It's Finished!

It’s finished! My teaching time has come to an end! These past couple of weeks have been super crazy! My aim was to be almost completely packed by the 27^th of November and I’m pleased to say I think I mostly managed. Still needed things to live with though. We have also had all the prep for the 3 Christmas performances. Due to Corona, we couldn’t do the normal Christmas play with all the primaries due to distancing the parents out and the students supposedly. Grades 1, 2 & 3 were together and I made many of the props with the students in our art lessons for it. This was very stressful and took a lot of work but I’m really pleased with how they all turned out.

With grade 1 we made sheep masks! The sheep were so cute!

With Grade 2 we found Shepheard staffs and made ‘grass’ to stand at the front of the stage.

With Grade 3 we made a fire. Now, this took FOREVER I spent hours before the lesson, making the bass, making the foam rocks (expanding building foam), and then giving them their first coat of paint. In the actual lesson, they gave the rocks another coat of paint, went out to collect the sticks, and then tore up the red tissue paper for the flames. Becky and I then spent at least another hour gluing the whole thing together and praying that power wouldn’t go (we were using a hot glue gun). I’m really pleased with how it turned out. The only thing that would have been better is if we could have put fairy lights inside it I think.

Grades 4 & 5 were together and they did a ‘countdown to Christmas’ performance, sadly I wasn’t able to see their final performance. Finally, we had Grades 6 & 7 together and they did a brilliant job too. My favourite line in it though was said by Talia Wardle, it was something along the lines of “we can make him a birthday cake and then throw it up to heaven” when asked what can they do to celebrate the real meaning of Christmas. I think I need to try this!

In our final swimming lessons, we had pool parties! It was so much fun! I especially enjoyed swimming with the grade 4s and 5s on Wednesday the 2^nd and with the 6s and 7s on Friday the 4^th which was my final lesson ever. With those grades, I can really swim with them as they are in a deeper pool and can properly swim without fear of drowning (most of them anyway but they’re very sensible, I also had extra people on the side of the pool keeping an eye on everything for me).

Grade 4&5

Grade 6&7

Grade 6&7

Grade 6

The children were leaving and I think it finally hit me a little bit that I’m leaving and I may never see some of them ever again! I have had such an amazing time teaching these amazing children, many of them have challenged me both with my patience and my intellect and I have grown and learnt so much from being able to teach them and support them.

For now, Amano Christian School, my time of teaching here is over. But I’ll be back, even if it’s only a visit!

Preparing to finish

Ok, so it’s now just under 3 weeks until I return to the UK, and I have to admit that it is much more stressful than I expected it to be. I have so much to think about, in terms of handing over my responsibilities in the school, sorting out what I’m taking home and what I’m leaving, planning and teaching lessons and most importantly making time for the people that I will have to say goodbye to soon. The students as well are all asking me questions like "Miss Beth, when are you coming back?", and "Miss Beth, why are you leaving us?" which makes things harder.

Prayer Points

•          Please pray for rest and good sleep. At the moment I wake up very early and my brain goes around all the things I need to do but I can’t do anything about those things at 4am.
•          Please be praying for peace in the leaving process. At the moment I am not as excited as I think I should be about going home because I’m so stressed about everything that has to be done here.
•          Please pray for the relationships with the people here. I have made so many amazing friends here and I want to be able to maintain those relationships but I know it won’t always be easy.

Meet the New Volunteers Team 2020/21

Mattias, Sebastian, David, Benjamin, Tina, Hannah, Me, Diana, Bekky, Melina, Maike and Katja.
The whole team while on holiday in Nsobe.

On the 2^nd of September, 5 new volunteers arrived from Germany and Austria. We have Tina and Bekky who are working in the Girl’s dorm, Sebastian who works in the boy’s dorm, David who works in Secondary school teaching Chemistry, and Melina in Primary school.

On the 7^th of October, 2 more arrived from Germany. Hannah works in the kindergarten and with one of the Families on-site and Maike who will also be working in primary school.

Finally, on the 10^th of October Benjamin arrived from Germany and he is now working in the Boys Dorm as well.

 

This now makes us a big team. We are 10 volunteers! Diana, Bekky & Tina live and work in the Girl’s Dorm. Sebastian and Benjamin live and work in the Boy’s dorm. David works in Secondary School. Melina, Maike, Hannah and I live together in the flat and work in primary or with younger children.

Tina

Maike

Hannah

David

Bekky

Benjamin

Sebastian

Melina

Me and Diana

Term 3 - Part 1 (7th Sept - 23rd Oct 2020)

Final days of working on NEO

We (the teachers) started term a week early on the 31^st of August to get the lessons online for the students on NEO. The students started on the 7^th of September. We didn’t know how long we would be working on NEO for, as far as we knew it was probably till the half term in October. On the 11^th we heard that they were coming back. The following week was spent rearranging classrooms to allow for social distancing and preparing everything we possibly could to make sure that when the children arrived on the 21^st they would know what was happening and it wouldn’t be too much of a shock. We also still had to keep an eye on our lessons on NEO.

1st Day back. Mrs Wardle and the grade 4s and 5s.

Monday the 21^st of September came and we were as ready as we could be. All the students have to have their temperature taken before they get out of their cars and they had to hand over a health form on that first day too. It was really strange to see the children again after such a long time of them being away (they left late March) but it was also really exciting. I did feel (and still do) a little bit like a broken record, always saying “social distance” or “wear your mask” and “cover your nose”. It’s so unnatural for children to keep their distance from each other all the time, and especially tricky since some of them hadn’t seen each other in around 6 months. It was ok though, we managed.

One of my many masks.

Unlike in the UK, everyone has to wear a mask all the time here, the students and the teachers. This became especially tricky once it got to about 37 degrees C, and we teach inside metal containers. I now feel like I understand a little bit what it’s like for the chicken in the oven (except I’m being cooked alive). All jokes aside, it isn’t too bad as long as I can get a cold drink occasionally. Oh and the other good thing is that so far we haven’t had anyone pass out in school!

Before NEO I was teaching 8 hours of lessons (teaching not assisting). 7 hours of swimming lessons and 2 hours of music lessons. Now I teach 7 hours of swimming (which we had to fight for it to be allowed), 5 hours of Music and 5 hours of Art, that’s 17 hours in total! I have very little time available for assisting lessons anymore. It’s a lot more work and I do struggle with the planning sometimes but I really enjoy being able to explore new things with the students.

In Music lessons this term we have been looking at Music Genres, more specifically in this first part of the term, music genres from around the world. We looked at Jamaican Reggae, Latin music, Middle Eastern music, different styles across Africa, and then in the final week, we did Country in The USA. It was great to be able to show them that there is more to music than pop and rock. We were able to dance and sing with them too which was really fun, especially in the lesson on Country and Bluegrass music, we went out onto the sports field and taught them a line dance.

Art was more of a challenge since they aren’t allowed to share equipment, I had to come up with lessons that didn’t require a massive amount of clean up (I didn’t have time to clean up between lessons and didn’t want to ruin equipment). We looked at painting with Bubbles, this was by far my favourite! I had Watered down paint in containers and I added soap, each child had their own straw and they would make bubbles in the pots and then put their paper on top of the bubbles. The children found it fascinating and when the older children saw me setting it up for the younger ones, they begged me to let them do it too. We had a lot of fun, although it did get a little messy at times! We did many other topics and I really enjoyed being creative with them and seeing what they can create!

Swimming is much the same as what I always did, the main difference is that we have to take two busses to the big pool to distance the students. The other thing is that I have to make sure that there aren’t too many students changing at once to allow them to spread out properly. Other than that we have lots of fun and the students all really appreciate the time in the cool water.

We finished for the half term on the 23^rd of October. That’s 8 weeks straight for me with the extra week before school started because of NEO. It is safe to say that I was shattered! My workload was much more, I had 3 new people move in with me, I had to wear a mask all the time, it’s hot, etc… But I’m so glad I’m still here. When the students came back, I quickly forgot that NEO was ever a thing. Things returned to ‘normal’ (except the masks) very quickly. I’m so glad that I got to teach in person again. Especially with me preparing to leave in the early weeks of December!

Photos from some of our Art lessons.

Bubble paintings out to dry
Grade 3

Some of the Grade 6s getting very into the bubble painting.

Grade 1 - Bubble painting

Grade 6s showing me their messy fingers

Grade 6 exploring bubble lettering and finger painting.

Grade 3 - Using nature to add to our creations

Grade 3 - Making a stick insect

Grade 2 - More nature

Our Livingstone Adventure.

On the 18^th of August 2020 (Tuesday) we, Stuart, Wendy, Megan, Talia, James, Diana and I set off (at 5:30am) on our Livingstone holiday adventure. The journey was a little squishy but we enjoyed ourselves and were very much looking forwards to where we were going. When we were nearly in Lusaka we stopped off at the Protea Hotel which was very fancy, I was definitely not dressed for the occasion. There were bushbuck and other animals just freely wandering around the area and we got very close to some. One little bushbuck we named Isabelle licked Talia and Megan! Talia was so excited and said that it was the best thing ever! We spent part of the afternoon in Immigration trying to sort out Stu’s, Wendy’s and my permits. We were partially successful. It was only my visa that wasn’t able to be collected. We spent the night in a lovely place called the Flying mission, although I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.

 

Very early start the next morning. We wanted to be able to arrive and set up the tent in Maramba in Livingstone before dark. Again another day of travel. When we arrived we heard that the elephants had been there for 4 days and had completely trashed the usual campsite, it was all flooded (they had just moved on). Thankfully there was an even better place, close to the toilets and the restaurant and it was overlooking the water. Thankfully we arrived in plenty of time and we were able to get both tents up with very little difficulty and then chilled by the pool. We ordered food from the restaurant and watched the hippos and crocks on the other side of the water. I was so excited about what this holiday had in store for us.

Megan, Diana, Me,
Talia and Wendy in front of the falls.

So it’s now Thursday the 20^th and we excitedly (most of us anyway, James was less thrilled) set off for Victoria Falls. It was so AMAZING! There was so much water! Apparently, it wasn’t loads but to me who hasn’t seen any rain in Zambia since early April, it was sooooo much water. We had lots of fun standing in the spray and getting soaked and taking photos. My favourite part though has to be the floating water droplets. The force was so great coming up from the canyon that the droplets of water went up rather than down. It was so magical but too wet to get photos of. I didn’t want to kill my camera and my phone wouldn’t have coped either. In the afternoon we were making ourselves a late lunch when we were discussing how we had been at Maramba lodge for almost 24 hours and still hadn’t seen any elephants. I would say less than 30 minutes later we got our wish. They were in the camp wandering around. It was so much fun to watch them. In the evening we went to a place called the waterfront and sat watching the sunset over the Zambezi river while having a drink. We also got to see elephants really close there, just outside the gates which was so cool! After supper when more elephants came through the camp, we were told to stay close to our tents or the toilet/shower block and not make too much noise. We later got moved away from our campfire to the restaurant just in case but everything was ok, the elephants moved off without too much trouble. We went back and went straight into our tents because that’s where we were ‘safest’.

I was just dosing off when I heard rustling in the bush area behind our tent, I assumed it was an elephant so I kept listening to try to figure out where it was. Diana was still unaware of it so I quietly let her know. We both listened for a while and then I saw the shadow walk past our tent (there were security lights). We had nowhere to go we just had to stay quiet and hope that it would move on. Then the side of our tent came in down on top of us, I now know that this was the elephant's tusk pushing down because Stu was able to see from their tent but wasn’t able to do anything. Then the elephant stepped on the very edge of our tent. Diana and I couldn’t do anything except stay silent and pray that it would go away. We didn’t scream but the moment it had moved off slightly there were many tears and hysterical laughter. That night we were moved into a chalet because the elephants were still around. We then had Talia staying in with us and had to deal with all the mosquitos inside our nets. It’s pretty safe to say that none of us slept brilliantly that night. Still, we were just so happy to be alive at this point.

First view of Victoria Falls 

It’s Friday and we get up and find that we still have a camp so we are all very relieved. We all got dressed up nicely because we are off to visit the posh hotels. We first visited Avani which I thought was beautiful. The pool looked amazing! There were some antelope just wandering around which was cool. As we then drove over to the Royal Livingstone hotel we came across some Giraffe which was soooo cool. They are so tall and gentle. At the Royal Livingston, even though I was dressed up very smart, I still felt underdressed. It was so fancy and there were zebra on the lawn and you could see the top of the falls. It was just… wow. Oh, but the prices were even more wow but in the wrong way 😂. We then went to the waterfront hotel again to see if we could book some activities and Diana and I nearly had a large fruit thing land on us. This is clearly not a good time for us but again we were fine. I wasn’t feeling to well (lack of sleep and I had a cold) so while the others went shopping I staying in the car and they came back with ice cream. It made me feel much better. We saw some elephants again but at a much safer distance and from inside a car! For the rest of the afternoon we chilled by the pool. We’ve moved things around in the camp now. Diana’s and my small tent is now a store tent and we moved into the big tent with the Wardles, much safer there.

The pool at Avani

Baby Zebra

My Favourie picture of a 
Zebra's Butt! 😁

Megan, Wendy, and Talia in front of the Zebras
at the Royal Livingston Hotel

James, Stu, and Zebras

Megan posing with the Safari vehicle.

Saturday the 22^nd and it was Game drive time. We got up and out at around 7 ready for the drive. It was a little chilly in the vehicle but we were prepared with our blankets. Our tour guide was interesting. He told us lots of different things about the plants and animals around us. Some of which we knew not to be true because it was all voodoo, but it was an interesting cultural/history lesson for all of us. We saw baboons, warthogs, elephants, giraffes, zebras, monitor lizards, crocs, and different birds including vultures. The Giraffes were amazing to see. There was a group of 7 which was amazing, 3 of them were very young! We also drove to see the rhinos. That was AMAZING! I’d never seen rhinos before, and they were so close (and thankfully peaceful). We briefly visited the market which was fun, the people are so talented and make such interesting things. In the afternoon Stu and Megan went off for a 'greet the elephants' experience so the rest of us stayed and enjoyed the pool. Megan said that we wouldn’t have as cool photos as them so I took it as a challenge and we had a fun photoshoot in the pool. It was a lot of fun and really chilled at the same time. We got dressed up again (not quite as much but still) and went to the Royal Livingstone to watch the sunset over the falls. It was so beautiful and I really enjoyed taking photos there. Diana and I also amused ourselves by watching what appeared to be a prom at the hotel, it was fancy whatever it was. We had an amazing time and we met a lovely couple who took some very artistic photos of us for us.

Red-billed Hornbill

Giraffes

PUMBA!

Elephants having a munch.

Hungry Rhinos

Me and Diana chilling with the Rhinos.

Stork in flight

SPLASH!

Sibling affections

And Pose!
Diana and Talia

The Elephant in the sunset

The Moon over the falls

Diana and Me and the Royal Livingstone

Group photo time
Stu, James, Megan, Wendy, Talia, Me, and Diana.

Down at the Boiling Pot

We’ve now made it to Sunday the 23^rd! We walked down to the boiling pot, it was a very steep walk but it was so worth it. I felt like I was walking through the rain forest, it was so tropical. The mist from the falls keeps everything damp there. The walk back up was hard work though and we had to have big sticks with us to scare off the baboons if they went for us. We then went and visited the falls again and we went straight to the floating droplet place, that place is seriously wow! We wandered around the market a bit and then went and walked over the bridge towards Zimbabwe. We had to leave an important document at the immigration and then we were able to enter Zimbabwe briefly without paying the visa price. The view from the bridge was amazing. We could see the falls and the boiling pot as well. The only thing that was slightly frustrating was that we kept being followed by people trying to sell us craft even though we told them we didn’t want anything. We had to be very firm in the end and tell them to leave us alone. We got to see the train come over the bridge which was very loud and very stinky but very exciting to see, especially for James. We also had a lot of fun hopping over the Zambia/Zimbabwe line. When we got back to camp we were getting ready to make lunch when the elephants started to come past our camp very close to cross the river. One of the workers said that we should probably move over to the restaurant just in case they came closer. We didn’t think this was necessary but we went anyway.

Say Cheese Diana

Enjoying listening and watching the sounds of the water.
James, Megan, and Talia.

Wendy and Stu infront of the bridge to Zimbabwe.

The tropical view as we climbed back up to the top.

It was rather steap in places

We made it over to Zimbabwe and back.

The view of the falls from the bridge going over to Zimbabwe.

Oh boy were we glad we went. Three of the bigger elephants came right into our camp and were searching around the tents. One of them was absolutely massive! We were all watching from the restaurant as one of them picked up our little tent (the same one they’d been interested in last time) and tossed it around. It tore the tent apart and played with what was inside, well, what it could get to anyway. I was up by the tables with the three children and staff while Stu, Wendy and Diana had moved a little closer and caught the whole thing on video! It was quite a sight. We could do nothing except pray that they’d leave the big tent alone, which thankfully, they did. Eventually, some rangers came and persuaded the elephants to leave. It was amazing to watch them as they did, they basically just made themselves look bigger by holding their arms out wide and then just spoke to them with authority. Two of the three moved off no problem but the third needed more persuading. Stu, Wendy and I then moved over to assess the damage. Amazingly the chairs and bags that had been in the small tent were unharmed. There was one broken cup and my pan had been destroyed but other than that there was very little damage. Even the plates, which the elephant had definitely played with (in its mouth), were not even cracked. We were very fortunate all things considered and we were all very thankful that we had moved and that no one had been in the tent.

One of the elephants as it passed over the river to the other side.

We had lunch at the restaurant and then had to leave pretty quickly to go off for our sunset cruise. None of us by this point were very motivated to go on the cruise. We just wanted to pack up the big tent (we had been offered chalets for the last night) and be ready for the next day. We went on the cruise, and we saw a very beautiful sunset but very few animals. I did get a photo of a hippo’s mouth though which I was very pleased with. After the cruise, we had crocodile pizzas which was really yummy! Crocodile tastes like very salty chicken I think, and maybe a little tougher but it was very tasty. We tried to pack away as much as possible before we went to bed so that we could start as quickly as possible in the morning. Diana and I then had Megan and Talia in with us overnight and we had fun again trying to kill all the mosquitos inside the nets.

TEETH! Possibly favourite hippo shot.

 

Talia being a little photographer.

Monday the 24^th and it was time to pack down what’s left of the tent and head off. We left marimba sometime after 10 and spent pretty much all day on the road again driving to Lusaka. Talia and I were in the very back and we both had a cold! I tried to sleep on the journey but didn’t manage. Diana, on the other hand, slept most of the way. I was pretty jealous. In the evening we got ourselves some pizza and went to the flight house where we were to stay the night. I posted some photos on Facebook and people had commented about the tent so I suddenly had to make sure to tell my family what had happened. They knew nothing till this time about the elephants. I told them first thing the following morning before we set off again. We stopped at the Fig Tree café for lunch and were back home at Amano before dark on Tuesday 25^th.

 

What a holiday! So much I wouldn’t want to do again but am NOW glad to have the stories to tell. Congratulations if you read the whole thing, I know it was so long.