Hand painting, elephants and sophistication!!

Now the strikes are over the schools seem to have settled back down to their routines and we find the teachers back at work welcoming our visits just as much as the children. Thursday at Dambwa I was speaking to the headmaster and he said he wished we could visit two times a week so twice as many of his children could benefit. It is a great feeling to know that our visits are appreciated. That afternoon I was entertaining a dozen children with an impromptu animal impression game. It obviously looked good fun because the numbers soon swelled to over a hundred! It was slightly chaotic but great fun and ended up with me being knocked over by a huge swarm of kids trying to stop me leave. They did quickly pick me up and brush me down though!

Friday at Cowboy Cliff’s we organised a mass hand painting mission. All 100 pupils printed their hands as did the volunteers and teachers. We chose reds, yellows and oranges with a special plan in mind. The children loved it. It was a picture to see the looks on their faces change from puzzlement to curiosity to joy. It was a great, but rather messy morning! Later that day back at the grotto we cut out the 200 hands, named them all and proceeded to spend the entire afternoon making a huge lion collage using a big cardboard box scrounged from a local shop. We are all big kids at heart!!

The weather is changing and getting much colder in the nights. At breakfast we all wear our fleeces, wish we had hats and gloves and mumble about how cold it is. By mid morning the sun is high, we are all looking for shade and passing comment about how hot we are! But it is fantastic to be guaranteed beautiful sapphire blue skies every day, without the chance of a shower, and amazing star gazing opportunities at night. This week we have all learnt the Southern Cross and Scorpio constellations.

School attendance is up at the community schools, Linda and Nakatindi, due to the World Food Programme providing Soya beans to make porridge again. The teachers have told me that many parents only send their children to school so they can get a free meal. When there is no free porridge they are forced to stay home and do chores.

Extra activities this week have included an early morning game drive in Mosi O Tunya National Park, a very special elephant backed safari through the park on the banks of the river, watching the Livingstone Performing Arts Group’s musical, African Shoes, in a spectacular outdoor setting and a great evening at The Royal Livingstone which started with seeing a herd of wild elephants and zebras. We began with high tea and aimed for a degree of sophistication not required when camping! When asked where we were staying, we decided an answer of “in town” fitted more with the ambiance than saying “Grubby’s Grotto”!!! We then had cocktails on the sun deck whilst watching the sunset over the Zambesi only to be disturbed by monkeys stealing the fruit from our Pimms and lemonade……!!!

Kelly Geoghegan, Book Bus Leader