Day Seven - Panes, Art Club, & Fond Farewells
With this being our last full day in Zambia, I took my morning walk to town to try and convert my remaining Kwacha to US dollars, which is the currency used in Zimbabwe. As luck would have it, however, the exchange offices were out of US cash. I suspect the rebasing of the Kwacha may have been a factor, but who knows.
The morning project was called 'Panes' and as you might have guessed, it consisted of replacing and repairing windows in the area schools. The Panes staffer would cut the glass for us and we would putty them in place. At first, we were rather sloppy and the staffer had to touch up our work. But after a few attempts we got the hang of it. Unfortunately, soon after that we ran out of glass. I think we had enough time to finish the whole school. Instead, we had to wait about 90 minutes in the hot sun for the van to return.
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(Click to Enlarge)Our final project for African Impact was Art Club. Arts and crafts is not promoted much in the local schools, so this program gives the children a chance to participate in some creative exercises. Tiffany, Lucy, and I had decided we would have the kids do two projects. First, we had them trace their hands and then make the tracing into an animal or other object. It took a while for the concept to catch on, but they eventually got it and came up with some interesting and colorful results.
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(Click to Enlarge)The other project was making handprint trees. We divided into four groups and each group made a tree on a large sheet of paper. The kids really enjoyed this and wanted to do it over and over. The results were great and we had four fantastic trees that the principal immediately hung on the wall, which was tremendous, since the walls had been rather plain cement prior.
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(Click to Enlarge)The common name for white people in Zambia is Muzungu, which means either white person or traveler, which often represent the same thing to the kids. Whenever the van comes to pick up the volunteers, the kids all gather around and the driver will beep the horn and the kids all chant Muzungu Bus over and over. They often don't even wait for the driver to start. It's very cute and it looks like this:
Back at the house, we had our final dinner, an exit interview, and then said our goodbyes before being transported back to the Waterfront Lodge, where we met our safari guide, Stephan, were assigned tents, and then visited the bar for a few beers and some Internet time.
