Rachel King, October 2006 
It is hard to sum up the experiences of a new country and culture in one article. How can I adequately describe the sights, sounds and smells of a place that is so different from the UK?
From November 2005 to September 2006 I was working in Zambia at Mukinge Hospital as the hospital physio. The mission hospital is based in North-western Province and serves the Kaonde people of Zambia.
It was an amazing time, which God used to change my outlook and opinion on a lot of different areas of my life. While the actual physio work was challenging and very diverse, I feel that I learnt a lot of things that were not necessarily to do with that role. It was a time that God challenged me and provoked me to really reassess what my priorities are.
One of the areas that God really brought to light was that of poverty and its knock-on effects. While the Kaonde people are subsistence farmers and tend to have regular food, if the rains came late, the harvest would also be late and families would be hungry. But for me, the main area that I witnessed the effect of poverty was hospital resources.
It never got easier seeing people become sick and sometimes die from conditions that can be more readily treated in the West with the drugs and equipment available there. I often asked God why, but I learnt to trust His ways are sovereign and that He is always in control. There were many times that God provided a surgeon when we needed one and no surgical patients when we had no way to operate. I learnt to thank Him for those times that He came through for us in a practical way.
We were based in a very rural area of Zambia, which meant that there was time in the evenings to try to digest the day. This was an important thing to be able to do as each new day brought something to think about, either something that happened in the hospital or something cultural that is hard to translate into British culture.
Although I have very positive memories about my time in Zambia, it was not without its frustrations. Even after I had been there a while and was beginning to feel like I understood the culture, there would be something that would arise that I would not understand when looking at it through my ‘British eyes’! God patiently taught me the meaning of the saying, ‘It’s not wrong, it’s not right, it’s just different’!
One of my fondest memories is that of a six year old boy named Gift. He was born with club feet that had never been treated. Shortly before I arrived, a visiting orthopaedic surgeon did corrective surgery to one of his feet. After the surgery is when all the physio ‘fun’ starts. Little Gift had to endure multiple manipulations and plaster changes to get the best out of the surgery.
One day, when he had been put into a walking cast, it was time for him to learn how to walk with the plaster on. We practised using wooden bars and he did a really great job. The next day, he was a little hesitant. When we asked him why, he told us that when he practised yesterday there was a little boy at the end watching everything that he did. What Gift did not realise was that the boy was himself, reflected in a mirror at the end of the wooden bars! It was times like those that will always stay in my mind!
So, how do I sum up the experiences of a new country and culture? Zambia to me will always be the smiling faces and greetings from the people that I walked past on the dusty roads. It will be the mothers walking with small children strapped to their backs and bundles of sticks precariously balanced on their heads. It is the smell of wood fires in the villages and the sound of goats tied to the back of bicycles for transport. It is the memory of the people that I will always look on as the family that God provided for me in Mukinge.
Please join me in prayer for God’s continued provision of resources and medical staff for Mukinge Hospital.
