Every road has a story

Allow me to reintroduce myself to the Zag family. This is Dominic Mizhi Sandu, many like to call me Fr. D. I am  a long time partner of Gonzaga in Zambezi program going to way back in 2007. Am happy to save some time again to accompany the 2019 team and share with them the Zambia hospitality because of the bearing the leadership program has offered to my personal life. 

Today the 19th May, 2019  our journey begun at 07:00 hours from Eureka Farm Camp that hosted Zag team us for our very first night in Zambia. Eureka was a place warm enough to soothe the motion sickness that just need a bed to sleep in order to regain the energy to traverse the African soil and roads.  It took us nearly nine house to travel from Lusaka to Livingstone, a journey that should only take 6-7 hours.

Traveling on a public bus has many conditions especially how one express his or her faith, but on this trip our bus host Mr. Nkoma invited one of the passengers  to offer a prayer for a safe journey. One of the Zags offered to pray and even when she was not loud enough for every person on the bus to hear, the host summed up for us saying,”if you were not praying along then you’re were traveling alone on the full bus.” Our journey was a journey of faith and we are grateful to God for the traveling mercies.

We were almost getting used to the sleeping on the bus, and the potholes on the Zambia roads, when the host woke us up to an announcement about a break down. What came to my mind first was the thought of a tyre puncture but it was not.  The fan belt of the Marcopolo bus had cut and the driver and the host were resolved to replacing it with a new fan belt.

We began to explore the options for ‘plan b’ for travel,  recognizing that we were in the middle of Lusaka and Livingstone cites.  The only option left was to exercise patience. Despite the effort to fix the new fan belt,  the driver and the host of the bus struggled to put it in its right place.

We had many ‘bush automotive engineers’ but they all failed.  Dr. Josh Armstrong, who’s not known for his automotive insights, was asked to offer them his iPhone to help “google the solution” on how to fix a fan belt on Marcopolo bus.

Wisdom tells us never, ever under estimate any person that we have met for the very first time. The person that helped fix the bus was actually a humble passenger that came to our aid and helped the driver to repair the bus. Thankfully google machine and the passenger repaired the bus. One other lesson I learnt from the bus experience is be good to people I meet on the road because they may be of help to me at some point or the other as the saying goes, “stranger is only a friend you don’t know.”

The break on the bus had taken close to two hours. The trip after the breakdown became even more enjoyable– the noisy tv was switched off, people begun to talk freely to one another. Many  fellow passengers slept peacefully until we reached Choma town. when most passengers were asleep the man who helped repaired the bus disembarked at Choma without even thanking him.

The story of this experience has just opened our awareness process of this journey we has just embarked on in Zambia. We know we shall be here as a team but we do not know each other giftedness when it may be applied to help the Zambezi Zag team.  Thank you entrusting your loved ones to this country – we look forward to the next journey and lessons.

Dominic Sandu