Live and Learn

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Brendan and Jason were so excited they had a football match scheduled against Amano, a small Christian school located 45 minutes away. They were thrilled to get to ride the bus there, Jason’s first time for a football game. Di, one of the other moms, asked if I wanted to ride along with her to the game. It wasn’t something I was planning on doing but since she asked, I decided to go along. Unfortunately for the spectators, it was a cold, windy and rainy sort of afternoon, but the players didn’t seem to mind.

Being a small school, Amano didn’t really have an Under 8 team to play against Jason’s team. So they took the younger kids from the only team they had and let them play. Jason was beside himself because these “younger kids” were still older and bigger than their team. Jason’s team lost, despite Brendan being the goalie and making a lot of good saves. Two balls got through, one by this huge kid who looked to be in Grade 6. Jason was so upset after the game that he refused to go shake hands with the other team. I finally threatened him (yeah, yeah, great parenting) that if he didn’t get out there and shake hands, the next time his team traveled on a bus to a match, he wouldn’t be on it. He managed to get out there in time to shake the last player’s hand. He is very competitive which helps him play hard, but the whole sportsmanship is something we are still working on.

Brendan’s match didn’t go too well either although they tried hard. Brendan was in goals again but not by choice. Lechwe players have a habit of blaming the goalie if the other team scores so Brendan felt pretty beat up verbally after the first game. There was an even bigger kid on the Amano team, probably the older brother of the one who played the first game, and when he shot on goal, nobody could stop it. Disappointing for Lechwe who is accustomed to winning.

I took advantage of being at the school to talk to the headmistress about the mental health curriculum that I am developing for schools. So despite the two losses and the wet weather, something good came out of the afternoon.

Thursday, March 4, 2010
Having taught the children at Lechwe about Conflict Resolution all term, it was time to offer the same information to parents who were interested. Knowing that things sometimes get delayed, I gave the school secretary a notice to be sent to the parents a full week ahead. Despite going in almost every day to move it along and make sure it got out, it failed to reach the parents until the day of the first workshop. And then some kids got three notices and some children didn’t get any. It was a marketing fiasco. I tried to not let it bother me but I didn’t always succeed. About 10 parents showed up to the Wednesday night workshop and 18 came to the Thursday afternoon one. The parents who attended were keen on learning about this subject, especially the large group of moms who came on Thursday afternoon. There was plenty of discussion and questions and laughter as we looked at the material together. Unfortunately, after the workshops, some parents came to me and said they would have attended if they had known about it and were sad to have missed it. So I will offer the same workshop again at the beginning of Term 3 and hope to catch those that missed it.

After one of the workshops, a Zambian mother asked if she could talk to me the next morning for a few minutes. Those few minutes turned into an hour as she spilled out the story of her adolescent daughter running away from home and all the complex issues surrounding their tumultuous relationship. The resource teacher as well as the headteacher recently asked to consult with me on a student who was found sexually experimenting with his siblings and his mother was irate and was blaming the school because of something the boy reported seeing between two secondary students. And a single missionary woman found her way to me and wanted to process a traumatic experience that was bothering her even though she had seen a therapist on her home leave and thought she had processed it enough then. But upon returning to the place where the trauma occurred, she found she needed a bit more help in processing it. I don’t know how much good this bit of consulting does, but I hope it is better than nothing, which is the other option here since there aren’t trained counselors available in Zambia. I’m telling you, I could have a full-time practice if I wanted it. So if there are any therapists who want to come practice in Zambia, you would never want for clients!

Monday, March 8, 2010
Today is International Women’s Day so the boys had a day off from school. It being a long weekend, the Moellers made a spontaneous trip up to visit us for a few days. Since Brent and Erin also know Jonathan and Cynthia from their time in Lusaka, they joined us for several meals and for many games. The five boys built great Lego creations, caught frogs and fish in the little ponds, played soccer, and played in the tree house. Thankfully, the rain let up during the day so they could mostly play outside. It was a nice break from our regular routine and fun to relax with friends.

Thursday, March 11, 2010
I am challenged when I listen to every one of Shane’s sermons on John. But the sermon I listened to today was particularly appropriate. The text was from John 4 where Jesus converses with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. As is typical in John, Jesus is talking about spiritual things and the woman is stuck in an earthly mindset, something I can relate to. Jesus offers water that will quench our thirst completely, a spring of water that will continually bubble up from within. Shane uses the analogy of drinking a Coke when you are really thirsty and while it may seem to meet the need, it actually makes your thirst even greater. Then he asks what it is that we are using to quench our thirst but that isn’t working. I have lots of ways that I try to find substitutes “out there” like by telling myself, I will be happy when . . . we have water and power, when our internet works regularly, when we have friends here, when MEF gets its act together, when we move back to the US, when Peter gets a teaching job, when blah blah blah. But there will always be something else that is frustrating or maddening and I have to learn to connect to the source, to God’s living water, instead of searching after a Coke that won’t satisfy.

Friday, March 12, 2010
We invited Adrian to join us for dinner and a movie tonight. We had a pirated copy of “Invictus” (our apologies to those with better morals than us) and we watched it together. This true story is set in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela was elected president. Although the Springboek Rugby team is a symbol of apartheid to Black South Africans, Mandela uses it as a means to unify the country. The movie is powerful in how it depicts the animosity between white and black South Africans and their movement toward reconciliation. The boys were greatly impacted by the movie and Brendan continues to make comments about Mandela and his character. Jason was visibly saddened by how the whites treated the blacks. Both were eager to go to South Africa and expressed their desire to tour Robben Island to see where Mandela was imprisoned those three decades. I hope we can make that work.

Sunday, March 14, 2010
Several families at Lechwe, spearheaded by Georgi, have organized cricket lessons for kids twice a month. So this morning we joined the gang at the Polo Club and the boys received their first instruction in cricket. Growing up, we used to play cricket on the farm with my Canadian cousins, using baseball bats and tin cans, so I had a basic understanding of the game already. Peter helped the other dads train the boys and I went out to learn along with them. It was a fun morning and then we fired up the grill and ate lunch together.

In the evening, I received an email from my friend Issa in Lusaka. I have worked with him before, providing training to the teachers of the Peace Clubs that he runs. He had asked if I would do a bit of training on “child counseling” and I had replied that I needed to know what he meant by that. This was his response:

This is what we meant by child Counseling.
Teachers expectations:
1.Teachers would like to know: Physical, Emotional, social and psychological impact of problems on children according to their age.
How to react when they first hear a problem in the process of counseling:
What they should do and what they should not.
What they can say to a child and what they can not.
Listening Skills
How to listen actively
How to ask right questions
Attending skills
Paraphrasing
How to reflect on feelings of the child when listening
Summarizing
Any other communication skills according to ages
Role plays in counseling a child.
2.They would like to learn how to handle problems like: Boyfriend/girlfriend relationship,
peer pressure, competition, bullying, nightmares, conflict with parents, conflict between parents, conflict with educators, worrying about parents' problems, harassment by teachers, teenage mothers, living with a handicapped person and losing someone close to him/her.

Coordinating committee expectation:
The following problems are usually referred to our office:
Failure in school, Pregnancy, HIV, Sexual or physical abuse, Drug or alcohol abuse, Suicidal thoughts, domestic/family violence, killing someone, Witness to violent crime, Abortion, Being or feeling abandoned by a mother or a father or both parents.
Our expect is that by the end of the training teachers should be able to use the knowledge they are going to acquire in dealing with the above problems at the school level instead of congesting the office with so many cases when we are few and the schools have been increased from ten to sixteen.
The training will cover five consecutive days from nine hours to sixteen every day.
And the last two hours of fifth day shall be used for graduation ceremony. We are suggesting to start on the second week of April, but we are flexible. We can start any date within April because we want to take advantage of the holy days.

Holy cow! When I received this email, I had to lay down on the couch because I was exhausted just looking at the list. Peter found it humorous while I found it overwhelming. Imagine trying to cover this in a five day workshop! I have to hand it to Issa, though. He knows what he wants and is often able to make it happen. A few obstacles stand in the way this time, the main ones being that I have no resources on 80% of these topics and Peter is teaching almost all of April making it impossible for me to get away. I’m sure we will work something out, once I recover from the shock.

Monday, March 15, 2010
One of the primary teachers at Lechwe caught up to me in the parking lot a few days ago and blurted out, “I’m wondering if you want help with the curriculum you are writing for Lechwe because what you wrote on conflict resolution is totally not working.” I took a few seconds to gulp down my pride then said I would love to hear her feedback and critique. I have been trying to work out how to best evaluate what I’ve done so far, so this provided me with the perfect opportunity. So last week I met with this teacher and spent the first half hour just finding out how she is coping in Zambia and at Lechwe (she is an ex-pat). She aired a lot of frustrations and I had a better sense of where she was coming from. By the time we discussed the conflict resolution curriculum, she didn’t seem so harsh. Basically, she was telling me it was way too difficult for her Year 2 children. Her point was valid but it was my hope that the teachers would take the information and simplify it for their class. She argued that teachers here were used to having worksheets do the teaching and it was too much to expect for them to digest the information and adapt it to their grade level. She had a few helpful suggestions regarding next term’s curriculum on Grief and Loss, including a little workbook where students will write or draw something related to each lesson. I’m excited about this new idea and I think it will work well.

When I got home, I tried to filter through the cricitisms and not swallow it whole hog. When I go into the different classes to teach every Monday morning, the children seem active and engaged and ready to talk about the lessons. I adapt it a bit, depending on the grade, but most children in Years 3-6 have no difficulty with what I am teaching. This afternoon, I met with three other teachers to hear their feedback on the curriculum. The other Year 2 teacher loves the lessons and has no problems figuring out how to teach it to her students. A Year 3 teacher was very encouraging and says they talk about these issues throughout the week and not just on Monday mornings for half an hour. She also had good suggestions as to how to make it better. The Year 6 teacher loves the material and wants to send the curriculum to her family of teachers back in the Philippines to use. I have a few more teachers that I will talk with yet but the evaluation process has been helpful.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
I love getting told by my maid that I am fat. She even took the time to point out exactly where I was getting fatter. I also woke up feeling foggy so I guess you could say I am foggy and fat.

Several weeks ago, on impulse, I decided that I should take voice lessons. It’s been twenty years since I had any formal training and I’ve gotten lazy. The music teacher at Lechwe, who teaches piano to Brendan, only charges $5 for half an hour of lessons. I have this window of opportunity to push myself to grow in an area that I enjoy. As soon as I talked to Mr. Banda and arranged the lessons, I felt myself panic. What am I thinking? Voice lessons feel so intimate, so personal, and I was embarrassed to sing for someone else and scared of the criticisms that would help me grow. But I’m making Brendan take piano lessons, so maybe I can have the courage that I am asking him to have.

Today was my first lesson and I think I was in a constant state of blushing but I made it through the lesson. Mr. Banda wanted to hear me sing so he could assess what I do well and what I need to work on, so he brought out his “Mission Praise” book that everyone seems to have here in Zambia. He flipped through the book trying to find a song I knew and came to “Pass it on.” He asked if I knew it and I answered in the affirmative, not adding that it was my favorite song THIRTY YEARS AGO! So I began my first voice lesson singing, “It only takes a spark . . .” How funny is that? We moved on to “Great is thy faithfulness” and we used that song to work on a few of my weaknesses, like hitting high notes without screeching. Despite the feeling of being exposed, I think this will be a good thing. Next week I get to bring my own songs to work on, and I can guarantee you it will be something from the last two decades at least.

On the way home from school, I told the boys about my voice lesson. In a moment of rare praise, Brendan said, “I thought you already had a pretty good voice.” I tried to explain how it can be helpful to have lessons to improve your skills in an area. This is hard for Brendan to understand because he is naturally good at many things but has a hard time pushing himself to be better or undertake instruction to improve. I see myself in him and don’t want him to settle for being mediocre at a lot of things but to discover the joy in developing a skill and enjoying the satisfaction of doing it really well.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
These days, Peter and I both feel a knot in our stomachs, an urge to cry, a sense of despair when we think of our partner organization MEF. Pan-African students are due to arrive at the beginning of April (postponed from January, then March and now it is April). This is the predicament that MEF is in though – their donor will be deciding in May if they will continue funding the Pan-African program. There is some chance that they will not give the funding, because they made a list of changes that needed to made and it is not clear if MEF has been able to make those changes. MEF has decided to bring students anyway and hope that the money comes through and perhaps by having the students already here, that will sway the decision. If the funding does not come through, MEF has no way of supporting these students and so we can only imagine they will be sent home. These students have to fund their own transport to MEF, which for some is nearly $1000, like those from Nigeria. We are worried that they will get here, having borrowed and scraped together the money, only to be sent home with nothing. But if MEF doesn’t start the program in good faith, then it is even more likely they won’t get the money. So they are in a huge pickle. I hear Zambians often say, “God will provide” but the Western part of me screams back that we are still responsible to do our part. We don’t know much of what is going on and the individualistic Western part of us wants to be included in the conversation. But the communal mindset of Zambia and many African countries, says that the group must follow the leader and not ask questions. The leader does not owe an explanation, is not required to communicate how decisions were reached, and should be trusted. But that is so foreign to us and hard for us to accept given our different orientation. It is hard to know if and when to speak, what exactly to say, what to do. We’ve been in this limbo for several months and it is wearing on Peter especially. Teaching is what he loves to do and the prolonged wait for students to arrive and wondering if the program will continue is difficult. I am slated to teach three courses this year and am eager to do that but don’t know if that will happen. Perhaps we just think too much, worry too much, trust too little.

While things are a tad depressing at MEF, at least I have other opportunities to contribute. I led another parent workshop tonight and despite my requests for a reminder on the chalkboard in the waiting area and a reminder notice sent to parents being ignored, we still had a good turnout. Fifteen parents showed up to learn about dealing with anger and we had a good time learning together. Only one parent was less than responsive, as he was dragged there involuntarily by his wife, I learned over the break. I’m seeing parents that have attended other workshops so I guess they felt good enough about the first experience to come back for more. That is encouraging.