Minibus Fun on Friday

The fun surprise for us this morning was that we had no power. It’s never gone out before in the morning like this so it was kind of surprising. It’s always bad news for Erika because that means she can’t make her coffee. We also couldn’t shower…gross I know. J

It’s always a toss-up to see which of my tutoring kids will come and when they’ll show up. This morning it was looking like I’d just have Paul but then Jeremiah came and he’s usually Erika’s but she wanted me to have him today, so I took him and he worked on some matching worksheets. He is such a sweet little boy! Then Ndamiwe and Elias ended up coming so I had four boys today. I didn’t bring enough worksheets with me so we just kind of went with the flow and did some of our usual games we do with letters.

After tutoring we did the usual hanging out with the boys on the Moyo’s porch while we waited for the ladies. Stone was babysitting Jeffter so he was there being cute and chubby. He was wearing the most adorable little footy pajamas. He wasn’t scared of me today either! He actually wanted to come by me and play so I was loving that!

We were also surprised today that we only had Regina come for English class. We’re not sure where the other ladies were or if there was some confusion about class. We had decided that we’d still have class today even though we’d promised to give them off to make up for having class on Tuesday’s holiday. However, we know for sure we’ll be gone next week Thursday and Friday so they said they did want to come today just so they’d be getting more class. With all the rearranging our schedules maybe there was some confusion. It’s always fun with Regina though. She likes to stay outside and we like it too. We played the real version of Banangrams with her, which is more like Scrabble, not just using them to test spelling. Regina ended up winning, although we did help her. She seemed to like it. Then Erika had an extra reading comprehension worksheet that she did on Venus. She seemed very interested to learn more about the planets and started asking some great questions. So we’re going to find more information for her online and print stuff up for her.

After class the power was back on so we could shower and "restart" our day. Shortly after lunch around 1:30 we headed into town. The minibus ride on the way there was amazing! We were the first ones on a large bus, the rate was cheaper than it usually is, and we only had one major stop. We were so impressed. Manda Hill was really busy too. There is a festival there starting today and going through the weekend so there were balloons everywhere, face painting, jumping castles, sumo wrestling suits, and carnival people putting on little performances all throughout the mall. It was pretty cool actually. We printed up some pictures first, and then bought some groceries. We’re starting to get things for our farewells and parties we’re going to have in a couple weeks. To finish the shopping experience we had a chocolate dipped ice cream cone before starting the minibus adventure home.

And what an adventure it was. I decided we should be picky on the way back and definitely get a larger bus since we had a lot of grocery bags. The first bus we were beckoned to happened to be the same bus we rode on the way into town but I decided we should not get on it because the only seats left were the fold down ones in the middle and on those ones, every time there’s a stop and people behind you need to get off you need to get up too and basically play musical chairs so they can get off. With all the grocery bags, it’s no fun. So we went to the next bus and I was sure he said it was headed to Chelston. I was mistaken.

We got about 1/3 of the way there and then it took a different turn. Immediately we were wondering what was going on. Turns out it was the Kaunda Square bus. And we kept hearing the call boy (the guy that attracts people to the bus and collects the money) say “Kaunda Square” but since it’s on the way to Chelston we didn’t think too much of it. Well, we definitely were on the wrong bus and ended up in the depths of the compound area of Kaunda Square. It was not very fun. When we reached the last stop that everyone had to get off at we asked the call boy if this bus ever went to Chelston and told him we thought we got on the wrong bus. He was nice and was going to get the driver to drive us back to the Great East Road where we could get a connecting bus but then a taxi driver came and offered us a decent rate so we took that instead. I was glad we did. It was a nice cab and the driver was very nice. It only cost us $6 to get back to  campus and the nice thing about that was we were taken right to our gate so we didn’t have to carry our heavy groceries all the way from the bus stop back home, which is usually a ten minute walk. It was definitely an adventure and kind of funny!

When we got home we popped over to campus quick to see if we could say goodbye to all the pastors who were here for Gratsi since all of them are leaving tonight and early tomorrow morning. No one was around though, so instead we said a quick hello to some of our adorable children.

We’ve been having some more visa issues. I thought that last month we had our official work permits and that everything had been taken care of but it turns out it wasn’t. They still haven’t granted us our permits so as of tomorrow we would have been living her illegally. So Christine headed back to the immigration office today to get it settled, but still wasn’t able to get them. So they granted us another extension, and Dave’s pretty sure we’re never going to get our official ones since they see we only have a couple weeks left here anyway. So strange, but this is Africa.

Supper was rice with salsa, fried potatoes and stir fry while watching the last episode of Friends. We don’t know what we’re going to watch now! The power went out again at the end of supper so now we’re back in candlelight, although the moon is so bright tonight! It probably provides better light than these candles.