at our graduation event on saturday i managed to gather a following of 6 little boys. they were all around 5 years old, and followed me around, climbed on my lap, poked me, and whatnot. for a solid 30 minutes i entertained them with the indi-glow on my watch. each one would take a turn putting their hands around the watch to make it dark enough to see the light. they would jump back and freak out for a second when they saw the light, let the next kid go, then fight their way in line for their next turn. i also spent another 30 minutes having my hair pet. obviously my natural, blonde hair is much different than the hair they are used to, so they were content to just sit there petting my head. it felt a little weird having 10 little hands petting my head at once haha. also, i got poked a lot. as we were sitting and watching the graduation, the little boys were all sitting around me/on me, and a couple of them kept poking my leg then looking up at me laughing and smiling. luckily, they took lots of breaks to dance and do gymnastics, which at least provided me with some breaks and entertainment.
i'd say a fairly typical graduation event.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
cutting the grass
inefficiency is something i've learned to get used to in zambia. nothing usually gets done in a timely manner, and many times take multiple tries to get done correctly. for instance, last week our gardener, this 19 year old rasta boy, gift, (who is awesome), came to me asking about mowing the lawn. most of the time people here just use a slasher blade to cut the grass by hand. but, one of his friends had a lawn mower we could borrow, so he was wanting to use it. he had never used a lawn mower before and was super excited! so i went with him to pick it up so he could mow our lawn.
in my past experience, lawn mowing is a fairly simple process that might take a couple hours depending on how large your yard is (our yard is not large at all). but no, this process took a solid 3 days! insane.
first off, the lawn mower has to be plugged in to an outlet. so that makes it a little tough as you're moving throughout the yard. it was on a long cord which helped, but you still had to move it around to different outlets. then, since the lawn mower was fairly old, the single blade on the bottom obviously broke when it hit a small rock in the yard. so we piled it back into the car, took it to one of gift's friends, and he welded it back together for us. success.
so the next day he starts mowing the lawn again, but the new welded blade broke again bc it was so weak after having been welded back together so many times. sooo, we loaded the lawn mower back in the car, took it back to the same friend, and had him make a whole new blade to put on. success.
this new blade was much stronger and sturdier so we figured we were set. get back and gift starts the lawn mower, and it shakes like crazy. apparently the new blade was much heavier than the older one and has thrown off the balance of the lawn mower or something weird like that. so as gift continues to mow the lawn he has to take breaks every once in a while bc the machine shakes his entire body as he uses it and makes his forearms cramp up. haha
finally, 3 days later, the lawn was cut and looked much better!! i think im gonna make gift stick to slashing the grass with the blade from now on though....
in my past experience, lawn mowing is a fairly simple process that might take a couple hours depending on how large your yard is (our yard is not large at all). but no, this process took a solid 3 days! insane.
first off, the lawn mower has to be plugged in to an outlet. so that makes it a little tough as you're moving throughout the yard. it was on a long cord which helped, but you still had to move it around to different outlets. then, since the lawn mower was fairly old, the single blade on the bottom obviously broke when it hit a small rock in the yard. so we piled it back into the car, took it to one of gift's friends, and he welded it back together for us. success.
so the next day he starts mowing the lawn again, but the new welded blade broke again bc it was so weak after having been welded back together so many times. sooo, we loaded the lawn mower back in the car, took it back to the same friend, and had him make a whole new blade to put on. success.
this new blade was much stronger and sturdier so we figured we were set. get back and gift starts the lawn mower, and it shakes like crazy. apparently the new blade was much heavier than the older one and has thrown off the balance of the lawn mower or something weird like that. so as gift continues to mow the lawn he has to take breaks every once in a while bc the machine shakes his entire body as he uses it and makes his forearms cramp up. haha
finally, 3 days later, the lawn was cut and looked much better!! i think im gonna make gift stick to slashing the grass with the blade from now on though....
Sunday, March 20, 2011
sunday afternoon
i had a lovely sunday. slept in this morning then went out onto our porch during the afternoon. beautiful sunny day with a cool breeze. i sat on the porch reading my book and eating an avocado from the tree in our yard (right now we have avocado, guava, and lemons all growing in our yard. more avocados than you can imagine, which i'm pretty excited about). after a while, a short sunshower came. crazy though bc it was only raining on half the yard haha. interesting that i could walk across the yard and go from fully being rained on to dry, sunny weather. did some writing in my journal, which i think i've done twice since i've been in zambia. stared at the beautiful trees with bright red and yellow flowers with the blue sky in the background.
then i came inside for a bit to clean up my room. i accidentally made the mistake of leaving my journal outside, though, and when i went back out, kamba, our dog, had chewed it to pieces. guess no more journaling for me haha. not really my thing anyways. i should have known better bc she had chewed apart another notebook left outside the day before. i'm obviously not a quick learner. whoops.
then i came inside for a bit to clean up my room. i accidentally made the mistake of leaving my journal outside, though, and when i went back out, kamba, our dog, had chewed it to pieces. guess no more journaling for me haha. not really my thing anyways. i should have known better bc she had chewed apart another notebook left outside the day before. i'm obviously not a quick learner. whoops.
Monday, March 14, 2011
garbage soccer
this past saturday we had an event for work, and there was a futbol game as part of the event. it was some of our grassroot soccer coaches vs lusaka police. we decided to invite the police to play in the game so they could understand what grassroot soccer is about. with the election going on this year, the police put stops to lots of rallies going on, and we didn't want them thinking our events were rallies for the election. so more than anything, it was to get them on our good side.
however, the morning of the event there were torrential downpours, and the field where the game was being hosted was barely able to be called a field. it was basically a big dirt field with trash and sewage all over it. so, with the rains, it made it even better haha. there were standing puddles of mud 6 inches deep all over the field. one quarter of the field was covered in black sewage. i never fully ventured over there, but some of the guys who played said it was foul. one of our coaches, who grew up playing on garbage covered dirt fields, got tackled and went face first into the sludge. he sat there for a minute wiping the nastiness off his face until one of his teammates came over to see if he was ok. his only response was, "disgusting." if he says it's disgusting, then you know it must be pretty bad hah.
the game ended up a 1-1 tie, which was probably good we didn't beat the police to keep them in our good graces.
the rest of the event went on, even with the rains. we had a big tent set up, so whenever the rains started, everyone just huddled under the tents to stay dry. at times though it got pretty chaotic bc so many people were pushing and trying to escape the rain. i somehow got put in charge of "cloud control" (crowd control), and let me tell you, this cloud was out of control.
also, it was very difficult to control the cloud during the futbol match. the area we were set up in was limited, so the tent with the music was right on the sidelines of the futbol field. kids were constantly running onto the field to play and dance and i constantly had to keep pulling them back. it was funny, if i asked them to move back, they looked at me like i was speaking a foreign language. but if i drew a line in the dirt and told them not to cross it, they immediately got it. that made things a bit easier.
as the game was going on, a little 3 year old girl ran onto the field and almost got bulldozed by one of the players. luckily, the player somewhat dodged her as i grabbed her arm and ripped her off the field. i seriously thought she was going to get run over though.
even with the rains and tough cloud control, the event went really well! we had drama groups come and perform, a couple really big zambian artists come perform, the futbol match, and hiv testing set up for the local community.
at the end of the event, when it was time to take down all the tents and dissemble everything, of course it started pouring down rain again. but, we were so ready to be done for the day, that a group of us just sucked it up and got soaked. it was kinda fun. in the end it turned into a big wrestling, mud fight. easy to do since the field now looked like a lake by this point....just with trash floating everywhere.
however, the morning of the event there were torrential downpours, and the field where the game was being hosted was barely able to be called a field. it was basically a big dirt field with trash and sewage all over it. so, with the rains, it made it even better haha. there were standing puddles of mud 6 inches deep all over the field. one quarter of the field was covered in black sewage. i never fully ventured over there, but some of the guys who played said it was foul. one of our coaches, who grew up playing on garbage covered dirt fields, got tackled and went face first into the sludge. he sat there for a minute wiping the nastiness off his face until one of his teammates came over to see if he was ok. his only response was, "disgusting." if he says it's disgusting, then you know it must be pretty bad hah.
the game ended up a 1-1 tie, which was probably good we didn't beat the police to keep them in our good graces.
the rest of the event went on, even with the rains. we had a big tent set up, so whenever the rains started, everyone just huddled under the tents to stay dry. at times though it got pretty chaotic bc so many people were pushing and trying to escape the rain. i somehow got put in charge of "cloud control" (crowd control), and let me tell you, this cloud was out of control.
also, it was very difficult to control the cloud during the futbol match. the area we were set up in was limited, so the tent with the music was right on the sidelines of the futbol field. kids were constantly running onto the field to play and dance and i constantly had to keep pulling them back. it was funny, if i asked them to move back, they looked at me like i was speaking a foreign language. but if i drew a line in the dirt and told them not to cross it, they immediately got it. that made things a bit easier.
as the game was going on, a little 3 year old girl ran onto the field and almost got bulldozed by one of the players. luckily, the player somewhat dodged her as i grabbed her arm and ripped her off the field. i seriously thought she was going to get run over though.
even with the rains and tough cloud control, the event went really well! we had drama groups come and perform, a couple really big zambian artists come perform, the futbol match, and hiv testing set up for the local community.
at the end of the event, when it was time to take down all the tents and dissemble everything, of course it started pouring down rain again. but, we were so ready to be done for the day, that a group of us just sucked it up and got soaked. it was kinda fun. in the end it turned into a big wrestling, mud fight. easy to do since the field now looked like a lake by this point....just with trash floating everywhere.
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