London Mission Society. Hilda teaches English in various settings, leads Bible studies, occasionally preaches and is one of those people who exudes the joy of Christ in a way that makes you want to be around her all the time. Her equally wonderful husband, Jeff, works for the Church of Jesus Christ of Madagascar (FJKM), in their disaster relief department helping communities recover post cyclone. With the Asukiles, we visited the FJKM headquarters, met others from around the world working with the Madagascar church and overall gained an understanding of what God is doing in this beautiful country.

We spent our first few days in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar, and found the city to be quite enjoyable. Although Madagascar is a part of the African continent its culture is very different from other African countries we have visited. In fact, if someone were to have blindfolded and flown me to Madagascar when the blindfold was removed I would not have guessed I was in Africa, but rather somewhere in Indonesia. We wound our way through the narrow streets, sampled local Malagasy fare, perused a few museums and bought our fair share of beautiful Malagasy baskets.

Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, has flora and fauna indigenous only to Madagascar. Perhaps the most famous is the lemur; a primate that to me looks like a cross between a koala bear and monkey. We visited a zoo in Antananarivo and saw some of these fascinating animals; however the highlight was trekking through the rainforest in Andisabe National Park spotting the lemurs in their natural habitat as they jumped, or in some cases flew, from tree to tree. A definite highlight of our travels thus far!

The last four days of our time in Madagascar were spent on Ile Aux Nattes. Off the coast of Madagascar rests the island of Saint Marie with the smaller island, Ile Aux Nattes, lying about 150 yards to the south accessible only by pirogue; a small, hand dug out canoe. Picture untouched white sandy beaches lined with palm and coconut trees giving way to sparkling clear blue water, and you’ll get a small picture of where we soaked up the sun for a few days. Upon arrival, I ordered a pina colada. The bartender subsequently said, “It will be a short wait. I have to get a coconut and squeeze the milk from it in order to make your drink.” I said, “NO PROBLEM!!!” The gracious owner of the hotel was a South African man named Ockie who looked like a pirate and was a devote Christian. We had some great theological discussions with him and were entertained by him feeding the three lemurs who always hung around the hotel. While I was sleeping in our room I almost had a close encounter with a lemur as it jumped on to the window sill and was about to leap into our room. Brent was watching this happen and was torn between scaring the lemur away and wanting to get a picture, thankfully (for his sake), he managed both.

We are currently in Cairo, Egypt with our good friends Ben and Emily Robinson. Ben is an associate pastor at an Anglican Church and Emily is a nurse at the U.S. embassy. We have seen their life and ministry here and visited most of the great sites in Cairo. Tomorrow we head to the Sinai Peninsula to climb Mt. Sinai, take in St. Catherine’s Monastery, and spend a night on the southern tip of the Sinai Penninsula. We will have much more on Egypt in our next post and on Monday, November 15^th, we return home after fifteen months on the beautiful, paradoxical, diverse continent that we have come to love.