A Typical Day

Most weekdays begin early - usually around 6.30 am, when it starts to get light. I wriggle out of my sleeping bag and go to put on water for my still essential cup of coffee - it's instant these days rather than a latte from the college Starbucks, but just as reviving. After breakfast, there is always last minute preparation for the day's classes: writing out wordsearches - no photocopier!- or finishing off the cutting out for the day's activities, packing up bags with books, glue, coloured pencils, scissors, tissue paper etc and scurrying around for sunscreen and water before boarding the bus at 8.30 sharp. Whoever had the bright idea of transporting a London bus to use in Zambia as a mobile library had not done their homework properly. Apart from the centre of town, most of the side roads in Livingstone are little more than dust tracks, full of lumps and bumps with the occasional remains of a strip of pitted tarmac. The bus can only crawl along at walking speed and turning narrow corners can be tricky. Two days a week, we take taxis as the bus cannot manage some roads at all. As we near the school we are going to, children in the road start waving to us and calling out excitedly "Kerry, Kerry" - they find it hard to pronounce "Kelly" - or "Hello, how are you?" as they run along beside us. At each school, we have three or four classes from grade 4 to grade 7. However the ages of the children can vary within each group as some children start school at a later age than others, but still have to go through each grade one by one - so you might have a Grade 7 class with kids of anything from around 13 to 18. Usually you plan two sets of books and activities, one for the younger groups and one for the older. Teaching finishes at lunch time and we will be back at camp, hot, dusty and hungry, between 1 and 2 pm. There is a rush for the toilet and to wash hands, grubby from sitting on the ground and sticky from glueing! After lunch of rolls and cheese, the afternoons are free. If it is hot enough, I will brave the cold water in the campsite swimming pool, while everyone else looks on in disbelief at my claims of how refreshing it is. Most days I do some washing as clothes get dirty so quickly. We wash them outside in buckets of cold water but if you hang them out early enough they are usually dry by evening. Then I might take a trip into town to use the internet or do some shopping but most transactions in Zambia are not straightforward and might take you ten times as long as the equivalent at home. For example, there will probably be a long queue for one of the few ATMs, which is quite likely to have run out of money by the time you get to the front. Or if you use the internet, it might take an hour to send an email as the connection is so slow. Back at the campsite, there is always preparation for the next day's classes, which can also take time, especially if you are trying out something new. It gets dark around 6.30 pm and then apart from a light over the cooking and eating area, it is hard to see anything in your tent or around the campsite and I am grateful for my head torch. Most nights we cook supper on our two gas rings- mostly variations on a stirfry but always tasty. Washing up is done in bowls of water heated in the  kettle. Once or twice a week, we go out to eat - my favourite is the traditional restaurant where everything is served with nshima (staple porridge) and you eat with your fingers. Then we might play cards or consequences. Sometimes there are groups of "overlanders" staying as well as us and the site can be quite full. There is a very basic "bar" which can be boisterous at times, but often we have the site more or less to ourselves. I am usually back in my sleeping bag by 10 pm, listening to the night-time noises: a blend of music somewhere, dogs barking, the train hooting, a bell ringing, chanting from a nearby mosque, an insect bleeping like an unattended alarm clock and later on, the cockerels crowing.

 Waiting for our taxis in the morning