January Update - Traveling All Over

The last 3 weeks we have enjoyed a close connection to La Crete through Mom and Dad who have been with us for their Christmas Holidays. It is always a blessing to hear news of home and to be present with friends or family. This letter is going to be a bit of a what’s new update since our last letter in October.

Anthony’s Work - Since October, I have continued to get to know the schools and staff in the area. I am working with 3 in particular, but did go to visit 2 others in November. Both of those schools are eager to see me extend the work I am doing to their areas. I will never work as closely or continuously with them as they are too far away, but am planning on duplicating workshops that are done in Macha with the further schools.

One-on-one mentoring, observations and planning sessions have continued, with some going well, others not seeming to work out as well. Even so, there is an overall hunger to learn how to teach reading and writing more effectively in all the schools. This continues to be a challenge for me since I come from such different curriculum and resource backgrounds. They have very little in these schools to read, so it is difficult to prescribe reading exercises. Many of the times, students must listen to what is read rather than read it for themselves. Another difficulty is the lack of libraries. None of the schools have what I would call a library. They do have 5 sets of small paperback booklets that all the grade levels share, but it would not take a student long to get tired of these same 5 booklets. Three of the booklets are about AIDS awareness as well, so I would imagine most Gr. 3-7 students are not interested. (These books were donated by NGO’s)

What I am looking forward to is the first workshop that I will be facilitating. I had planned for it to be Jan. 4-6, but it has been post-poned to the 26-28th. Please do pray about this workshop called The 7 Laws of the Learner produced by Walk Thru the Bible. This workshop may reawaken or develop a passion for teaching, really making a difference in the lives of students and become more intentional teachers. It has a spiritual emphasis that the teachers need, just as we all do. I am excited and leary of this opportunity, having never led a workshop in my life. Actually, I did lead two sessions just before Christmas at our MCC retreat in Johannesburg on Education in Africa, but that was more of an informal discussion than a teaching workshop. My prayer for this workshop is that teachers would be challenged, energized and awakened to a deep personal responsibility for the development of their students.

i had a really good visit with a teacher workshop trainer for Walk Thru the Bible in Jo’burg, who is looking for someone in Zambia to train teachers with 3 different workshops they have geared for teacher development. I managed to get workbooks, the DVD series for all 3 workshops and some other resources. I am hoping that this may develop into more future training for the BIC schools in Zambia.

Karlene’s Work -

Our Kids Work - Keyana is busy colouring and workbooking up a storm. She loves to play school and can’t wait for the new year when she can start kindergarten. She is learning quickly, and despite being 4 and a half, is very ready to go to school. In fact she has been begging to go since we moved here. She is still struggling to find friends she can connect with regularly.

Josiah is glad for the holidays, not being as excited about school as Keyana. After all, there isn’t a bus to ride and only one recess per day; those were his highlights when in La Crete. But he does feel he has lots of friends and has been gaining self-confidence. We have been working with him a fair bit at home to compliment the schooling; it was not challenging him enough, or been giving him as much practice and repetition that he needs.

Our Holidays - We left for South Africa Dec. 3rd. Getting there was a bit of a challenge. We do not have a vehicle for our own family, it is shared. So we got a ride to Choma from an MCC volunteer, then were going to take a bus to Livingstone. The buses, 3 companies, told us they were booked for the next 2 scheduled buses, but thought there may be a chance we could hop on the midnight bus. We decided to take a taxi, so after being quoted anything from 100 to 250 dollars, we jammed our bags into the trunk of a car and headed out. We then had to search for a guesthouse that was affordable, which took us two tries. It was clean and friendly though a few too many flies during breakfast. We had a wonderful visit with a former student at one of the fancy hotels, who managed to get us a free buffet supper - a real treat!

The next day we flew to Joburg, then met Karlene’s parents the next day. We had an interesting start to our trip when their flight was delayed by 1.5 hours, then our phone would not work til we bought a different SIM card, so we got out of the airport at the time we had hoped to be in the Drakkensberg Mountains. The trip their became more interesting as we stopped to eat, potty breaks and a missed turn that almost put us into northern Lesotho finally found us knocking on the pre-booked guesthouse door at 10 PM - 8 hours later than we had hoped. They had given up on us and went to bed, but were gracious in letting us in.

More about that wrong turn - we had been doing well following the directions to get to Bergville, but the road started to get less traveled, narrower and more mountainous. This we had expected, but it kept going on and we were not seeing any signs for quite some time. The speed limit slowed to 60km/h, and we entered a park. That was a bit of a surprise, but when we got to the other side of the park and it was dark, I asked how much farther it was until we reached Bergville. I was told we needed to go back the way we came for about 1.5 hours, then turn off to reach it. As we were heading back in the dark I caught up with a car moving slowly, so I checked my rearview mirror to see if Karlene was close behind in the other car, she was, so I pulled out to pass. As I pulled up beside the car, I heard some honking. I did not think too much of it, wondering what their problem was, but then saw lights flashing behind me. There was a car centimeters from our bumper flashing his lights and honking. I pulled over after completing my pass, and this crazy driver zoomed by waving his fist at me. He then cut me off, braked until I had stopped, then sat there in the road in front of us. I expected someone to jump out wanting to pound me or waving a knife, so was ready to drive away. After 10 seconds, he drove away squealing the tires. We drove off as well. Karlene told me later that I hadn’t been at fault, that I had just started to pull out and pass when this car came ripping down the road at about 150 km/h passing her and did not slow down until he was right on my bumper. She had been sure I would be hit.

Soon after this, a truck piled high with household items and mattresses on top came zipping past us, then about 50 m in front of us zigzagged, almost losing the mattresses. He pulled over, and as I got close I saw he had hit a small animal. I did not have time to miss it and ran over a dog. He had stopped, so I kept going and let him take care of the dog. The rest of the drive was less stressful!

Another fun adventure was when we drove to Durban to visit sea world. Again the drive got interesting when we went through a light that changed red before the second car could get through. So we drove a bit until we found a bus pullout where we could wait. Well we waited 10 minutes, and no car came. Karlene got quite worried, wondering what we should do now. I suggested we go ahead to the destination, but Karlene thought we had not even mentioned the destination by its official name, that dad and mom would not be able to find it. She let her imagination go and was close to tears, as we had heard Durban was a very dangerous city, but we did find our way to the Sea World. We waited at the car park for a little bit, then found out there was more than one entrance, so Karlene camped at one, I went to the other. I found Dad there waiting for us. They had made a U-turn after the lights, so had not seen us, and followed a different road to get to the destination.

We had a good time watching the kids enjoy the seal and dolphin shows, look at the shark and fish tanks, and the four of us went into the water park as well. Josiah thought it was very neat when I came back with a shark tooth I had been given by a fellow scuba diver 2 days later. He couldn’t get over that it was a real shark tooth we found on the bottom of the ocean in the sand.

We also had another vehicle incident when we were at the MCC retreat meeting. They offered an afternoon Lion Park expedition, where there were about 60 lions in captivity. Cubs could be petted, cheetahs taken for a walk and a small game drive to see zebras and impala. Keyana loved petting the cubs, went three times to the cage. A giraffe got out of its fence and walked amongst the visitors, though one of the caretakers nervously told us to give it plenty of space. Then we went to drive through the lions fenced areas. These were fairly large, and lions were grouped into family prides. When we got to the second group, one large male seemed to really take an interest in Dad’s truck, placing its paws on the back bumper and walking along behind it as Dad slowly drove by. It finally went right beside the window and peered in. Then Dad drove further and our vehicle, an SUV, came beside it, and it did the same wheelbarrow imitation. Only this time it thought the spare tire on the back looked yummy. I was driving slowly, but when it bit down and we heard a loud PSST sound of air escaping, I went a bit faster to escape the rubber eater. Then Dad had another lion who liked his pickup and jumped on the back, on top of the leather box cover, tore it and then jumped off. We tried to keep our distance from the lions after that.