Today was our first day back at work, and although we really enjoy it, we were sad that we weren’t still on our little getaway vacation. The P.E. sessions at Munali were pretty ordinary, slightly mundane. There are always a few random events that spice up our day though. At the end of our session with the high school girls there was some commotion going on in the field behind us. Many high school boys were throwing rocks and bricks at a spot on the ground and stabbing a stick into it. Someone said that they had found a snake. We weren't really sure why they had to brutally beat and kill the snake. A few minutes later the boys walked across the field to us with a stick staked through the dead snake. They dangled it in front of our faces, with its guts falling out, and asked if we wanted to buy it - so disgusting. Another interesting moment was when William, one of the peer leaders (who we think is crazy), came up to Chrissy and pointed at her black headband and said “LAPD LAPD!” We looked at him and then at each other and had absolutely no idea what he meant. When Chrissy asked him, he replied “you don’t know, LAPD, Los Angeles Police Department.” Well duhh William, we know what LAPD stands for, but what the hell does that have to do with a black headband. He acted like we were stupid, but he just makes no sense. Then he started making kung fu noises and talking about Tomb Raider and Angelina Jolie… huh?
During the middle of our sessions we were told that we had to coach a basketball practice that afternoon. This sounded really fun, but hey it would have been nice to hear about it in advance. Chrissy decided that she was going to let me take this one and she would help out if needed. It was a boys 13-14 year old team, and they had a vast range of abilities. It was fun though because they really listened to me and seemed to respect what I said. Oh ya, I forgot to mention that they do actually have a coach, Timo, but he didn’t show up till the last 25 minutes. I did like him though and it seems that he knows what he’s doing. Anyway, it was a pretty successful practice and I’ll now be working with this team every week, which is fun to look forward to.
As usual, being a Tuesday, we hit up the Pizza Inn after work for our weekly bogo pizza night with the British girls and Mike, Dave, and Ivy. Tonight not everyone wanted to eat pizza, so there were only 7 of us joining in. We got 8 pizzas, yes I said 8, which means that in order to finish them all we each needed to eat at least one pizza to ourselves. Chrissy and I each successfully finished off 8 slices, but I have to say we felt a little sick after. As a group we managed to eat all except 2 of the slices!
We did some food shopping and then headed home, wholeheartedly looking forward to our hot showers. Unfortunately the water wasn’t working – gaaahhh. Finally it turned on and four of us rotated through taking quick showers. It was Mike and Dave’s last night here so we went going out to African Braii, the popular bar just down the street. Side note: we are sooooo sad that they are leaving us : (. We became really good friends with them over the past 2 weeks. And now who is going to open the really tricky jars of peanut butter? Bah.
We got ready and headed out around 10 o’clock. The bar was pretty empty, but that was fine with us – we didn’t want too many African men there attempting to marry us. The boys were a very important part of why we felt safe going out, we knew they would look after us if we needed them to, and this came into play more than once. Mubanga, some of his friends, and some of the other men from Sport In Action were there. They started off by buying us a round of Mosis, and this just continued throughout the night. There was literally a pile of beers sitting on the floor in the middle of our circle, and when we ran out, more appeared.
There were many other random men who kept coming up to us. One in particular kept asking all of the girls (me, Chrissy, Jodie, and Danielle) to go upstairs – we had no idea what was upstairs but this just sounded terrifying. In these situations either Dave or Mike would just walk over and put their arm around us and get us out of the awkward situation. We love our big strong protectors/fake boyfriends. At one point though Mike was kissed by one of the men trying to talk to us, and then we had to step in and start protecting him – we got a good laugh out of it.
This one guy came up to me (Chrissy) and was telling me about his girlfriend and showing me pictures of her. Then he asks me if I have a boyfriend and I say yes so he doesn’t hit on me on all night (it didn’t work). Next, he asks me if I’m “scandalous”. I just looked at him and was like, “Excuse me??” He replied, “Oh right, you probably don’t want people saying you’re scandalous. Let me rephrase the question. How do you feel about personal scandal?” Bahaha what do you even say to that? I was like um I guess it depends on how the particular scandal. And he goes, “How do you feel about personal scandal with me?” I was like BAD haha and start telling him off for being a bad influence and cheating on his girlfriend. He just won’t drop it and finally I edge my way over to Mike, who was closest, and the guy was like, “That’s Mike, right? Does Mike like you? Will he be upset if he sees me talking to you?” And I’m like “YES MIKE LIKES ME A LOT!” And the guy is like, “Really? Did he tell you he’s attracted to you? You’ve talked about it?” I was like “Yes, we’ve talked about it. He really likes me and you shouldn’t ruin his last night by flirting with me.” This mystery conversation between Mike and I actually never happened, but sometimes you need to pull out all the stops to get through these awkward situations. I told Mike the story and he forgave me for lying haha. (Unfortunately, this guy was kind of a member of our group and we gave him our phone number before we found out he was so aggressive. He called looking for me four times over the following days. We didn’t pick up.)
Eventually we went upstairs as a big group and went out on the balcony. We danced the night away for the next 3 hours just having a blast. The boys broke out their “white man wiggle” and started busting some moves. It was hilarious, and we have so much more respect for them (particularly Dave) for getting into the dancing scene. Chrissy and I were pretty devastated when we requested Ke$ha and the DJ didn’t have anything by her. If we have to, we will be introducing Zambia to the one and only Ke$ha. Danielle and Jodie left and the rest of us stayed a little longer partying with our Zambian friends. We left, thinking we were going home, but then Mubanga and Ronald (one of the nice men who was buying all the rounds) took us to a club/discotheque. We literally sat at the table pretty much falling asleep until we convinced them to take us home. When we got home, around 3:30, we made toast and hot chocolate before bed. Long and crazy night, but we had a blast. We will definitely miss the boys.
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