June
Preschool on 1st
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| A scrum for the next thing made of playduff |
Friday morning means preschool day for me, and the first time I went to help in St
Stephen’s preschool (situated in Chodort) I decided to take some playdough, which proved a big
hit. Here it is called Playduff - I can't work that one out? Luckily I took 30 balls of it in which was just enough for us all to have one each, and then the teacher Audrine (I called her Audrey for about 6 weeks) and I spent the next two hours
answering requests to make things – Auntie, make me a car! Auntie, make me a necklace, Auntie make me a bicycle (I ask you how do you make a bicycle from playdough),
Auntie, make me a dog, etc etc. The
playdough jewellery was popular with the girls ranging from hair beads (not a huge success) to bracelets, rings etc.
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| Royce with her playduff necklace and ring - she's so beautiful! |
Every one of the children, like all Zambians we've seen, is very good at singing, as well as very good at dancing, and at the end of the mornings we either have a story or a song - they prefer the latter. I was able to teach them a few nursery rhymes they didn't know, but at the end of one morning I was treated to something like a well rehearsed West End musical. It was amazing! The children jumped into their positions, some on the desks, rocking and singing away, and every child put so much enthusiasm into it. The lead role was filled by Audrine, equally talented, with their tune – Working in the Kitchen ...
The Site
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| Mmmm Nshima anyone? Dublin the woodwork teacher, Jane and Mrs Mbawe, Odin (Pauls' star trainee site manager) and two carpentry students |
One Friday Paul
had all 12 of the carpentry students over from Chodort to fix the fascias on to
the first house, and so to thank them for the extra work we treated them to
lunch (also saved transport to and from Chodort). So we asked our friend Mrs Mbawe to cook up
some lunch for them which she did, and Jane helped to dish it up from the back
of the truck. Mrs Mbawe is the chief
cook and bottle washer at Chodort, and is in charge of making tea and sometimes meals and she had no trouble whipping up a
feast for the boys – nshima naturally, beef knuckles in gravy and a vegetable
relish – green beans chopped and prepared with tomatoes and onions. (As that is
the law here) (Well, you would think so. Whenever you ask how to
prepare something that is ALWAYS the answer, oh, take some oil and fry it with
tomatoes and onions.) Anyway it all went down very well, even though there were not enough plates and they had to wash and return them ready for the next person.
Goat curry
That Friday
evening we ventured to the Golf Club with Ben and Rahem as we had heard there
was an authentic Indian goat curry served there every week. We met some Indian people we knew, since this
is Choma, namely Rupek our ex-landlord, the very jovial owner of Arupees garage
which sells not just fuel but also wait for it, stationery, saucepans, plates
and glasses, material, dried foods etc.
Paul meets lots of the Indian businessmen when he’s out and about in town
for the site, so he was welcomed by them all.
The curry was delicious - very meaty goat, and the vegetables we had seen in the huge pot on the brazier (made from a tractor wheel we were advised) had all cooked down completely. The curry is made on a Wednesday for the white farmers, and on a Friday for the Indians, since those two groups make up Choma Golf Club. We are learning, we are learning ...
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| Well it's nearly a Union Flag - dual purpose scarf |
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| The red the white and the blue |
We marked the
Queen’s Jubilee in our time-honoured tradition – with a BBQ, naturally – thankfully I don’t know how to put the short
video of us and Ben singing the National Anthem on here. I have brought a scarf (thanks Tor!) with a
square Union flag (yes I know it's wrong!) on it for such occasions, and Paul
and I wore our red white and blue.
Otherwise the main event for us was the following day, where we watched
the Jubilees Regatta at the Sports Club.
The locals started to watch supportively, but drifted off after a while,
they couldn’t handle
all that
water ...
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| What does this word say? |
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| Once Upon a Time ... |
Library
On our Thursday morning visits Rahem and I are gradually working our way through the
whole school, one grade each week in two groups, so they all would know the
library and have had a story read to them, which we took in turns. The children
all love the illustrations in the books, which are mostly excellent and make
the books come alive to the children – they would giggle and gasp as we turned
the pages of some of the more spectacular. We worked our way down the age
groups, so with the younger ones in Grade 1 and 2 there was very little fluent
reading out loud from the children, and some of the answers to our questions
were rather unexpected, eg "What colour are the shoes?" Answer "Bananas". Mmm.
We realised the answers had been correct on the previous page so the
kids thought it was worth a try; so we are not too sure about their
understanding of English sometimes, but hey ho, we plod on.
Preschool
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| Sun, stars and the moon, it's all here |
This week I
made some stencils from cereal packets as the teacher had said we were
painting, but she changed her mind and they were colouring, which meant the stencils
would last another day, good thinking.
She is pretty organised and always has a plan for what the children are
doing. On the walk home that day some of the children were on the way home and
shouted out goodbye from the back of a bicycle, and then I met some more children
from the Mochipapa School where we had opened the library, it’s so sweet when
they call out Auntie, Auntie from across the street. Feeling part of the community.
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| How's that for a walk home? |
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| Oden passing by - Paul just needs a quick word ... |
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| ... and a pose for the camera |
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| Couldn't resist a Pointsettia Tree |
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| That's where the scarf ended up |
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| That's how cold it is at night here - morning of 12th June - frost on the garden |
Visit to Rosemary the Brickmaker
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| Rosemary with one of her grandchildren |
We think a lot of Rosemary. We visited her first back in March with Rhoda and she was kind enough to give us all a slap up lunch. She is a caregiver for the OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) Committee basically meaning she looks after heaps of children, some close and some distantly related. She not only has a brick making enterprise which she runs with her daughter, but she makes the traditional hand brooms that sell well here, and also grows her own maize. Then she tells us she doesn't have a job - she's amazing.
The OVC committee meeting that Jane was planning on going to had been cancelled (for the third time), and I met Rosemary outside as she had turned up as well as me. We got chatting and she invited us to see her brick kiln, so we made a visit on the Sunday afternoon. It is quite a common sight to see these kilns around, as the soil from an anthill is ideal, and there are plenty of anthills. Not little ones. They are anything up to about 4 or 5 metres tall, and the soil is nice and sandy and very finely sifted by the ants. Clever ants, they are the beginning of the brick making process here.
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| Work is very near home |
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| The brick kiln, very hot and smokin |
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| Thousands and thousands of bricks |
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| Back home to see the family |
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Lusaka Trip
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| Mr Paul supervising the loading |
After stocking up on supplies which involved sitting in a hot truck in some long lengthy traffic jams, and a supermarket shop, the solace of the lovely Zebra Crossing Cafe was welcome. It's a combination of art gallery/restaurant/internet cafe/art supplies shop, so it is like an oasis of calm in the chaos and heat of Lusaka.
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| So long as Paul has his tea all is well
Choma Life
Phew, back to Choma. Jane is still painting with the art group every Wednesday, one of these days I will put some of my work on here! We sometimes have a theme, sometimes not, but on one particular day we went out to one of the art group member's dam to spot the lechwe (antelope type) and do a spot of sketching.. It was real African bush, searing heat even in this cold season, and we did see the lechwe.
Now I am in a tangle with this blog - the captions will not work normally on the following two photos for some reason so this will have to do.
 The dam with the in laws house behind A zoomed in view of the lechwe
Some sort of e-blip there.
If it's Thursday it must be the library
So, June rolled away, but the grand finale was a lovely weekend away on Lake Kariba, the largest man made lake in the world at 140 miles long. This blog is playing up so next bulletin for July will include our Lake Kariba trip. It was the weekend of 30th June and 1st July after all.
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