Brendan's Birthday Blues

Monday, October 1, 2007

It is the start of a new week as well as a new month and I am hopeful about the possibilities of the week. I was feeling anxious this morning in anticipation of Peggy coming for her first day of work. I spent time in prayer, asking God to help me build a relationship with Peggy and that we would work well together. I need to be direct in my expectations but I also want to learn from her wisdom and experience. She seemed so shy and so I was praying that she would feel comfortable with me. When Peggy arrived, she was so warm and friendly and I was immediately at peace. She gave Peter and I our first Bemba lesson and she was very patient with us. I prayed that there would be much laughter in our lessons, even if it is at my expense as I try to get my tongue to form these foreign sounds. God answered my prayer and we did laugh and enjoy the time together. She will be a good teacher, better than I imagined, and her goal is that I will only be speaking Bemba with her in good time! She told me that her father died when she was eight and her mother died when she was twelve. She and her three younger sisters moved in with her grandmother. She has a six year old daughter and is not married. She said that God is still working on answering that prayer for her. She laughed when I told her I would join her in praying for a good husband for her. Peggy has a very sweet temperament and I enjoy the time with her. Though this work arrangement will not be without challenges, I’m sure, I trust that God brought her to us and that good things will happen through this relationship.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Peter spent the morning in town trying to find pieces to fix Jason’s bike. The second day Jason had his pricey cheap Chinese bike, the pedal snapped off. Peter tried to salvage it with a variety of inventions but nothing worked. Meanwhile Brendan had another flat tire. Peter worked endlessly on both bikes, finally getting Brendan’s up and running. After another few hours and the help of a neighbor who had different tools, Peter was able to replace the pedal. So now both boys are nowhere to be seen in the afternoons. They ride all around the MEF campus and it is quite safe. The cars drive slowly mostly because they have to with all the speed bumps and potholes. They let friends ride their bikes if they are in a generous mood, which is surprisingly often. They wear their helmets even though no one else does around here. They have a water bottle that they fill up with our boiled water. Jason was caught drinking from a hose with his Zambian friends and was admonished severely. We may know the cause of his diarrhea now. I must say that I am relieved that Peter was able to fix it because yesterday afternoon Jason was very angry that he couldn’t ride his bike. He was also mad that we didn’t buy a $1000 Hummer riding toy that showed a picture of a kid riding through a mud puddle. When he is mad, he likes to dump all his toys out and I find them strewn across the room. His consequence was to spend the rest of the afternoon putting the legos back in the bag. He discovered it does take all afternoon if you only put in once piece at a time. I scraped paint off the windows in the boys’ room while monitoring Jason’s slow progress. But today was a totally different story and he was as happy as a lark and Peter is our hero!

I finally made it into Brendan’s school this morning to volunteer. Because I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to my taxi, I was also able to talk with Jason’s teacher. He has been complaining of children being mean to him and I wanted to get Ms. Pieri’s perspective. That has happened a bit and she has addressed the boys being mean. The biggest issue is that no one can understand his American accent, not even his teacher. The class is very diverse with virtually no native English speakers. Some speak Bemba, some Afrikaan, some Swedish and other languages. I have to work on Jason slowing down when he talks, though when I mentioned this to him, he insisted that he would still talk fast to us!

I was glad for the chance to sit in on Brendan’s class and to help with a reading group towards the end. There are eight of them at the top of the class, with Brendan being at the bottom of that group. In that group there are two Zambians, two Asians, one Indian, and two whites (one from Italy and one from Australia). In the rest of the class, there are more Zambians, a Russian, and several more Indians. It is a very chatty class and the teacher has difficulty keeping them in line. I can see how Brendan would be frustrated with that. The children then went to learn a hymn with the music teacher so Ms. Lubamba had a fifteen minute break. She invited me to join her for a cup of tea in the teacher’s lounge. I almost refused but then thought better of it. I really like and respect Ms. Lubamba and am pleased to spend a bit more time with her. As I was waiting for Joe to come pick me up in the taxi, I tried calling Anita but she didn’t answer. I looked over and saw her car in the parking lot and a few minutes later she appeared. I asked her if we could get together tomorrow and she gladly agreed. I have been meaning to set something up since we ran into each other over a week ago but with us sick, I wasn’t going anywhere.

Joe was an expert taxi driver this morning, a little scary, but an expert. There was an accident in the middle of the two lane road when we were going to school this morning. So everyone just went off the road and into the dirt. There were at least two lanes of traffic on both sides, crisscrossing in the middle of the road, around the accident and it was absolutely crazy. Joe decided to go against traffic on the opposite side of the road. I can’t even begin to explain the chaos. But with the help of his horn and giving a thumbs up to other cars, he weaved his way through the oncoming cars and we made it to the other side. In the afternoon, we were still driving on empty so I asked him why it was that most taxis run on empty. As I suspected, it costs too much to fill the tank, so they just put in a little. Right now there is no gas at all in Kitwe. He hopes that a truck will come from Ndola today. There are long lines of parked cars at the petrol stations. When we were sitting at a light, he turned off his engine. I sure hope he shows up tomorrow. I told him to call me if he had no gas to come get us and he assured me that he would find gas before tomorrow.

Wednesday, Oct. 3

Happy Birthday, Brendan! I woke up early and made crepes for breakfast, per Brendan’s request. We waited and waited for Joe to come, wondering if he didn’t find gas but he finally showed up ten minutes after school had already started. Even though we were really late, he stopped to pick up another woman at the gate to MEF and took her into town. I was a bit disgruntled at the extra delay but we were so late anyway, what did it matter? I dropped Brendan and Jason in their classes and then walked to Anita’s house which was only a little ways away. Since I had planned to bring cupcakes to Brendan’s class at 10:30, I had a few hours to kill. Anita said I was always welcome to hang out at her house so I took her up on her offer. We had a cup of tea and then she left for an hour to walk with a friend. She returned with her friends and we all visited a bit more.

At 10:30, I delivered the cupcakes to Brendan’s class. They were very excited about the “little cakes.” They sang “Happy Birthday” to Brendan and then gave him seven jumps and seven claps. When he made a wish and blew out the candle, everyone screamed at the top of their lungs. Apparently, it is tradition to scream so that his wish comes true. I wish I had been warned!

I stayed the rest of the morning in the class, helping with reading groups again. When the kids went off to the library, Ms. Lubamba and the aide, Ms. Impaka, and I all visited. Ms. Lubamba’s thirty-two year old niece died of AIDS yesterday. She is very busy preparing for the funeral. Her niece refused to get diagnosed, get treatment, or to let her church community know and care for her. She simply lost her will to live and she deteriorated very quickly in the last six weeks.

I had been meaning to ask Ms. Lubamba what a “jackdaw” is since that is the name of Brendan’s reading group. Apparently it is a British bird and not one anyone here has heard of. So much of the curriculum is British. All the stories refer to witches and wizards and ghosts. Ms. Lubamba says she will name the groups Zambain rivers next time as it is a shame that they don’t celebrate the country in which they now live.

But then we talked about parenting as Ms. Lubamba has a boy in Jason’s class and we laughed at how much we have in common! Brendan and I both really like Ms. Lubamba and Brendan stated that he wished he could have her all year. His regular teacher will be back from maternity leave next term and I have heard good things about her. Having Ms. Lubamba during this term has been a gift.

The afternoon was filled with a family party which included cake and opening presents. We gave him a new chess set which he loved and Peter and he played a game together in the afternoon. Brendan was able to talk to both sets of grandparents. In the evening, I made burritos which is Brendan’s favorite meal currently. He opened a few more gifts from family that I had brought along and then it was time for bed already. That is when he fell apart. All day he had been so pleasant, so thankful, so good-natured. But when the day was done, he declared that it was “the worse birthday ever!” He sobbed, and lashed out, and refused to be comforted. After much snuggling and a long back rub, he said that his birthday wasn’t like the ones he reads about in books where it is nonstop excitement from morning to night. His birthday was just a normal day with a few special things that to him weren’t very special. Welcome to the real world, kid. I’m glad he is making this discovery at seven as that may help us in the future. The anticipation of a birthday is huge but it can never measure up. Maybe we should make him stop reading, then he wouldn’t get such grand ideas. Or we can just help him through his disappointment and redefine what special is. Peter and I worked hard to make his birthday special. That is no easy feat here. In the US, it is easy to find entertainment to mark the day as different. Movie theaters, bowling, miniature golf, going to the beach or the mountains, going to a park and playing on a cool play structure. . . none of that is available. When I asked Anita today what they did when they wanted to do something special, she said they got together with friends. There is nothing to do and without friends you will die, she said. Well, we are still in the process of making friends which I think added to Brendan’s sadness. Not having close friends or family around made him more homesick. Plus, I made the mistake of throwing him a super-cool science birthday party last year with lots of friends from church and he remembered that. We are still hoping to have a little party with kids from the complex but that is complicated since there are so many of them and it is hard to single a few out and exclude the others. Then there is the question of what to do at the party since I am clueless and have few resources here. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, we aren’t taking it too personally that our son just had the worst birthday ever!

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007

A few days ago I came upon three maintenance men in my backyard. Hoping they were there to address our hot water situation, I asked them what they were doing. One man replied, “Stealing your lemons, madam.” I told them I was waiting for my lemons to turn yellow since they are hard and green right now. He replied that they were fine right now and if I waited until they were yellow they would be “finished.” I asked if that mean they would be no good or that they would be all gone. With a slight smile, he answered, “All gone.” Then today I found more people in my yard helping themselves to my lemons. It seems I will not have the luxury of waiting until they are yellow. If I want any lemons off my tree, I will have to get them NOW!

This is our favorite Jason word that has been incorporated into our vocabulary: spagito. Can you guess the meaning? “I don’t want to sleep under a spagito net!” “Why not the spagitos like my blood?”