The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music

Thought some of you would like this title, but it is also apt because Lusaka is both hilly and full of music. In fact, one of the things I love about this place is the sounds. All kinds of sounds are interesting - just as the sights and smells differ radically from life in Canada, the sounds are also different. I often wish I had a tape recorder along with me so I could record some of these moments, take a "photograph" of the audio world. Alas, I don't have the technology, so I will have to resort to reporting on it, in particular music.

I regularly hear music, even when just biking to school. There are often church choirs, or funeral gatherings, singing, practicing, and praising God. If it has been stereotyped that Mennonites can sing well, the same can be said for Zambians. When I listen to the choir at church I often think that this group could easily be recorded and sold on a CD. Every church I've been to - I think I've been to six different denominations now - had wonderful singing. Some sing acapella, others with the accompaniment of a keyboard but the sound is always wonderful. The combination of powerful bass voices with soaring sopranos, usually accentuated by some ululations from the audience, combine for a wonderful listening experience. The singing portion is definitely my favourite part of the church service. Although I have no idea what we are singing about (I presume its about God, but that's about all I know) I do recognize good music when I hear it.

Zambian pop music, the stuff that people listen to most on the radio (although gospel music also has a very strong presence) all sounds basically the same. High on artificial synth music, low on anything to do with an instrument. When describing Zambian music to one colleague I was listing the different major musicians and after each I concluded that "he sounds like K'Millian." K'Millian is, from what I can tell, the IT performer on the Zambian scene. I have purchased a small collection of the most popular singers which I will bring home in order to relive my Zambian days. At some point I will get some church music to round out my collection.

The sound of music then is one of many on the list of defining experiences this year. To walk down the street and hear choirs practicing, people on the back of a truck singing for joy or sadness, and to hear music pouring out of churches throughout the city has been an unforgettable experience.

The Challenge of Teaching

One of the major challenges I have found in teaching is the wide range of skill levels possessed by the students. In my Grade 8 class, for example, there are some that are very intelligent and grasp everything right away. There are others who can't read. There are only a few at the top end, quite a few in the middle, and then some at the bottom. This leads me to wonder: to whom should I be aiming my instruction at. If I aim only at the top end then most of the class will flounder but the top end, who actually have a chance of passing the exams next year, will be well prepared. If I aim at the bottom end, I might be able to bring them up a little bit but they still won't pass and the top end will be left bored.

I still haven't quite developed a consistent answer to this question. Probably in effect I am aiming at the top end and the middle or upper middle of the class. I have to, after all, make some progress in the curriculum and can't go over the same things over and over again. Nonetheless, I often wonder if I should be doing more for the other kids as well or if this would not make much difference in the end anyways.

When the Sun Shines

The sun is shining again after a month of frequent rain making me a very happy person. Rainy season is not technically over yet - rains will continue off-and-on until March - but it is certainly slowing down and it is a very welcome change. It is wonderful to wake up in the morning and see nothing but brilliant blue sky, especially after waking up every day to the drudgery of endless miles of dark grey cloud.

The sunshine has also had many very practical applications in my life. I can take my bike to school every day again instead of having to weigh the odds of rain and choose to take the bus. Another perk is that the muddy roads that resulted in slow travelling and dirty trousers have now dried up and are passible again. Some roads had turned into large lakes and you had to cling to a very narrow mud path around the edge, fighting for space with vegetation and other pedestrians, while trying to avoid slipping into the murky waters.

The sun also puts me in a much better mood. After weeks of cloud I found myself a little grumpy and I think it might have had something to do with the weather. With the sun in the sky nothing can bother me. For the first few months after I arrived in Zambia I hardly saw a single cloud. I almost had to remind myself what they were when they started to appear. I'm really looking forward to going back to that picture perfect weather for the rest of my stay - especially when it starts to cool down a bit in a couple of months.

The blue sky here is wonderful. It has a depth and texture all its own. When you look around and see nothing but but blue and try and stare into it for awhile, I am made very aware of my finite smallness. That may sound a little cliche, but its the truth.

Its another sunny day, which makes it another good day in the life of Stefan.

Failed System Fails Failing Students

There. Just wanted to see how many uses of the word "fail" I could throw into one failure of a title. It was for good reason, however, as the Grade 9 examination results from November have just been announced, and in Lusaka only 27% of students have progressed to Grade 10.

I have been feeling a little bit of pressure this term because I am now teaching an examination class - Grade 9 Civics. At the end of Grade 7 and Grade 9 there are mandatory exams. If you succeed you go on to the next grade at a government school. If not, then you either drop out of school, try again next year, or try and find a school that will take you. So, teaching one of these classes means that if I don't teach well then the future of kids could well be ruined. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but teaching Grade 9 is a different beast than Grade 8 or Grade 10. I needn't have worried. With the results that are coming out I now realize that no matter what I do very few of my students have a hope of having even a chance of progressing to the next grade.

There are two problems with the Grade 9 exam. First, it is made impossibly hard for most students because there are not many Grade 10 places to put successful exam writers. Secondly, most students have very little knowledge for the exams even if they study hard. Partly that's because many of them have very poor English skills.

The national progression rate this year was about 37%. Lusaka was by far the lowest province at 27%. This doesn't mean that city kids are stupid - it just means that there are fewer places to put them so the standards are much higher. Progressing has absolutely no relation to passing the exam. A pass is considered to be 240 of 600. Progression in Lusaka was 336 for girls and 376 for boys (in order to encourage female education). It is not terribly encouraging that only a quarter of students were able to get slightly over 50%.

The story was not particularly good at the schools where I work. One had 7 of 60 progress to Grade 10. Last year that school had 5 progressions out of 40 kids. At the other school the number 4 progressions out of 60 pupils has been used (but someone else told me they hadn't actually gone for any results yet). The same person that told me 4 of 60 also mentioned that only 11 kids in the whole examination centre progressed out of 600+ kids. Ouch.

It must be a scary time for Grade 9s - preparing for a nearly impossible exam that you will pass only if you are among an elite lucky few. A crazy system it seems to me, but I guess one indicative of the limitations placed on the education system by a lack of places in secondary schools and the poor quality of education that most kids receive (especially among the urban poor and in rural areas).

Coaching Career Off to Poor Start

A week ago we discovered that the inter-school leagues were about to start and so last week we set about training our players in boys football and girls netball. I have been working with the netball team (despite the fact that I know nothing about the game except what I was able to garner on Wikipedia) and we had our first training session on Wednesday. After the practice I was feeling pretty good about the team - some people were good at defence, we had some good shooters, and it seemed like we could pass well. Boy was I wrong.

Things got off to a bad start in our first game on Friday when our players didn't know how to line up at the beginning of the game. Lots of them had never played before, I myself didn't know, and hadn't thought to tell them. The other team ran circles around us from the first whistle to the last and the final score was nothing less than a 15-0 thrashing. This may seem bad but first it has to be put into perspective: we had raw rookies in Grade 8 playing against players with several years of experience in Grades 11 and 12. The league system is so bizarre that instead of matching schools up against opponents with similar grade levels, we are stuck playing secondary schools. As a result the other team was taller, faster, better trained, and even had nice uniforms!

A question that many might have is what is this game netball. Basically netball is to basketball what ringette is to hockey - a game invented for women to play in an era when women weren't supposed to play real sports. Each player has assigned zones where they can go, you can't dribble (have to pass right away), only certain players can shoot and must do so within a "shooting circle" and the hoop has no backboard. That's netball in a nutshell.

So we'll go back to the drawing board this week and try and improve some of the fundamentals - passing under pressure, getting open, playing defence, where to stand. Hopefully our opponents next week will be of a similar grade level and we have a chance to play a decent game, otherwise another thrashing is in our future. The team is fun though and the game is actually not so bad once you get into it - after all I like pretty much any sport that involves a ball and two teams.

Caterpillar or Termite?

I've eaten a few strange things lately so I thought I should provide an update on my recent swallowings.

Awhile ago I had fried termites - known as inswa. This was actually pretty tasty. The primary taste is oil and salt with a little crunch. These I had absolutely no problem eating and actually quite enjoyed myself in the process.

More recently I had caterpillars. These are bought dried, then soaked and fried. They were really chewy and almost reminded me a little of black licorice. I didn't particularly enjoy them although they weren't horrible either. I was a little disappointed though, when after finishing my first helping of caterpillar, my host dad gave me a second helping.

One not particularly Zambian delicacy that I have eaten a lot of lately is soy chunks. I guess this isn't exactly a weird food as such but it is something new to my diet. At work the staff is provided lunch and often it is nshima with soy chunks. These chunks look kind of fleshy to the point where the first time I ate them I thought for awhile that it might be chicken and then thought it might be mushroom. Once again, salt is the primary flavour and they actually taste alright. They had better be healthy too, and are presumably quite cheap considering they are being used for large scale staff feeding. It was certainly a step up from the dried fish we had the first week.

Now compare my list of weird eating items with the responses given to my be the kids in my Bible/games club when I asked them if they had ever eaten any weird foods. Almost all of them said that the weirdest food that they had ever eaten was pig. Pig?! They also almost all declared that pig was their least favourite food. I guess this shows the contrast - for me pork products are completely normal and caterpillar is quite bizarre whereas for them it was the opposite.

The Evolution of My English

Zambian English has many subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, differences from Canadian English. The longer I'm here I increasingly take on characteristics of speech that will be very unusual upon my return home. For example:

1. I am now trained to commence every conversation with a "How are you?" and to answer reflexively "I am fine." I am thrown for a loop if this is not how a conversation starts and it takes me a little while to regain my footing.

2. I repeat words a lot. For example: "Do it fast fast" "yes yes yes" "thank you thank you" etc. My host dad and the headmaster at Chimwemwe do this and I presume that that is where I picked it up.

3. "staying within" (not going far), "this side" (here), "that side" (there) - I think I've commented on these before

4. "I am asking for a..." I have only done this a few times now but it is a slippery slope. Instead of saying "May I please have a..." people use "I am asking for a..." I thought that that was really strange at first, but I find myself doing it occasionally.

5. I am getting better at speaking really slowly - especially in class. That took some work.

6. When doing internet lessons I would be spelling out a website address and when I side "o, r, g" I found that students were hearing "o, i, g". So I've adapted the pronounciation of r to more like "ara".

7. I've picked up a little bit of an accent sometimes, especially when speaking with Zambians. Fortunately, I still have some skills to turn it on and off, but these gradually are fading little by little.

So there you have it. Just think, I still have five more months to lose all sense of what Canadian English is about.

Top 5 Things To Eat on the Street

1. Fritters - it seems every society has its own deep fried dough product, and Zambia is no different. For only K200 (about 5 cents) this tasty round treat helps fill the stomach. Usually I buy them in groups of two or three for my morning snack. Some ladies on the street sell big ones for K500 - these are really good. Nothing like oil and dough. Yummm.

2. Roasted Maize - this is a treat that my family often gets. Think corn on the cob except maize and roasted. You eat it straight off the cob. This is available all over the place.

3. Cream filled long john type thing - more deep fried dough, except this time they are long and cylindrical with a stuffing of a sweet, whipped cream like substance. These are especially good in the morning when they are fresh. At K1000 (25 cents) they are a little more pricey but are well worth it.

4. Popcorn - available in K200 or K500 bags. It is made with old, large commercial popcorn makers. It tastes pretty much like popcorn - no explanation is needed.

5. Not home made products such as Chicco's biscuits and sweets. Chiccos are sold for K500 (13 cents) and come in a variety of flavours - the best of which is Malt and Milk but others that include Chocolate, Coconut, and Butter. Butter is kind of gross because it actually tastes like eating, well, butter. Sweets are available for K50 (just over a cent) and are popular with the school kids.

There you have it, five quality items available on a street corner near you (well, probably not near to you, but pretty close to me). Tasty, cheap, and enjoyable! "Is it safe?" you ask. Sure it is, at least I have yet to get sick from a street product (knock on wood!).

China and Africa: A Marriage Made in Heaven or Neocolonialism?

Zambia welcomed Chinese president Hu Jintao last week as part of his eight nation tour of Africa. President Hu spent a few days signing economic deals, shaking hands, celebrating the "One China Policy" and sharing platitudes about how wonderful each other's country is. Except that when I say "Zambia welcomed" perhaps I should have said, "a few people welcomed." The role of China in Africa in general, and in Zambia particularly, is still one of much debate. It was controversial enough for President Hu to cancel most of his planned visit here for fear of protests.

The pro-China argument goes like this. China needs resources for its growing economy. Africa has resources it needs to sell and it needs jobs and investments at home to generate job opportunities for Africans. Thus, the argument goes, China's gestures of goodwill (forgiving debts, creating economic zones of investment in numerous countries throughout the continent, building infrastructure, etc.) are in good faith and will have huge benefits for African countries. In Zambia, for example, an economic zone was created, and with it an expected 60,000 jobs. Speaking of 60,000, the Chinese are also building an "ultramodern" (whatever that means) stadium to seat 60,000 people. Needless to say, the government is tickled pink by the arrangement. So far so good right?

Well, others would say that China is merely looking to exploit Africa for its resources and are embarking on a new form of economic colonialism. Cheap Chinese goods, they say, will flood African markets and thus drive local industries under. Meanwhile, the Chinese will extract large amounts of resources to fuel their growth and will leave Africa for broke once the resources are gone. It is also argued that the Chinese investors have exploited their African employees and provide terrible working conditions. This argument is especially put forth in Zambia by the Patriotic Front and their president Michael Sata. In fact, he decided to embark on a visit to Taiwan coinciding with the Hu's visit to Zambia and will be expelling the mayor of Lusaka (elected as a PF councillor) who made the "wrong" decision to attend the welcoming and farewell ceremonies for the Chinese entourage. Sata also allegedly received considerable campaign financing from Taiwanese businessmen and met with them in Malawi a few days before the election.

So the debate in Zambia rages on about the benefits of Chinese investment. Hu has now gone on to Namibia and Mozambique dropping goodies all along the way. Certainly China wants something out of its relationship with African nations, but it may be too early to tell whether or not the relationship will work out as well for both parties as they wish it.

A Woman for President?

This is the question I put to my Grade 9 Civics class. We had been studying democracy and, most specifically, the threats to democracy. One of the threats that the textbook listed was that women tend to not be involved in public life - they don't vote as much as men and they don't run for office. This could be said for the Western world as well, but it is especially true here.

I was expecting my question to be rhetorical. Certainly the students have been taught something to at least answer the question correctly even if they didn't believe it. To my surprise, however, I found myself debating the merits of females in politics. My male students told me that no, a woman could not be a president. "Why not?" I probed. I was told that a woman would be too vulnerable to being influenced by men. Additionally, neighbouring nations would think that they could sway Zambia too easily because of the female president. Men, I was told, were more objective, more reasonable, and less swayed by emotion. Once I lifted my jaw off the floor after hearing such nineteenth-century chauvinism I tried to counter by pointing out that many women had been successful leaders and also tried to counter the charge that women were some how less objective than their male counterparts.

What was surprising to me about this incident was not the beliefs that the kids had. After all, women are treated like second class citizens in many ways here. (Although, interesting, a large proportion of the police force is female - I don't know how to explain that phenomenon). What did surprise me was that they would actually come out and say it and then vigorously defend their position. Schools, I had thought, at least paid lip service to the idea of equality in a theoretical sense.

I guess Zambia won't be having a woman president any time soon.

Young People

Youth is a very different time in Zambia than in Canada. In church, for example, the youth group extends from early teens up until one gets married - whether this happens at 18 or 25 or 30. Considering the life expectancy in Zambia is 39 this means that one has, potentially, nine years of adulthood. Better pack it all in in a hurry!

The thing that I find quite strange about youth here, though, is that they don't do anything. After graduating from high school they sit around at home for two or three years, not working, not schooling, just sitting around. From the Western cultural lens through which I view the world, I cannot help but see this as laziness and mooching taken to the maximum. Clearly I am missing something, and it is far more acceptable here than in Canada, where one would be told fairly quickly to either get to school or get a job. I guess on one hand there aren't a whole lot of jobs to be had (although people don't exactly look for them either). On the other hand, I am told that Zambians have certain expectations about the kind of jobs that they want and, if one is a high school grad, certain jobs are just beneath you.

My host family is fairly middle class - perhaps verging on upper middle class. Currently we have two of the young 20s crowd who have graduated from high school but are in this in-between stage. They help with the house work and other than that sort of wander aimlessly and talk in vague platitudes about their next step in life. Its not as if they have to work to support the family (I wonder if it would be different in a poorer family which needed the income) so they just sit around.

I must be missing something. Has it always been like this, I wonder? How long does this period normally last? What is enjoyable about it (they often complain of boredom)? Why don't they want to get on with their life? Ah, maybe it is time that I stop making Western value judgements and start just accepting.

Bible and Games Club

One of the activities that I have been doing at Aisha School is a club that on Tuesdays does a little Bible lesson with an activity and then on Thursday does games. This has been a big hit and people like coming so the attendance is remarkably regular. Since Christmas things have changed because about half the people went to another grade, so we got a little smaller, but that's OK. We also lost all our boys - so now it is informally a girls club. This isn't so bad either - the guys were harder to deal with and cheated a lot more when playing games.

My supplies for the games are three tennis balls so sometimes some innovation is necessary. Some games require no supplies - like musical chairs and a few other little games. Dodgeball was a big pre-Christmas hit. I was always a little scared that someone would get hurt because the two sides were very close together and some of them were throwing the balls pretty hard. Fortunately, nothing untowards occurred. Then, just before Christmas, I had an epiphany and we started playing an adaptation of ultimate frisbee - ultimate ball I call it. We don't have a lot of space, but the kids really enjoy it and I usually get to play as well, especially if one team falls behind. My most recent crossover from North America was 500. All these games (dodgeball, ultimate, 500) were new to the kids and they seem to lap them up. I am trying to figure out how to play kick baseball (or Chinese baseball as my elementary school gym teacher called it - I'm guessing they can't do that anymore!) in our limited space.

That's the good news. I started thinking yesterday and began wondering how many of the girls will become teen moms, how many will be sexually abused, how many will get AIDS. Not a pleasant thought. If they follow statistical averages then probably half will be teen moms, most will be abused, and about a third will get HIV/AIDS. A bit of a sobering thought when watching these energetic, enthusiastic youngsters enjoying simple tennis ball games.