What a day, I need not have been worried cause today was probably one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had on this trip so far. It started with the frosties (they were not frosties, hardly any sugar and even the picture of Tony on the box looked a bit funny) before we set off on our walk to the school. Imagine the scene 4 Irish people set off walking through ruralish Zambia trying to find a place we’d only been once before, we of course got a bit lost, we knew the general direction but we were following small paths through the fields passing house after house (answered kids question of “how are you” with “I’m fine how are you” they would respond with “fine” it must be the first English phrase they learn in school). On the way we saw a large open back lorry bringing kids to school, there must have been 100 kids standing in the back of it, this is not the first time we seen something like this it is so weird. So we eventually got to the school and met Principal Laugh Aalot. We were brought into our classrooms, Áine & Dan were in one room and me and Jamie in the other. We were to use the projector which required electricity so the teacher brought in an elaborate set up involving two car batteries to power it (the school has limited electricity), but it didn’t work so we moved to the computer room. The presentation started awfully with several kids asking me to slow down cause they could not understand my accent (arra sure what’d ya mean me Irish brogue is grand). After that however it went really really well and I enjoyed it. We got them to build towers from cardboard and pencils and see if they could hold a water bottle. Some towers worked and some didn’t but everyone had a great fun doing it. Afterwards we headed to the football pitch for a kick around between ourselves, however kids started appearing from everywhere until eventually there was about 250 Zambian kids playing with us. It was bizarre having so many kids running around you, everywhere we ran there were about 50 kids following us. We were stopping asking their names and taking pictures aswell. It is the most fun you could experience chasing after a ball with 70 other Zambian children and getting there first and booting it high in the air. Eventually we got some sort of a game going Irish against Zambians (although I’m not entirely sure they knew we were playing) we won 3 -1 which was impressive for the heat, for a full match report please see the report below from Daniel Collins, the Engineering For Humanity Sports Correspondent. In the evening we bumped into Sr. Mollie who told us that she is shutting down the block making plant (we visited the plant yesterday and met the manger and told him how we were preparing a report for Sr. Mollie, then today she shuts the plant down and fires him, he’ll think we caused it to be shut down. Oh Shit hope we don’t meet him again). We decided to take it easy this evening so we had few drinks and watched “Charlie Wilson’s War” on the laptop. Half way through the film it hit me that I’m in the middle of Africa. I’m starting to really enjoy being here. It really is such a unique experience (we’re getting far more out of this trip than we can ever hope to give back, the people are just so friendly). Goodnight.
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