A Hot and Crazy Day!

Today started out pretty peaceful. We both slept in ‘til 8am. I got up and showered right away, and then made breakfast, and Erika did the opposite. When we were all ready to go, we relaxed and read for a little bit and then Mr. Zulu stopped by to deliver a loaf of bread he picked up for us. He is such a kind and funny man! I really get along with his personality and sense of humor. Erika and I had wanted to go around campus and take pictures of ourselves—nicer ones that we could use on our blogs or profile pictures or whatever. So we started out on our leisurely stroll and on the driveway we met Pastor Sargent who said he was heading into town if we wanted to catch a ride. We were planning on doing that after we took pictures, but since he was offering now we decided to switch plans. We went back to the house to grab our modems, money and purses and then headed into town. Along the way he pointed out the places we need to go when we caught a minibus back.

We stopped first at the Arcade Mall, more like a strip mall, because that’s where Pastor Sargent’s first stop was. We first went to Airtel to try to fix Erika’s phone which hasn’t been able to receive any calls. However, her battery was dead and the guy said he couldn’t fix it unless he could turn it on. But we were still successful because we topped up our modems with 2GB, so that should last us much longer. We also got some more cash out of the ATM; after trying about 4 different ATMs we finally found one that could give us some money. Since Erika needed some passport pictures taken for her visa we had to go over to the Manda Hill mall. It wasn’t too far of a walk there from the Arcade Mall. The fun part was crossing the busy highway with no crosswalk. We found the place where Erika could get her pictures taken. It was really inexpensive and she got a ton of them, not just 2. She only had to wait 10 minutes. Makes me wish I would have gotten mine here too. I definitely paid more in the States, waited longer, and only got 2 pictures. Oh well. While we were waiting for the pictures to get printed, we went over to Woolworth’s and browsed around. It kind of felt like we were in a smaller scale version of Kohl’s. I also happened to notice that I had missed 2 calls on my cell phone. So I called Dee back and she informed me that Charity, the preschool teacher, was sick today and asked if we’d be willing to teach it. It was very out of the blue, and we have not even observed in the preschool, so we didn’t know what we were going to do, but I agreed.

It was 11:30am at this point and preschool starts at 1:00pm. So we headed out of the mall right away and went to the minibus stop. The first person who waved us down was going right to Chelston, so that was easy! We climbed in the bus and got the back seat. We weren’t sure how much to pay. We had heard from most people that a ride that long would cost about K3,500 which is less than a dollar. Other people started passing money forward to the money guy, so I did the same. The smallest bill I had was a K5,000 so I passed it forward and asked if he had change. He had no idea what I said and just kept the money. However, Erika didn’t pass anything forward. The guy must’ve thought I was paying for both of us, and never asked us for any more money. So both of us rode back home for less than a buck. Talk about cheap transportation. And we were never that squished either. At the most, there were only 4 of us on the back seat at a time. We got dropped off a little ways from campus so had to walk the rest of the way back, but it was a nice little walk and we didn’t have any troubles finding our way. J

We got home and ate PB&Js quickly and started thinking about what on earth we were going to teach in half an hour. Pastor Kawiliza also stopped by to welcome us to Zambia. He had been sick the past few days so that’s why we hadn’t met him before. He is a very nice man. He also told us that they’re going to have a little welcoming service for us in the chapel on campus on Monday morning. So that should be really nice.

I piled some of the Early Childhood supplies I brought with me into plastic bags and then we started to head over to the preschool classroom. We have a little back gate in our courtyard that leads right out back to the preschool. There was a padlock on it so I was trying to yank it out since it was rather stuck when all of a sudden I felt a piercing pain on my right toes. Let me tell you, I hardly even remember what happened next--my body just went into auto-pilot. There was a swarm of those huge ants right under my feet and they were crawling on my toes biting the living day lights out of them. I think I would have been funny to watch because I yelled “OUCH!” and started kicking my leg wildly. My flip-flop went flying and I started running toward the stones and grass, stones went flying too. Finally I looked down and didn’t see any more ants on me but I had definitely upset them. There was a huge swarm of them and they were mad—they were making noise, like a buzzing sound almost. I’m usually not a wimp when it comes to things like this, but my foot HURT!! Erika went and told Anne what happened, and she said I’d be ok, but my toes would probably start itching, and she said the itching can last for up to a week. She very nicely let me use some of her anti-itch cream. Well after that slight delay, Anne finished opening the back gate for us and said she’d probably throw a pot of boiling water down on the ant nest. She said she’s been too nice to those ants lately but now they have to pay.

We got into the preschool room, which was quite small and just thought to ourselves, “now what?” I suggested that we start with letters and chants for ½ hour, then read stories and sing songs for ½ hour, then play some games and then let them have free play for the last ½ hour. This was the true meaning of the phrase ‘make it up as you go along.’ It was very hard because not many of them knew any English words at all—so just the basic communication was difficult. Also, we were brand new teachers, muzungus and we had no idea what their usual routine was. As they started trickling in, we tried to get names down. Most of these kids we had seen before when we played with them the other day, but it was still tricky getting all of their names. Then when it seemed like most of them were there they just spontaneously burst into an alphabet chant they had already learned. After that I used the mini white board I brought and went around writing each of their names and trying to have them figure out what letter their names started with. Then I pulled out some letter flashcards and did those for a while. There were some very rambunctious boys and it’s hard to try to manage them when they don’t know what you are saying. I tried some techniques from the MLC center—doing the sign language symbol for “stop” (they liked that and started copying me), we played the imitation game and copycat. Then we decided it was time to move on. We split the groups in 2 so they were more manageable and Erika went into the other room with hers. I read a couple of books to my group. The first one was a Barney and Baby Bop book. I know it was probably not the most relatable to the kids but they loved looking at the pictures and we just tried identifying different things in the pictures like toothbrush and moon and bed etc. The 2^nd book I read was a book I had made for one of my Early Childhood classes at MLC. It was meant for toddlers, but it worked so well here too! It was the simplest book—pictures of fruit and the word. Who would have guessed back when I was assigned to make that book at MLC that I would one day be using it in Africa? After reading, we changed locations again and this time I sang some songs with my group. We sang Old MacDonald, 5 Little Monkeys, The Hokey Pokey and Ten in the Bed (even acting that one out). They loved these songs, even though I’m not sure they knew what I was even saying. My hope is that if we do enough of them repeatedly, they’ll pick up on the words. After some songs we went outside for some games of Ring around the Rosy and Duck Duck Goose. Then we game together as a whole group again and I taught them What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? I would say that this last game was the most successful! Everyone loved it and probably could have kept playing for hours. We even invited some of the older kids who were watching us to come and play. After this we just let them have some free play time, so they got toys and balls and cards and just played for a while. I think overall, everything went OK. We definitely felt overwhelmed the majority of the time. It’ll be interesting once we know what their actual routine is and how Charity normally handles behavior issues. It’s always hard as a teacher to think your lessons flopped or you didn’t do as good of a job as you hoped and that’s kind of how we feel. I’m sure it will be better once we know more what the routine is like. It was still so wonderful to see those kids smile and laugh!

We got back to the guest house and pretty much crashed. We were tired and extremely hot. It was nice to catch up on our blogs a bit and relax before our walk at 4:30pm. We forgot that it’s Lent and there are Wednesday evening services, so our walk was quite a bit shorter. We just met up with Mrs. Birner and took a quick walk down the road and back—maybe only 20 minutes or so. It was still nice to talk and be outside. The short walk gave us time to get ready for church. It was nice to go to Bethel church on campus today for the first time. The singing was a capella but there were nice harmonies added. We used the old Lutheran hymnals and they were originally from North Mankato. Small world. At the end of the service we shook hands with the pastor, then joined the line, shaking hands until everyone had greeted everyone.

We came home to our dinner waiting for us. Pasta with a beef stew type thing, cooked cabbage and eggplant. I have never had eggplant before, but it was delicious! There was also some left-over nsima that Anne had made for Pastor Sargent but I wasn’t brave enough to eat any today.

We finally did some lesson planning tonight! I can’t explain how much better we feel about all of the teaching stuff now. It’s like any big project you start—the hardest part is just getting started. Once you get the ball rolling, the ideas keep coming. We have a pretty good handle on the first week of English teaching. We’re doing a kitchen theme: items you find in a kitchen, verbs related to kitchen work and we have a ton of games and worksheet ideas. But I’ll post more information about that as we teach it. Now we’re just curious to see if our plans match ability levels, since we don’t really have a good idea of where these ladies are at yet, as far as English speaking goes. So our teaching flexibility will probably be in full swing next week!