So, this morning we incidentally cancelled our one and only class today, English, to play sports with children. How did we do that, you ask? Well, we need to start on our third part of our three part purpose in Zambia and work with the Lutheran Community Schools for Vulnerable Children. We thought that we could easily cancel our class and visit Kaunda Square and see the teachers in action before starting a few teacher training inservice dates with them. (Yes, two recent college grads are doing teacher training seminars. It’ll be great.) So, unfortunately, Fridays are sports days, aka, no instruction is gone and we cancelled our class for nothing productive. Fortunately, we had a fun morning of playing kickball (me) and netball (T) for a few hours this morning with the school kids. And netball, while similar to basketball, is not the same. After my game was done (we had a spectacular game where the score was 29-7. Unfortunately, I was on the losing side), I watched T learning to play and succeeding at playing this new game. I was impressed.
Lunchtime was a step up from our everyday PB&J; we upgraded to grilled cheese with garlic salt. And Mrs. A brought us over some maize, too, delish! And then I may or may not have spent a good chunk of an hour reading this book that I’m obsessed too….This guy is hilarious. If you have time, read the book.
At 14 hours, we met with Mr. S and Mrs. N, the two headmasters of the schools are Kaunda Square and Matero, about how we could possibly be helping their program in our—gasp!—two months that we have left here. We settled on visiting the schools to observe the teachers next week and conducting three inservice sessions for the teachers. Boy, am I glad I brought Teach like a Champion and the corresponding DVD to Zambia!
After our meeting, T and I followed the sounds of preschoolers playing kickball, and stood on our picnic tables to watch them play over the back wall. Soon they spotted us, lost interest in the game, ran over waving, and started climbing trees for a better look. After coaxing T into giving me the keys to unlock the back gate, some I was in the yard climbing trees and singing songs with them. T shortly followed, too. They were all trying to impress us with their climbing skills and the songs they remembered, and they tried teaching me a bit of Nyanja too because they think it’s funny when I say things like “Bwera kuno” (come here) when I’m frustrated that they can’t understand me in class. I don’t remember a thing of what they had me repeat, and frankly, I don’t want to know what they were saying and teaching me!
Later in the day we had a scare because T’s face was progressively getting redder and purpler throughout the day and she was really warm. Could it be sunburn? windburn? malaria? fever? some wild African disease? We stopped over at D&L’s house for some mothering for T. No fever, and by 9 pm, the redness had gone down drastically. She lives! In the mean time, we celebrated SB’s birthday at her surprise party at D&L’s house with some pizza, cake, and fellowship. Her daughter even wrote her this funny birthday song that the kids played on the guitar. We spent the evening listening to funny stories about living in Zambia, as most of the missionaries here have been here for 20+ years. My favorite was about a law that was recently repealed in Malawi about how it was illegal to fart in public because it added to pollution. J
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