Some of the local efforts

This morning we went to visit the Temwanani Day Centre for Orphans. Dids and Val have been down there quite a bit as they are having a look at the set-up, but the rest of us were seeing it for the first time. Three volunteer teachers run the nursery school for about a hundred orphans-its pretty amazing that they manage to get anything done considering how wild the kids are…they are extremely patient women! The incentive for the kids to turn up is the meal they get when classes finish at 11:00.

We made some progress with our project as well. Jamie met with Vickness, the second teacher at Lusekelo who was able to tell him a lot about the operation of the classes. Tomorrow I’m going to meet with some of the students taking the courses to hear their opinions. Once we’ve spoken to everybody involved, hopefully we will have some ideas about how the classes can be run more efficiently.

This afternoon I was going to go to football training with the Ungweru Youth team. It was cancelled though which allowed time for us meet Brave and some of the Youth Committee about another idea of theirs. On Friday morning they are going to Luwinga Secondary School to speak to the students there about various aspects of positive living. On the agenda will be issues such as AIDS/HIV, Community Development, and Issues for Women. They would like a few of us to offer our views on positive living and speak about lessons we have taken from our education and experiences.

This evening we tasted a local maize beer called Chibuku. It smells like stale beer, has the texture of reddy brek, and leaves the drinker with the general sensation of having vomited. A litre costs Kw60, around 27 cent. I haven’t developed a taste for it.

I’m pretty impressed with the work that the Ungweru Youth Group do. They give very generously with their time. With no compensation, they go to hospitals to clean, they clean the homes of orphans and the bedridden, they promote positive living amongst their peers and younger children, and they have made huge efforts to make us feel very welcome.