Our first full day in Zebilla was beautiful. We woke up for breakfast at 7. We had vegetarian spring rolls, vegetables that reminded me of Chinese food vegetables but fresh, omelettes, oats and instant coffee. I had no problem drinking black instant coffee, maybe I need to keep that habit at home. Our team leads were really busy meeting with different people, working out logistics and transportation so they had to push our meeting to after lunch. This meant we had some down time to explore so Eliza, Lemora, Shelby and I went for a walk. We hadn’t walked 200 yards when we were enveloped with school children. Apparently there is a private school next door to the hotel. The kids were out on break and so excited to see us. A lot of the kids yelled “Nasara” every time they saw us, which translates to “white woman”, but a lot of the kids use the term for any foreigner. We asked some of the students their names and told them ours. They laughed at our accents when we said our names, and tried to teach us some games. One of the younger girls just wanted to hold my hand, every time we got separated she found me again and just held my hand quietly. All of the older students spoke english, but the younger ones still speak primarily L1 or their local language. The local language in Zebilla is Fra-Fra. Eventually we found the teachers and we got to chat with them for a while. They showed us their classrooms, and we asked a lot of teacher questions. They were disappointed that we wouldn’t be coming to their school, but they were a private school and we were there to see the public schools.
I had to walk back up to the hotel because the team leads had someone from town come to sell us more data cards for our phones. After I added to my phone Eliza, Lemora, Shelby and I decided to try going for a walk and making it further this time. We stopped because Eliza was dying to see inside some of the clay homes, and we found one close to the edge of the road that was no longer whole and had clearly been abandoned. As soon as we stopped a girl came over and asked to be in our pictures, and then some other members of her family came over to talk to us. They told us how they make the clay buildings, and that because rain causes them to wear over time many people are now building with concrete cinder blocks instead. By the time we got back for lunch some of the students from the school were already up at the hotel looking for us. Lunch was fried rice and plantains. I think I could happily eat plantains and fresh mangos for the rest of my days.
My body was still adjusting to the different environment so I was just a little dizzy after lunch and laid down for a few minutes. I got right back up for our meeting at 3 and felt great though. I made sure I was drinking a ton of water and I think that helped my acclimate better. Isaac from Afrikids, Katie, Keely and Monty then presented some logistics and expectations to us. The following day (Tuesday) we would be going to visit each of our schools just for about 15 minutes each. They wanted us to see the climate, the number of students and the supplies each school had access to. That evening and the following evening we would be planning for our 2 days of conferences. We had 2 days of conferences to present the ideas and strategies we thought would work best for our schools based on what we saw. After the 2 days of conferences we would get at least one full day at each of our schools. Most groups had 4 schools, but Jasmine and I had 5. We had 2 Islamic public schools, 2 general public schools, and 1 public school that was too far for us to travel to, but that would be sending teachers to our conference days. We would be working with two teachers from each school, so collectively Jasmine and I would be working with 10 teachers.
**Forewarning: Teacher talk** After the meeting Jasmine and I began planning. LRTT’s 6 Principles of Effective teaching are: Mindset, Professional Culture, Assessment for Learning, Climate for Learning, Preparation for Teaching, and Teaching for Learning. As a fellowship we all agreed to include mindset, and then Jasmine and I chose to also focus on Teaching for Learning and Assessment for Learning. We knew we needed to see what was going on in the classrooms before we could get too detailed with our planning, so we laid out some ideas and format and saved the heavy planning for the following afternoon. I brainstormed some of our best practices that went with each principle, and other practices we’d seen from our colleagues so we would have a foundation to start from.
Around 6 PM Lemora and I got a text to come to Eliza’s room. When we got there we found out we were in store for a great brain break/surprise. Eliza and Shelby had learned some choreography and insisted Lem and I learn it and do the dance with them. My friends and students can probably imagine my face. This is not the kind of activity that is normally in my comfort zone. However these three women in the short time we had spent together had already made me feel so at home with them I didn’t even hesitate. It’s a true testament to why traveling in a fellowship of like minded individuals can form some of the most beautiful relationships. So somewhat less than gracefully, (lol) I learned the dance. We did a lot of laughing, and danced until it was time to go to dinner.
For dinner we had rice, vegetables with eggplant and french fries. After we had all gotten our plates and were eating the power went out because a storm had blown in. The storm came with cool winds and blew in really quickly. It didn’t last very long, but cooled the weather down a lot. As soon as it started raining Eliza ran out to the courtyard to run around in the rain and sing Toto, Africa. When we were all done eating Eliza, Shelby, Lemora and I sat outside in the gazebo to watch the lightening as the storm passed. We had a great conversation. Eliza asked us to each share a characteristic that defines us. It was a really hard question, but we each shared something meaningful, and learned a lot about each other. I highly recommend this question when you want to really get to know someone new. We finished our night chatting and sharing. It was a beautiful first full day in Zebilla.
Adventures of O 