For the last two days, I've had a song from Rent stuck in my head. It's my own fault, really. After a training session on HIV/AIDS, I went home and made flashcards and listened to Rent. So today I've been singing "Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe" to random people.
It's been a weird training day. We have interviews with some head honchos, a bike repair session, and some tech stuff, all on different schedules. Usually we have language and tech, alternating before and after lunch by day. So the change has been nice, and it's given us all a chance to just kinda chill. And it gave my language group a chance to study together for a bit.
We're all a bit loopy right after lunch (right now). Erin is walking circles around the insaka with her water bottle on her head. A few people are playing Uno. There's a lot of studying. People are exchanging music, especially Sharon's Zam Pop purchases, and ebooks. We're all charging our electronics, hoping the batteries will last most of the weekend, at least. And we're all chomping at the bit, ready to go to Lusaka on Saturday. Yay field trips!
Continued on Friday 2/17, after class:
For me, PST has been pretty uneventful so far. No crazy mefloquine dreams, no medical issues, no homestay problems. I'm enjoying language classes. My language is Bemba, which is spoken in Central, Northern, and Luapola provinces. After my last semester in college studying a Bantu language, this is SOO FUN. I don't have to put together the language from scratch. It's conveniently laid out for me already in a handy-dandy little grammar book. Loving it.
The technical training has been good too. I taught my first English lesson today! Granted, it was only to my fellow trainees, but it was good to get some practice. And I was terrified. But it was good to get that first go out of the way. We're learning all about the Zambian curriculum and how teachers are supposed to make their term, weekly, and daily lesson plans, and getting the basics of classroom management and teaching theory for EFL/ESL. It's definitely helpful for me to get those basics, since I don't have formal training. I hope the veteran teachers among us aren't bored, though.
My homestay family has been fantastic. I'm staying with the Mulenga family. My ba taata (host dad) is Alexander. He's a carpenter. My ba maayo (host mom) is Irene, and she's a stay-at-home mom. I have four bandume (brothers) and two bankashi (sisters), whose ages range from 2 to 18. All of the children speak both Bemba and Nyanje, which sometimes makes things confusing since I'm supposed to be learning Bemba here. The schools in this area are taught in Nyanje (in the lower grades, at least), so that's their default. Having them around forces me to practice, though. If I want to communicate with the adorable 4-year-old that follows me around EVERYWHERE, I have to either use charades or stumble through some rudimentary Bemba. I usually end up doing a combination of both, and it works out. The older ones like to practice English with me, but my host parents make me use Bemba, and talk to me in Bemba as much as they can, supplementing it with explanations in English. So it works.
In the last two weeks, I have eaten with silverware a grand total of three times. All three times were during lunch at the training center on the days we're there all day. The rest of the time, I've been eating with my hands. The quintessential Zambian food is something called nshima (pronounced nn-shee-muh). It's maize meal which is cooked and vigorously stirred into a thick paste, and served in "lumps." It's the main food in any meal; protein and veggie dishes are called relishes, and are cooked in small quantities. Nshima is a cool food though. (Well, not really... it's actually pretty hot. Every time I get a lump out of the serving dish, I burn my hand. And when I break it apart, the inside is like lava - burning and super sticky.) Basically, I consider nshima an edible spoon. To eat it, you take a piece off of your lump and knead it with one hand. Then you shape it with a slight depression on one side, put your relish in it, and eat. Silverware is present at meals, but only for serving. It's a good system, really, and pretty practical. And Zambians make nshima twice every day. It takes some major muscles to stir that stuff. So don't ever mess with a Zambian woman, or she'll beat you up with her nshima muscles. (Not kidding. Zambia just became the world champs in women's boxing. And on a related note, if you didn't know, Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations in football! Go Chipolopolo!)
