Week 4: 27/02/2011 ‘Shaken, not stirred’ (cultural development)

So this week, while still loving it here, we really experienced some of the negative aspects of Africa for the first time. On Thursday morning, I woke up with a dead cockroach underneath my back; it must have crawled up my mosquito net in the middle of the night before I unknowingly rolled on top of it, squishing it to death! Amy slept on an infestation of ants and I put my shoes on one day only to find that they were covered in some sort of slime. It was pretty repulsive. Also, because of the hectic week that we’ve had, I’ve been a bit under the weather and completely lost my voice. This has made trying to quieten down our class of over 60 a pretty tiresome task and I was not too impressed to find that the last of my cold medicine had been eaten through by bugs! Oh, and to top things off, my bikini was stolen! We’re taking it all with a pinch of salt though. It’s just been really interesting to note the complete change from a month ago when we screamed at the sight of ants, held each other’s hands in fear as we got a taxi with no seatbelts and vigilantly washed our teeth with only bottled water, to now, having adapted and just manned up a bit!

The biggest and most shocking thing that happened to us this week though, was that we were in the midst of Zambian riots in school on Wednesday. It was a pretty scary experience and we were fairly shaken up for quite a while afterwards. We were left in charge of over 60 children as we hid out in our classroom with tear gas being let off around us, had the chaos of rioters running past us and heard the echo of gunshots close by. We later discovered that two men had been killed during these uprisings.

The mayhem all kicked off at about 10am. We had been teaching since 7.30am and were both sitting at the teacher’s desk marking books while the kids did the work we had set them. There was a bit of commotion and when we looked up there were two strange men in our classroom, one of whom was diving under our desk. Completely confused and slightly amused, we looked to the children for answers of what was happening. One of the kids shouted “thieves” and so thinking the school was being robbed, as we could now see more people running past the classroom, we grabbed our bags in terror. In retrospect, it wouldn’t have made sense for there to be thieves in our school because the only thing for them to steal would have been a few pieces of chalk or a couple of benches, but at the time it made total sense. 

The men then ran into our cupboard and the children locked them in there. I noticed two men with fish bowl like helmets on and large guns strapped around them escorting a rioter past our window. Bewildered, we asked Haggai, one of our pupils with good English to translate all the Nyanja words being thrown about and fill us in on what was happening. Throughout the day we discovered that all the taxi drivers and bus drivers were rioting in the town and the Zimbabwean markets (which back onto our school) about an increment in taxes. They were throwing rocks and hitting cars with sticks while the police tried to discourage them by letting off tear gas. In an effort to find safety, they were all jumping over the walls into our school, bringing the pandemonium with them.

The bedlam continued for the majority of the day and we didn’t venture out of the school until about 2 hours after school was meant to finish. Hundreds of the children who had tried to leave ended up running back to the school minutes later in fear. For the most part we gathered as many children as we could into our classroom and locked the doors and the windows. Some of the boys were being typical adventurous kids, wanting to be out in the brunt of it but we had to take the responsibility to tell them exactly what to do. It was pretty entertaining though, seeing them standing at the threshold of the path outside the classroom, making every excuse possible for why they needed to leave the room begging “teacher, teacher, may I leave the room?”.

Feeling the effects of the tear gas was pretty scary but it was even worse trying to console sixty sobbing, sweating, terrified children at the same time. I was wearing a Khatanga, which is like an African piece of material wrapped around shorts, which I had to whip off and hold up to my mouth to breath. Thinking on our feet, we told the children to take of their socks and hold them up to their mouths as they stayed low to the floor, as some of them were starting to hyperventilate. There were people running around holding things up to their mouths all around and we felt very unsafe. Looking back, it’s amazing how together Amy and I were because we knew that we had to be the adults in the situation. It’s certainly something we’ve never been trained for! As soon as we got back to Jollyboys though, we both just broke down in tears from the stress of it!

I think the thing that really got to me the most was the lack of organisation and procedures that came into effect by the other teachers. I know that for them, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened but I don’t believe that this should excuse the blatant disregard for the pupils’ safety. It made me really angry having teachers suggest to us that we go and hide out in the principal’s office and just leave the children to their own devices. This is what most of them did, they just left the pupils on their own. Meanwhile, there were children as young as 4years old roaming the school grounds totally unsure of what to do. At one stage, Amy and I had to go and stand at the school gates filling people in on what was happening while we watched some of the other teachers just chatting around a tree. I simply didn’t understand this because even when I asked the teachers what they were doing they would reply things like, “I’m scared” or “it’s not safe out there, or in here”. We were pretty shocked that the school wouldn’t take such simple steps as to say, ‘if there is an emergency, all the teachers and pupils should stay in their respective classrooms’.

The day ended with a priest praying safety over small groups of children as they left the school. We stuck around an extra while with some of the really scared children and then walked them as close to their homes as we could. The thunder and lightning storm that began at about midday really didn’t help the fear as, at first, we thought the rumbles of thunder were bombs going off! The children really appreciated us sticking around though and some of them even came to visit us the next afternoon asking us to be their friends!

We decided to treat ourselves to a very fancy and well-deserved five star meal on Friday night at a hotel so posh that they even give you a stool for your bag. It was a nice ending to a pretty emotionally straining week! We are both absolutely fine now though and having had a lazy Saturday to recover, we are well ready to face whatever Zambia throws at us next!

Oh and P.S. Mum, maybe don’t print this week’s blog for Nana to read….!

Week 3: 20/02/2011 ‘Best weekend of my life’ (Personal experience)

We have had yet another wonderful week here, filled with different experiences. School was much the same as last week but we’re more into the routine now. We started giving the kids basic phonic lessons and doing a spelling test with them every day. The words are all basic three letter words like “bad” and “hit” but they still struggle immensely with them. I received an incredible package from my eldest sister. Alongside some sweeties and photos of my nieces and nephews, it was jammers with resources for school like stickers and colouring books. You would know she’s a teacher! The kids go crazy for the stamps she sent.

On Monday we had a lovely Valentine’s Day, getting plenty of unexpected cards, flowers and chocolates from the kids in school and very thoughtful friends. Then on Tuesday, we made a trip to the hospital to get Amy’s knee looked at. The doctor prescribed a bunch of tablets which we later found out were actually for respiratory problems. We then had some trouble arranging payment for the consultation as we had only brought insurance papers and not enough money… We went for a nice long walk to the nearest ATM and on our way Byson, the taxi driver who had brought us to the tiny hospital pulled up alongside us. He had been driving up and down the road just in case we needed a lift anywhere else and offered to ferry us back and forth. Africa’s a bit weird like that.

The past three days have resulted in what I can only describe as the best weekend of my life. We were fairly shattered by the time Friday afternoon came around after lots of long days and some mid-week dancing. So when lunchtime arrived, we both collapsed on our towels for some serious sun-soaking. This didn’t last long though as Des, a local friend, asked us if we would like to go on a friend’s jet boat with him so we threw some clothes on and headed out.

It was the strangest experience sitting in this Landrover with no seats in the back, resting against petrol canisters (slightly unsafe perhaps as Tony, who was driving, lit cigarette after cigarette…), with 5 Zambians, one of whom was from a local village and had 8 wives and 36 children between the ages of 7 and 22. Another of them was unable to fit in and so held onto the back of the car as we flew down the muddy, bumpy roads. The private extreme jet boating with just 5 of us on this massive boat bombing through the Zambezi River was a lot of fun but it was the experiences on the way home that really made the trip. We drove the dirt track back through the little villages looking in amazement at the tiny, empty, straw roofed huts that house entire families. We also got to experience the perks of being friends with some locals. We stopped to join in a native football game out on the grass; we got water pumped for us by kids at a bore hole; we got chased by adorable kids with swollen bellies; and we tried a local beer called ‘shake-shake’ which tasted like warm, lumpy vomit, mixed with petrol.

The excitement continued after this though as Tony pulled off the beaten track (literally) and led us to a small animal enclosure. The view was breath-taking and we were extremely privileged to experience a not-yet-open-to-tourists encounter with 6 month old baby white lion cubs. They were so cute and fluffy, like teddies that had come to life! They rolled around and climbed on top of us like kittens! Then we were able to go in and play with the cheetahs, which was slightly scary as they purred a hungry purr. We then made it back in time to be treated to a scrumptious candle lit dinner with flowers and wine by two strapping young English men. It was the perfect ending to the perfect day.

On Saturday, I was up in the early hours to head off white water rafting. It’s something I had wanted to do for quite a while and had been putting it off because Amy’s knee was acting up. Because of high water though, this was my last chance. I had mentioned it to quite a few of our friends here, in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to do it alone and in the end about 12 of us decided to do it which was ideal. We got to travel on one of those typical open-top safari trucks before we climbed for about half an hour down the rocks to the river. Even when we were getting into the boat, it didn’t click with me that being in an inflatable boat whilst being thrashed around the rapids that follow Victoria Falls would be in anyway scary. It was terrifying. I think I may well have actually died for a few seconds!

On one of the first big grade 5 rapids, our boat was completely flipped, scattering and nearly drowning all of us. I was thrown under the water unaware of which way was up and which way was down for what seemed like a lifetime. When I finally reached the surface for a quick gasp of air, my head was stuck underneath the edge of the boat before another huge wave hit, filling my lungs with water. I was shaking for hours afterwards and hearing that about 3 people die doing it every year didn’t help, but it was so worth it!

Then, after a nice cold shower and some serious after-sun application, we all enjoyed a peaceful sunset cruise along the calmer part of the river. Watching the bright sun disappearing along the African horizon, as we spotted hippos and crocodiles in the water, was indescribable.

With Sunday, came a delightful fundraiser in the orphanage with traditional dance and food. My mother would have been very impressed at the amount of… ‘different’ foods I tried! No doubt there are many more fascinating experiences to come!

Week 2: 13/02/2011 ‘Putting all your eggs in the one basket’ (Professional development)

I have officially fallen in love with this place. This past week has, yet again, been very eventful. We finally experienced and went beneath the beautiful Victoria Falls; enjoyed Zambian dancing; attempted to learn far too many strange sounding Zambian names (even the Western names sound peculiar, I was calling a young boy called Paul, ‘Ball’ until the other day); suffered from some serious mosquito bites; discovered bedbugs; hand washed all our clothes; and even ate Caterpillars. Our orphanage visits have been really fulfilling too. We watched as one 15 year old boy repeated “it’s so beautiful” while staring in awe at the pictures of snow Amy had brought and we loved drawing with chalk on the pavement with the younger kids. In addition, we also found it pretty bemusing to be asked by one 15 year old boy, while playing volleyball in the sweltering heat, how long he would have to be in Ireland for before his skin turned our colour. He was completely serious, bless him.

When we first began, we had so many…. shall we say….. “concerns” with the education in our school. The classroom was crammed, the staff meetings unproductive and the school day relatively drawn out, with the children taking at least 15 minutes to just find a page and date it. The ‘teacher in me’ was overwhelmed with ideas of how we could later fundraise enough to get each child in our class, books. For the entire class of over sixty, there is only one book per subject which is for the teacher’s reference only. As you can imagine, learning to read without books isn’t exactly practical. We pictured how different the school would be if we could just cram the dusty store cupboard with resources and completely go back to basics with reading, writing and number skills.  In the last week though, Amy and I have come to realise that we cannot fix everything and it’s not everything that needs to be fixed. We can however focus on more specific areas and get the children more involved in their own learning.

Most of the lessons we have observed being taught basically involve the teacher writing a long and complicated explanation up on the board and the children then copy this down word for word. Going around the children asking them to read out what they have just written or explain what they are learning about, you quickly notice that they generally aren’t grasping the concepts very well. I’m sure this is down to a number of different things and I reckon if we at home were dealing with such a lack of funding and resources and so many mixed ability children in our classes, perhaps some of our teaching styles would also revert back to this traditional chalk and talk method.

Albeit this, Amy and I are trying to approach our own lessons with a more creative approach to get the children thinking, understanding and becoming involved with their own learning rather than just regurgitating information. We got the class to write letters to penpals in Ireland which they were extremely enthusiastic about. Of course some of them were writing things like “I love you” to these complete strangers, but nonetheless they all put in the effort! They are fairly attentive anytime we do something different, even just little things like getting them to spin around and point to numbers on the board, then race to add these numbers rather than just writing monotonous sums up. Though, it has been said to us that the reason they listen to us so well is because many Zambian children are told folklore which equate white people to the Devil…. but I’d rather believe that it’s just because our lessons are so incredibly interesting.

Mrs Chilufya, their class teacher, whose name eluded us for days on end, is quite set that we try to follow the tatty books as closely as possible. Nevertheless, as we don’t know very much about things like The Bantu Migration or Zambian languages, we have been allowed to veer away from it a little!

One of our better lessons so far was a maths lesson. The previous day the teacher had written up a complicated explanation on the board for the ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal to’ symbols. It was then expected that the children should understand how to answer questions on this. Marking their work we soon realised that very few of them had a clue how to do it. So, the following day we took a lesson on the same topic, getting them to come up to the board to do examples and referring to the symbols as like a crocodile’s mouth. It seemed to make a world of difference and correcting all their right answers was pretty satisfying.

In addition to this, we have enjoyed teaching them a few songs and some Irish dance. In return, we loved being taught a very impressive dance from the Losi tribe. They found Amy and me trying to shake our hips like them to be absolutely hilarious. Our plan is to continue trying to get the children to think for themselves over the next while. Hopefully we can continue to come up with practical lessons which do this while developing their literacy and numeracy skills! All in all, I still absolutely love being here and learning so much. Each day continues to bring new experiences!

Week 1 02/02/2011- Don’t blink or you’ll miss something (Cultural development)

It’s hard to know where to start, this whole experience in Zambia has been so much more than I could ever have ever expected already and it’s only been a week! My mind is completely blown by how culturally different and yet unbelievably enjoyable this place is. Every day brings something new and it seems like we are constantly on the go and experiencing new things. Whether it is my Visa card being swallowed by an ATM for 2 days or haggling down the price of a beautiful African painting in one of the many local markets from 75,000 Kwacha to 30,000 (which is like… £4), my journal is going to be overflowing with incredible experiences in no time.

Our trip over took nearly 40 hours and was quite tiring, especially having to sleep on an airport bench in Johannesburg overnight. The exhaustion wasn’t helped by the fact that when we woke up in the morning and went to check the status of our flight we were told by officials that is “didn’t exist”! Amy and I sorted it out soon enough though and our arrival was only slightly delayed as our flight had a quick stop over in Zimbabwe. Patrick Kayawe (our main contact here) was awaiting our arrival at the airport and has been an absolute gem ever since. He treated us to dinner at the Waterfront where there were signs like ‘do not feed the monkeys’. He also took us on a tour of DALICE (David Livingstone College of Education) where we got an idea of what the lectures, living conditions and provided food there are like (extremely different if you’re wondering… they made Stran halls look like a five star hotel and Chatz food look like Christmas dinner), we even participated in an impromptu volleyball game!

The people are incredibly hospitable, to the extent that even though I have heard a million times over that the African people are so friendly, I am still shocked every time strangers on the streets turn into approachable (or more aptly, ‘approaching’) friends. I’m sure it’s just because of the colour of our skin and there is the odd mumble of ‘Mzungo’ (which means white person), but all the waving and smiling people wanting to introduce themselves to the foreign teacher is altogether quite welcoming. When we met our class for the first time, they all beamed and cheered as they heard the “teachers from oversees” would be with their class for six weeks and have remained as enthusiastic. Today we were walking through the markets after school when a few kids from our class spotted us and eagerly ran up to us giving us big hugs. They are so adorable!

Apparently there is a phrase here- “treat a stranger with kindness and you will see her true heart”.  This has definitely been evident thus far. Florence, a friend we have made from a different part of Zambia even invited us to her granny’s house for a traditional dinner a few days ago where we tried nshima, Okra, eggplant, pumpkin leaves and other delicacies which we had to eat with our hands!

It seems time here is about a series of events rather than a concept which corresponds with the numbers on a clock. Generally speaking, we have waited between 40 minutes and 3 hours for people to arrive somewhere and they don’t usually see this as an apology worthy offence. It can be a little bit frustrating when you are up and ready for 8am (the time you are supposed to be meeting) and they don’t arrive (or even text to say they’ll be late) for another few hours. That will take some getting used to and I just hope it doesn’t make me too relaxed because I can see being a few hours late to class or to meet friends causing some serious problems at home!

We have started going to Lubasi orphanage where we have arranged to teach some extra lessons twice a week. It’s pretty heart-breaking to see how little they have in comparison to most children at home. It has been very interesting just talking to some of the children and playing football with them. They’re very open about how they got there and how long they have lived there- talking about their parents who have passed away or are unable to care for them. Their spirits remain high despite all they have been through. Even things like playing noughts and crosses or hangman with a stick in the mud make them happy. The short ‘bus’ back is also an experience in itself. Being crammed into a rickety minivan with way more people than it’s meant to hold, as it coerces its’ way along the most potholed streets I’ve ever seen, is quite nauseating, but entertaining nonetheless. I tell you, never again will I complain about the three or four unfilled potholes on my road at home!

 The weather here is like sitting in the ‘Rainforest Café’, with a small child going trigger happy on the climate changing switch. One minute you’re basking in the incredible heat of the African sunshine and the next, the town is trembling with the roars of thunder and alight with intense flashes as the rain pours and people run for shelter. An hour later, you pass a woman with a baby in a colourful makeshift sling across her back, carrying a basket of orange mushrooms on her head and find yourself wondering if you need to put some more sun cream on. It’s quite bizarre!

I’m looking forward to getting stuck into teaching in our Grade Six class of about 63 eleven to fourteen year olds! So far it seems that they are very attentive and have been writing us letters and singing us tear-jerking songs already. The next week seems like it’s shaping up to be as busy as the last and I’m sure we’ll learn even more about the African way of life!