Immigration, Laundry and Africa's School System

The immigration office was visited once again so we could get approved for another 30 day stay. I think it is kind of bizarre we have to go every 30 days to renew our stay because I thought the whole purpose of getting a visa was to avoid stuff like this. However, I guess not in Africa. When we go again next month we will have to apply and get a new visa because they only supply you with 90 day visas. The next visa we receive will see us through the rest of our stay in Zambia. Then we will have to get a new one for Tanzania. Man, the wild world of traveling and staying in foreign countries. It makes you thankful that the United States of America is literally united. It would be terrible if we had to pull out a passport every time we crossed state borders (sucks to suck, Europe!) ha.

When we were in Mpika Zack and I were able to get out and walk around by ourselves for a bit considering we now know that place better. As we were walking we could barely believe our eyes when we spotted a few white people in the distance. There isn’t much to this story, but I just wanted to mention it because it is actually crazy to see white people after going so long with being the only ones in a solid 50km radius.

As the end of September approaches some of the monks are heading to Tanzania for school. We started out with a low number of monks and now are even getting smaller. We are in the low 20’s now, I’d say. It will be interesting when we travel to Hanga Abbey in Tanzania. The Abbey there has a very large community so it will be a big change going from such a small one to that. With some of the brothers now gone Zack and I are kind of on our own. The brothers we usually hung around and spoke with have left. Not all, but a lot.

Last week we finally were able to find some wash buckets and laundry soap. We washed our clothes by hand for the first time and it went well. You must scrub the clothes quite hard which probably isn’t very good for the fabric, but it does get them clean. I am happy to be able to do it now too. I felt bad always giving my clothes over to the ladies to wash and so now I am able to just do it on my own. I think Saturday afternoons will be laundry time. It can take some time to get through all of your clothes because you much rinse, wash, scrub, rinse and then hang all of them. This is why you want a nice hot and sunny day too. That’s not hard to come by down here, though. The clothes dry fairly quickly and then you take them from the clothes line and fold them up and you are set for another week.

This past weekend I came down with a bit of a cold or what I think may be hay fever. I’m not quite sure. Hay fever isn’t actually caused by hay nor does it cause a fever (humans really need to work on naming things better). However, it is an allergic reaction to certain dust particles. I don’t recall ever having this back in the U.S. but it may be something in the air down here that is setting it off. All the dust and wildfire may be kicking something up into the air. I’m not positive, but that’s my best guess so far. It causes nasal congestion, headache, sneezing, pressure in the face and a mild cough. It sucks, but I think it is going away (I hope). I am going to take a break from my long walks this week to see if that is what is causing it. I hope not, but if it is I may have to rethink my long walks down the dusty road.

Teaching has started back up and is going well this week. I have become extremely comfortable talking and teaching in front of the class. I am confident in what I teach and I know the material so I’m not nervous when explaining it. The 40 minute classes are a breeze and with all the lessons I have planned (thank God for planning ahead) the 80 minute classes are a piece of cake. I know I will have enough information for the entire term.

As teachers we must create a file with all of our lesson plans and such. It is like a record of the work we have done. This is the worst part of teaching because it is a bunch of busy work. I have to rewrite my lessons and record what I do each week and then recreate the syllabus (which is what they gave me) and also is what I base my lessons off of each week. So really it’s just rewriting the same thing multiple times in different ways. Oh well.

I will be testing my students at the end of next week so I can assess their progress on the topic of homeostasis. I will also collect their tests in order to compile some pieces of work for my file so the government (or whoever checks my teaching records) can see that I am, in fact, doing what I said I would.

There is still a problem with teachers and student not showing up to class. I swear my class gets larger each day I come in. I believe I am over 40 students now. Furthermore, I teach second period which means a teacher should be teaching period one. However, sometimes I walk in and find that there is no teacher and the kids are just hanging out and talking. This is sad. This is one of the many reasons why Africa’s school system is so underdeveloped and poor. To combat this behavior I make sure to show up on time and teach for the entire length of time. The students always have lots of questions which is also fun for me because I like helping explain the answer.

Yet, another problem that exists is some students not coming into class. Zack’s class yesterday was completely empty. We were really confused and could not find any of the students so we just wrote out what we would have taught on the board so hopefully they could at least copy the notes down when they returned. We are unsure if they did, but we can only hope. When it comes down to it, though, we can only do so much. We put in our time and now they must put in theirs. I think it is like this for most things in the world. We all must put in a bit of effort.

*Shout out to my sister, Grace, whose birthday was yesterday. Happy 19th! We will celebrate when I get home...trust me, I have plenty of random gift cards to blow. I think some are seriously from my senior year of high school grad party. I need help. So we will spend them!*

Thanks for reading!