Picture Day

Today started off like every other day: shower, breakfast, catching up on zillion Facebook notifications I get from Dave commenting on my pictures, and getting things ready for our first tutoring session. Erika’s girls showed up at 8 and a little after 8 but my boys never came. I was supposed to have Raphel and Sam today. I think that because last week Thursday was a holiday and they only came once that week for tutoring, they got confused this week. It’s my fault. Last time I should have reminded them when they were coming next.

I putzed around the house and found a way to occupy my unexpected free hour and a half. To mix up my reading of Jane Eyre, I’m also reading a book that U. Ernie gave me when we were over at their house the other night. It’s the book he wrote for his dissertation entitled Poceza m’Madzulo (Evening Story Time). A man named Julius Chongo used to do a radio program on Zambia Broadcasting Services where he presented and narrated stories. These stories are old village tales usually with morals attached. What U. Ernie did was tape these radio broadcasts, which were all in Nyanja (one of the Bantu dialects) and translated them into English. His book has each tale in Nyanja first, with each sentence numbered, and then he includes the English translation, also with numbered sentences. It’s such a cool way to do it, because you can compare the sentences to see how he translated it. Sentence number 1 in the Nyanja version is sentence number 1 in the English version. His book is the first of its kind and is being used as one of the primary texts at the University of Zambia for Oral Literature. Not only is it very interesting to read some traditional Zambian folklore, but it’s amazing to see how gifted my uncle is. I had the idea that maybe we could even use this book in English class with the ladies. I think Erika’s group might try using it. I know she’s starting to do some traditional American fairy tales with them, so this might be a good complement to that. They can read the Nyanja version of the tale first and see how much they can translate into English themselves. Or they can use it to compare the Nyanja to English. I’m not sure yet if it will work or not, but it’s kind of a neat idea nonetheless. I just think back to when I was learning Latin or German. A big part of learning the language was taking a Latin sentence or paragraph and figuring out what the words would be in English. You’re comparing the unknown language with your native language. Since neither Erika nor I know Chichewa or Nyanja, we have no way to let these ladies compare English to their own language, so having this book might be something useful.

English went really well today. We started off with our hymn and prayer, which has become a nice routine to start the day. In our small groups we went over homework first, where they had to pick a family member and describe him or her. Two were brave enough to try and they did a perfect job! All that worrying for nothing! Bertha described her husband and Doris described her daughter. I was very happy they understood. And for the ladies that thought it was too difficult, these two examples were the model. I think everyone is doing just fine! After yesterday’s lesson I was feeling bad for giving them so much grammar so today was “review day!” I had a worksheet for each aspect of grammar we’ve learned so far: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. We only got through the nouns and verbs worksheet. This is showing me that even though I think they have something down, review, review, review. The more they have practice and review, the more they will remember. The noun worksheet had three columns: person, place, thing and a word bank with different nouns at the bottom. They had to put the noun into the correct column. I thought this would be very easy, but I think it was just the right amount of challenging. It was also a good way to learn some new vocab: rock, cloud, singer etc. The verb worksheet had 10 sentences and they had to circle the action verb. We also identified the nouns in the sentence too, since we just reviewed that.

At the end of class we played Bananagrams to help with spelling. They worked in partners, I would give them body part words and they would have to spell them. They loved it! So did I. I asked them if they enjoyed working with the Bananagrams tiles and they said yes, they were having so much fun! Plus, they’re working on spelling, so it’s a win win situation.

When we got back, Anne had some maize prepared for us. So we had three mini cobs of maize as a pre-lunch snack. Lunch was then our usual PB&Js, but for some variety we had them on toast!

Preschool today was a little bit different. Charity was there and the atmosphere was so different. The children had their regular routine, so things just seemed a lot easier. Plus, Charity could speak in Chichewa to them, so they cooperated better. Since she was back, they did their regular routine, starting out indoors with devotion and learning a letter. We have a new game plan for next week now. Since we could finally talk to Charity about how she does things, we have a better understanding of their routine. We’re going to start indoors, and Charity is still going to come at the beginning to have a devotion, since they can understand her. Then we’ll split into groups—the higher level kids have little workbooks they do, and the lower level kids can color and draw etc. Then we’ll do a bunch of the songs, games and finger plays that we’ve been teaching them, and then finish with free play. We feel a lot better now that we have this sorted out, so it’ll be interesting to see how next week goes. Today when I read stories, Charity translated after each page. It’s amazing how much more they pay attention when they actually understand what you’re saying. They even clapped after each story. They also loved “Old McDonald” today because I brought out some popsicle stick puppets I made as a prop for one of my stories when I was student teaching. They loved those! So we’ll have to keep doing that.

After preschool my afternoon tutoring group was Chipo and Mwandida—my ladies group J. Today as our special treat we took the mat out and sat under a shade tree. We had fun identifying parts of the body again, and playing with the Bananagram tiles. As much as I love these girls, they are almost my most challenging group because they’re too old to just do the ABCs all the time, but they really don’t understand anything I say to them in English. I really want to teach them things and really want them to succeed and learn but right now I feel like I’m not teaching them as well as I could be. So any help would be welcome J.

Yesterday I told my ladies I was going to come around to their houses at 4pm to take a family picture. So Erika and I started making the rounds at about 4:45pm. I got a little late start, and felt badly for making them wait. It was so awesome doing this little thing for them and seeing how happy they were and how seriously they took it. They got dressed up in their best clothes for their pictures. We’re hoping there’s a place in town to print pictures. It’s something so simple—giving them a family picture—but they are so appreciative. I am very excited to give them this little gift! It was also nice for us because we could finally put families together in our minds—which husbands go with which wives and who their children are.

We ate supper on the tables outside: beef and mashed potatoes and salad, while watching an episode of Friends. We’re so excited that tomorrow is Friday! Since we didn’t go through half of what I had prepared for English today, we’ll do the other half tomorrow. So that means hardly any planning for me tonight!