Victoria Falls....

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Heellloooo All,

As you've probably gathered by the title of this blog I have been to Victoria Falls thus giving the reason of my again late blog entry.

As always I will start where I left off last week. We spent a couple of days visiting two projects (I say projects, they are pretty well established at this stage) including a school called Chililalila - get your tongue around that - and a childrens centre attached to the Hospice which Alice's cousin works in. Chililalila was a great place to go for a few days to see what a general school format was like in Zambia. It was very well equipped with lots of staff including nurses, teachers, cooks, gardeners, social workers, councillers etc etc. We didn't do much aside from playing or being chased around by the kids all day which was great of course but because the school had such a good thing going on already it didn't feel as though we would have a defined or more accurately needed role there so will probably not spend a large amount of time helping there.

The school attached to the Hospice was lovely. It has around 60 children divided into 3 classes. The kids are from the ages of 3-5 and have regular meals of porridge for breakfast, inshima and some sort of meat for lunch and a snack before going home, perhaps something like a bread roll. Inshima (in Tanzania its called Ugali) is almost like a mashed potatoe but made out of a plant called maize and is utterly disgusting but they eat it out here as though its going out of fashion. They also decide to feed the kids this much as most of them come from broken homes - most orphans - and don't get any other meals. For the first day we simply watched the teachers teach and helped out here and there during activities. This was great to get a feel of what was going on but we noticed a darker aspect of what seemed like a very nurturing and steady institute. The teacher there who was very young in her 20's (I realise the irony of being even younger myself) would hit the children over the head with stick, not very hard but still hitting. She would also throw chalk at them. I saw at one point two children hitting each other and the teacher marching up to them, holding one of the kids by the arms and telling the other 'ok now beat him back' - a good moral there, if someone hits you just hit them back harder. Almost the worst thing of all that happened was when asking the class a question one child puts his arm up and answers incorrectly. The teacher then proceeded to instruct the class to 'shame the boy'. The whole class the started pointing and shouting 'shame!' at the boy whilst banging the tables and laughing - talk about completely demoralising a child. Why would anyone want to answer a question in class again in fear of getting shamed? After seeing this we notified Siobhan of the situation and she immediately went to the head of the centre who then went and gave out to the teacher. Later on during the day another of the teachers (an older one) went up to Alice and told her that she had completely demoralised the teacher by telling and that she's only young blah blah blah to which Alice answered that its not ok in our country to hit a child. So we then went to apolagise to the young teacher and explained our reasons for doing so and because she was such a good christian she explained that she had forgiven us already. So apparently we're now cool? Will the hitting and shaming stop happening? Something to work on this week I think!

On the weekend we decided to have a little break from quiet Kabwe and make our way to more hustling and bustling Livingstone which is where the Victoria Falls are. We stayed in the ever so jolly 'Jolly Boys' backpacker hostel which was complete with pool, bar, shop and chill our area it was great! We arrived after a 7 hour bus journey which was one of the more pleasant I have taken in Africa after having the luxury of airconditioning! After about 5 minutes after having checked in we then bumped into our Irish friend Mark from Zanzibar which was very strange! We went out that night to a local bar which was far from happening but was great to catch up and hear his stories of Malawi. The next day we didn't go straight to the falls as to break up our stay a bit but instead had a look around the town and the local markets. Its obvious that Livingstone is an incredibly touristy town as the prices are sky high but with enough bargaining and enough of saying 'look i've been in Africa for almost 3 months I know your wooden necklace doesn't cost £20!' etc etc we managed to get a few good bargains. The town isn't particularly picturesque and doesn't have anything particularly authentic within in it, just tourist markets, banks and cafes which to be fair is nice for just a few days visit. The next day we went to the Falls which I must say is just as beautiful the second time round. Because we are now in rainy season it had a lot more water which equals alot more backlash which equals a very wet Meghan and Alice. We hired some rain coats so it was all that bad but it did result in us looking like Frodo and Pippin on their great adventures in the Lord of the Rings. It was really incredible though, the sheer scale of the water is mind blowing but the amount of tourists taking pictures did get in the way a bit. We then took a really long and boring tour of this little museum thing which involved a guide just reading us the plaquards very slowly and incorrectly. We then went to watch our friend Dave do a bunjee jump off this bridge which connects Zambia to Zimbabwe. We did the whole one foot in Zimbabwe one foot in Zambia thing - we are after all ridiculously cool. Watching him jump off completely fearlessly did give me a slightly sick feeling in my stomache but at the same time looked completely exhilerating. I contemplated doing the gauge swing which is slightly less daredevily but more realistic to what I was ready to acheive. This was an extremely expensive thing to do which we found out so decided perhaps to save the money and do something less dangerous like a yoga retreat in India!

Now I'm back in Kabwe and planning to visit another childrens centre for street children at some point this week and go and do some outreach work which I've never done so is quite exciting. We have well and truely hit rainy season now as there isn't a moment where it isn't pouring. Most of the streets have become quite flooded but on the positive side its still quite hot so can totally wear t-shirts without being cold. Another thing which comes with the rain is the mosquitoes. The lovely things have had me for breakfast lunch and dinner and snacking in between - its torturous!

This weekend we will travel back to Lusaka to go to the Indian embassy for our Visa's as we will be flying to Mumbai in only three weeks! There is also a monthly market which is on at the same time and worth checking out! Hope everything at home is fine and dandy.

Lots of Love xxxxxxxx

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