Well, it was a pretty low key day today. Currently, on Fridays we only have English class with the wives at 9:30, so not only was I able to get a run in, but I got to sleep in, too! There are not many times when I get to sleep past 7 am here! On my run, four boys around age 12 thought that a “Muzoongu” running on the street was interesting, so they joined me for a few meters. On my way back when I passed them again, they yelled “Hello!” as I replied with “Mwi Bwanje!” I also heard them whisper, “Ask her for money!” Yes, since I am American, I obviously have a lot of money and carry it around with me as I’m jogging! English was a small ground today, so T and I ditched our lessons until Monday and did a reading activity with the entire group, instead of breaking into ability levels. As I am learning here, we always need to have back up lessons ready to go because it is an often occurrence that we only have 2 or 4 of the 9 students in attendance. Today’s reason: there was a children’s clinic in town that many of the women were taking their children to. After English, we spent the early afternoon working on our other project here. No, nothing to do with the English, tutoring, and preschool lessons that we’re working with daily, or even the schools we need to begin working with, but setting up the program for future teachers to come to Zambia. We’re a pilot program, so we’re trying to update an advice log along our stay here of things we’d tell the next group to make their time here a bit smoother than ours. Later in the afternoon, the LCCA Board invited us to their monthly meeting about the Christian Community Schools for Vulnerable Children, aka, the 2 schools run by the LCCA. The majority of the students are “vulnerable” meaning they are orphans or only have one parent who can’t support them going to school. The tuition fee for those who are not vulnerable is K10,000 for single parent families and K20,000 for two parent families per month, aka $2 or $4. Wow. The world is so different. A lot of the things I heard in this meeting kind of broke my heart. Like how they are in desperate need of a Director for the schools who can write proposals for donations for them. They want to pay this person $500 a month. That would be crazy talk in the U.S. It’s difficult to fathom sometimes how different lives can be. I’m currently reading a book entitled The Hole in the Gospel, too, and this book, which is about poverty, and the meeting have definitely gotten me thinking lately. I have been blessed so much and I want to be able to share with the people I’ve met in Zambia. People in the U.S. are not content with what they have; they always need bigger cars, houses, better jobs, etc. Zambians are very content with what they have, even if they do not have much. Alright, enough of me getting on my soapbox. Just ask T about it; I was on my soapbox for a good hour on this topic the other night! We ended off the night on a very American note: we had pizza, the most American tasting pizza I have had here, and watched a few movies. The ones tonight just so happened to be Ever After and Newsies. What fun! Tomorrow we are excited for the Dutch Reform Market and the magic show!
:)
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