Now we can drive in zambia!

So this should be a quick blog to inform you of our triumph today of getting zambian driving licences!! Its taken a long which but finally we have them. I even have a picture but, decided that i didn't ought to put that up without taking out a few bits so some randomer on the internet can't copy it.

So last week we turned up and got our provisional licence, and today we turned up about 9:30 and waited while the manager was at the bank. Then waited some more once she got back. And then got sent to payment booth with instructions to pay for our driving test, and the desk clerk was told to book our test for today. Then back to the manager who then wrote on the test paper that we were getting our licences converted. and also asked for more photocopies of all the documents that we'd photocopied to get our provisional licence. So we were glad we'd spent half an hour yesterday making sure we photocopied everything we own. Then we went and paid for the licence and came back to the managers office to get our nationality changed from British honduras to Great Britian. Lucy's was happy but the computer maintained that Rich was from british honduras and wouldn't change it so, the manager gave up and said she'd work on it later. But if not rich just has to remember he's from British honduras acording to RTSA in zambia!

Anyway,

Thats the big news for today and probably the next few weeks, we're planning a visit to kitwe to go and buy pizza and go to pick n pay mainly just because we can now drive in Zambia and we miss eating pizza.

back at school

Just a quick blog to let you all know we're still here!  Now at the end of the easter holidays and as always we've not got as much done as we were hoping but, thats the way it goes we are a heap more prepared for term 2 than we were for term 1! so thats handy!

Currently we've still not got our driving licence we've got our medical done and we have our theory test tomorrow morning so i'll tag a bit on at the end explaining how we got on.  But basically its been a bit of a mission to get this far as the lady at chingola wasn't there to trnsfer licence over so, we tried kitwe and got told lots and decided we were best waiting for lady to get back to chingola which she is now so, on thursday we booked out test for this thursday and we'll see how we get on, We've learnt the 10 basic rules of the road and as many of the signs as we can so, we just have to hope the test is nice and simple!

Other than hanging round rtsa we've got a heap of work done which is always good, there is always more to do at any school but at Amano its particularly the case with lots of people coming and going and not leaving any sort of plans so, we've been looking through that and trying to sort out our respective areas a little more than they were before and we're getting there!

Mindolo Dam

Mine truck being transported on the way down to lusaka

Having a drink at mug and bean (very exciting for us!)

Also we've been relaxing! We spent a day at mindolo dam (lake left over from an old mine) which was lovely, it was very nice and relaxing and we had 4 nights down in lusaka. We stayed at a backpackers for 3 nights and treated ourselves staying in a hotel for the 4th night.  It was just s well it was only 1 night as it cost the same as the 3 nights at the backpackers! Lusaka has developed very quickly since rich was there 5 years ago and so was quite a shock to both of us to see big new shopping malls and extensions to old shopping malls meaning that they'd be worth a visit in most cities in the UK it was quite a culture shock coming from little amano near little chingola! We also went to the sunday market at one of the shopping malls which was good fun with a lot of crafts were being sold and it was fun going round talking to the locals an bartering with them. Other excitements were sitting in a coffee shop (mugg and bean) and having a coffee which tasted very good having not been to a coffee shop since december and going to spur steak house which was very very tasty but rich had an ulcer on the joint of his top and bottom jaw which made chewing painful, so, for the first time ever, lucy finished eating before Rich and had to help him finish off which was very upsetting for rich as it was a very juicy and tasty steak, in fact its making him upset just thinking about it.

Just a quick driving licence update, been in to rtsa a few more times, we now have a provisional driving licence. We thought we should get a full one, but no, so we have to go in again in a week to see the manager who we hope will then change our licences over to a full licence..... but, who knows exactly what will happen, we may still have to do the driving test, although we think and hope that it is just a matter of the manager ticking a few boxes on the computer and then we'll be done, however, this is zambia so, we'll wait and see!!!

Also, our provisional driving licenses have a few mistakes on them, we're both from British Honduras which is quite funny, but especially as the country no longer exists, its belize now and has been since 1981! Also Rich's birthday is 04/11/04 which makes him 8. Lucy's is 24/08/1998 which makes her 14. Handily the manager says she can change these when we see her next week.

Easter!

Hello again so, yes its about time that i updated the blog as its been a while. The main exciting news currently is that we're on easter holiday which is always welcome! Had a good few days off around easter weekend and now getting into holiday life at amano. Not that we're short of  job, there are plenty of things to get done that aren't possible during school time, getting school schemes of work/ planning so they're good for us and good for the people who come after us. Also we'll try to take it easy as well, hopefully we can manage to get a few days away in lusaka thrown in as well. These are a few of the main things we'll try and do during April.

Update  on car registering - Car is now officially ours, went a week after handing paperwork to ZRA and they had it, Steve Studd had kindly gone a few times during that week for us but with no luck. Started Queuing where i thought i had to go, and realized that i was getting nowhere, so got bored and decided i didn't care any more, and started walking off. Just on the off change i asked some guys in an office if they knew where i needed to go, and he walked round the office with me and found the paperwork and then i signed and i was good to go. Then i headed to RTSA the final stop. we queued up outside the managers office at 4:20 (closes at 4:30) thinking probably would have to wait another day but, miracle of miracles the guy in the office saw us and entered stuff in the computer and even went past closing time for us. We just needed to pay but that was locked up so we got that sorted another day!

Anyway so back to now! Unfortunately this involves  another RTSA story!

The Main thing that we should get done during the holiday is to get our driving licences for Zambia, We've been driving on our UK licences but after 3 months they want you to have a Zambian one. So we'll have to sort that out, we've been told many things about what is possible and what isn't so we decided the best plan was to go to town and to RTSA who give out licences and ask the boss what the story was and what was possible! So, we arrived at 8 ish this morning and sat down and waited for only about 20 mins before we went in and spoke to the manager but one slight problem was the guy in the manager seat was a man, which isn't a problem in itself but we have been reliably informed the manager is a lady. Anyway we asked the guy if its possibly to change licences over from our UK one and he said that it was definitely possible to do but he wasn't able to do it and we need to wait til the middle of the month til the person who does it is here (we assume this is the manager). He was the same guy who did the paperwork in the end for our car and he recognized us, He even told me that i already had a Zambian licence so maybe i should just say i lost mine? Any way, So we left RTSA after a very short amount of time but quite happy as it seems likely we don't have to take any tests but slightly disappointing that we have to wait! As long as the guy is correct it all sounds good, the problem will come if we have to take theory tests and stuff that he didn't tell us about and then we'll have less time to do it in. But we'll worry about that later, we plan to head in again on monday and see what he says, maybe thats close enough to the middle of the month! We shall see!

RTSA in chingola - Where we seem to spend most of our spare time!

The last few weeks of school were hectic as you would expect with reports and what have you going out, the school sends out reports at the end of every term which is ok if you teach a few classes quite a lit of the time but, if you teach lots of classes once a week then it becomes quite hard work. Handily we didn't have it too bad, especially when compared to some. The last day of the term school finished at lunch and then after that we had a parents afternoon especially for boarders its a chance for parents to come and check up on their kids at the same time as they pick them up, as always talking to parents is quite fun talking to parents explains quite a bit about why the kids are like they are.

We've had another house event, primary football, again won by luano (our house) we are it seems very handy at football having won the secondary one as well. The primary football wasn't quite as high  standard a the secondary and even included some attempts at netball. It was getting quite loud with all the secondary's  cheering their house on and i don't think that all the primaries appreciated it but it was a good afternoon especially as we won. We also had a secondary house rugby event which Luano lost, and it rained quite heavily and it was rugby so i didn't see much of that, but what i did see suggested that most of the guys should stay clear of a profession in rugby.

In other sports news the girl u19 netball team came 3rd in the ISAZ (international schools association zambia)  competition in Lusaka which is a mighty effort for a small school.

Teaching has been going well, getting better relationships with pupils which makes things easier although it will take a while to build up as strong ones as were left behind when you've been teaching for 3 years at the same place, plus there is still a little bit of a wall up from some students which makes it hard. I think i have found all there is in the science lab and found any experiments that are about. But while there is a fair bit of equipment there is very few class practical's so, i've been making steps to rectify this buy buying and making some new experiment equipment.

Also the school needs to buy new PA equipment now it has a large hall and more people their old stuff isn't loud enough and has too little capacity for the number of people that it has to deal with so, i've been drawing up an equipment list as well for that, and it turns out its fun spending other peoples money! The school has put a amount of money side to buy PA Stuff and so its good to be able to put to use all those years of setting up PA systems and get them a decent set of equipment at a decent price.

Hopefully soon we'll get a newsletter out, if you've been following the blog then there really isn't going to be much new appear on that but if we can i'll try and attach it to the blog if i can remember how to!

Registering a car in zambia... and other news

Hello again.

Seems like quite a while ago that we last did a blog, think that was 3 weeks ago, things keep on going we're in routine now so that means that just like any school the days goes by quickly and the weekends go by even quicker!

Car registering (this is long so avoid if you're not intereted in a story of incompetence, and time wasting)

When we wrote the last blog we had just bought our car, which has already been really useful in carrying people in to and out of town and on friday taking grade 1's swimming because all the school busses were being used or don't work! The main use of the car has been to take rich in to town to try and get the car registered as ours which back home is about a 10 min job filling in the form and then chucking it in the post. In Zambia it's not that simple, I honestly think they have devised the most complex and long winded way possible to encourage people to either not own a car or be corrupt and just pay people to get the work done.

The first step you have to take is to go to the police station where you have to fill in a form and get the previous owner to fill in a bit and sign it. However when we went there they weren't there so we had to go back another time. I went back another time ans still  noone was there so went back to school, came in a 3rd time and someone was there but they were off to see a football match so didn't have time to help and also i needed a photocopy of everything. The next day, 3rd time and a week later i was successful! The idea of seeing the police is that they check the car with their records to ensure its not been reported stolen, but they just see that the car exists and then fill in their form and stamp it. You then have to go to rtza (road traffic safety authority i think) You have to present them (who ever you find who wants to talk to you, no discernible queuing system exists you just wait until something happens) Then they told me to go and pay for a vehicle inspection so you go round the back and get a recipt to show you've paid then you wait a bit more and the guy gets bored looking at you and asks to see the car, he asked to see under the bonnet and was dissapointed when there was no engine (its under the front seats) He was looking for the engine number which i said was under the front seat so he decided he couldn't be bothered anymore and just filled in the form!

Next step ZRA (Zambia Revenue Authority) I don't know why we need to see these guys, but you have to. I went there straight after RTZA with the hope that we were just a few steps away from completion! which i think we are but this was a week ago and we've not progessed past this step. They looked through all the forms and as is the fashion gave me a new one to fill in which i did. But they wouldn't accept my forms as i didn't have proof i had money to pay for the car. I explained that having already paid for the car finding proof that i had money was tricky as it had gone on paying for the vehicle. But no deal, so go away come back. So i went back and got told i didnt have copies of the correct documents so i headed to the studds house down the road got the copies and went back, He looked through them and didn't look very happy that i was asking him to work at 4 on a thursday afternoon so said, this is all ok.... come back on monday afternoon it might be ready then. So welcome to zambia, its fine as long as you don't go anywhere or expect to get anything done.

Other news (welcome back those who couldn't be bothered to read our car registering exploits!)

Crowd as Luano house won the final football match

In other news Amano had its first house sports afternoon on thursday, there are 3 houses  named after local villages, We are in Luano house and needless to say we are the best, this was proved by us winning everything. Turns out the pupils got really into the afternoon which meant there was a really good atmosphere about the place. The idea of bringing in the house system is to give them a bit more practise of competitive matches in sport as well as other competitions throughout the school such as the sciece fair and other events that take place. If the first event was anything to go by it looks like it will be succesfully adopted by the staff and students!

Amano v Ipusikilo in the Hall

On Saturday Amano played host to a group of teams from ipusiliko street kids home. We were supposed to be playing  8-a side football outside but, as if to remind us of home it rained, it rained and thundered the evening before which turned the power off about 5 and then we were woken up about 5 in the morning by a thunderstorm and it didn't stop raining until about lunch time. I would be interested to have a rain gauge to know how much rain falls at times but i wouldn't be surprised if a few inches  fell in the morning, which made the ground outside a little slippy especially as most of the ipusikilo guys play in no shoes or in plimsole type shoes with no grip. So, we played 5-a side in the hall. There were a lot of games and some won by amano some by ipusikilo. its now 3 in the afternoon and we still have no power! so 22 hours no power and counting! (In the end power came back on after about 26 hours off!)

Back to a proper subject rich is  starting to get to grips with what equiptment we have in the science department, back home you would have a lab tech who in my experience, know everything,  so you just ask them if they have..whatever. or if they have any ideas for showing.... whatever else and they'll find you something, or make you something out of bits they have lying about. At amano things are different, you have an idea, search though the prep room for what you want. Obviously the more times you search the more you find so each time it becomes easier! So we're getting there.

In other, other news Rich had a haircut, Its a little  shorter than he's used to but his hair dresser did a very good job and was very cheap. Lucy was a little scared to start with until she realised that she couldn't really make him look much worse than he did already! So now rich doesn't over heat his cross country times have improved from 22:52 on the first go to 19:25 last week. just 20 seconds shy of Mr Kirk who its fair to say is Rich's number 1 target to overtake next week! 

half term already.....

Hello again

Decided that seeing as half term is over now i should update the blog and let everyone know how we're getting on. firstly after a 2 week christmas holiday that involved, moving out of a house, christmas, and moving to Zambia it was nice to have a week with little that had to be done and we do feel a little more relaxed and rested now than we did 10days ago which is really good! Having aid we feel rested we haven't been sitting down wondering what to do or playing computer games all day although we have managed a few hours here and there!

Bethel Youth in the ipusikilo chota

On sunday night we were at ipusikilo street kids home with bethel youth, which was a good evening it was great to see the former street children singing and dancing away when we were singing song out of mission praise! While it was going on we had a huge thunderstorm which lead to power going out so we had a few torch lit accoustic songs while steve found a generator and gave us power back.

On tuesday we went to Ndola to go to Picknpay which is a south african supermarket chain if you're not aware, i'm fairly sure they much be owned by wal-mart or tesco as it seems very asda/tesco ish it was nice to be there as you can get hold of a lot more stuff there than you can in chingola although it wasn't as exciting as shoping in shoprite in chingola where you never know what you'll find. Another benefit of this trip was that at the same mall there is a debonairs pizza so it seemed rude not to get one, especially when pizza and coke was only about £5.  Rumour has it that there is a shoping mall to be built in chingola, i like the idea of debonairs being there as well but similarly being able to get hold of take away pizza to easily can't be a good thing. Luckily this being Zambia its unlikely that a mall will be built very quickly so, we'll probably be long gone before it actualy happens.

Wednesday we moved the School Library, it only seemed a small library until we started moving the books, fortunately there were lots of people on hand, a lot of books were moved and i think mainly ended up in the correct place, i guess we'll find out shortly when pupils try to find things! It took us from about 8 til about 1:30 so were glad of lunch and a drink when we finished, in the afternoon we went to Musenga to go swimming in lucy's old pool! which is deep!

Our new and clean car

Thursday we went for lunch at musenga and phil grove picked us up after having looked at a car which he mentioned we might be interested in so, we went and had a look in the afternoon. We went back on friday with Steve Studd and decided that we should get it! so, we now own a car, all we need to do now is to do all the paperwork and get ourselves zambian driving licenses! which we still haven't managed to do. Exactly what paper work we have to is another thing we have to figure out!

Tomorrow we get back in to routine, school wise things have been good we have had more challenging classes than i think we were expecting, behaviour of the pupils while good isn't quite as you might expect and a few homeworks have not been handed in! Hopefully punishments handed out will mean these problems go away, like always with pupils they are pushing the boundries and seeing what they can get away with. Its still hard to get used to no one wanting to answer questions, being very direct with who you are asking questions of helps but doesn't make the problem go away.

Grade 8 is also causing trouble with constant questions and most of them with rather obvious answers, they are only just a month in to secondary school so i guess its to be expected they'll find thing hard as its a big step up. A stupid question tally has slowed the rate of them down as after 3 have been asked in a lesson the class has a chore to do!

As has come to be normal there are plenty of sporting fixtures coming up and as a result of this lucy will have a busy time. A few primary footbal fixtures one against the boys from ipusikilo. as well as this qualifiers to the ISAZ (international schools association Zambia i think) tournament in lusaka at the end of march. So as is normal in a school it will be a busy 7 weeks until easter. we do have a long weekend early in march which is why half term is so early.