Church, school and life in the time of cholera

At church on Sunday I had to smile when a family across the way whipped out their hand sanitiser immediately after offering people the sign of peace. I guess you do have to think about such things though. In assembly on Monday morning the head told the students they can no longer drink the water we get by tank delivery and must bring their own boiled water to school. Some of the kids have brought hand sanitiser to school too.

It's been quite a week. I suddenly got an extra student - he was supposed to be going back to the UK but had visa issues and he came for an interview on Tuesday and started with us on Wednesday. One of my other students from last term returned two weeks late after his parents finally paid fees. Two extra students makes a big difference to my marking load - groan, but they are sweet boys. After swimming yesterday though two other boys decided to throw the new boy's hat in the loo and then flush it. Had to call in their parents. The swimming lesson itself had been eventful as one boy was stung by a bee and then one of my autistic boys went too far in the deep end and panicked. Nearly had to jump in.

All the students dressed up today as what they want to be when they grow up. Two boys looked rather like terrorists but told me they were going to be soldiers. I got asked what I was going to be when I grow up, hmmmm. One little girl wrote to her teacher about her roll model and when asked about it she said well it was a model who walked on a railway line.

Went to Msasa this afternoon to get quotes for fixing the car I damaged last Friday. Had to first queue for fuel to get across town. Hopefully it is more panic buying but who knows.

Stil in Love in the Time of Cholera

Well I had a nasty mishap yesterday when I went to check on the other house I was house sitting. Parked the car on what I thought was a flat bit of the drive way on Colston Hill and DID put on the hand brake. Went in to the house to check on things and came out to see the car rolling down the hill into the stone wall of the property - aaaaaaaargh! Heart failure. It took two hours to extract the car from the wall with the help of the gardener, house keeper and office manager on the property. My boyfriend did offer to come help too but managed to get it out with the four of us there. Did have to tow the truck up the slope and unwedge it from the rubble. Then saw the damage and felt really bad as it is not my car or wall. Thankfully no people or animals were behind the car when it rolled and luckily for me, the owner of the car is on fully comprehensive insurance. I now just have to get a police report and then go to insurance on Monday. My week was ending so well up until that point (my class behaved beautifully and had ended the week on a good note).

I had thought I was going to have to cancel seeing my step-brother Callum today but once again my boyfriend was amazing and sacrificed watching two important rugby matches to drive me out to Lilfordia to pick up Callum. He even arrived at 7.30 this morning with a thermos of coffee for me - what a keeper. We had a lovely day with Callum exploring the Avondale Fleamarket and then the Maasdorp Upmarket, having lunch at my favourite place, The Bottom Drawer. It was fun seeing Harare through someone else's eyes. For the first time I experienced a supermarket posting someone at the door to dispense hand sanitiser because of the cholera outbreak at Food Lovers in Avondale. Does make sense I guess.

The German Society has a concert on tonight and it feels like I have the performers in the same room as me. It actually is fairly decent music but I am not sure how late this is going to go on for. Sadly one of the dachshunds has cancer and is not doing too well. I hope she lasts until her owner gets back. She was quite poorly on Thursday and didn't get off her bean bag all day but she is little perkier now.

Love in the Time of Cholera and other stories

Made it to home time on Friday - woohoo!! Now to try annihilate my pile of marking so I can have a bit of a weekend. Went to a beer and food tasting and pairing evening at Jam Tree last night with the boyfriend. Really like the porter and The River Brewing Co. gave a good background on the brewing process and flavours. Never been beer tasting before, it was fun. Tomorrow I am supposed to be picking up my "step-brother" from Lilfordia and taking him round my favourite place - the Maasdorp Upmarket. Plan to go with the boyfriend next Saturday. Did I say I love that place? Am also still very much in love with the bf.

So with the cholera outbreak our grade one teacher had the mother of one little girl come and say for safety reasons she no longer wanted her daughter swimming at school. The poor grade one teacher thought she had neglected something in the pool time and had done something wrong. She was wracking her brains as to what when the mother said no, it was a risk of getting cholera from swimming! Supposedly people on FB were saying that all the helicopters flying over Harare at the moment are to monitor the cholera - um, yes - to see all the dead bodies?

It is two years today that my dear friend Cara's special mum died. Vanessa had become a really good friend of mine and was always supportive, kind and cheerful, even when she was battling the cancer that eventually sadly killed her. I miss getting emails from her and hearing of her travels. It's funny, I was just telling my boyfriend about her last night, not realising that today was the anniversary of when she died. Definitely someone I will always remember and gone too soon. I remember the last time I saw her in Joburg and how she said of course she would see me again when I said goodbye - unfortunately this was not to be.

You will always be remembered Vanessa and you are greatly missed.

Double teaching act today

Sheesh, I am pretty pooped this afternoon. Our head was sick and off school today, so I had to quickly print stuff for her class to do and run back and forth between her class and mine. I did combine her class with mine for our free standing structure building challenge and it went pretty well. My class was stoked to be individually assigned "an assistant" and they did all work well together. My two girls trumped the boys though with theirs - go girls!! After break it was a little trickier as I had to run two maths classes and the one little boy who has really bad eye sight has to have everything re-written for him on his own mini white board. While this was all going on a lady arrived to enquire about the school but her daughter should really apply for the Sunshine Project, so I gave her their number quickly. At the end of the morning the head's class were getting on quietly with a comprehension in their classroom - so quietly that all three of us teachers completely forgot they were still there and didn't dismiss them at home time. Ten minutes after all the others had gone to the gate, one little girl came through and said could they go home - oooooops.

Had the last lesson with my Chinese student yesterday and we re-read his favourite book from when he has been here - King Bidgood's in the Bathtub. We also followed how to draw a dragon based on Emily Gravett's book "Again!" We finished by watching Mr Mistoffelees - my student's favourite song, particularly due to the magic in it. His mum said she will try play it to him in China but she said some stuff on Youtube is blocked there. Am very happy that he will be back again in January - YAY!! In the meantime we will continue with lessons on Zoom. I will miss he and his family lots.

Have a board meeting tonight for the XenArts dance project. I will probably have to give an update on the situation in Zim - hmmm. There's no foreign currency or cash and everything is really expensive ... will see what I come up with.

See a video from Xenoula's last visit to Zim here

My friend Xenoula who runs Xen Arts, working with women at Oasis in Zimbabwe.

And just like that he'll be leaving

Today has been a little frenetic. My three naughty grade sevens were up to nonsense and I ended up sending one of them first to go do his work with the grade ones, and then to the head's class. I think the latter had a greater impact and he came back with his tail between his legs. Am glad I followed through with what I had threatened, as I don't think he thought I was going to and got a shock when I did. The morning had started off well with me taking art first thing. I played some music while the children worked and I was impressed when they requested Beethoven and Mozart (well some of them :P ).

Didn't realise that today was my second last lesson with my favourite Chinese five year old before he goes back to China on Wednesday (sad panda face). I will miss him and his family so much. They really are very dear to me. Baby brother came and took me by the finger the other day and led me to the black board to see his art work - he is only one and a half. My five, soon to be six year old, was very taken with a video of one of the latest Emirates air buses. He was more excited about the aeroplane than his stop over in Dubai. He had wanted to make a revolving battery powered mobile as his next project and he had settled on the video below - that was until I realized he leaves on Wednesday. Will have to wait till he is back next and will see if my boyfriend can help me. At the Maasdorp Market on Saturday I found another book written by Posy Simmonds called "The Bouncing Buffalo". I have her book "The Chocolate Wedding". Think I will give this other book as a birthday present to my five turning six year old.

Have been asked to contribute photos to a project being run by the Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers in conjunction with the Iziko Museum in Cape Town. They made a previous mini video documentary - see below. They are wanting to make an updated longer version. Am to be interviewed for it too some time this week. Quite an exciting development.

One of my photos is on this previous video.

OK I had better finish preparing for tomorrow and mark yet more books. After having my naughty three driving me up the wall today, when I said goodbye to the class at lunch time the one said he didn't want to go home and couldn't we have a sleep over at school (not today but another night). The whole class then got excited and really thought this was a marvellous idea (I inwardly groaned). The boy who suggested it was already saying who could bring tents and then others to contribute supplies. Was very relieved when I told the head that she vetoed the idea, as fun as it may have been for the students - I don't think I could handle a whole night with no sleep with all of them.

So far, so good

Overall the first week back hasn't been bad and had some good moments. I am a little tired now though, I won't lie. Some of my class were a little disappointed they weren't in the new teacher's class but I did get a hug from my one naughtier student which was sweet. Generally my class has been quieter now I have slightly fewer of them. At one point my naughty student said, "Miss Lannas, have you noticed we're quieter than the headmistress's class?" He was actually dead right - it hasn't lasted but it was good at the time. One of the girls wanted to know why I don't wear my hair down much. In response, one of my other naughty boys said, "Don't question Miss Lannas' fashion choices." They do make me laugh. Had one of the boys with autism leopard crawling past my classroom this morning and making grunts. Later in the morning he suddenly came wandering in and told me he had made a garden for the snakes in the yard outside. Never a dull moment.

Am head over heels in love with my boyfriend and everything has a rosy tint to it. Best anti-depressant ever! He really does make me happy and puts a smile on my face. I did see my psychiatrist today though and from my blood tests my lithium is not within the therapeutic level which means I have to have my dosage upped - not that happy about that as it does make my hands tremor a bit and makes me have hair loss and weight gain. We happened to get onto the topic of if I ever have children and he said that I really need to know before hand and plan, as if you are on lithium it can affect the baby in the first 12 days of being conceived and can have some fairly detrimental effects on their heart and spine development - scary!! He said if you miss this important stage you may as well carry on taking lithium but it is best to switch to lamotrigine which is not detrimental if you can help it. You can apparently breastfeed on lamotrigine (you can't on lithium). Good to know and to discuss such things. Besides this my psych also gave me a pep talk about what I can do next year for NILD (oh, I have been allowed to redo it next year, which is good news). Need to prepare in advance and take steps to avoid last minute panic, which I know I should have done but there were some things that popped up that meant I hadn't finished preparing for school and went into a flap.

We had a musical quiz at the Mustard Seed on Tuesday, where we got asked pop culture and asked to identify various pieces of music played on the piano. I was able to help with musicals and more modern music. The older members of our team were fairly good at the older music and we came first. Teaching my Chinese five year old this evening, I played him a few more Disney songs and he asked for some more from Cats (the musical), so I showed him Mr Mistoffelees and he loved the "magic". He is also really enjoying Mary Poppins now and wanted to know if there were really "people called Mary Poppins", which I thought was rather cute - "a person" rather, but sadly no.

And so it begins ...

Back to school tomorrow. This holiday seemed to really fly by but it has been good. I think I am ready, just need to finish working on questions for a "Learn to Earn" fundraiser we're doing this term. Went into school today and it was nice to see the other staff. Shame, my head had an armed robbery early in the evening a week or two ago. I will be locking doors before it gets dark from now on. Not nice.

I am a little nervous I might sleep through my alarm in the morning. Have asked the house keeper to call out loudly if I am not up by 6. I did manage to get up early this morning but I did need coffee. Guess it is just getting back into it again and getting to bed earlier. I just have a nightmare of waking up at 8 when I should have been at school at 7 - eeeek.

The last weekend of "freedom" was good. Had a baby shower on Saturday and in the evening my wonderful boyfriend made me dinner which was very special. Had a braai yesterday with friends. Am not looking forward to having marking again but I am looking forward to seeing my students. On the way home from school I discovered a new shop called Waste Me Not which has all sorts of environmentally friendly products such as bamboo toothbrushes and re-usable straws. Very excited and plan to go get a toothbrush.