Time

It’s February half term (midterm) here for LVCA, but the secondary school doesn’t have one. No time at the Kindergarten this week apart from the free English lessons that Arne and I do on a Wed and Fri afternoon. It varies from having 7 people to 2 and their English speaking levels of all of the people who have turned up are different.

Cultural values: Time vs event, as ‘westerners’ we are time orientated, for example most of us are punctual and we like to schedule our time or have our time scheduled for us. Whereas Africans are event orientated, a ‘come what may’ and not really tied up to a schedule. If I haven’t told you already, they say ‘you have the watches but we have the time’. My example: I turn up for my first Kiswahili lesson this week, turns out it’s the annual school meeting, everyone has to be there including my language teacher, then to my third lesson and he’s not around at all, I head into the centre and I bump into him on the way. When I first got here that was hard to get used to, and now it’s one of the reasons I go to him for my lessons, so I don’t wait for him to come to me. However now though I know that’s the way this culture works and I’d like to think I can cope and live with that.

On Sunday afternoons at about 2pm a passenger ferry comes to Kahunda, it has an amazingly loud horn. Well I was there when it ‘docked’ (pulls up to the bank). There were a fair few secondary students watching on which was why I was there in the first place. One student had a camera with him (the one with the film and something else you have to do manually before each photo). Inevitably I got asked to be in a picture which turned into fair amount of pictures or (picha – that’s how they pronounce it and said lightening quick). They were really eager to be in a photo with a muzungu.

Corn on the cob

After my hour of Language learning the other day I was making my way to the pitch to do some touch rugby, which didn't come to fruition on that day. I walked past a teachers house and there were a load of students there, so because of my sheer nosiness I went to investigate. Turns out they were there for punishment for not turning up to the morning jog. The punishment was to scrape the uncooked corn off the cob, the corn is then ground into flour to make ugali (see a previous post for ugali description). I thought, I'll give that a go and I did one in the time it took another student to do four, so either I was really slow or he was super quick, it was the latter. After this I stopped, then some student said something so I thought 'I'll show him'. Well pride certainly does come before a fall. I stayed and did about 15-20 cobs, my hands felt a little sore after (not the fall). Later on as I was throwing the rugby ball around with a couple of students and I looked down at my hands and saw that I had a nice couple of blisters on my thumb, ouch! (that's my fall)

The next day I'm there and a student just rips a branch off a tree, nothing unusual about that but I tried my Swahili and asked what he was doing. He started walking towards the pitch and said 'snake'. Ok, I followed closely behind; they were still playing football until they saw him trying to pick it up with a stick. He couldn't quite pick it up so I gave it a go (with the stick) and carried it off the pitch. By the way it was a tiny, tiny thing probably 40cm long but not even 1cm wide. As I was carrying it off a student said 'alive' or something to that effect, and sure enough it was moving a little. Once off the pitch I picked up a brick and threw it at its head once to kill it twice to be sure and a 3^rd time as a safety measure. That's my first kill of a snake, as I wasn't the one who killed the black mamba on Christmas day. Snake related the students were telling me how they don't like walking through the forest as there are a lot of snakes in there in particular, cobras. Oh ok thanks for letting me know and absolutely petrifying me. I'm thinking about getting a walking stick encase one literally crosses my path. The idea of standing stone still till it has gone doesn't sound even slightly attractive.

I don't like talking about snakes, it makes my imagination go wild. I'm trying to not let it get running by believing myself that there could be a snake at my feet and that little itch isn't just an itch, I'm just going to stop right there and go and do something else!