It's been a while since I picked up pen and paper to write. (Yes, I draft almost everything with pen and paper. I'm perhaps just the tiniest bit old-fashioned.) I am spurred to do so by a couple of concerned e-mails from my mother asking if I’m alive. (I may or may not have forgotten…Read more Goat Head Soup
Month: August 2015
The Other Shoe
Life does not follow a narrative arc. But sometimes it certainly feels like it does. I am currently living such times. Remember when I posted all my negativity about the inevitability of everything falling apart? Well, things have fallen apart in a manner of speaking, at least for me. (Don't worry. I'm fine, if adjusting…Read more The Other Shoe
Wednesday, August 12: Pencils
Pens here are a valuable commodity. Bribing an officer with a pen will grant you a free pass at a highway traffic stop. Lonnie carries a bag full of pens whenever he leaves the house. We're not talking fancy pens. We're talking the kind of pens leftover at the end of a convention, or that…Read more Wednesday, August 12: Pencils
Saturday, August 15: Learning
Teaching is a learning process. Friday was the end of four weeks' teaching and yesterday the one month mark of my arrival in this country. At the end of a month, I have a bit of confidence in what I'm doing, that I'm not a terrible teacher and the like. At least, the students seem…Read more Saturday, August 15: Learning
Nshima
To make up for my last excessively negative post, something more fun (with pictures!) Maize is the staple starch here, eaten for nearly every meal by most people even in urban areas. The staple comes in the form of 50 pound bags of ground corn, either coarse ground "mealie-meal" or fine "breakfast meal". The mealie-meal…Read more Nshima
Things Fall Apart
Yeats' "The Second Coming" has been much on my mind of late. Partly this comes from reading Things Fall Apart and its later companion No Longer at Ease by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, the former of which draws its name from the Yeats. The books taken together bridge the colonial era in Nigeria and by…Read more Things Fall Apart
What I’m Doing, Part II
This is Part II. I'd recommend reading Part I first. The close of July marked the end of two weeks of teaching. A week ago, when I first drafted this post, I closed with the following paragraph: You will never meet a class more enthusiastic to be in school, even if 'school' is more enjoyable…Read more What I’m Doing, Part II
What I’m Doing, Part I
If you asked me what I would be doing before I came to Zambia, I probably told you some of the following: Teaching preschool Teaching elementary/middle/high school English Teaching adult ESL Teaching literacy Teaching elementary school math and/or science Teaching middle school math and/or science Teaching sex ed or, as it was delicately put, "reproductive…Read more What I’m Doing, Part I
