Dear All As Promised Here Is the First of Several Updates I Will Be Sending
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Dear All As promised here is the first of several updates I will be sending back to the UK this year about my time here in Zambia. Firstly I’d like to once again thank everyone who helped me with my fundraising for your extremely generous contributions towards my year with Project Trust. The experience so far has already been so exciting and rewarding and there’s no way I could have got to Zambia without the kind donations from so many people. I travelled out to Zambia via Johannesburg nearly a month ago (Wow time is flying!) after meeting up with my project partner Wessel and two other Zambia volunteers, Pippa and Kate, at Heathrow Airport. It was a very strange feeling saying goodbye to my family in Newcastle, knowing that I wouldn’t be seeing them in person for a year, but it was also extremely exciting to leave the UK behind and begin the journey into the unknown. From Johannesburg we flew up to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, where we were met by our country rep Kelly, a very friendly American who’s been living in Zambia for the last 19 years and therefore knows the country very well. After a few days in Lusaka spent getting over the long journey and getting used to the heat, the four of us headed out to our respective projects in Zambia’s Eastern Province. For the girls this meant a 4 hour bus journey along the great east road to Petauki, the town in which their project is based (blue star on the map). For myself and Wessel the journey was more unpleasant. A 16 hour bus marathon, overnight (with no sleep thanks to loud African music being played over the radio on a three hour loop), along the great east road to Chipata followed by a 2 hour (and very African) taxi ride, up the road towards Mfuwe, to our project in Mambwe (shown by the red star on the map). We arrived after being on the go for over 48 hours and were completely exhausted. We were shown to our accommodation and promptly both fell asleep. The Jonda bus was definitely more of an experience rather than an enjoyable end to our journey and I certainly didn’t feel particularly like I wanted to do it again. Our project in Mambwe is very exciting. Wessel and I are both teachers at Mambwe Secondary Boarding School. We live in a small house right by the school in the middle of the teacher’s community. The school has around 520 students ranging from grade 8 to grade 12 in ability and from about 13 to 20 in age. It’s rather odd teaching students who are older than yourself and I’ve had to resort to telling my classes that I’m 26 in order to hold some authority during lessons! I’m currently responsible for teaching all of grade 10 physics, around 150 students split into 3 classes. Wessel is responsible for grade 10 maths. Myself and Wessel are also very excited to also begin teaching computer studies in the New Year too, as the school has recently been gifted 25 second hand computers by a charity in Japan. In this day and age we both think computer skills are a vital skill for students trying to seek employment and so we feel we can make a real difference here through these lessons. I’m also looking into teaching some more physics classes as test results for the grade 10’s have already started to pick up a bit and I really enjoy teaching physics lessons. In the quite limited time we are not spending planning lessons, marking homework and tests or tutoring students, we have been able to explore some of the local area around the school and Mambwe district. We’ve had a trip to the edge of the South Luangwa National Park and have seen real life wild Elephants, Crocodiles, Impala and Hippos – a really amazing experience and we haven’t even been into the park yet! We’ve also had several walks around the tiny local villages, aided by friends and teachers from the school. It’s very humbling to see how the vast majority of the people here in rural Zambia live. Their houses are made of mud, with straw roofs and no running water. Every day is a struggle for them and full meals are not regular. It makes me very guilty of how I used to waste food in the UK and also guilty that we’ve been given such a nice house here in comparison. (We even have a shower that actually works! But only when the water is on…) The teachers at the school are an extremely friendly bunch of people, always happy to help out with anything, whether that’s teaching advice, teaching us how to prepare Shima (the staple diet of every Zambian), taking us up to the national park during weekends or giving us lifts to the bus stop at stupid times in the morning so that we can catch the bus to Chipata or Lusaka when we need to. I feel very welcome here as a result and that was not something I had expected so soon this year. It’s lovely. Living in Mambwe is by no means easy, I think this may be why the community is so strong and willing to help us with any problems we have, no matter how small. For the first week or so we were only able to make pasta with ketchup at mealtimes, as we had no food and no way of getting any either. The heat here in Mambwe is incredible too. We are in the bottom of a large valley and as a result the heat stays high all the time. The temperature hasn’t fallen below 25⁰C yet, even at night, and we’re told that it gets even hotter in October, around 40⁰C on average each day. This makes it very hard to teach and it also means we spend large amounts time in the mornings filling buckets of water to drink when the taps are turned off through the day. Between about 11am and 3pm its nigh on impossible to do anything other than hide in the shade of a mango tree outside our house as it’s so hot. Luckily I don’t have any lessons within this time window but Wessel does and he says it’s horrendous. As a result of the weather school days start very early here. I’m up out of bed at around 5am and I start teaching at 6.45. School lessons run through until about 1pm each day but the students are not finished with work until about 8pm as they have not one but two afternoon prep sessions, after their lunch break, and then an evening one too. They’re worked very hard here and education is really appreciated. Out of my 150 students there are only 5 or 6 trouble makers and if I compare that to the UK that’s really nothing. Students here are very hard working and driven. On the whole it’s a real pleasure to teach them and I leave most lessons smiling and looking forward to the next one. I’m currently in Lusaka, organising a work permit for the next 6 months or so, this involved another trip on the dreaded Jonda Bus, but in the end it wasn’t that bad. We took the day bus on this occasion, learning from the mistakes of last time, and this meant we were able to pass time watching the stunning scenery pass by outside. Zambia is beautiful and the journey back to Lusaka took us along the edge of the Lower Zambezi National Park and across some stunning mountain areas too. I feel very lucky to be here in Zambia and I can’t wait to begin exploring it even more in December when school breaks up for a few weeks. Overall our project is very exciting, our location is very exciting, getting to know the people here is very exciting and the opportunities the next few months hold in store are very exciting. I’m one excited volunteer. Ollie .