One Tuesday we fly home for a 5 week holiday after an amazing year and a half. It’s been a great experience. Whilst we have encountered some of the toughest months of our lives, we have also found tremendous fulfillment in what we have done.

Chikankata has become our home and we will miss it alot - I never thought I hear myself say that 12 months ago! It's a great place, with great people and difficult to explain unless you visited for yourself - it's just special and now very dear to our hearts!

To our family and friends at home, please forgive us if we…..

Bore you with hundreds of stories and pictures
Tell you how cold it is in the UK and Denmark(it’s been 37 degrees today)
Forget to flush the toilet – we do this twice a day (except No.2’s of course)
Ask you to pray for rain in Zambia – it’s a seriously worrying time
Are late – we’ve got used to “Zambian time”
Keep going on about the poverty here and how poor the hospital is
Tell you how hard the first nine months here was
Shower a lot and use all the hot water
Leave your front door open – ours is open all day, everyday
Question how so many children under 5 die of preventable diseases
Talk about all our friends in Zambia – they are great people
Keep asking you to visit Chikankata – it’s a great place
Want to eat fish and chips or Chinese food for every meal
Ask if you’ve got any Chocolate digestives if you offer us a cup of tea
Stress what a horrible disease HIV/AIDS is
Tell you how low your car is and how good your roads are
Don’t drink any Coca-Cola (the national drink of Zambia)
Read your newspaper or magazines
Ask to borrow some of your CD’s for a short period of time
Discuss with you your idea of ‘community’
Tell you about the past of Chikankata
List all the great people / visitors we have met in 18 months
Ask for a favour of some kind or another for Chikankata
Remind you how fortunate you are to have such a great health service
Tell you how much we have missed our friends and family over the last eighteen months

Thanks to all who have supported us in so many ways over the last 18 months. You have really inspired and encouraged us and we hope our presence here has made a difference in some small way.

We'll see you soon and blog again in January!