On the 24^th of October Zambia celebrated its 54^th Independence day. This meant another day off school for us, the children and the other staff members. The week before it was national prayer and fasting day where the teachers went to a service in the boma and fasted during the day. Many of the children weren’t allowed to take part in the fasting as they were told it might make them ill but they still had a morning long church service at the school if they wanted to attend.
Zambians are very proud of their country so this day was quite big for most people. There are a lot more patriotic type things in their day to day life. For example singing the national anthem at quite a lot of events and having the president’s portrait in people’s offices. The Zambian flag is never too far away there is one constantly flying in the school and several in the head’s office.
On to independence day. The first event was a flag raising ceremony at midnight to mark the first moments of the special day. We took the bus with the pupils who were going as part of the school choir at around 10:30. We watched the evening’s events for a bit before we met some other teachers from the school and chatted to them for a bit. It was a shame we couldn’t really understand what they were saying at the event as most of the time as a lot of it was in Chinyanja. The evening ended, surprisingly, before midnight by about 5 minutes as someone’s watch must have been out. Everyone dispersed very quickly after the flag had been raised which was odd as I thought people might have stayed around for a bit longer. We got the bus home and went to bed as it was late for us.
The bus left for the boma in the morning at around 8:30 which was quite early considering that we had all been up at half midnight that day! It was a similar group of people going to the event that day as the night before. The head teacher was already sat at the event when we arrived and the deputy head came as well. The celebration was held at the local town council offices which has offices on three sides of a large square opening onto the road. It made quite a good area for all the performances as well as the seating for lots of people. In front of the offices there were seats for people with roles of responsibility or people associated with the performances so I got to have a “ring-side seat” which was good as I could see most things.
There were several important people such as the district commissioner and leaders of local groups. They sat in the centre beside the mixing desk and instruments. All the performances were done towards them which meant most of the audience just saw the back of the performance. There was an alright speaker system meaning it was loud enough however the microphones or the speakers were fairly poor quality and weren’t very clear. Fortunately about half of the talking at the event was done in English which was nice to be able to understand.
On the side open to the road there were some trees that provide shade for the spectators many of them didn’t have and seats. There were a lot of people there. There were no barriers to stop people walking into the stage area. The stages area had no markings either it was just the ground. As a result of having no barrier the local police officers and organisers had to keep pushing people back to stop the area shrinking.

There were many performances by local groups including the school choir. There were actually more students than could fit on the bus so some of them had to walk all the way there which isn’t too far but takes about 50 minutes. There were several choirs most singing local songs and many were all women choirs. I have a few videos that I thought I’d put on here as it was an quite impressive atmosphere that a photo won’t really capture. They are short as I have limited data to upload things. Click here for the first
There were several groups that just danced or danced with their own music. There were two large groups of children who were performing a majorette dances to music which was interesting to watch. There was a lot of marching involved and some of them were quite young but they still managed to be in time.
There was a really cool south African group wearing some animal skins and had thick leather boots on their feet. They had bells around their ankles which were used to add to the drums that they had brought to accompany their dance. Their dancing involved lots of stamping and also dancing on the floor. They did this in the dust and at one point we could hardly see them though all the dust that they kicked up! Here is a video if you click the linkas the site makes me pay if there are videos on the site. Otherwise there is a photo.

There was one local dance group that had put white ash on their faces and wore African styled patterned material called chitenge. They did the dance which is the for this region apparently. It involves walking one foot at a time quite slowly whilst shaking your hips quite fast. They often tie some material around their waists to accentuate this movements as you can see their movements easier. They often look upwards whilst doing this. I have better videos of people doing this type of dancing that I might post another time.
One thing that was a little odd about this event was the fact that many people just joined in with the performers on the stage! They simply walked in from the crowd and started to copy the dance or just dance spontaneously with them. There were people of all ages doing this from very young to very old, men and women. It seemed quite odd at first but I think its sort of a sign of appreciation and enjoyment. Some of the esteemed guests came and placed money at the feet of the groups they particularly liked while they were dancing.
There was a short speech by the district commissioner. She spoke in English while another person repeated it in Chinyanja. It was talking about being united and proud of what they have as well as what they need to do in the future to keep progress happening in Zambia.
There was also a boy band group from Mfuwe who came as guest performers. They dressed very like boybands in Europe or America would. I hadn’t heard of them but apparently they a re quite a big group out here.
At the end we, the people on the chairs around the offices, got given a very small piece of cake which was very nice not having eaten a cake since I left the UK. I left on the bus with the pupils to go back to the school for some much needed lunch. Overall it was a very exciting day but I was very tired later!
Just a little story, while I’ve been writing this there has been a spider running round the table I’m sitting at it’s been round at least 5 times and I’m not really sure what the purpose is.

We got on the bus in Lusaka with the other volunteers at about 6:30 as we wanted to avoid having no space for our bags. It left at 7am sharp and was surprisingly empty we think maybe it’s the Mambwe bus that is always busy since it is the only one that goes all the way to Mfuwe and the one we got on wasn’t for Mfuwe. We ate bread buns on the bus as breakfast and had a few snack brought from the people who sell things at the little stops through the window of the bus. We said bye to the other volunteers as we got off the bus with Mhairi and Maeve to go to their house at Petauke boarding school.

We were swarmed with offers of taxis but the girls said a good price is K20 and only one driver was willing to do that for us so we got in that one. I had to have my bag on my lap since we all had large rucksacks and it was a small hatchback car. We got dropped at the school entrance and walked to the girl’s house.

We dumped our stuff there. I haven’t yet posted about my house but I will do later. But their house was better in some ways but not in others. It was a reasonable amount larger and they too have a spare room. They did only have one working plug socket in the whole house and the water comes on way less frequently so it’s swings and roundabouts. We ate some food at their house before going out to the town to buy some food as they didn’t have enough food for the four of us for two days.

We walked to the market first which was amazing compared to our market. I will be writing a post about the market in Mambwe later. There were tonnes of stalls selling all kinds of things from watermelons to sweet baked goods. They had carrots, onions, green peppers, cabbage, apples and the list goes on. The prices were much more reasonable than in our market too. They could get a stack of 4 tomatoes for K1 but for us the equivalent amount would cost us K5 which is 500% the price! We felt a little sad that our own food situation was not as good as the girls’. we went to a bank in the town to get some cash having depleted it on taxis in Lusaka. That’s another thing we don’t have in our town.

Towns in Zambia aren’t very well designed everything is spread out and the buildings close to each other are often used for very different purposes. It makes it very hard to find anything easily and do shopping quickly. Fortunately the girls knew where to go.

We went on to their butchers (guess what? we don’t have one of those!) to get some chicken and sausage. The sausages here are usually beef ones for some reason which might sound quite odd but they are quite nice. As we were walking around there were plenty of people saying hi and wanting to shake our hands and chat. The girls seemed surprised as they said this rarely happens to them.

In Zambia there is quite a divide between men and women. It’s not to say that they don’t interact with each other just that the way a man interacts with a man is usually different to the way he would interact with a woman. Men don’t usually make physical contact with women other than shaking hands as a greeting. That is unless they are married but even then there are very few, if any, public displays of affection. One surprising thing is that you often see men holding hands. Being gay in Zambia is illegal so it is not seen as something homosexual simply as an act of friendship. This was a little disconcerting to begin with but now it seems normal.

After the butchers, we went to get an “ice cream”. This is wasn’t quite the same as what we would call one in the UK although they do have proper ice cream. It was more like an ice lolly with milk in the ice so it was a little creamy but still had more of a texture of ice. I had one covered in almonds and chocolate. It was a very nice treat to have. After that, we went home and chilled out at their house. We had a roast chicken and roast potatoes for tea which was amazing! We haven’t really been able to eat that kind of thing as we usually get meat which will last multiple meals rather than a whole chicken. The potatoes weren’t anywhere near as good as ones at home but they were nice in their own way.

That evening one of the girls’ teacher friends had said he’d take us to a club in Petauke. When he arrived, we took a taxi from the school to the town. We went into the first place and there was no one around we sat down at a table and had a beer. In Zambia anything compared to beer is expensive. It’s almost double the price of a beer to get any other drink. After sitting in the almost empty bar for a while we went to the other club. It was much bigger but still didn’t have many people.

We went to stand outside where there was an outdoor stage. There was a selection of live groups coming on over the night but none had arrived when we got there. When the music started we were all having a go at dancing despite no one else there really doing anything. After we had started dancing other people started joining in. There were some very impressive dancers and some slightly odd ones. The dancing in Zambia involves a lot of hip movement and thrusting which is rather alarming to begin with but its just the way they do it. As with most things we have got used to it now. We left the club before any of the main acts came on as we were all tired by midnight.

After a good sleep and nice lie in thanks to thicker curtains at their house. We got up and had some breakfast. We were meant to go to a dam with the teacher to spend the day there but we they couldn’t get the car from a friend. So we spent the rest of the day at the house and looking round the school. We went back to the town for Andrew and I to get some meat and veg to take home with us the next day. Later, we found out that we were invited back by the owner of the club for a braii (BBQ) as they liked our dancing so much. We all found this quite amusing. I feel like we could have been invited back as we are white and that makes us interesting but nevertheless we went back that evening even though we weren’t planning on it before being invited.

Before going out, the girls suggested we should watch the sunset. Petauke is on a hill which makes it a very good place to get a view of the area and of the sunset. They suggested that we should climb the water tower at the school to get the best view. It was very very tall! It took about 5 minutes or so to climb to the top of the tower we estimated it was about 30 or 40m high. It was vertical ladders all the way up the tower and on the top there were no railings! It was an amazing view you could see all of Petauke and the sunset was very impressive. My phone camera doesn’t really do it justice but you might get the idea from the pictures. We waited until the sun had gone down before going home for tea.

We went back and had the Braii which was goat and quail. It was very tasty and we enjoyed it very much. We met some of the teacher’s friends which was nice. They were all really friendly towards us and chatted plenty. I met a guy from Burundi who spoke French. He was surprised that I knew how to speak it. He probably didn’t realise how close to France the UK is. He had a very strong African French accent but I could still understand him. Since then I’ve not met anymore French speaking people though.

We went home late and had a good sleep. We made pancakes for breakfast before Andrew and I got on the bus to go home at around 10am.

It was a really nice trip. It was very interesting to see where the other volunteers live and what they have to do in their area even though it made us a bit jealous. We don’t talk all that much as we are all often quite busy with teaching so it was good to see what their life here is like. We are hoping that they will come to visit us at some point and that we can go and visit them another time later in the year.

Our day started at about 3:30, since the bus leaves Mambwe at 5am sharp. We got up, got ourselves ready and had breakfast and started walking to the junction with our bags for the 5 days we would be away for. It felt odd leaving our house for 5 days as since we arrived from Lusaka we hadn’t left our house at the school for one night. As we were walking, one of the teachers drove past and gave us a lift to the junction where the bus collects us; he was on the way to Chipata. We were 15 minutes early so had to wait for a while.

It was pitch black when we left the house and we saw the sun rise from the road which was nice although we don’t get the best views since we are in a valley. There were a group of pigs by the road making noise while we waited and as the sun began to rise we heard all of the chickens in the area start crowing! The bus arrived and thankfully stopped for us to get on. Unlike last time there was plenty of space in the bus for our bags as, being near the start of the quiet end of the route, the bus hadn’t yet filled up. Then all we had to do was wait for 10 hours until we were in Lusaka.

I had made muffins and a sausage sandwich to use up things in our fridge which was nice to have for our lunch. Later in the journey, we got our free snack from the bus which, disappointingly, wasn’t crisps it was malt biscuits. The journey was pretty uneventful. On the way in the girls from Petauke, who were on a different bus, spotted us at one of the stops. When we got off the bus we got a taxi with them to the hostel. The other two girls were already at the hostel as they got an earlier bus. It was nice to see them all again after such a long time. Andrew and I had a lot of tasks to do in Lusaka so we went out to do them as soon as we had arrived as it was getting late.

We were tasked by the school to get a drum kit for the music department as the previous volunteer had raised some money to get a keyboard and overshot so they wanted to use the extra money. We went to the Levy mall and were driven by the lovely Patrick who drove us most places we went in Lusaka after that first trip. When we got to the music shop sadly the drum kit was out of the budget by quite a lot so we couldn’t get it. We decided we’d come back later to buy some other instruments instead. I went to get some more credit for my phone in the shop then we went to look at the barbers we had seen on the internet. We had seen a very professional website with pictures of hairstyles that were similar to home so we went to have a look.

It turns out the fancy website was a bit of a façade and it seemed like a standard Zambian barber when we got there although we were reassured they knew how to cut our hair but we weren’t convinced. We went to look for an Indian spice shop we had seen online to get some spices we couldn’t see in the supermarket. It was a small shop and it looked like it was in someone’s house but it wasn’t actually. We got garam masala, turmeric and cumin. On the way back we saw another barbers this one looked more organised so I went to this to get my hair cut.

It was a rather tense haircut as the guy cutting my hair seemed rather unfamiliar with using the clippers which I would have expected him to be fine with as Zambian haircuts are usually short and I would think the clippers are the main tool they use. He also had a habit of looking at my face in the mirror and not what he was doing while he cut my hair when he concentrated on what I was saying. I tried to keep my sentences short and simple after I realised he did that. It was also tense as he seemed to be cutting with the scissors at slightly different lengths when he did the top.

In the end it didn’t turn out that bad. I have had better haircuts but it wasn’t bad. Here is a photo of my haircut.

Later that evening we went to a curry house and I had sweet lassie and butter chicken with an onion type starter. It was a very nice meal after having had quite basic meals for the month. It made some of us feel a little queasy though as such a large amount of rich food after quite a plain diet was a lot. We walked the short distance home to the hostel feeling very full! When we got back we stayed up for a while chatting before finally going to bed.

In the hostel, I met a French man who, after retiring had decided to do a round the world trip visiting conservation reserves and volunteering at them. It was quite interesting to chat to him in French as I’d not spoken to anyone in French for a while.

For breakfast, we had the food made at the hostel. I had a continental breakfast as I didn’t fancy a full English at the time. Thinking about it now though makes me want one a lot! It was only K30 for toast cereal and a cup of coffee. That being a total of under £2 which was nice since we’d been spending a lot on taxis since we got there. Kelly came to pick us up to take us to the immigration office at 10.

We drove there and went inside. We had to take off our bags and sign in before proceeding to the collection desk. We waited in the queue before being told we must go and get a file number before we could collect the permanent visa. We were then told that they weren’t ready which meant that our whole trip would have to be repeated in a month’s time. We got our temporary visas extended and then went back to the hostel where Kelly told us about the braii (BBQ) that she was putting on for us that evening which was exciting too.

We then went to Manda hill mall again to do our shopping. We got lots of tinned items since they keep well and can be used in an emergency we got chopped tomatoes, kidney beans and baked beans again. The important items we got this time were chocolate, cheese, a new kitchen knife and a sleeping bag for me for holidays when camping to save money. We also got a lot of spices from the shop as we hadn’t had a chance to buy them in Chipata last time. We got a lot, over 15 different types as we want to be able to make the food as varied as possible. By the time we had finished Andrew’s flipflop had fallen apart. He’d bought it from Chipata for about £2 so it was sort of expected. We bought some new ones and then left the mall. We went back to the hostel again to drop off the food. My bag now weighed significantly more than it did when I arrived in Zambia!

We then had to nip to the bus station to get the tickets to Petauke (where two of the volunteers live) for the Jonda bus the next day.

We went to Kelly’s house for the Braii next. Her house was amazing it was very large and had a lot of land. She had a swimming pool, a trampoline and a table tennis table! It was a big difference to any of the homes we had been to before in Zambia! We met her husband and one of her two children which was interesting to talk to them. We had some amazing food she had lots of meat including steak and chicken. There was a pasta salad mashed potatoes and a crab dip with vegetables which was very nice. After a short time there we had to go back as she had to put her kids to bed and get ready for the next day. We went home with full stomachs once again.

At the hostel we chatted until late again and then went to bed ready to get up at about 5 the next day. One notable thing about the hostel was that it had hot water for showering which might seem silly since its so hot. I was sceptical but after having one but it felt very nice! As we can have cool showers at home. Which is more than the girls have as they only have a bath.

More to come on the rest of the, trip in Petauke.

I will be writing a post about my trip to Lusaka and Petauke later but after arriving home from this trip there was a province-wide planned power shutdown. It was planned to last from 6am until 6pm. We knew about this a few weeks ago. While we spend some of the day travelling on the coach hardly noticing the power was off, when we arrived home the power was still off. Surprisingly the water in the fridge was still cold and the freezer was still cool despite the power being off for around 9 hours. As the time approached 6pm we eagerly waited for the power to come back on. It didn’t.

We were waiting to cook tea since our oven is electric so we couldn’t do anything before then. We had been told that often the power will remain off for longer than it is meant to with no warning or notification. So we decided to try and light the brazier which was left at our house with charcoal to cook on instead. We tried lighting it with leaves as kindling and small twigs followed by the charcoal however this really didn’t work as the wood burnt way too fast to light the coals.

We asked our neighbour to help since her grandson has been chatting to us lots since we got here. He came over and showed us how to do it. He lit some twigs and leaves like we did but he brought some of his own charcoal and lighter fluid. After dousing the coals in lighter fluid he set it on fire and it was going. To get it going fast after this he swung the metal brazier around to get the coals hot and with fewer flames to get it ready to cook on. When it was ready, we made beans on toast as we didn’t want to try anything complex. It made very good toast, much better than the grill does normally!

Unfortunately this is the only photo of the occasion and I seem to be pulling an odd face!

After eating, the neighbour came back to tell us we should put the remaining coals in our bin to burn the rubbish and take the burner inside in case someone took it. While doing this he noticed a lot of cockroaches coming in and out of the manhole covers around our back yard. We had already noticed this but weren’t sure there was much we could do about it since it’s the drain and besides very few end up in the house and, fortunately they were unseen in our rooms. He decided to disturb them a little with his shoe and tonne of them began scurrying from one drain cover to the next. The cover is raised a little so there is the perfect hiding place for them around the edge he asked if we had any doom. Doom is a bug spray that kills almost everything (not humans). It is very effective at killing all kinds of things in the house. So he began spraying the edge of the of the cover. That was when the chaos started!

Loads began scurrying away from the cover towards us and anything else to take cover under. We began stamping on them as that was the only thing you can do to stop them. Lots were running towards the house which wasn’t great. I went in to get a spare shoe to hit them with instead of my flip-flop. After we had done that a few times not many more seemed to be around. Then Yona, the neighbour, decided we should look inside the drains. We did this and wished we hadn’t.

As soon as the cover was lifted you could hear hundreds of them rattling around inside the drain! A couple escaped and we got them before they got away. Then we sprayed inside which caused them to all evacuate at once! Until that day, I was chief cockroach killer in the house so Andrew wasn’t really enjoying this exposure to a swarm of cockroaches. There were literally hundreds coming out all at once in all directions. It was like whack a mole but on a huge scale with many small targets. All of this was done in torch-light since it was around 7pm. Some other neighbours saw what we were doing and decided to come and help kill the many cockroaches that were still hurrying out of the drain.

After using the doom we used some repellent powder in the drain. Then Yona brought some paraffin a stick and plastic bags to try and get rid of some of the last ones. I then went round to the side of the house with my windows and realised id left one open and there were cockroaches crawling below the windowsill! We quickly got theses and I was just hoping there weren’t too many in my room (so far I’ve only found 2) After doing this to both our drains we went next door to sort theirs so as they are connected. For some reason theirs weren’t as bad.

I have to say I haven’t seen that many outside since but there were quite a few in the house to begin with but now there are virtually none. This might all sound pretty horrible however it really didn’t seem that bad at the time as the five of us who were there were all enjoying ourselves despite the disgusting nature of the task.

And the best part was we didn’t even have to bother picking up all of the squashed cockroaches as the neighbour’s chickens went round eating the dead and remaining live cockroaches the next morning!

This evening we had the first rain since we arrived here in Mambwe. It was rather unexpected. Neither of us really check the weather forecast since it usually says 39^oC and sunny. We did look at the weather during the rain and the forecast didn’t suggest there would be a chance of rain so we aren’t sure how accurate it is really. We were coming back from the boma (the little town with a few shops and a market) having just bought our first bag of maize meal to make nshima for ourselves at home. We bought a 10kg bag so we got a taxi home from the shop. We were glad we did otherwise we would have got very wet!

When I got in from the shop it completely stopped raining. So I decided to carry on doing my washing. As soon as I put the buckets outside on the porch area it began to pour with rain! I decided to continue as there wasn’t much else to do. We have somewhere inside the house to hang things to dry so I didn’t need to worry about hanging it outside and since none of the floor is carpeted it doesn’t matter that it drips a bit. While I was doing the washing the rain became torrential.

Outside you could hear the rain pouring from the corrugated roof tiles onto the ground around the house(there are no gutters here as they would be redundant for over half the year). There were huge puddles beginning to form around the edges of the house but the rest of the ground seemed quite dry in comparison as it just seemed to absorb the water. There was a strong smell, petrichor, since the ground was so dry and the rain had only just started. I really like that smell and we don’t often get it at home. Fortunately our roof seems to be quite water tight despite the evidence of some watermarks on the roof.

After a bit I noticed the faint rumble of thunder coming. The rain was still heavy. I couldn’t see any lightning accompanying the thunder at this point. Then suddenly there was a very bright flash and, almost immediately after, a tremendous boom of thunder. I could actually feel the sound as it happened. It really sounded like there had been an explosion. There were several more like this one over the evening. It was very impressive the amount of rain and the thunder and lightning.

We weren’t really expecting any rain until around November time but it’s not an exact science. The rain has cooled the air down now a lot but it has become very humid which is not really a nice exchange as it is still very warm just not hot. Hopefully sleeping should be easier tonight as i have been waking up due to being too hot the past few nights.

As I was taking out the bin this evening, after the rain had stopped, I noticed that there were two orange mangos on the floor. They must have been nocked off the tree by the storm. All the other big mangos are still very green some of the smaller ones are beginning to turn yellow but I hadn’t seen any that were totally ripe. I picked them up and brought them inside to wash.

I haven’t had mangos since I got here as there are none around. The kids at the school and many locals like to eat the unripe mangos. I tried one once. Surprisingly, it wasn’t bad at all they are very tough and hard and you have to eat the skin since the flesh wont separate from it. They taste vaguely of mango but no where near as strongly. The flesh is white and doesn’t taste sweet at all they aren’t sour or bitter just not sweet it was odd but I can see why you might eat them. It seems like a better alternative to the other habit some have of chewing on sugarcane!

The two mangos I got were very small ones but they tasted amazing! The flesh was very soft and it wasn’t really like a mango I’ve had at home before but a ate every last bit of them! I managed to stop myself from eating the second one to take a photo of it. Having not had much fruit for a while it was very nice to have a mango. I’m not very excited for the other larger mangos to become ripe but I might have to wait until late November apparently!

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.

 

Our first trip to Chipata started at around 5:15 am, around the time many days start. We got up and had our breakfast and gathered our things. We both brought our large backpacks since we knew there would be a lot of things to bring back. Since you cannot get a taxi from the school, we had to walk to the junction where the school road and the great east road meet. That was where we were told to wait for the “green bus” which comes at 7am. For reference this story is from Saturday the 15^th of September but I haven’t had a chance to write about it until now.

We were waiting for about 10 minutes since we had got there a bit early. It was already light and beginning to get warmer by this point. Then a small minibus arrived at around 7:05. On the side of the bus was written “The yellow submarine”. We asked where they were going and they said Chipata. We checked the price was K50 which we were told was the standard, about £3.30, significantly cheaper than any bus journey I’ve had in Warrington despite the journey being around 40 miles. The bus wasn’t too full there were a couple of spare seats. We didn’t stop at many places which made it quite a quick journey. The bus itself seemed quite safe although the engine sounded like it had seen better days and the driver seemed to be struggling to get it to change gear.

We heard a lot of murmuring about “muzungos” while we were on the bus so we could tell we were being talked about. It’s rather annoying that there are no major similarities between Chinyanja and English. I am hoping to learn how to speak it although it seems like a lot to do on top of my day job. It’s not helped by the fact that the way the language is structured is quite different to English. I think once I’ve got the basics I will be able to make progress it will just be a matter of putting some time aside to learn about the grammar.

We were dropped off at the bus station in Chipata which is quite busy since many bus companies operate from there. We got off and as usual were the only white people around; this meant that we had many people coming over to “help” us. They usually expect you to pay for the help that they give you and since we knew what we wanted to do we were trying avoid this. However we looked puzzled as we wanted to find the bus office to book a return bus at 2pm but were struggling to find it. We couldn’t work out where it was so had to get some help and they asked for us and said that the person in the office said that bus wasn’t running. However we weren’t sure if he was telling the truth since we never heard it for ourselves. We decided to leave the bus station and head to the shops and sort out transport later. We had arrived at 8:30 so we thought there would be plenty of time to do everything. As we left we were asked if we wanted a taxi to the shops as the driver quoted it was 30km and we couldn’t walk. We both knew this wasn’t true as Chipapta itself is probably not much wider than that as a whole city! We decided to walk since we could see it was less than 1km to the shops on google maps.

We walked out of the station to find a chaotic street which had taxis trying to flag us down by honking their horns and ”bus” drivers asking if we wanted lifts in their overcrowded vehicles which are effectively the same size as a small van but have around 10 seats. Some of them even had people standing in the doorway holding onto the roof bars half outside the van as there were no seats. We walked up the other side of the hill with the many other people carrying varyious items including chickens, buckets full of water, shopping bags, trays of nuts and other items to sell to passers buy. As with every area with a reasonable amount of people there were plenty of mobile phone credit stalls. At one point I decided to count all the ones in view and I got to no fewer than 12!

As we approached the “Great east mall” we were offered Malawian Kwacha and US dollars buy many men waving large wodges of cash. This is because Chipata is almost a boarder town many people need dollars for the visa to enter Malawi and kwacha to spend there. The great east mall is not very large it is not like the shopping centres in Lusaka as all the shops open to the outside not an indoor corridor. For those of you reading this who come from or know Warrington, I could describe it as being like riverside retail only about half the size and with more smaller shops. We went round some of the shops to start with to get an idea of what they had and the kind of prices since we wanted to bulk buy a lot of things like rice, pasta chopped tomatoes and other tinned items. We also wanted to buy a kettle and chopping board since we both agreed that this would be something that would improve the kitchen a lot. As it turns out a decent kettle is only £13 so it wasn’t too bad. We went to the spar supermarket as well as shoprite which was a long walk away. We were offered yet more taxis but this time to the Malawian border along that road so at least we know how to get to Malawi now. We went to choppies which is now our favourite shop due to the price and range of items.

After having a look around we decided to walk back to the bus station we were constantly being asked if we wanted a taxi or a ride on the back of a bike which does sound like something I’d like to do at some point just for fun but I didn’t want one at that time. I don’t think our large travelling bags helped the situation as many backpackers travelling to Malawi come through Chipata and we looked the same as them. When we got to the bus station we established the man in the morning was right the bus wasn’t running today as it had broken down before it had got to Mambwe. So we went to check another bus company but the bus left at 1pm and we had to board at 12:30 and it was already 10:30 and we hadn’t been to the bank or bought anything so we decided we might have to get a shared taxi home.

So we left the bus station once again, having learnt nothing new and were welcomed by the onslaught of honking and taxi offers yet again. All the while it was very hot but not as hot as Mambwe so it didn’t feel too bad compared to normal. We went to the bank where we withdrew some cash since there are no cash machines in Mambwe. We also grabbed a sausage bap from outside the spar shop which was very tasty and only K8, about 60p. We also managed to change all of our K100 notes into smaller denominations which has made life so much easier in shops since then.

We then went back to the furthest shop where I got a box mosquito net to give me more space to move in my bed which I have been glad of. We also got some cleaning products and cloths to make the house a bit better. Went out of the shop and packed the shopping into our backpacks but not before the security guards, who are at almost every shop, checked that you had a receipt. We then walked back to the other shops to get the rest of the items. We had a lot of stuff by the end of the shopping trip. I had 5kg of rice and 3kg of pasta, bottles of cleaning fluids, orange juice, meat and vegetables. Our bags were completely full of stuff and we had carrier bags too. The walk back to the bus station was tough and we knew we had missed the bus by over an hour so we knew we would have to get a shared taxi. When we got to the bus station the bus company said they would sort us out with a taxi which seemed nice however when we had started loading the bags into the car they said it was K100 each rather than the usual K50 for a shared taxi. We think this was because the bus company take a cut. We now know where to get a sharing taxi from  thanks to some of the teachers at the school so we wont be making that mistake again!

The taxi ride was rather long and uncomfortable. There were two school children in the back with Andrew and I so four people on the three seats in the back. Then in the front there was also four people. One person was even sat with the driver in the driver’s seat! Before we left, we ended up with a tour of Chipata. I think,  one of the girls wanted to say bye to her boyfriend but no one knew where he was! We never found him in the end. We also went to a petrol station and several roadside stops for food and other things and a change of driver too. In total we spent 40 minutes going around Chipata before leaving. The car was very overloaded so had very little give in the suspension meaning we had to slow a lot and go over speed bumps at an angle in order to not break the bottom of the car. In the taxi on the way home I could feel the temperature rising as we got closer to Mambwe which wasn’t surprising but it was an annoying end to the day.

When the taxi dropped us off at the school it stopped at the end of the road to the school so we had to walk the last 1.6km down the road with our bags. It was a tiring end to the day but at least it was a successful shopping trip. We looked forwards to cooking ourselves something different to pasta with tomato sauce that night. I can’t remember what it was we cooked that night but it did taste good.

Unfortunately, as you can see by the lack of photos, I was too busy that day to take any pictures. I’ll try to take some next time I go. Instead I can leave you with a very poor picture of some of the many chickens around the school. These were wandering around outside the staff room.

This week has been quite tiring I hadn’t really appreciated how many things you have to do as a teacher here! And the heat in the afternoon can make it hard to gather the effort to do things but it is possible. The week started with the assembly in the school hall again with the national anthem and a lot of notices about the term ahead. There were many more students this time than there were last week probably around 3 times the amount! There should be around 600 by now I have been told which is the capacity of the school.

The school was built in 1991 as a partnership with the Japanese government to help Zambia develop so they donated the school to the Zambians. Due to a lack of money these buildings are much the same as they were when they were built. One thing I have noticed about teaching in the classrooms is the heat as the sun gets stronger throughout the day. Despite having windows all along the classroom which are almost permanently open, the heat radiates from the roof. It is made of black corrugated panels. They aren’t iron but they still absorb lots of the heat from the sun and radiate it into the classroom. This can make it very hot despite the breeze it feels a little like you are putting yourself under a gentle grill when you enter a class room sometimes around lunch time.

I received my new timetable at the start of this week. I have three classes a maths class for grade 10 (Year 11) which I teach for 6 periods a week. A period is 40 minutes but they are always in sets of two so 1 hour 20 minutes. I have my grade 10 chemistry and biology classes for two double periods a week each. I have a very busy day on Tuesday teaching all my classes back to back. The school day starts at 7am each day and most lessons are done by around 12:50 when we have lunch although I have run a few classes after this to try and fill some gaps or provide the students with extra help with understanding classwork.

Andrew and I had to make our first test this week and it is for all four grade ten classes. We were told to make it based on the first and second term’s work as well as what we have covered this term so far. We were meant to be creating it alongside another teacher however she couldn’t arrange child care for the day so we had to do it alone. It feels like a huge responsibility and not something we have ever done before. We found the schemes of work for the previous terms and chose some topics to create questions for. We used a range of resources including modifying text book questions, past papers from the uk and practice questions we found online. We have now received confirmation from the head of maths that it’s suitable which is good to hear. Now we just have to make the marking scheme. We wanted to check last year’s test to see if it was similar however the office where it is kept was locked since many staff were away at a funeral that day.

Some of my lessons have had to be taught outside. This is because of a shortage of classrooms for the pupils. Normally there are enough however last term one of the dormitory blocks caught fire; no one was hurt but the building is unusable. So the students are now sleeping in what used to be classrooms that have been converted to dorms. But this has lead to a lack of classrooms. Teaching outside is nice though as it’s done under a tree in the shade and it is often a lot cooler than in the classrooms. The only problem is the board space is limited since you only have one portable board that is about the width and height of two single school desks and they are propped up against the tree sometimes balanced on chairs or tables. Since this is about four or five times smaller than the normal classroom width chalk boards it can be a challenge as you have to make sure the students have finished copying as you have to rub off the board regularly to write new things.

There is also the problem of the animals the chickens this time are not the culprits. It is the cows there seems to be a heard of cows, including a couple of bulls, which live around here. I haven’t yet established if they belong to the school or just a local farmer. Whether they belong to the school or not they are often found being walked through the school grounds by a man with a stick. When teaching in a classroom this is not a problem however when you are outside they can get pretty close. The students often have to leave their seats, quite sensibly, in case the cows come closer and start charging. They don’t tend to get too close although one of the cows has three claves and the other day one got lost and started mooing and the mother came charging to find it causing the pupils to have to run away. Fortunately this wasn’t during a lesson the kids were just milling about during break time.

One of Andrew’s and my favourite times of the day is break time. As teachers we get a snack and drink provided to us. One of the home economics teachers makes these muffin/scone type snacks freshly each day. They are always deliciously warm and soft as well as being just sweet enough to be satisfying but not sickly. There is also a cordial, usually pineapple for a drink which is very refreshing. We want to learn how to cook what we call muffins, due to their shape. However the staff call them scones but I think they are more like a muffin inside really. So one morning we will go and watch them make them and get the recipe so we can make them at home as we could both eat at least two in one go but we can only have one in the staff room.

Teaching can be quite challenging as despite having a standard UK accent the children seem to struggle to understand what we are saying, as we do with them at times. I have had to slow down what I am saying in order to make sure that everyone has a chance of understanding what I am trying to explain. I have found this hard especially if I am trying to explain a problem as I often get faster when I am enjoying solving a problem. I have also started using fewer long or complex words and instead using more common ones as this makes it easier for them to understand. The reason many children struggle to understand is perhaps due to a lower standard of English generally. Since for many English is a language only spoken at school as a second language they struggle to form coherent sentences and understand complex English. This is totally understandable since if the language you speak at home is Chinyanja then why would you speak English there? It is unlikely that their parents would speak any English at all especially if they live in a rural village.

I hope that gives you a bit of an insight into the school and the way it works. In another blog post I will describe how the school is set up a little more including more pictures of the school.

I had said that this post would be about the house and garden however, since I can write about that at any time and won’t forget about it, I will be talking about my first week at Mambwe boarding secondary school.

I was rudely woken up by the neighbour’s many cockerels crowing at around 3:50 which was rather unexpected. I managed to go back to sleep despite them continuing to make noise all morning. In fact they seem to enjoy making noise all day and they only seem to stop when they go to their coup to sleep. It doesn’t get light here until around 6 in the morning and the sun comes up very fast so at 5:30, when I got up, it was still pitch black. We made ourselves porridge to eat and then got ready for school.

I had to iron some shirts before school since they got crumpled in my bag on the way here. We don’t have an ironing board so we just do it on a table. We were running a little late and, me being me, I got a quite worried when I realised we would be a couple of minutes late for the 6:50 staff meeting. As it turns out I didn’t need to worry, most teachers still hadn’t arrived by 7am and the meeting didn’t actually start until 7:10 due to the relaxed attitude of Zambians to timing. The head teacher introduced us to the staff who we had already greeted with a hand shake and the usual greeting of “how are you?”, “fine and you?”, “fine”.

After the meeting we went to the hall to address the students the head spoke for a while and introduced Andrew and I to the students. Then they sang the national anthem which was quite impressive with everyone singing a cappella.

The rest of the first day was rather confusing since it seemed nobody told us anything about what we would be doing, when to start or how to find out. We were eventually directed to the heads of department. Helpfully, the head of science wasn’t in and still isn’t. We were given the task of taking the previous volunteers classes for the first week since the new timetable was yet to be generated.

I found it quite surprising that we would be trusted to teach so early but I was excited to give it a go. As it turns out the timetable we were given initially was wrong so I kept trying to teach a class and then another teacher arrived to teach them a different subject. Despite the reports of large class sizes none of mine had more than 30 during that week. This was since many students can’t get to the school on time or don’t have the funds to pay at the start of term. All my classes now have over thirty or forty students which, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to make me worry.

I taught two grade 11 classes (year 12) and a grade 10 (year 11) class they were very respectful when speaking to me and, generally, remained quiet when I was talking to them which was reassuring as I was very worried that class discipline might get in the way of teaching.

Lunch is provided for staff at the school since all the children are boarding they have three meals a day provided so they just make extra for the staff at lunch. The lunch for students is always nshima and beans unless it’s Thursday then it’s rice and beans. Not baked beans although it is quite similar. We decided we didn’t really like nshima after this although we later realised that it was because we were not managing to eat the beans with the nshima as its very hard to pick up. This meant we were just eating nshima which is very plain, even the Zambians will admit that. I should mention it is traditional to eat nshima with your hands. First you take a small amount and roll it into a ball with one hand. It is extremely hot but I have been told that I will get used to it, as with many other things such as the temperature here. Then you make a small indent with your thumb in the ball and use this to pick up whatever is served with your nshima.

Below is a photo of what I had for lunch this week. The portion sizes here are very big since nshima is meant to fill you up. The staff have a scheme where they pay K100, around £7, per month to have some meat and vegetables to be cooked for us instead of beans. We are very thankful for this as the same thing for lunch each day can become a bit wearing.

The staff, with a few exceptions, are quite friendly. They are willing to help, usually on their own timescale but do help in the end. The previous volunteers were friends with two of the teachers in particular and Andrew and I were invited round to their house last Friday for a meal and went to a bar to play pool after which was exciting.

The temperature is something which I have  now managed to get used to. By get used to it really means you expect to be constantly sweating from around 8am till 8pm. I can get to 42 degrees here in October but at the moment it only gets to around 37 degrees between 12 and 3 it usually cools down to around 22 degrees overnight which now feels quite cool. It hasn’t rained here since we arrived and it probably won’t until the rainy season begins in late November.

I am now beginning to settle into the school routine and what I am doing is feeling normal. There are many more things to mention to life in Mambwe but I’ll save these for another time. I’ll leave you with a nice photo of a sunset above the great east road to Mfuwe.

 

We finished our stay in Lusaka with a celebratory fresh goat BBQ and Nshima at the youth hostel. Nshima is the Zambian staple food it looks like mashed potato but is made of corn meal mixed with water. The goat was brought in on the Saturday and proceeded to run around the compound of the hostel until they caught it. We stayed up a bit with some of the guests at the hostel and tried to get some sleep.
We woke up at around 3:30 in the morning on Sunday the 9th as the bus left the bus station in the centre of Lusaka at 5am. We got a lift from the manager of the hostel and got there a little after 4:30 already the luggage section of the bus was completely full. So we all had to get on the bus with our luggage and find space for our bags inside the bus. In the end I took up two spaces with other volunteer’s bags and my own bag was on my lap. Other passenger’s bags were placed in the aisle which was a very inconvenient since everyone had to climb down an obstacle course of bags to get on and off. My bag was sat on my lap for around three hours until I managed to rearrange the bags.

The roads are pretty smooth aside from the occasional speed bump by a village. The bus seemed to be travelling very fast despite the road being relatively thin and having speed bumps. Thankfully it only seemed to take the most direct route round corners, on the wrong side of the road, when they could see no one else was coming. I was surprised at how hilly it is on the initial route out of Lusaka; there are many little hills either side of the road as well as travelling over them.

After about 5 hours, the first two from our party of six left and, a little after that, the other two girls left. At each stop there were people offering drinks, snacks and fruit which was useful as I had little in the way of food. After around 8 hours on the bus we arrived in Chipata the nearest local city. We didn’t get off in case the bus left without us. The bus got very hot while we were stationary as there was no breeze even from the open window. We arrived in Mambwe at about 16:00 and were met by the headteacher’s son and shown to a taxi to take us down the road to the school. Once we were there we were shown to our house.
The kids were all walking around the school and the office was packed full of children registering for the term as we went to collect the keys from the office. It was a little intimidating with so many of them around. We didn’t get shown around the school site perhaps because we arrived quite late. Once we had looked around I we went for a quick wander around the site. We met a couple of teachers who were very chatty and helpful and went home for some tea. We had some instant noodles since it was late and we had very little in the way of food. The headteacher came round at one point to give us a loaf of bread and say hi which was kind. We went to sleep under our mosquito nets that night and, despite the heat, slept very well. The next day we had to get up at 5:30.
In the next post I will talk about the house and garden.