Visitors from the US Embassy

On Tuesday, we had 6 visitors from the Consular Office of the US Embassy visit our Village and School. They spoke with the 4-8 graders about what an Embassy is and what they do. Afterwards they did some leadership exercises/games with the 6-8 graders.

It was a great joy to have the Chief say that our kids were different than others they have worked with. Our kids have critical thinking skills, she said!

Zambia Wins the African Cup!

It has been an exciting week. First Zambia kept winning. Then they beat Ghana in the semi-finals. Last night was the final against Ivory Coast. By the end of the 90 minutes the score was 0-0. After an additional 30 minutes the score was 0-0. It came down to penalty shots, and Zambia got one in. The Take-away was full of truckers and people who came to watch the game. Teacher Malowa's house was full of mothers and children who came to watch the game. The children have written about it today at school and I will be posting some of the things they wrote soon. The is only the second time the Cup has come to southern Africa and the first time to Zambia. There has been much celebrating and joy!

"We've come to register our children at your school."

Our school is joyfully moving along. In case you haven’t been following our news, we grew from 61 to 125 when the school year started in January. We opened our school to the community with a monthly fee to cover some of the costs, as well as the lunch that is served 4 days a week. By the second week of school we had every class full, and that was with adding a 5^th class.

Now I face the challenge, almost daily, of parents coming wanting to enroll their children. I’ve been told on several occasions that the children are crying because they can’t come. A group of 8 children whose parents work at a health clinic further in the bush showed up on Friday to be “assessed” so that they could come. Right now they are not going to school at all. Several parents last week brought money and wanted to pay even though we did not yet have a space.

We are considering some alternatives for some of these children or ways to raise funds to add on to our building.

Guards dropping, Big rigs stuck, Cobras hiding

Several events of the last couple of days have brought home the fact that we "aren’t in Kansas anymore." The other night as we were getting ready to go to sleep, we received a call from one of the guards. He reported that another guard, “had dropped.” Not knowing what that meant, Benedict had to ask, “Is he asleep, did he faint, is he dead?” He was just very sick, and I guess he collapsed. Francis Mboko drove him home.

The same night at 3 am we got a call saying that one of the big trucks parking for the night was stuck. Our parking lot is not paved, although we have put layers of laterite and gravel. Many of the trucks who park overnight are very heavy and very long. That night there were 18 trucks, so not much room to maneuver. Benedict had to find chains and lights so that the truck driver and his partner who was driving another truck could get the one unstuck. The whole process took a couple of hours.

Then people began seeing a very large snake on the path between the school and the community center. Roman saw it “standing up” and found the holes where it was living. Today I had to ask the older boys to redirect children walking to school to come around another longer way, so that they wouldn’t come near the snake. Our workers got the backhoe (thanks Uncle Wayne), dug up the holes and eventually killed the snake.

So life is never dull or boring or commonplace. And we are always learning something in all of these circumstances.

CD Recording

CD Recording

Tuesday evening, our friend, Bob D’Antoni from our church in MD arrived from the Children’s Village in Namibia. He was there to record for a second CD of the children there. He came for a one day recording session with our children.

So on Wednesday, gathered around the microphone in our living room, about 25 of the children, as well as Mama Rose C, and Teacher Malowa recorded about 11 songs and scripture readings.

Bob left on Thursday with the basic tracks he had recorded. He will take them back to the states, mix them, add some instrumentation, and send the final version for our approval. So look forward to a CD from the Village of Hope in 3-4 months!

Week 3

Week 3

Today was the first day of our 3^rd week of school. Yesterday early afternoon we had a heavy rainstorm. I didn’t think any parents would come to the 2^nd meeting held at 4pm. However, we had about 12 parents come. These were folks who couldn’t make the Friday meeting. Once again I was encouraged by the interest and desire of these parents to have their children receive a good education.

I’m wondering if we will also be influencing schools in the surrounding area. The head teacher from Shalubala in Landless Corner has his 2 children coming here. A teacher at the school has a daughter here. One of the teachers at Okada Community School has her son coming here. And the niece of the head teacher at Liteta is now a teacher at our school.

I’m trying to learn the names of the new children. I’m not sure that I will ever be able to do that. The goal of learning these names is complicated by the fact that everyone wears uniforms, so they even look even more alike. We have interesting names like Cleopatra, Wisdom, Savour, and familiar names like Elizabeth, Thelma, Abigail.

On the way to church yesterday with my singing team, Prudence said, “I can’t wait til tomorrow. I like school.” I asked those in the car if they liked having new friends. The response was a joyous yes. I believe that it is very good for our children in the Village to be in a setting with other children, bigger classes, and opportunities to share their faith.

TGIF! - written 1-20-12

TGIF! This is one of those weeks where I was very aware that I was sooo glad that it was Friday!

This is the second week of school. We have doubled our student population and have 3 new teachers. This also means that we are not serving lunch to about 70, but we have gone up to serving about 140 lunches. You should see the n’shema pot. It takes 2 of our male workers to stir the n’shema. Benedict bought what he thought was a huge amount of pumpkin leaves to have to cook as relish for today. Unfortunately, they really cook down and there wasn’t enough for the upper grades.

I’m still trying to make order in my office. All of you who have been here and helped organize the office, it is almost all moved to a space about 1/3 the size. I don’t yet have glass in the windows, just the grill. So at the end of each day I have to move everything off of my desk that could get wet if it would rain overnight. The room is arranged in 2 areas – one for office and teacher resources, the other the library for students. Right now we also store all the cooking items in the library area. That includes 2 tubs of plates that we use, the huge pot and smaller pots, etc. It is a good thing we eat with our fingers here – no silverware to mess with.

Then the mud!! It has been raining quite a bit this week, so there is lots of mud. The children take off their shoes when they go into the classroom so that helps keep the rooms fairly clean.

Sue (from Buffalo, MN), it would make you so happy to see all 125 kids using the paths in the courtyard as we gather for morning meeting. There is enough room on each side of the hexagon for a class to stand. Of course, if there is lots of rain some of it is filled with water.

Folks who are sending their kids here have put together car pools to get the children to school. There is a car that comes from Liteta, one from Wangwa farms, one from Landless Corner. This has all been organized by the parents. We have nothing to do with it.

We called for a meeting of the parents since there are so many new students and we wanted to inform them of some of our policies and what to expect. I gave them the option of 2 different days and times to come for the meeting; one for 2:30 today, and one for 4:00 on Sunday. To my amazement and joy, we had about 50 parents show up today!! The meeting lasted over an hour. After I finished my part, we opened it up for questions. All of our experienced teachers were there as well. Overall it was a very good meeting.

We have eager children, hardworking teachers, good helpers, and a loving God who has provided the school and all that we have.