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Two weeks ago…
…this was a new pair of boots. Most of the kids we trudged around with were barefoot.
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The thatcherless years
Just time for one last bundle of thoughts before the plane leaves. Plenty more to write up later, but for now, this will have to do. It’s as easy to play armchair politics as it is to be the world’s greatest football manager from the comfort of your couch. All the same, it’s impossible not…
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Two new schools
Back with the program today – and everyone in Zambia has a ‘program’ which they stick to as tightly as African time allows. I haven’t blogged much about leaving Simakakata school behind because, well, there’s no way I won’t be coming back to visit. The staff, George, Sonia, Beatrice, Loveness and Edwin, are quite possibly…
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School posters
Back at Simakakata today, and the funny thing is that my brain is can no longer comprehend the incredible poverty here. Despite everything, the lack of food, of water, of teaching materials, of clothes for the kids, of shoes… it all seems so normal. Just another primary school. Now with added day nursery. Even though my eyes…
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When the lights go out
Forget everything I said about Livingstone being civilisation… the 3G is too slow here to use for updates, and the power’s been off all day, so we haven’t been able to use the connection at the backpacking hostel we’re staying at to do any work either. There are photos to go with this post, but…
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Joining the Dead Aid debate
We’re back in Livingstone after a strangely uneventful bus ride, all things considered. Driving over the parts of the main Livingstone to Lusaka road that are just dirt tracks in a six wheel coach should, really, have felt more adventurous than it actually did. I guess National Express-style buses are the same the world over…
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The story so far
Most of the evenings here have been spent fighting a slow internet connection – it can take an hour of failed attempts to get a photo up for the LearnAsOne blog, so we’ve been working on that pretty much flat out. We’ve been at the school now for four days, and the kids have gone…
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I promised myself…
That first day we got to the school I’d write up a blog post from the site, rather than head back to the motel to transcribe and upload. So here it is. Short and sweet because LearnAsOne get the best stuff. The school we’re raising funds for is this old farmhouse. The day starts at…
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The long and occassionally tarmaced road
After a weekend of travel and chasing round the country finding SIM cards and currency, today started with a long car drive in a very cramped car on something that is apparently the main road from Livingstone to Lusaka. When we got into Kalomo, we’d planned to take an hour or so to settle into…
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Busy times
The last couple of weeks have been utterly insane. As much as I thought the Zambia experience was going to be just a couple of weeks, every spare moment between trying to cram four weeks work into a fortnight has been spent either writing press releases and blog posts for the LearnAsOne site or trying…
