First Impressions

Its hard to believe I'm actually here and finally doing my first blog entry from Zambia. Having said that, being in an internet cafe staring at a PC is something that could be done anywhere. Anyway, hello to you all from Livingstone.

Today was my first day of a full day's work; this morning I was assisting in a Grade 6 class at the one of the local junior schools and this afternoon I was working at a local farm. More of both of those later.

Getting here was fine, not much to record of note save that I dropped and thought I'd broken my iPod. My flight from Heathrow to Jo'burg was particularly comfy. I told the woman sitting next to me about my fainting episode on my last long haul flight which got me an upgrade. About half an hour later the cabin steward came to get her stuff as apparently she'd fainted too!! Anyway, I got all 3 seats to myself and managed to sleep.

The volunteer house is probably what you'd expect from somewhere in the heat which has had too many students living in it, but its tolerable. There are 3 ginger cats, and there was a dog, but he's gone back home to Zim. My roomie is a girl called Joyce, who's Dutch, and a lawyer thinking of a change of direction - yes really! We get on brilliantly and have a scary amount in common. She's only here for another two weeks on the projects but she's staying in Livingstone for a few more weeks. The rest of them seem like a good bunch, especially 3 girls who arrived on Monday. There is only one that I couldn't see far enough, so that's not bad out of a dozen or so. We're set up in 2 houses so there is much to-ing and fro-ing, particularly at meal times. Which brings me to food. So far I've eaten cornflakes, pasta and mangoes. The mangoes grow everywhere, there are about 10 trees in the garden so when we need some more we ask the gardener or go and get them ourselves. They're fab, but not pretty to eat.

On Monday I went to the orphanage for the first time. Its hard to know where to start. They are having to rebuild parts of it as the roof of the living area (which is about my living room x1 1/2 - or maybe one of the S+W boardrooms x2) for 20 boys so classes haven't started yet this term as the boys are now living in the classrooms. About 230 children come to the school for lessons as it is not a fee-paying school and they don't have to have a uniform. When classes start we only teach in the morning and the afternoon is spent on general play time with them. Yesterday I got them to write their names and numbers on the blackboard but as we only had an inch of chalk it didn't last long. I wish I'd brought out some of the stuff that I've sent, but at least I know how badly it is needed. When we ran out of chalk the kids wanted to braid my hair. Most mzungu (white person) hair is too thin, but mine was great to do.

There is not really much for the children to do, so we organise games, play sports, read and just talk to them. The older boys know about football, I've even found an Arsenal fan! Some previous volunteers have gone in with loads of presents, so some of the kids are a bit grasping, but its not their fault. When my stuff arrives, I'm going to make sure it goes to the schools for use, rather than be grabbed by individual children. That just ends in mayhem.

This morning I went to my first class proper as a teaching assistant, this time at a governnment school that the project also works with. When I got there, my first thought was that compared to the community school the kids looked well and it seemed organised, and that I'd probably choose to work at the community school as the need was greatest there. The next few hours were in a way quite shocking. It was a grade 6 class, which should be for 12 year olds, but there were some kids who had been held back a few years, so went up to 15. There were about 50 kids in the class, with one teacher - which is of course why they need teaching assistants - and when we joined they were reading a story and then had to answer questions on the story. At the end of this exercise, those kids that had not answered a question or read a paragraph were hit hard on the hand with a piece of what looked like hard rubber hose pipe. It clearly hurt a lot. It was about half the class. The teacher made the sing (in local language so I didn't understand what it was about) while she went around the room belting the kids. It was horrible. What it comes down to is that some of these kids can't read and so can't do the work, and for that they are always going to get hit. They were told to go away and learn to read to avoid being hit in the next class. No, I don't know how either, but we are thinking of setting up reading classes. The kids only get half a day's schooling as there are so many children and not enough resources, so we could do classes for when each set of children is not in a formal class.

It was awful to sit and watch this, but we are given strict instructions not to interfere and I understand the logic. We can't change the culture in an individual classroom and we are there to help the kids learn to read so that they can get past this. They were so eager to learn and talk to me. I marked their work from a science class and after I handed back the corrected books, they all re-did the work using the corrections and handed it back in. After that there was a home-economics class which was quite surreal. The teacher set a revision test so I wasn't allowed to help which was just as well as I didn't know the answers. "What are the 3 types of food? Body building, energy and protective!" You can see the logic.

What was quite worrying though is that many of the children seemed to have no idea of how to answer questions - I spent most of my time showing them how to go back to the text and look for the answers. Here they learn by rote, and are not shown how. If they are not bright enough to pick it up (and about a dozen were) then they are left behind.

The second class was interrupted by the deputy head asking the teacher to hand out leaflets. I'll quote from it later as I left it at home, but it was from an evangelical Christian organisation based in Louisiana, promising eternal damnation if you didn't do something totally pointless. It was truly nauseating.

I found all that quite hard to take in the morning so this afternoon I wanted to do something different. I went to work on a local farm which is run by local women volunteers. They raise chickens and grow crops to raise money to fund a home visiting project, going out to the villages and helping where there are terminally ill family members. They try to educate the villagers on preventing the spread of AIDS but until only a few weeks ago they didn't realise it was transmitted by sexual contact. There are a lot of billboards talking about AIDS prevention and encouraging condom use, but it seems there is a long way to go. I also had a look at the health clinics that the project supports and they are busy! I suppose that is a good thing. It was pretty hot today, so hoe-ing and raking in 30 degrees was interspersed with much rest and chat. Yes - my back is ok - I was careful.

Anyway, tomorrow we have a frolic to a game park and a local village as part of getting to know the area, and on Friday I'll be back at the school and orphanage. There is a new project starting up trying to re-educate prostitutes and give them the skills to get jobs in the hotel industry, which is growing here, and I've said I'd like to be involved in that, as its a start up venture and I do believe empowering (sorry!) women is so important in order to achieve real change. I'll let you know what happens, but I'm really keen on taking that forward.

Livingstone itself is one long street in the centre with other roads going off at right angles. There is a Spar supermarket, which is just next to where I am now and it sells about everything you could think of as necessary and a lot that isn't. I haven't explored town much yet but plan to at the weekend. Its been so hot that when we are between projects at lunchtime I've just gone back to the house to hide in the shade. I don't know why, but I didn't think it would be quite as hot as it is. I definitely need another pair of shorts (and not half the crap I have with me).

Anyway, its happy hour at the bar near the internet cafe, so I'm going to head off now so that I have time for a cocktail. Yesterday we had drinks on the Zambezi watching the sunset.