Of Rats and Spiders

Highlights from June 20^th 2012:

• writing creative short stories with the grade seven’s at Birdland
• Olive and her lovely staff made a traditional Zambian lunch for us featuring the much awaited N’shima (Alice was very excited).
• Reed, Gigi, and Grace killed their first large spider (Tommy killed the rest) and felt triumphant
• Emma and Grace signed with the deaf kids at Munali and when they coulden’t keep up,  resorted to written conversation
• Gigi, Jack, Reed, Leora, and Sam visited Temwani at his home. Temwani is a 7^th grader at Birdland who has been too sick to come to school (the cause of his illness has not been diagnosed yet)

June 21, 2012

After a bumpy bus ride to Birdland school we met up with Olive Mumba (head of Birdland) and she took us to the homes of four students whose education is paid for by SAAS donations. The first woman we met was the grandmother of a former Birdland student and four other kids she was raising by herself with the money she made from crushing rock. The grandmother had injured her leg which made it hard for her to work. After speaking with her we visited three other families who were very greatful for the opportunities their children had been given. Olive had organized for some of the money that SAAS had brought over to be used to replace their dirt floors with cement ones. After buying the cement with the families we took a public bus (The size of a VW van) back to Birdland; the bus was packed with 25 people! When we got back to the school most of the group read with the third and fourth graders who talked animatedly about insects while Emma, Reed, and Leora helped make lunch and hung out with the kindergarteners. At lunch almost everyone tried some rat that Gabe bought from one of the families we visited (we got pictures as proof!) After school we went to Manda Hill Shopping Center to exchange money and stock up on food. We all had a blast at the supermarket armed with Mercy’s detailed lists. We made sure to get our new favorite mango and guava jam.  We ended up with four million kwacha worth of food for the next few weeks. For dinner tonight we had tacos and discussed the two very different scenes we had taken in. We are now watching the Euro 2012 quarter finals!