One day a week ago we had just come home from school and started to do some work, when we began to hear some singing and music coming from somewhere. Initially I thought that it was coming from one of the neighbour’s houses. One of them seems to have a habit of playing songs with extremely heavy bass in them. But this time it wasn’t that.
I was meant to be going to go to speak English with the head chef at the school kitchen since he had asked me to help him improve his English. I went there but it turned out he was still busy as he had been late preparing lunch so had to start tea for the students. Then I saw a group of women coming out of the hall all carrying guitars. I had a some books and notes in my hand so I went home to put them back. When I mentioned the music, Andrew suggested that we went back and have a look. We walked around to the school wondering what was going on.
We had heard that the MP for our area was coming for a visit, but having had the local education officer come recently we didn’t get why another visitor was here. We walked to the side of the school hall to see that there were lots of groups of people dancing and singing with a small band. We watched for a few minutes from outside before we realised the drummer was beckoning us to come into the hall. We weren’t sure about going in as we had no idea what was going on. we went round the outside of the hall to the entrance and the drummer explained what was going on. the local MP was coming to visit and many of the local churches were here at the school as a meeting point. The government had decided to give local churches some money to help them run so the ceremony was to showcase their choir or band and thank the MP for helping secure the money.
There were many churches there. There was Baptists, Pentecostal, Catholic, reformed church of Zambia, Anglican, Jehovah’s witness and many others. They all had very impressive dresses or shirts on all colour coordinated. The hall was packed! It is about the size of 3 tennis courts and I imagine there were way more people in the room than UK regulations would allow as the chairs were packed so tightly to fit everyone in.
As the MP arrived there we all stood and then sung the national anthem which happens at most events. There were many teachers around since most are members of the local churches themselves. They all performed a song, with a dance most of the time. Some brought their own instruments and others used the band that was there. Their voices were always very loud despite not using a microphone and it was very atmospheric. I took a video but it is not good enough quality to post as you really can’t hear the singing. You will just have to take my word for it that it was amazing! We couldn’t understand the words since they were in multiple different local languages but despite this we both really enjoyed it. Here is a photo; I couldn’t really capture the moment very well but it might give you an idea of what it was like.
In other news, a while ago I made my first set of muffins/ scones that I spoke about before. They turned surprisingly well they tasted nice and were a similar shape but not quite texture to the ones at school.
Our oven doesn’t really work properly as it has two heating elements, one at the top one and the bottom. The top grill one works very well but the bottom doesn’t at all so we have the issue that when the oven is on all the food gets blasted from the top and not really from the bottom. We have asked if someone can come and see if they can get it to work which should be good but in the mean time we use a baking tray to shield the top of the thing in the oven to stop it being incinerated! Here is a photo.
I have a short story to tell about having a shower. If you don’t like bugs then you might not want to read the rest of this post. I was having a shower in the evening at one of the times the water is actually on, when suddenly I realised a cockroach had joined me in the bath tub! It was scurrying to try and get out since the shower was spraying it. It ran past my feet and started scrabbling at the least steep part of the bath. It couldn’t get out here so just carried on trying to climb out. So I took the opportunity to squash it with the end of the mop. It didn’t bother me after that. I have got used to all the bugs now and have another exciting story about cockroach(s) for later. So a message to all cockroaches don’t join me in the shower again or you know what will happen.
Jack in Zambia 