Zambia

I'm in San Antonio tonight, visiting a dear friend and planning to go to a Photoshop class tomorrow. (Yes, I'll blog stuff about the class.) I was sharing things from the Africa trip. I find myself frustrated by the difficulties that I know people over there are facing. They are people, far, far away. My influence and ability to help is very limited both by geography and by any one person's limited means. So, why does my mind focus on some of these things more than before . . . It's because I've been there. Those people have faces . . . I've talked with them, I've touched them, I've eaten with them . . .

On Sunday, one of the prayer requests came from Zambia to pray for the farmers because the flooding has severely damaged the crops. I emailed my friends . . . most of the maize crops are standing in water . . . pretty much ruining the crop and there is not time left to replant. Maize is the primary crop for the farmers around Namwianga . . . I asked her what would the people do for food . . . the answer is that there are relief agencies that will come in with food. That is a good thing, it is a needed thing . . . but it does not help the people in Zambia with the struggle to be self-sufficient.

And their blog also led me to search for the news articles that are also in the Zambian news right now:

Grocery store burns This is the only grocery store in the province . . . will they be able to rebuild . . . there was not enough infrastructure in place to prevent the total destruction of a needed resource . . .

Utility outages , Zambian Utilities and Zimbabwe issues

Henry had told me about something he read that talked about all of Zimbabwe being without power . . . now it includes all of Zambia . . . I don't think the power was off an extended period of time . . . but . . . another area where insufficient infrastructure makes life more difficult for the people.

And while "rioting" is never a good solution, (note that the people whose property got damaged in the rioting had NOTHING to do with the cause of the problems), I can understand people wanting to make some kind of statement that things need to change. But . . . there needs to be a better way to make progress - wise people need to work together for the good of all Zambians (and all Africans.)