School shmool

Education in many American communities is a normal part of children's lives. The law says that children must be receiving education until 16, if i am not mistaken. In many families parents are actively involved In the schooling. In m village this is the exception not the norm.

Children are not required to go to school.Often times there is not enough money ,for school fees and if there is children are sent home because they dont have shoes to wear or the proper uniform, or soap to clean their uniforms. If the children are able to sit in the classroom many times they dont have notebooks and pens. Families will often pull their children out of school to help on the farm or perform other daily tasks. Food security, daily survival, and alcohol are more important than schooling.

The children also only go to school for half a day. Maybe from 7:30 to 12:00 through grade 7 and during grade 8 and 9 they may stay an extra hour. Half the students have classes in the morning and the other half in the afternoon because there is only 5 class rooms for grade 1 through 9. The children are also required to do manual labor. In the mornings you will often find children sweeping the classrooms and the surroundings of the school. Certain days children are required to bring hoes to help clear the drive way and paths to the toilet or you will find them slashing grass for the soccer and netball pitches as well as the surroundings. There are no janitors and the teachers aren't responsible for the cleanliness the students are.

The children take similar subjects to those in America. They learn English, math, science, writing, social studies, kaonde, civics and all children are required to take religion as a class. Students are tested at the end of each term in each of these subjects. The school calender is a little different here. There is 3 months of classes and then a one month break then 3 months of classes again.

So that is an overview of school life at Nyansonso Basic School.

Thank you seatbelt

So yesterday I was traveling to Lusaka to go on a short holiday...however on the way a small incident happened. I was in the cab of a pickup truck and we were traveling over the speed limit, like all drivers, there was another car trying to change lanes that did not see us coming. We hit them and spun around. There car spun and flipped over into the median. Thankfully everyone was alright in both cars. I had my seat belt on and there was no one in the bed of the truck. The driver had refused a few people who wanted to hitch to the next city from getting in the back of the truck.

After the incident I called PCMO (the peace corps doctor) and was asked to come to Lusaka for a check up. I was feeling fine but they wanted to just make sure. A little while later my chest and neck were sore. My chest from the seat belt, my neck from the impact. I finally arrived in Lusaka just before the PCMO was supposed to knock off, but thankfully she saw me. Everything was okay I received some ibuprofen and was asked to stay within the PC compound so I could be seen in the morning.

So today I went in the morning..there is some swelling but nothing to serious. I got x-rays taken no fractures seen in my neck from the inital examination, a more specialized doctor is going to look at them later. I have to wear a soft neck brace and take some anti inflammatory and pain medicine for the next few days. But i was so pleased with the way that I was taken care of. It definitely makes me trust in the doctors here and I do know that if something serious was to happen I would be well taken care of.

This accident has definitely made me think more carefully about the hitches I take. Sometimes after you have been standing on the road for 4 hours without a ride you will take just about anything. I am so lucky that i was sitting in the cab of this truck with a seat belt, it was probably one of my safer hitches. You never can predict when a car accident is going to happen and I will be more conscientious of this now.

I am grateful that Leanne was already in Lusaka so she could come and take care of me, I am even more grateful she was not in the pick up truck traveling with me, and I am even more grateful that I can leave for holiday this afternoon.

Cheers to holiday! Hope you all are finding this well.

ny bad

Okay so i had been really bad with this. I apologize but I am going to try to catch you all up to speed. For Christmas vacation I did a few things. For Christmas itself I spent the day at the provincial house with other peace corps volunteers. The next day we went ti the orohanage in solwezi where we gave each child a toy and then left some community toys for the children. It was so humbking. Although I would say that this Christmas was my least commercial yet...the joy in each chikds eyes from some toy cars or small dolls was...I don't know the right word, humbling, heartbreaking. I am nit sure. It makes you appreciate things alot. At the end as we were leaving the children and staff sang us a song which was wicked moving, it brought tears to my eyes. There is a video floating around somewhere, if I can find it I will share it. You could hear in their voices ans are by the movement just how grateful they were. The next day me and a couple others from my province met up with two of our friends from a different province. We went to a chimpanzee orphanage when we literally got to hold some of the chimps and feed them. There was one chimp that was not fit for the human interaction so she was in a seperat enclosure and she was sourtung at us and throwing rocks at us as the guide was telling us about chimps and the program it was so awesome. I was also peed on by a chimp.I was sitting on a log and the chimp was in a tree and decided he had to pee. It was coo. How many people an say they have been pee on by a chimp? I posted some pictures on Facebook. We also went to a waterfall and just relaxed and then to solwezi to celebrate the new year.

For my birthday I spent it in solwezi with some friends. It was nice and relaxing although I did have an infected cut on my foot that made it swell alot and eventually the swelling spread to my ankle. It was difficult to walk. But I am healed now and only had to stay in solwezi a few extra days.

When I got back to my village from my birthday addventure I was confronted by my community saying that they had organized the nursery school and that I would begin teaching it the next day. Needless to say I was a little over whelemed, still not 100% but I was very apprefiative of my community's effort and so we began. It has been going really well different from schools in the united states. The resources are just not there, no paper, crayons, sissors, chalkboard But it is not only the resources but also the parental involvement. I feel that in many places I the US parents know what the children are learning about at school and reinforce it, but here most of the time the learning stops once the child leaves the class, especially the english which is what the parents want the children to learn the most. It has been challenging but rewarding.

I also have gone to a training in Lusaka which was nice. I got to go to the movies, eat some good food, see everyone that I did my training with and learn a few things. One bad thing that happened was one of the girls I trained with was sent home after being hit by a drunk driver while walking, causing her to break her foot. Her recovery time was too ling so she was medically seperated.


Right now Leanne, Kim,and I are in the proecess of writing a grant for a joint Netball and football tournament where we will have VCT, which is great since it is not availablin my community and people don't know there HIV status, and HIV/aids educational events. It will require some work but it will be nice if we can pull it off.

This Monday is youth day so we had one of the neighboring villages over for a celebration of dancingm, poems, songs, questions in English and track and field events. Sometimes I have a moment of "wow I really am in Africa this is awesome" and the definitely occurred during these events.

That is a quick update. Hope all is well with you.