Day 22 (22/06/11) Kaoma

Due to my laziness it’s now the night of the 23^rd and I still haven’t written this post, oh well better late than never (I know there a joke her but I just can’t think of it). So yesterday started with a return trip to Chilombo basic school to teach another workshop. Today it was the turn of Grade 8’s, the class of the painters son Abel. Abel wanted us to come to his school and his it down to him that we visited the school at all. He visits the guesthouse regularly selling his father’s paintings (he helps paint them) and always wants to listen (and keep) Áine’s iPod since hearing The Vengaboys (remember them) on it. So the workshop went well the class asked loads of questions which was cool (and we could answer most of them which is even cooler). Once it was finished we were brought back to the ranting Principal’s office to sign the visitor book. I took the turn of writing a small bit about our visit and saying thanks or their help. The walk home was interesting as all walks through rural Zambia are however we had ran out of water and were waiting for Progress (the guesthouse manager who also owns a shop in town) to bring more. It was a tough walk without water (we didn’t resort to Bear Grylls drink your piss tactics) but finally we made it home where we took it easy for a bit so I decided to gather all the pictures of the trip so far together. We have about 1500 pictures already (and we took about 100 today). When dinner came it was heaven at long last we had chicken nice big juicy lumps of it (to use a shitty catchphrase it was “finger licking good”). I could’ve kept eating all night if there had been enough chicken. After dinner me and Jamie headed for town while Áine and Dan set off for boys town to bring back the shovel they borrowed (don’t forgot your shovel if ya wanna go to work). The internet was painfully slow (slower than cripple on a bicycle). Dan and Áine arrived as we were finishing up so me and Jamie headed next door to Kitoko supermarket to buy some cornflakes and biscuits. There is one box of biscuits that cost KW12500 but are unbelievably good, they’re like Fox’s creams and are so addictive. They come in plain or chocolate and coconut flavour and I can’t quite decide which is nicer (it like trying to decide which arse cheek is more useful, left or right). So Aine finished up and the 3 of us headed home abandoning Dan who’d only just logged on. While he was waiting he was talking to a guy who said there is a four day holiday next week to commemorate the ex-president who died last week. We had heard some rumours about this and weren’t sure when it was. I checked the internet but in typical Zambian style there was no information available. It wouldn’t really matter to us that much if it was any other week but we have to renew our Visa’s next Wednesday or Thursday (oh shit).When we got back I went and asked Rita and Molly and they weren’t sure some girls around said it was true others said it wasn’t. To complicate matters there is a 4 day weekend the following week and its possible some people are confusing the two. If it was true we would have to get the bus the next morning to Mongu to renew them early (an option none of us wanted). So we rang the nun who runs the Mongu guesthouse and she didn’t think it was true but said she’d go and find out for us. To be sure to be sure (me lucky charms) I decided to ring the Irish embassy (not something I expected to have to do when I arrived) but they were gone home even though it was only 3 (well combine Irish peoples lack of timekeeping with Zambians and it’s just chaos). So we decided we’d wait until tomorrow (gotta love procrastination). Later we were sitting around outside when a truck pulled up and we heard Irish accents hop out (it’s so weird to hear another Irish accent again). They turned out to be a husband and wife from Tipperary who live in Kildare. The woman is a teacher and has visited before and they lived here for about 20 years about 20 years ago. They were nice people and we chatted for a bit. They were served dinner in the kitchen at our usual supper time so as they had just arrived we gave them space. However they were still in there 90 minutes later and we were getting hungry so we went in and started cooking our pasta. We chatted with them and their guest the crazy principal from the first school we visited. The pasta turned out to be really nice. Timothy gave us a CD of Zambian pop music which Dan attempted to download but the CD got stuck in his computer and wouldn’t come out (even with tweezers). It was looking like a lost cause but for some unknown reason it eventually popped out 2 hours later. After we played poker in the gazebo with bottle caps as chips. Then to top off the day we murdered a frog while trying to escort him from our room (I’m only an accessory it was Dan and Jamie who conspired to drop a bed on him). So that was yesterday now to write about today.