6 hour Commute

6/30

We had two p.e. sessions at Munali before leaving for Chipata. They were both with grade 7, one class at Tionge and one at Mumana. HIV/AIDS was the topic at both sessions. We repeated a few of the games we’d already used and had success with earlier in the week.

            The commute to Chipata takes 2 and a half hours because the bus system is so hopeless. Add that to the hour and a half commute to Munali and the 2 hour commute back home after Chipata, and that’s 6 hours of commuting in one day, only 3 hours of actually teaching. Bah. When we arrived at Chipata, the teachers initially told us that the session was cancelled because the students were rehearsing a cultural performance. We were disappointed because it was cancelled the week before, too, and it takes forever to get there.

            The head teacher must’ve felt bad, because a few minutes later we found out the decision had changed and we were going to meet with the students after all. The only problem was there was a group of 80 students signed up for the session. We only had enough questionnaires for 45 (not to mention that there’s no way the two of us would be able to handle 80 students alone). We didn’t want to turn away so many students, but we thought it would be better to successfully teach half of them than to take all 80 and fail to teach them anything at all.

            We gave the students about 25 minutes to fill in the questionnaires before beginning the lesson. We used the same discussion plan as at Tionge, but the lesson went much differently. Where the Tionge students asked lots of questions and volunteered their opinions often, the Chipata students were dead silent. We repeated our questions slowly and even one of the peer leaders translated them into the traditional language, but still no one would participate. In the end, we only got 3 or 4 students in a class of 45 to contribute to the discussion. We definitely got the impression that they aren’t at all comfortable discussing HIV compared to the kids at Tionge. When we led them outside to play a few games, more then half disappeared entirely. Needless to say, we were disappointed after all the success we had at Tionge. It looks like Chipata will be the more challenging of our HIV sessions each week.

            When we got home, it was way past dark and we were both extremely tired. We decided to take the night off from reviewing the questionnaires. We made nshima, baked beans, and green beans for dinner before turning in early.