Our First Sad Goodbye

This morning Dalitso came for tutoring, but no Gertrude. So I had a bunch of different things for Dalitso to choose from. He chose a fill in the blank worksheet, a reading comprehension sheet and the same map work we did with the ladies in English. It was a fun morning. He brought his baby brother Chisomo along so while Dalitso was working on his sheets I got to play with cute little Chisomo. At the end of the morning we had another photo shoot with the boys. The camera is seriously their favorite toy. We got some gems of pictures out of the photo shoot.

For English, I took my group back to the guest house area because Erika and I were doing different lessons, and at the Moyo’s house the classroom is just too small for both of us. With my ladies we read about 6 different reading comprehension passages and answered questions about them. It was kind of fun because this is the first time we’ve done something like this. Rhoda and Bertha especially seemed to enjoy it. At the end of class we played a game where I wrote down a bunch of the vocabulary words we’ve learned these past 3 months and put them in a plastic bag. Then the ladies had to draw out a word and describe it so the other ladies could guess what it was. They all complained it was too difficult but they all did such a great job! It was a proud teacher moment for me hearing them talk in English, even though it was broken English.

After class was lunch and I made a fried egg and avocado sandwich. It was delish. I also wasted time sorting out the zillions of pictures we’ve taken since we’ve been here. They were all combined together in my computer folders and I wanted to categorize them. Fun, I know.

This afternoon Shadreck and Pimbi both came so we did a couple worksheets and then played our usual flashcard game. Even though we always do the same things, I do see improvement in what they know in just a few short months. Another proud moment of my adorable, smart children. Of course, having these two made for a hyper afternoon. Shadreck is always jumping around and standing on the table and just being crazy. His craziness rubs off on sweet little Pimbi, so Pimbi burst out in random screams and vocalizations. It was pretty crazy and they just make me laugh.

Straight from afternoon tutoring, we called Mrs. Birner and headed into town to go grocery shopping for our camping trip. It was very successful and made us very excited for tomorrow.

When we got home we headed over to Anne’s. Unfortunately, we found out that Anne is going on vacation tomorrow and won’t be back before we leave. She totally deserves a holiday after all the hard work she’s done the past 3 weeks. For us, that means we had to say goodbye earlier than we were expecting. So we gave her a picture and a card as we sat on a mat in her backyard. Sarah was also there, so got to witness our tears. I didn’t think I would cry, but who was I fooling? There were definitely tears and hugs. It was hard. This was probably only a taste of what is to come… L

For supper we had spaghetti and chicken with veggies.

Then we packed for our camping trip and headed over for some TV. We had some great episodes of Say Yes to the Dress.

We’re getting up early tomorrow to head to Kafue and we’re not bringing computers, so the blogging will cease for a couple days.

Final Preschool

This morning we started out with English, and we had 5 ladies come. We had a hodge-podge worksheet put together focusing on reading comprehension, verb tense, sentence correction and writing prompts. They did very well. Dee even came toward the end just to watch us teach.

After English we went to the tents for tutoring, but none of our kids came. I think since they’ve started a new term, the kids’ schedules have changed so that’s going to affect out last few days of tutoring. We’ll just have to go with the flow.

So because of no tutoring, we had an extended lunch hour. We had PB&Js and fresh oranges from the tree. I even took a little cat nap before heading over for preschool.

It was strange having preschool again today—it’s seemed like ages since we last did preschool. We stayed together today, doing our usual chants and songs and we made Mother’s Day cards for all the kids’ moms for Sunday. They did such a great job of coloring their pictures. We also took a picture with the kids that we’re going to give as a gift at our farewell party next week. We’re pretty sure this was our final day of preschool teaching. We’ll be gone on Thursday, and then next week Tuesday we’ll be getting ready to leave.

After preschool Mwandida came for tutoring. She told me Chipo was at school, so her schedule must have changed as well. Mwandida did some wonderful work with reading. It was kind of nice to have her one on one. Erika had a random combination of her tutoring boys, so we eventually combined our groups and played some games.

After tutoring we had volleyball, where my team won the majority of the games. I love having Vicar Moyo on my team because he is the most encouraging, optimistic player we have. Even when we’re down by so much he says “Now we go!” or “it’s ok, it happens”. The phrasing of the things he says is so funny though. I love hearing how confident he is.

For supper we made rice with sausage and stir fry. Then we headed over to the other guest house to watch some TV and do some printing.

Regular Schedule!

Today was our first real day of being back to our original routine. All the visitors are gone, and school starts up for the kids again. There must have been an opening day thing at schools today since our morning tutoring kids didn’t all come. Out of my four boys, I only had Junior come, which was OK actually because I think he benefitted from the one on one time. He is such a sweet little boy but is pretty far behind as far as reading goes for his age. We had a nice morning though, just the two of us. We were back under our tents today instead of at the Moyos. It felt good to be back there. It seems like ages since we tutored there last!

After tutoring we got a couple nice pictures with Anne. She got all dressed up in her beautiful chitenje and hair wrap. I think we got some pretty nice pictures with her. She might be going on holiday for a few days just to unwind from her crazy 3 weeks of cooking 3 meals a day every day! We just hope she'll be back before we leave.

After that we had English, and that was back at the Moyos. Pastor Phiri also used that classroom for Bible Class today so we figured we’d keep them there for class. Today we did work with a map. Using the buildings we have learned, we extended the lesson to work with directions and where things are located on the map. As a review of the directions, we first had a little exercise where I asked ladies two at a time to do something in relation to direction. For example: Doris, stand behind Ella. Stand to the right of Kaluwa. Stand in the center of the room. Go to the west of Regina etc. That seems to work pretty well and got them moving a bit. Then we moved into the map. We also gave them a worksheet with a bunch of questions on location of certain buildings or which direction to go when going from one building to another. That took the majority of our time and was the perfect amount of challenging. The ladies worked so hard and did a great job. I was so proud of my ladies especially because I thought that could be pretty tricky for them but they did so well!

After class we headed home for lunch. We had boring PB&Js again, but now that we have that wonderful bakery bread we don’t mind it so much. Mr. Zulu came over to get more pictures with us. He is such a sweet man with the best laugh ever!

Afternoon tutoring was just Pimbi. And Erika only had Mirriam show up, so it was a girls’ afternoon. We had lots of giggling going on because Pimbi discovered how to stick the pencil to her nostrils by breathing in hard. It was so cute. We had to break for a mini photo shoot of that special talent. I am just going to miss this little sweetheart girl!

The afternoon was pretty lazy. I got another thing crossed off my list. I also tried opening my Spotify music account this afternoon. I didn’t think it’d work over here but it did, so I treated myself by listening to my favorite music which I haven’t heard in months. Crazy how little things like this can put you in such a good mood.

We took a little walk up to our fruit and veg stand with Dee to pick up some more delicious mangoes because she heard they had a new delivery in, but unfortunately that was false information. It was still nice to get out and enjoy the beautiful late afternoon sun and breeze.

For supper we had rice-nice brown rice that Anne gave us today- with salsa, chicken which I marinated with a bit of lemon juice and garlic salt, and our usual stir fry. It was tasty if I do say so myself.

We were going to head over to the guest house again to watch some cable TV and do some printing but Dee informed us that Herman, the owner of the Wildlife Camp, is staying there tonight, so we decided to let him have some peace instead of just randomly showing up and disturbing him. J

Nothing else really exciting happened today. Even though it was a routine day, I try not to take these wonderful “routine” days for granted. Whether we’re doing something exciting or not, I am just so happy to be here and trying to soak up every day I have left.

Back to Bethel

It felt good to be “home” at Bethel this morning. It was amazing to see the building progress that’s been done in just the 2 weeks since we’ve been there. The walls almost reach the roof now! The service was wonderful as usual. The choirs sang wonderfully and the sermon was very good. It was very windy today though, so lots of the dirt from the brick laying flew up in our faces every time there was a gust of wind. Erika filled in as the keyboardist today and did a wonderful job despite the keyboard having some issues. Jack, the usual keyboardist seemed so happy to have us back so we could play the hymns.

At the end of the service Pastor Mutentami addressed the congregation about Christian funerals and attendance at these funerals. He said recently fewer and fewer people have been attending the funerals of their church family members and he wanted to encourage people to attend. It was very interesting how he dealt with the situation. He spoke in a way so full of grace. It was so neat to see an issue or situation dealt with after church and discussed as a whole congregation.

I also met a very nice man named Thembi who was sitting next to me in church. He spoke excellent English! He was a visitor who has been to Bethel several times before. He had lots of questions for me about what I’ve been doing here as far as teaching goes. It was fun to talk to him!

After church I went over to campus to take a picture of Doris’ family since last time I took a picture, her son Raphel wasn’t there.

For lunch we had our avocado sandwiches and then decided to head into town once again. We wanted to check out the curio stands that set up at the Arcades on Sunday afternoons. Before heading into town though, we loaded up a backpack with clothes and shoes that we wanted to trade. The minibus ride into town was OK…we just took extra-long stops, which isn’t unusual. At the Arcades I managed to get the 2 big things I was looking for along with a bonus thing and all our clothes got traded. They were never a clean trade but giving them some clothes and shoes definitely made it a little cheaper. Depending on how full my suitcases are with all the stuff I bought, I might have to trade some more clothes.

It was a tiring afternoon…bartering wipes you out. We stopped at Spar for a few groceries and then headed home. On the way back we took the same turn we did the other day when we ended up in Kaunda Square. We thought the same thing happened to us again! But people said the driver was going the back way to avoid traffic. We were on some small dirt roads in a bus with absolutely no shock absorbers. But somehow we got back to one of the main roundabouts. It just took us a while. I didn’t see traffic anywhere, so I’m not sure if that was a legitimate excuse for taking us a different way. We made it though.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy. For supper I made fried potatoes again, scrambled eggs with cheese and onion, and garlic bread. It was quite delish. After supper we went over to the other guest house to watch some TV and print, since our printer is out of ink. We printed some preschool certificates for our party on the 14^th and also printed some worksheets for English on Tuesday. This week is going to go by quickly—we have 3 days of teaching and then we’re headed to Kafue with Mrs. Birner to camp for a couple nights as one last hoorah before we leave. On our wish list are a male lion and a cheetah.

After accomplishing the printing we headed back to our house and got ready for bed and another week!

I was going to use this blog post as a shout out to my twin, Joe, who was supposed to run a marathon today. I was thinking about him all day, and after getting back from town I was going to look up the race and see if I could get any stats on how he was doing. Unfortunately I saw that due to weather, the marathon got cancelled. So he ran a ½ marathon instead, which got finished before the bad weather started. I feel so terrible for him. To train for months and months for this event only to have it cancelled at the last minute. So sad. I’m proud of him anyway! J

Monkey Hunt

Today was a wonderfully lazy Saturday. I got to sleep in a bit and enjoy a quiet morning reading.

After showering and eating some breakfast we decided to head over to the other guest house to watch some cable TV. Since Professor Cherney left early this morning the guest house is empty. We loaded up our laptops and settled in for a day of lazy TV watching. We were very productive and got quite a few things done off our list, like writing thank-yous and writing an advice log and evaluations of our students for the teachers next year.

We took a break to come back to our house for lunch. We cut the wonderful brown bread we got from the bakery yesterday. That made us sad that we haven’t been going to the bakery all this time. We mashed up an avocado with a little bit of lemon juice and garlic salt and spread it on our bread. It was so delicious!

After lunch we went back for some more TV. And then around 2:30 we took a walk with Dee to meet her friend Vincent. He lives a little ways away up the road and they met him on a run one time. He’s 29 years old and is a business man of some kind. He recently broke his femur though so he’s been to the hospital a lot recently and now trying to rehab his leg. He was a very nice guy though and we were happy to meet him. It was a hot one out today so on the walk back we were roasting! I did get stopped by a minibus call boy on the way back saying he liked me and wanted to marry me. I politely declined. J Dee also got stopped by some people in a vehicle who said they see her running a lot and the lady wanted to be Dee’s friend. Dee said she could come running with her any time. How random though…just get out of your car and ask some white person if you can be friends. This is Africa.

After our walk and visit with Vincent we went over to campus for kickball. Dave wasn’t around, although the kids were playing. We found out that he was over in the woods hunting monkeys and all the younger kids were with him. So we headed over there to join in the search. The monkeys come and eat from the students’ fields, so they are very pesky. Dave shot 2 of them but one of them got stuck in the branches of the tree and didn’t fall. The other one did fall though and as soon as it did, Given swooped in and grabbed it by the tail and ran through the woods with all the kids following him and cheering loudly. It was so funny to watch; I was cracking up so much! It was so cute because some of the younger kids got very scared by the loud gunshots so they hung very close to me for “protection”. Aubrey was the most scared and hung back by the houses, even after the monkeys had been shot. So I went over to him and he came right to me and sat on my lap. I had little Maggie hanging on the other leg just cuddling and watching the monkey action. The monkey hunt and trek through the woods really tired Aubrey out so he fell asleep on my lap. Love these kids!

After the excitement of the hunt we came home for supper. We had stir fry, spaghetti and grilled chicken. Everything tasted delicious tonight. The veggies were more flavorful because we cooked them longer and the pasta was better since we got better pasta sauce.

Since we finished Friends last night we decided to go back to season1 and start over, so we did that after supper and got a few episodes in.

I’m so looking forward to going to Bethel again tomorrow. It’s been a while since we’ve been there…I’ve missed it!

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.

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.