African Journey

A view of Matopos Park in what was then Southern Rhodesia, today known as Zimbabwe

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In 1966, my husband and I boarded a freighter and sailed for 18 days across the Atlantic Ocean to Capetown, South Africa. We arrived in the middle of winter, and stayed in a missionary rest house that had little heating and a very interesting landlady! Our two 50-gallon oil drums, filled with wedding gifts and supplies for the next two years, got lost somewhere in transit and we needed to await the arrival of a VW Kombi-Bus we were assigned to drive 1400 miles north to the small town of Choma, Zambia.

So we spent one week on our own in this beautiful port city near the Cape of Good Hope. We got just a small taste of apartheid while we were there, something we were convinced could never be changed without violence and bloodshed. God had other ideas and a faithful servant in Nelson Mandela.

Zambia was a brand-new nation, four years old when we arrived. And we were newlyweds, embarking on an adventure. For two years, we lived and worked at a Secondary Boarding School for students in the Southern Province of the country. It was a life-changing experience on more levels than I can possibly count.

We returned home in the summer of 1968, with a 5 month old daughter, and a lifetime of memories. These pages will tell the story of that time, as best I remember it now, so many years later.

My grandson, Joel Fischinger, scanned our 572 slides from that time so that I can access them for this purpose.

Thanks, Joel.

I look forward to putting some of these stories down in writing – hopefully my grandkids will enjoy them someday.