Unexpected Trip to Lilayi

Today was a pretty routine day. Morning tutoring was supposed to be Raphel and Sam but they didn’t show up for a while, so it was just Paul. Then Sam came a little late and then Raph came right at the end.

            English also started out pretty late. The ladies seem to come slightly later each day. I think it’s because the schedule is still a bit wacky with Gratsi still going on and we aren’t in our usual location etc. We ended up getting a good turnout though with about 8 ladies coming. We worked a bit more on writing, which was challenging but they did it. I helped Rhoda more one on one with writing. She can comprehend and speak English pretty well so we did the assignment verbally and then she copied it into writing; she’s an awesome speller as well. So she just needed more help putting all the pieces together. And at the end when she got it all done she was so happy and we just shared the biggest high five. It was definitely one of my favorite moments of class so far.

            Afternoon tutoring was Mwandida and Chipo. I had to go ask them to come early today. They keep forgetting that since there’s still no preschool I had asked them to come earlier on those days so we’d get done earlier. It actually was a good thing I went to hunt them down though because Pastor Birner invited us to come along to Lilayi Game Farm with them and Prof. Cherney. So after tutoring we headed over to Birners at about 3:30. By the time we got to Lilayi, it was around 4:30. Lilayi is just outside of Lusaka and is a private game farm; definitely nothing like Luangwa though. It was such a nice lodge though with a beautiful pool. Our game drive guide was named Sonnet. The drive started out slowly…we only saw a few bushbuck. But then it got better. This is what we saw: bushbuck, impala, puku, waterbuck, warthog, duiker, wildebeest, eland and giraffe. We also heard a bush baby calling in the trees but didn’t get to see it. And as a special bonus at the end, we got to see orphaned baby elephants. They are just beginning an elephant rehabilitation program on the game farm so they had 5 baby elephants there that had been orphaned in different ways, several of them due to poaching. The 2 littlest ones were only a few months old and we got to see them getting fed and going to sleep in their stalls. It was so cute! After they nurse these elephants back to health they’ll reintroduce them to Kafue National Park.

            We ate supper at the lodge; I got the chicken kabobs with chips and veggies. It was very delicious!

            We didn’t get home ‘til about 8:45pm and then still had some lesson planning to do. It was quite a long day but so fun.