Surprise, you’re a teacher!

Wednesday, 25th July

My seven days in Lusaka have been full of adventures. You never know what happens – that’s the best and the worst of Zambia.

I had my first lesson (on entrepreneurship) on Wednesday, the 25th of July. I had just arrived from the Immigration Office, exhausted and without any notebooks or my laptop with me, as I was prepared to go back to the Immigration Office in a couple of hours. That’s when the hotel&catering teacher came to me and asked if I was going to have a lesson today. When I said that to my knowledge, I wasn’t going to have a lesson that day, he told me that a classroom full of students was waiting for me. What could I do? There I went, no time to be scared, and kept my first 1.5 hours lesson of entrepreneurship. Since that, I’ve been teaching every day. Besides entrepreneurship (which I wasn’t prepared to teach in the first place), I teach basic computer skills and business communication. I have eleven classes per week, each taking from 1 to 2.5 hours. In addition, I should give consultations to community groups (don’t ask me about that, it’s not clear to me, either) and participate to meetings and work in projects, whatever is needed.

Teaching is really demanding with all the planning of lessons and exams, assessing assignments, gathering material for spicing up the lessons, planning the timetables and so on. Especially when I don’t have any templates to apply for I haven’t taught these courses ever before: My first job here was to plan the curriculum of each course. Sometimes I’m really tired and stressed out. Our chief saw my timetable and noted that I had some free space there (as I had scheduled only the lessons, not all the administrative work) and suggested that we could add some work there… I feel hugely responsible for providing the students with accurate and appropriate knowledge and skills in order for them to cope with whatever comes in the future. The students are really sweet and enthusiastic, and my worst nightmare would be letting them down. I can’t believe that I came all the way to Africa to search my peace of mind and this is what I ended up into. I’m hoping I can loosen up a little as time goes by.

Commentators on the streets
I was prepared to hear a lot of comments on the streets because of my skin colour. I’d heard that I was probably going to be called a muzungu, Mary, my wife and so on, on a regular basis. However, the problem is not as big as I had anticipated. Especially here in Kabulonga, where I stay, I can walk on the streets almost in peace. I’ve noticed a clear connection between the socioeconomic status and the way the person behaves him/herself. The educated population is discrete, but the citizens with lower SES can be rather aggressive in their attemptions of gaining my attention. Anyway, the people shouting their comments to you don’t usually mean harm but just want your attention and perhaps have a chat and make friends.

The servant
At Riikka’s place, my “home” here in Lusaka, we have a servant – I guess you could call Wilson that. I don’t feel wholly comfortable with the situation. Wilson works at Riikka’s house three days a week and in other Finnish residents’ houses two days a week. He washes laundry, irons, does the dishes, cooks food, does it all, basically. He comes at 8 a.m., so you have to make sure you have some decent clothes on by that time. For example, this morning I was leaving for the Immigration Office not until 9 a.m., and it was somewhat uncomfortable to hang around in the house when he was trying to do his job there. On the other hand, I have to admit that when I came home from work, exhausted, it was nice to get warm and tasty n’shima and vegetable sauce á la Wilson.


Tuesday, 31st July

The party outfit
Last day of July, almost two weeks (= half a month, OMG) gone already! The African summer is only about to begin, I can’t wait! Today, I went to the tailor’s (Nancy) to design my traditional chitenge outfit for the Kitchen Party on Saturday. (Nancy complemented me for my hips – big hips are appreciated in Zambia J) Kitchen Party is a women’s party that is organized when a girl/woman is getting married. Something like polttarit in Finland, that is. The guests bring all kinds of kitchen equipment and textiles as gifts, and dancing and eating is naturally included to the party night.

It’s bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
Today we also ate fresh bananas from our own garden at Sable Road! Spectacular!

Lovable students of KYPT
Teaching is still such tough work… but rewarding as well. On one of my courses (business communication) for the automechanics students, I’m now teaching debating. I organized a brainstorming session today for the students to come up with topics to debate about. I was amazed about how smart and deep these youngsters are! The topics were just great, concerning gender differences, self-employment vs. working for someone else, the value of education etc. I obviously need to give them more chances to express themselves during the lessons!

Tomorrow, I’m going to meet my ‘Singing Class’ again. It’s the hotel & catering class in which, as I found out on our first lesson, everyone likes singing. They gave me a sample of that last time, and they are, in fact, very talented. I hope we could organize some kind of a concert for them some day. I’m sure they will play along!

The newspaper
Lately, I’ve been helping in the Community Voice Newspaper office by editing their upcoming issue. I’m loving it! I’m secretly planning on strategies of how to switch to their side and work full-time in the editorial office. They say I should become a journalist – I don’t think it’d be a bad idea J

African rhythms
Oh, I haven’t yet mentioned my latest hobby – African dancing! It’s great: we dance once a week at the KYPT school yard, with three drummers and plenty of audience. Gift, the KYPT secretary, teaches us. He also coordinates dancing and theatre activities to a bunch of kids (Children International is the organization, if I remember correctly – go and Google). The dancing consists basically of rocking your hips and stomping your feet, it’s really flirty and so much fun!

Finnish reggae in Zambia
Last Saturday, we had a farewell party for a Zambian reggae artist (Izaizai, perhaps) who is going back to Finland to his family. As I talked to him, I learned that he’s played with Soul Captain Band and Jukka Poika – go figure! If you took a look at my music collection that I’ve got with me here in Zambia, you’d find Soul Captain and Jukka Poika there. Actually, I’ve only got five CD:s (in mp3 format) of music here of which the two are by Izaizai’s bands – so talking about coincidences!

Pictures
1) Sable Road, my home street
2) Lumi the Cat at our swimming pool
3) Children International kids rehearsing at the KYPT school yard
4) One of the KYPT school buildings. That's were I'm teaching.
5) Children's acrobat group rehearsing at KYPT school yard