Une tornade, un monstre et un ours en peluche

(translated - a tornado, a monster and a teddy bear)

Today has been Zooms (that disconnected), Google Meets (as an alternative), WeChat and WhatsApp calls. I started off early with my one student to go over work from yesterday one on one online. We got cut off on Zoom halfway through conjunctions and prepositions and will have to resume on Thursday. I then had my grade 7's and was trying to revise a past maths paper with them for their upcoming entrance exams. We suddenly lost connectivity with that, well at least I did. I tried to get everyone to reconvene on Google Meets but only managed to get three out of seven. It was very amusing to hear that when I left the Zoom chat and the rest of my class were left on, pandemonium apparently broke out and it freaked them out that I was no longer the host or there. I did chuckle and was glad they missed me. Bodes well for the return to school. I did get from the three who made it to Google Meet which topics we will need to revise when we return to school. Quite a few things, and this was from some of my stronger students.

I managed to have my French lesson on WeChat for its entirety but my mum came charging through midway wanting me to go help with our dog Jasper. He had apparently found a hole in the fence to next door and gone to investigate the tree cutters and all the noise they've been making. Luckily he was so intent on that, he ignored our next door neighbour (he has torn her clothes before) and thankfully her dog was indoors as otherwise it could all have been quite disastrous. Fortunately the tree cutters were all up the tree too, as Jasper bites people. I was in the middle of my French lesson so waved my mum off but she managed to get him back into our yard and he has been confined to the veranda all afternoon until Given, our gardner returned and fixed the hole.

As something different, I played a story telling game with my Chinese French students. Basically we added on to a story I started and I provided the words in French. I struggled a bit with what teddy bear is in French but otherwise the story revolved around a monster and a tornado. They seemed to enjoy this. We had already played Simon Says in French. They are getting pretty good at parts of the body. They can already read English so tonight I need to try find some very simple stories in French.

This afternoon I managed to WhatsApp my friend Heather in the UK and chatted to her and saw her beautiful baby boy, Louis. Tomorrow is my art day. We are going to socially distanced paint in the late Daryl Nero's garden and try some of his techniques - dabbling with water colour, oil pastel and then a marker pen.

And boom into another week

Today was an early morning Monday and it kicked off with a staff meeting to discuss the way forward. It seems government is going to let exam classes back on the 28th of July (I teach grade 7s so we are in that category). The other grades will slowly filter back after. All of the staff will have to be tested for Corona before we start and apparently be re-tested again 30 days after. The whole school will have to be sanitized and each teacher is going to be armed with a temperature gun to monitor our class. It's all a bit surreal. We're only going to get a two week break before we resume back at school and we could be going until September. This of course could all change. There has been a case of a student and then a teacher who had COVID last term at a private school. It's the first close to home case I've heard of here in Zim.

It will be good to have my students in class though, as some are really falling woefully behind with remote teaching. There are two in my class who haven't done any of the maths classwork I've set since term began. I'm not sure how we're going to catch them up on that. They have also taken to muddling up their work books, doing English and maths all over the place in the same book. It makes marking a nightmare. For some of the others, they say they understand on Zoom, but their work tells a different story.

This afternoon I met with a friend who has just been diagnosed with being bipolar. We talked about meds, therapy, diet, exercise, anxiety and faith. I found that on my previous medication I felt things more strongly and I had a stronger faith, but when I switched to lithium, it numbed my emotions and my faith took a dive. I said that through my experience you come to know yourself in a deeper way and you learn what your triggers are.

Hatina Ecocash

Yesterday the government in all their wisdom, decided to announce that Ecocash, a form of telephone banking, along with One Money and other mobile money services are immediately being stopped. This is crazy. A huge proportion of the population in Zim relies heavily on Ecocash as they do not have bank accounts and with there being hardly any cash being circulated and few people earning US dollars, this is a serious set back. We had just started having to pay our gardner with Ecocash yesterday, before the announcement. He wasn't happy as there are still charges on it, but we couldn't afford to pay him in US dollars any more. I am suddenly wondering how much longer I can keep affording to live here in Zimbabwe as my salary is going nowhere and the cost of living is just sky rocketing, it's scary. If I have to move it would probably be to the UK as my sister is there and I have lots of friends and family. I don't want to, but unless things really turn around here it might be that I have to. I don't know how the average person living on the supposed minimum wage (which is a pittance), is supposed to survive when I can't even meet all my bills on what I'm earning which is supposedly on the higher end of the income bracket.

On a happier note I went and had te-unch in my best friend's garden and it was so lovely to catch up and see each other. We exchanged books, talked lots and watched all sorts of birds flit in the branches and on the verandah. Was very special.

Spot the red fire finch.

Tea with friends is time worth spent.

Prejudice

When I tell you I'm bipolar does it change how you think of me?
Do you automatically class me as looney or belonging to Section 3?
Does the idea of mania scare you or does melancholy make you fret?
Do you stereotype and forget who I am inside?
Yes I have mood swings, yes I can be sad,
but does that make me stark raving mad?
Am I a lesser person because I take pills?
Surely you can see that helps me pay my bills.
When I have bad days or slip down the slope,
do you walk away or treat it as a joke?
Will you see that it is something you can't fully understand
until you've walked a mile in my proverbial shoes?
I will not judge you but will you judge me?
You can choose.

Fête des bateaux-dragons

Today is cold again. Got up before my Zoom classes and went and ran up and down the garden with my dogs to get warm and do some exercise. I might go do it again just now. The sun briefly came out as I sat and wrote up my records of work on the verandah step but it has gone again and it is gloomy now. Not all my students were online for class. This has happened when we are reviewing the week's work too and they consequently don't know what they are doing. Frustrating! I had my two Chinese five year olds for French today too and I asked them about their Dragon Boat Festival yesterday. They seemed to eat fish and special noodles and then go watch a boat race. Elsie my dog made a guest appearance in the lesson and we talked about her coloration and I got my students to greet her in French. She momentarily looked up from her warm spot in the empty flower bed.

We have a problem with paying our gardner. He was getting forex from when my mum was teaching students from HIS but they have gone back to the US with lock down and we can't keep doing so. Now having to pay in Ecocash but the trouble is it devalues so quickly. We are paying quite a bit above the minimum wage (the minimum wage here is pathetic) but it still isn't great. Our gardner has to pay his rent in Epworth in forex and for tutoring of his children since government schools are still closed. My salary hasn't gone up this month but inflation sure has. I am now thinking of also marking scripts for Allied Arts to help top up. There is a limit though to how much extra work I can take on. If it carries on at this rate I won't be able to afford to live here any more.

It's Friday - hoorah! Am seeing a friend tomorrow, skyping some friends in Germany and then on Sunday will have to go back into school again as two of my students didn't hand in their work on time and I have to go back into school to mark it so they can get it back on Monday and the system doesn't grind to a holt with a backlog of books. Irritating, but one of those things. Waiting to hear when school might close so we have a holiday before we then re-open again on the 28th of July for who knows how long a term. I probably won't get a complete holiday as I will not only be giving extra lessons to subsidise my income, but will also probably have to keep going with my grade 7's in preparing them for their high school entrance exam in early August.

A little boy living in Monavale is doing as his school project a survey of what snakes we've had in our gardens. The list below is what has come up. He's also looking up the types of venom and the anti-venom that can be used. A lot of the residents have lost Jack Russels to snakes.

Nostro accounts and frustrations

Was an early start again today and a long day. Just finished my marking now. Some of my students are doing well and keeping up and doing their work properly, but I have a few that do their work all over the place in different books, all mixed up and it is honestly a nightmare trying to mark it. They also don't say which past paper they are doing and when they fall behind I don't know what I am marking as some of the papers are multiple choice so I really can't tell.

A muffin from The Plot from one of the other teachers cheered me up.

I went to the bank at lunch time to sort out my account being linked to Ecocash so I can easily transfer funds across and make payments. My mum sat in a petrol queue last week from 7 am to 4.30 pm, only to get to the pump and be told they were only taking Ecocash payments which she didn't have. When I got to the bank I joined the queue on the pavement outside only to discover it was for people making withdrawals from their nostro accounts (yes withdrawals in US dollars). I have money sitting in my nostro account that is being eaten away by bank charges. I went to sort out Ecocash and then came back out and joined the queue for nostro accounts and withdrew my US. Couldn't believe you could actually get dollars in cash. Am afraid some of it got promptly used to pay for petrol :(

After the frustrations with some of my class, it was an absolute pleasure to tutor my new student. He is polite, conscientious, neat and tidy. It was also nice to do some high school level science. On the way home we passed a guy who was posing as a muse, I presume busking, at the traffic intersection. Rather a dangerous place to do it, but it was refreshing to see. You don't really get people doing that sort of thing here in Zim. He was really good.

I got some lovely feedback on the illustrations I did for a story about a little boy and his toy owl. He apparently takes his book to bed with him and keeps looking at the pictures and particularly likes the one below of him making a chocolate cake as a reward for the little girl who found his owl after he kicked it over his wall to see if his owl could fly. (I didn't write the actual story, his clever gran did).

It's been a short week with half term but I am jolly glad tomorrow is Friday. I didn't have my French Chinese students at lunchtime today as it was the Dragon Boat Festival in China today and they were celebrating it. I need to look up what that is in French now so I can ask them about it tomorrow. (Just done so, there's not a direct translation. They have dragon fruit, dragon tree and Komodo dragon but no Dragon Boat Festival).

In my happy place

Had my Wednesday art morning again today. I missed two weeks as was in a down but got my things out today and had fun. Under Sarah Fynn's guidance I picked a photo of a kudu and then did different abstractions, using blind contour and block shading to cutting out a concertina of the shape and then worked into the shapes and form using oil pastel, water colour, a solid graphite block (which I loved), charcoal and then a toothbrush for splattering and a sponge. Really enjoyed it and was fairly pleased with how it all worked out.

At 12 pm I had a nail biting final bidding on Bidding Wars for Julia Donaldson phonics books for the school. Another friend was also bidding and it literally went down to the last second before midday. Only my second time winning a bid but never had someone else bidding simultaneously against me. It was close. The books should be a good tool kit to work from at school.

I took my new student for maths for the first time this afternoon. He lives in a gated community where another friend Claire Bradnum used to live. Made it easy to find as had been there before. We sat distanced across the dinning room table. Stopped at a friend's afterwards to drop off some wool for making blankets for an old age home in Mabvuku. Cleared up some cupboard space at home (slowly, very slowly clearing).

It's been a little bit warmer and brighter the last two days. Definitely an improvement to the gloom over the weekend. Didn't realise there was a solar eclipse on Sunday. Would explain why it got very dark. Wouldn't have seen it because of the cloud.

The start of the auctions

Today sees the start of weekly auctions of foreign currency by the RBZ in a bid to stabilise the exchange rate. We wait to see what happens with that. At the moment the source of the black market rate has been blocked and no one is sure what the US dollar is trading at. Shops are now allowed to give their prices in US dollar amounts but this means having to whip out calculators and a random rate being given. It's a bit of a déjà vu scenario but scary in a way as we are well aware what followed last time we went down this road.

I have suddenly got a new student to tutor in maths and science. Will boost my income but will mean I am working pretty hard. It is looking like we might close for school holidays in a few weeks' time before we reopen with government on the 28th of July. This is all if COVID doesn't suddenly take off. The problem will be that my grade 7's will be writing their entrance exams for high school at the beginning of August so I might not get a holiday as I might be coaching them. It's all a bit of mess and you just take each day as it comes as the plan could change.

I had a bit of a break after my Zoom lesson this morning as I went to go get a pizza from Sorellas in Rolf Valley. I popped into the nursery at Willowmead, across the road, and got some bone meal to plant two ornamental cherry trees I have been given. Ended up with an arum lily and pelargonium to boot and had a quick look in Kava (which is amazing). On the way home from school this evening I stopped at Dandaro to get my new Karen Seager miniature framed. The man, Mr Macfayden, who does the framing was busy re-framing a giant Darryl Nero that is up for auction on Friday. It was quite funny that he was going from that size and scale to my tiny 10x10 cm piece. There were cygnets and baby crakes in the pond at Dandaro.

Karen Seager miniature.

Still had some marking when I got home and have a bit of a headache again from wearing my mask too long. Have now finished and can do some art tomorrow morning before I teach in the afternoon. The lock down life.

Back to 'normal' tomorrow

It is still quite bitter outside and very overcast. Apparently it's going to be like this for a week and then hopefully get warmer but I've heard you can't predict more than four days ahead with the weather. Tomorrow morning we'll be back to the early morning pick up and drop off at school and I will do Zoom lessons again. This afternoon at lunchtime I had my Chinese five year olds on WeChat. They are a lot more talkative and we are making some progress. Have done Le Petit Chaperone Rouge, La Belle et La Bête, Le Bonhomme de Pain d'épice and La Reine des Neiges with them. They hadn't come across these stories before. We also played a French version of Simon dit (Simon says) which they enjoy.

Just had a lovely long chat on Whatsapp with my good friend Heather and saw her gorgeous little boy who is doing so well. Said I would try look out for a copy of the Jacqui Taylor African ABC for Louis. Jacqui does amazing water colour illustrations that capture a lot of things from growing up in Zimbabwe.

A fifth death from Corona was reported in Gweru yesterday. People are wondering if there will be a sudden spike with it being cold. At the moment a lot of doctors and nurses are on strike so I don't know how many government hospitals are fully in operation. Besides COVID the country really is in quite a pickle, with hyper inflation happening again, human rights abuses and corruption at the top. Things are starting to open again but I think people are being a bit gung ho and not being that careful. If we do get a major outbreak of Corona, our health facilities really aren't going to cope with it. The choir I belong to wants to practise in smaller groups. Still a fair few of us. Will see.

Father's Day

This day is like an empty shell
not really having the man in person.
My last memory of seeing him
is in the high court and a restraining order.
I have had virtual contact but then more abuse
and so I have pretty much cut myself loose.
This person who is part of me
and yet has been missing most of my life.

Of masks and whether to Skype, Whatsapp call, Zoom or Google Meet

I am enjoying my half term break. As I said in my previous post, this could be the only break for a very long time, if schools go back on the 28th of July and we have been going since the 4th of May, so I am making the most of this. Although I get days that aren't so pressurised with remote teaching, the days books are returned are long and there is a lot of extra prep you have to do. Any way, today I met up with a friend at a new market at the Borrowdale Race Course. It was good to see my friend and walk around but I was a little taken aback by how lax some people were about wearing masks and it was quite a big social gathering. While the idea and concept is great, we are still in lock down and I think it is all a little risky. I think I will wait for lock down to be lifted before going back again. All the prices were in US dollars but you could pay in EcoCash but I don't have any so it was merely a window shopping experience. I wasn't too keen on buying food that was not covered in any way. Veggies and plants are one thing but pastries left uncovered with both the vendors and those in the public not wearing masks breathing all over was another. Rant over.

On the way home stopped at the gate of a friend's mum. We thought she might already have moved to Malta to be with my friend but she lost her husband at the beginning of lock down and is still here. She was having a frustrating day trying to tie up her husband's estate as everything is on go slow with lock down and she still hasn't got a death certificate.

Got some groceries and I ended up behind someone who paid for their trolley full of shopping with $2 bond notes. The bill must have been several thousand. It made me think of 2008 and really made me think are we back to those days? With the money they have supposedly printed we well may be.

Got home and ended up deciding on Whatsapp being the easiest to chat to my best friend Nina. She has rescued two baby doves but says they poop all the time and it's smellier than baby poo. Was lovely to catch up and touch base. Just watched an interesting piece of dance called The Revisor choreographed by Crystal Pite with my sister in the UK.

Nina's doves.

Half Term in the time of COVID

It's a funny sort of half term. We have had six weeks of remote learning. There is rumour that the government is going to open schools again on the 28th of July (two weeks before school holidays) which means this is going to be a very long, strange term. Some of my students are doing well and keeping on top of the work sent. Some haven't done any of the maths classwork since we started (hangs head in dismay, but they don't seem perturbed). The grade 7 entrance exams have been postponed to August. I hope this doesn't make my lot sit back and not do anything. There is only so much you can do over Zoom and trying to tell their parents. Last half term I was in the Vumba with friends. Seems another life time ago. Some people are travelling this weekend. It is all a bit of an odd scenario as technically we're still in lock down but not.

When we eventually get back to school.

It is definitely winter now. The grey days don't do wonders for my mood and it is quite cold. I managed to do some exercise yesterday though and felt better. There aren't so many birds when it's really overcast but the other day I counted about ten species when I was out with the dogs and had a bush shrike quite close at hand. Didn't manage to get my proper camera in time though.