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.