Here is a little sketch which might be of some interest in showing how different things are here.
Round about Christmas time a young girl of about 11 came to me after Mass and told me that at school she was top of the class with two more years of primary to go but since she wanted to be a doctor she needed to change school because the one she was at was unable to get her the results she needed to get to a secondary school good enough to get to University. We met several times and eventually I said I would pay her fees at the new school. In reality this is a commitment to the end of university.
I visited her at the school which impressed me with its friendliness, the walls decorated with pictures of joints, properly labelled, and other anatomical items, she is clearly very happy with good friends and a very good staff. I was able to ascertain that it was a good choice before I agreed. Yesterday she came up to the house and we had a long chat, among other things she was asking me who I would have voted for Kerry or Bush which I found rather impressive. To her teachers amazement she is already second in the class. She then went on to explain that although to her I am her father because her own is dead, in school she tells people she is being supported by an uncle because she does not want anyone in a fit of jealousy to get a witch doctor to do me harm. Then she went on to tell me how the matron did not like it at first when she and the others in her dormitory sang songs and said their prayers before going to sleep,but now she likes it and how twice they have seen evil spirits outside the room trying to stop them praying but how, when told strongly enough with prayers and injunctions they left, the first time to go and terrorise another girl in a neighbouring dormitory, she too was OK after enough prayers. None of this was told in a spirit of bravado or excitement, merely as a fact of life and this is how you deal with it. One hears too many stories from very sane and normal westerners from their own experience which are not so dissimilar to write it all off as total nonsense and purely imagination. Even local people do not always believe it until forced to do so. This is one of the bigger culture shocks of coming out to this society.
and a couple of pics... here's one of the garden
and here's one of a matoke tree
Round about Christmas time a young girl of about 11 came to me after Mass and told me that at school she was top of the class with two more years of primary to go but since she wanted to be a doctor she needed to change school because the one she was at was unable to get her the results she needed to get to a secondary school good enough to get to University. We met several times and eventually I said I would pay her fees at the new school. In reality this is a commitment to the end of university.
I visited her at the school which impressed me with its friendliness, the walls decorated with pictures of joints, properly labelled, and other anatomical items, she is clearly very happy with good friends and a very good staff. I was able to ascertain that it was a good choice before I agreed. Yesterday she came up to the house and we had a long chat, among other things she was asking me who I would have voted for Kerry or Bush which I found rather impressive. To her teachers amazement she is already second in the class. She then went on to explain that although to her I am her father because her own is dead, in school she tells people she is being supported by an uncle because she does not want anyone in a fit of jealousy to get a witch doctor to do me harm. Then she went on to tell me how the matron did not like it at first when she and the others in her dormitory sang songs and said their prayers before going to sleep,but now she likes it and how twice they have seen evil spirits outside the room trying to stop them praying but how, when told strongly enough with prayers and injunctions they left, the first time to go and terrorise another girl in a neighbouring dormitory, she too was OK after enough prayers. None of this was told in a spirit of bravado or excitement, merely as a fact of life and this is how you deal with it. One hears too many stories from very sane and normal westerners from their own experience which are not so dissimilar to write it all off as total nonsense and purely imagination. Even local people do not always believe it until forced to do so. This is one of the bigger culture shocks of coming out to this society.
and a couple of pics... here's one of the garden
and here's one of a matoke tree
posted by Patrick & Kathie at 3:07 AM
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