March 6th
Last week was an exciting week of only Lindsay and I teaching at school. The four new teachers were in Itumba trying to get their paychecks (took them all week), the headmaster was in Mbeya, the second headmaster was in Itumba, I don’t know where the academic master was, and the disciplinary teacher was busy running the school and didn’t teach. As a result, the students were extremely rowdy and I was very tired.
Umbege came to my house many days last week to help with my garden expansion. Everything is finally planted and now I am hoping it all grows. I am also watering everything twice a day (if it doesn’t rain) so I have a lot of work to do. It takes me about forty minutes to water every plant I have. Now, I must wake up earlier so that I am not late to school. It is nice to have such a busy schedule but it leaves little time to do much of anything else. Unfortunately, Umbege doesn’t know any details about the wizards’ burning so I don’t have any more news there. I asked the teacher, Lwangalo, to shed some light on the subject but he denied it and then ran away from me. I again asked him for details today and he said we would talk later….still waiting for that talk!
On Wednesday, the disciplinary teacher, Kabage, decided to have a tree cutting/planting day at school. Of course, I didn’t know this prior to the school day starting and stayed late on Tuesday marking assignments. Instead of teaching, I spent Wednesday reading and taking photos of the students doing work. The tree cutting/planting days are truly a joke. Half of the students are sitting around waiting to do something, a third are walking around with their tools not doing anything, and the rest are actually cutting down or planting the trees. Once you see the photos, you will see how much work they were truly doing! The students were allowed to go home early which I took as an opportunity to walk to Isoko. Lindsay joined me on the walk but became sick on our way there. Once we reached Isoko, she stayed in the town while I walked to my friend Hawa Kibona’s house. Hawa was one of the student teacher’s from last term who is home on a two week holiday. While I was there, Hawa informed me that she saw the music video. Back in November I joined Mr. Mbughi in the middle of the soccer field dancing to one of the church songs that I have grown to know every word of (that is all the only music they play in the village). The church music group was being filmed for a music video and I took a part in the production of the last song. Last Sunday, the video was released. That was the Sunday where we had a downpour and I didn’t go to church. Hawa informed me not only am I in one of the songs, but they put my photo on the cover of the CD! All week students have been commenting that I am such a good dancer but no one told me I was on the cover! After I got over that shocking news, we caught up on the last couple of months since Hawa has been at school. She was disappointed that I didn’t visit her at her university in December but I promised to visit over the Easter break. I left around six that evening, walked through the market, and then returned home for the night still shocked about the CD news.
On Friday night I finally saw the CD! It has taken a month but now Mr. Mbughi’s inverter is working again so we have electricity for watching music videos. Friday night, Lindsay and I went over to watch the video. There are about seven or eight songs and I am in the last song. I look quite ridiculous. I would do it again though as it is definitely a memory that I won’t forget. And there are so many landmarks in the video which makes it so exciting to have. You’ve got the school, the church, the hospital, the soccer field, and then of course random shots of people that I nor Mr. Mbughi nor anyone else in Kafule has even seen before. It is embarrassing yes, but I have gotten so much more respect from the community ever since its release.
On Saturday, after teaching at school in the morning, I walked to the market in Ndembo with Enea and the school cook, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is very fun and I enjoy being around her. She was the one who had me dance at the local drumming with her back in September. On Saturday she was just as entertaining. Enea is a little less fit than Elizabeth and I and struggled quite a bit on the walk. She had to stop a few times. It is only a little over two miles to Ndembo…Elizabeth just laughed with me as we kept slowing down. During the walk, we ran into a group of men that were very angry. After a five minute conversation in which I couldn’t understand they left. It took Enea and Elizabeth awhile to inform me but I finally understood that a rabid dog was running lose and the men were trying to catch it. I picked up a stick right away. Elizabeth and Enea thought I was joking but I was quite serious, I don’t want rabies! I also picked up sticks for them which they took up as walking sticks. Fortunately, we only saw the dog run across the road once but never came close to us. Hopefully he has been caught by now, I haven’t heard any updates!
That’s all for the week. I am waiting for the rain to stop so I can head over to Mbughi’s for the night. We are watching the video from his brother’s wedding. He has talked about this video for months now and tonight we finally get the opportunity to watch it. Lucky us. All of the teachers have returned for classes this week and we have added a new teacher. The new teacher is a form six student waiting for his examination results and teaches mathematics, physics, and chemistry. I have given him my form one students which makes my schedule amazingly lighter which I appreciate very much.
Love,
Gretchen
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