Having grown up in Alaska, with its challenging date line, I’m no stranger to unusual halachic shailos. However, life in Zambia has given us the opportunity to find our own.
We had to ask a rav what kind of non-kosher food we’d be allowed to buy, because it’s impossible to ignore the dozens of children, stretching out their hands, begging for food everywhere you go.
Like other countries in Africa, we’ve been dealing with an electricity shortage. The entire grid is shut down for increasingly long periods, and it’s been a difficult adjustment. Our Chabad house across from our home has a hospitality suite for Jewish businessmen. It’s beautifully furnished, but without electricity, our guests often have to come over to shower, charge their phones, and survive the heat. In the near future, we hope to have a generator for the Chabad House so we can establish our first Jewish preschool, opening with two children - ours.
One of the biggest challenges we’ll face is our children’s chinuch. They are still young, and Alef Beis books and videos of the Rebbe are all they need, but soon they’ll be school aged. I’m a graduate of online school myself and am very grateful for the education and virtual social life they provide, but knowing that my children will have to leave home at a young age is hard. Even now my toddler understands that his friends in Zambia are not quite in his world, they don’t know his pesukim and niggunim, and he definitely feels a lack.
Shlichus in sub-Saharan Africa certainly has its challenges, but it is the greatest joy to be here carrying out the Rebbe’s vision, and simply the best gift I can give to my children.
