Family

Editor’s Note: I found this almost-written, unposted post in my blogger account today under the date of August 1, 2009. Since I haven’t gotten around to writing about our summer travels yet, I thought I’d post this one. Since it was written, however, the fourth Dewbury baby has been born: Ethan. He’s as adorable and loved as his older siblings.

Living in different country from your family makes visits extra special. The reason we went to Zambia in the first place was to spend some time with my sister Alicia and her family this summer, since they were planning on being there during our entire visit to Canada. She and Ben have 3 incredible children (and a fourth on the way!) who enjoyed showing us all around the various parts of Zambia that they've become so familiar with.

Alex, who decided she would go by the name Alexa while in Zambia, is our oldest niece. She joined the grade three class at the base school where she was thriving. School ran from about 8:30 until 1:00, and she would spend the afternoons doing homework and playing with her friends. On week days, we wouldn't see her from the time we dropped her off at the base until the ride back to the guest house.


We got to see more of Levi, our six-year-old nephew. Although he completed kindergarten in Alberta, it wasn't recommended that he join the grade 1 class at the base. So he would attend preschool on the days that Alicia volunteered there, and the other days he would roam around, hanging out with his adult friends and entertaining himself.

Avery, whom we hadn't seen since she was 6 months old, turned two in Zambia, so it was like we were meeting her for the first time. We loved learning to decipher her words and laughing at her mannerisms. Unfortunately she was suffering from the lingering effects of a parasite, but overall she was happy and bubbly and extremely entertaining!


Some of our most memorable moments in Zambia were related to these kids:

• Having learned that geckos who lose their tails will grow new ones, Levi decided to conduct an experiment. He cut the tail off a gecko with a stick. When we asked him why he did it, he said, "I wanted to see if it would grow another gecko."



• One evening Alicia and Avery were singing. We went through a couple of songs and then the grownups couldn't think of any more songs. So Alicia asked Avery what song she wanted to sing and she suggested "Twinkle". After signing Twinkle, the question was posed again. The response was “Twinkle”. When Alicia said to choose a *different* song, Avery cocked her head to the side, put a finger to her mouth, looked at the ceiling (as if she were thinking really hard) and said, “Ummmmmmmmmm…Twinkle!”



• At least 2 of the kids’ birthdays fell during the time the family was in Zambia. On their birthdays, the people at the guest house made a special cake for them to celebrate. Uncle Darren’s 34th birthday also happened to occur while we were there. Levi found out about this and made Darren a birthday card with his grownup friend Anine – incidentally the only present Darren received this year! Levi also announced at breakfast, “Today is Uncle Darren’s birthday! He’s 43!” and then turned a bright red with embarrassment when we laughed and said, “No, no, he’s only 34!” The embarrassment didn’t last for long because Levi sensed an opportunity and replied, “Uncle Darren, if you tell them it’s your birthday they’ll make you a cake,” not realizing that was something special they only did for kids.

When we weren't enjoying our family, we got to know and tried to help out the other folks who live on the base and work for Foundations for Cross-Cultural Education (FCE). Darren spent most of his days painting with Ben and I helped out at the preschool whenever Alicia was scheduled to work there. We learned about sustainable development in Zambia thorugh our visits at "the farm" and about hospitality from the folks at the guest house. Before meeting up with our family and FCE, Darren and I enjoyed the wild, touristy aspects of Zambia, which was also interesting.

It was definitely a valuable three weeks of our lives, and included the greatest range of experiences we could think of: adventure, education, service and relationship-building.