Supposedly the last week before we return

I need to finish my lesson plans for the supposed start of school next Tuesday but it is all rather hard to plan. For a start it now seems government doesn't want us to go back to classroom teaching so it looks like we'll soldier on with online but there is no indication as to how long a term I'm planning for. It feels like we are ending up having a lot more school than normal and I'm scraping the barrel for topics to cover for the estimate of end of term. I do need to do revision too as I don't know how much has gone in with some of my students but not having them face to face makes it difficult to tell if they are really understanding. Sigh, one has to just do one's best and go with the flow and not plan too far ahead (unless you're trying, "trying" to write forecasts for work). My grade 7's write their entrance exams for high school supposedly in two weeks' time, again, who knows what is going to happen, but I have to finish preparing them as best I can for that, whilst juggling my two grade 6's.

In other news, saw a few friends this weekend and went to a socially distanced mass at Saint George's Chapel this morning. Not going to tell my sister this as she feels we should be maintaining a very strict lock down with the stats coming out of South Africa. I won't tell her too that someone who attended mass at the cathedral in town was diagnosed with COVID and is now dead. The cathedral is being sanitised and they are re-thinking mass there. I guess we do have to be careful but the mass at St George's was very spread out and there were very few people there.

Was paid by my Chinese students yesterday but sadly they might not want lessons for the next month as they will be travelling around China. This is a bit of a blow as it is one of my only sources of US$ and you now have to pay for petrol in US$ not bond. We are a bit stuck with paying our gardner as my mum was paying him in US but no longer can and paying him the equivalent in bond is almost my salary. I need to pick up more work or really will have to assess if we can live here. One of the reasons government might up the strict level of lock down again is that MDC plans to have a mass protest on the 31st of July. ZANU PF may use the excuse of COVID to tighten entry into cities in the week of the protest. Things are rather dire in Zim but I am not sure what the protest will achieve.

On an end note, apparently according to a doctor, for COVID you should be taking zinc, have vitamin C, sit in the sunshine every day and take an asprin a day as COVID causes coagulation. I'm getting my sunshine with my dogs and am already taking zinc. The naartjies at the moment are really good, so there's my vitamin C.

(proverbe) Mieux vaut prévenir que guérir

It's almost time for Zumba with my sister. Am nearly through the first week of the two week break between "terms" for school. We closed last week Friday and were supposed to have the grade 7 exam class starting back on the 28th but from newspaper reports it seems that might not happen now. It makes it all rather difficult to plan. I am trying to put together a term plan for now until some point in September. It is proving quite a task and feels like we've had an awful lot of school. Besides the fact that correspondence school is just not working for some. Am still waiting for one student to hand in work.

In between school prep I have been doing quite a bit of art which has been nice. I went out to Mazowe to a farm to paint aloes on Tuesday and was rather pleased with my two pieces. Loving using cadmium yellow at the moment. Want to try capture the jacaranda avenues with their yellow leaves. The first of the msasas are starting to come out.

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.