Zambia : City Life

This week was cultural overload! I was placed with a national partner and another girl here learning as well. We travel everyday taing 2 mini buses (at one point crammed with 19 ppl) to a compund. A compound is like a community of people wo live in shanty houses some with no electricity. Each day we are given assignment to research and observe the cultural in this setting. My national partner grew up and lives at this compound. We talk mostly with women. They are tending to children and house work. The hardest day was sitting with a mother and her son in their home. The 8 year old boy at sicle cell anemia. He is unable to go to school and the mom can barely pay her hospital bills. So ok yes my heart breaks for the diease... but my heart breaks more due to the "lack of faith" this mother thinks she has due to her sons illness. Yes, you read right, she feels like her sin has casued this and if she had more faith, her son will be healed. We shared with her the story of Paul and how he asked 3 times for the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh but God chose not to. He didnt lack faith, just the God saw greater glory in his pain. She didnt ever quite grasp this concept. Im learning there is a catergory for everything in an Africans mind. There's gotta be a reason. But I mean, Job's friends thought this and even the disciples thought this with the blind man.... so this is nothing new.