Polygamy, Peer Pressure, and Vanishing Fenders

6/8

There’s a little less to report now that we’re starting to get settled and in a rhythm. In the morning, we took the bus to our worksite, Munali, and someone proposed to Sarah again. He said he loved her and wanted to marry her, so she held up her hand to show him her ring and said, “I’m sorry, I’m already married.” And thinking she was showing him the number of husbands she had with her fingers (and not the ring), he goes, “You have four husbands?” Everyone on the bus laughed really hard and Sarah said, “No only one!” He answered her with “Fire him! I’ll take over.” I hope all the men reading this are paying close attention. Apparently, being a husband is not part of a cultural tradition, but a hired profession, and your wives have every right to fire you. You’ve been warned.

At the site, we helped facilitate P.E. class for 6^th and 8^th graders at the Tunduya school. We did more games that can be related to peer pressure and had a large (perhaps too large, 80 kids!) group discussion about the topic at the end. Apparently we move on to the HIV/AIDS next week, but we probably won’t know for sure until the day comes. After the session, we had lunch (we got fresh oranges and clementines to go with it, they were sooo good)! We had a lot of free time to hang out after we ate.  The Sport In Action baseball team had practice and our baseball gloves were a huge success!  They were so happy to get them, especially the catcher’s mitts.  Eventually the girls U12 soccer team that we were coaching last weekend arrived and had another practice.

We took the bus back to our house, but it got dark mid-ride. At first, we were getting a little tense because we thought traveling might get dicey after dark. But people either paid us no attention or were, if anything, helpful. No heckling at all, which was nice. We think it’s probably because it was only about 6 p.m., so even though it was dark (it’s winter here, remember), there are lots of people on the road heading home as well. So now we’ve officially learned all the necessary bus routes, and are autonomous Zambian commuters J. During our ride there was a point when there was a large clattering noise.  We looked at each other and Chrissy said, “please don’t tell me that was a piece of our bus…”  But sure enough it was, these vehicles are just so safe.  It's a very unique experience to watch your car's fender bounce away down the road. Womp. We had almost the same dinner as Monday night, only this time we made pasta instead of rice and added some chopped potatoes to the veggies. I see us getting really sick of this. To the moms—first meal back absolutely cannot include pasta, rice, beans, or boiled veggies.