written 2/11/12
It’s almost that time of year in Zambia. The
time of year where your yard becomes one big puddle, creatures find a new home
in your roof and mangos and cucumbers fill the market. That’s right, its almost
rainy season. I have a love hate relationship with rainy season. Meetings get
cancelled, it’s hard to go anywhere and living in a mud hut gets harder if that
could ever be possible. At the same time, the village is busy farming and
providing food for their families, the market is stocked with amazing veggies
and I get to read and drink time more than just on the weekends. The rains are
especially important this year. Last year, it rained just enough for maize but
there wasn’t enough water for reserves. This year the village has a water
shortage. I have no water in my village and the boar hole (water pumps) is
broken as well. The water we get for drinking is 3-4k (2.5miles) away and even
with a bike its difficult to carry 20 liters of water that far. Water is life
for sure and being here has made me more aware of this fact. But again when it
rains it pours…no pun intended.
These last few months have been busy with lots
of work. I have ordered books for the resource center in my zone and hopefully
they will be in early next year. The grade 7s and 9s are taking their exams and
there are preparations for World AIDS Day. I haven’t received the money from
the grant I applied for so our event will just be a small one but at least we
can continue the discussion on HIV/AIDS in my area.
With the arrival of exams at my
school, I have realized how much some children love to learn. I found out that
one of my pupils (a girl who also gets water for me) spent all her evenings studying
in the school. She would go to school after dinner around 7pm to study and go home around 1am. She was in grade 9 last year but
didn’t pass, this year she is studying harder to pass all her subjects. It’s
really encouraging to see someone who wants to learn so badly. She is such a
smart, outgoing, beautiful girl. I hope she can go on to grade 10. It’s hard to
watch some of the girls because the mentality is that girls don’t need and
education. The Ministry of Education is trying very hard to fight this
traditional ideal with emphasizes on education of the girl child. Peace Corps
Zambia is
Last week, I took my neighbor’s
daughter, Ester, to preschool with me. She always greets me in English and is
a very smart and adorable 4 years old. I told her if she could manage that I
would take her to school with me. She told her father to buy her new shoes so she
could walk with me. Monday morning comes around and I see Easter walking toward
my house. She’s dressed in her Sunday best including a brand new pair of shoes,
which isn’t easy to come by in the village. She has her snack of Amasuku (a
village fruit) and she’s ready to go. After a quick breakfast we start our
journey to the preschool, a mere 5k walk away. I was worried that her little
legs would be too tired to make it and she seemed so worried I was starting to
reconsider. After our break at the tuck shop at the road to get her more snacks
she was finally getting excited. We finished our 5k walk and were greeted by 15
other preshoolers and she introduced herself to the class. She seemed really
overwhelmed but was excited to learn. She comes from a family that doesn’t
speak English at home where as most of the other students come from a more
literate background. She comes from the village whereas the other kids live at
the Oil pipeline where the preschool is located, which is more like town than
village. We continued our day by having
snack time, pretending to be jungle, farm and safari animals and
finger-painting. It was a perfect preschool day and a great first day for her. After
we walked back home she quietly ate the rest of her snack and beamed when asked
about her day at preschool. These kids go through so much to get an education
and its one of the many things we take for granted. All kids go through the “I
hate school phase” and that phase doesn’t stop with college, but it just seems
as though you never realize how important it is until you don’t have access to
it or you have to climb mountains and cross streams to get there.
UPDATE: We finally got the results
back from the grade 9 exams. 34 out of 68 pupils passed English! It’s so good
to know that all my pep talks, occasional rants and hard work actually helped.
There were 36 pupils who have passed to go to the 10th grade. This
doesn’t seem like a lot but there were only 21 in the previous year. Hopefully
this will be good motivation for the teachers and the kids to keep working
hard. I’m really proud of them but also sad to see my 2nd grade 9
class go.
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