six

A week and a half ago the grade 8s went to Chimfunshi, a chimpanzee orphanage in the north. Last week, it was announced that some people they met there were going to be visiting later on in the day. About 15 people arrived at Banani in the afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that all these people were white. It is funny to think how shocked I was to see white people. I had been in Africa for barely two weeks and I was already stunned to see people who look like me. It isn’t like I notice that I’m one of a handful of white people at Banani regularly, but the sight of a group of them reminded me of it.

For lunch today I got to have EGGS instead of the dreaded chicken. I was beyond happy. I love eggs and I love food. Yesterday at our devotional we wrote down ten things that made us happy. Number three after my family and my friends was food – sandwiches, cheese, bacon, hot sauce and jalapenos. Man, I looooove food.

I had another scare on Sunday. Two in one day is too many for me, especially since it is still winter. I was serving apples for evening snack when I felt something hit my head. Naturally, I bent my head down in order to remove whatever was on my head. Guess what I saw hit the ground. A bug. Good grief, two bugs in one day. This one also had long antennae, and it had weird legs and wings. There was more scurrying and whimpering. Luckily, no girls saw me, just some of the other youth.

Yesterday, Mei and I went to Lusaka on our day off. It was good. I got to eat some good food. I bought a chicken pie for 2$ and the third best sandwich ever for 5$. It had hummus, lettuce, tomato, cucumber and AVOCADO! The slices of avocado were huge. It was so good. I was debating between that sandwich and a sandwich with jalapenos. The avocado sandwich barely won, I just didn’t feel like eating a lot of cheese. I also ate some ice cream. A vanilla soft serve cone dipped in chocolate. I also bought some chocolate and candy, yum yum yum.

Lusaka is kind of a gross city. It is very dirty and it is full of cars. There is so much traffic it is incredible.

Getting there was a big adventure too. We took a bus. Lusaka buses are very different from Canada buses. They are basically little vans that as many people who will fit are crammed into. It took us seven tries to get one to stop. Then, I was crammed between two large men. The one on my right had a cough and really bad breath. He also kept falling asleep onto me; I had to elbow him to wake him up. The way home was much nicer. I sat in the very back so extra people weren’t crammed into my seat. I was also sitting with three other fairly small people. I finally got to see the famous Zambian sunset on the ride home. I’m always in dinner when the sun is setting, and the trees are in the way. It was very pretty. The sun got so much bigger than it does in Canada, and it turned red. The sun was red, so neat.

It’s exam time for the girls right now. This makes me happy for a couple of reasons. One, no long hours in the library; two, quiet! It is a lot quieter when they are worried about exams. I also got to put my amazing math skills to work the other day and help some girls find out the height of a square based cube. They called it something weird AdMaths. I don’t really know. I said that it doesn’t exist in Canada; we just call it math. I say that a lot.

LYLT