Shock News – Mr C spotted with a paintbrush in his hand

by Liam and Liam

Today we had breakfast. We all then went to Pasani. There was still a surprising number of kids despite it being Saturday. We started doing the PVA on the classrooms. It was hard work as the walls kept sooking it all up. Mr Christmas kept telling us to lather it on and called me “Lather-on Liam.”

The kids were all still chanting “We are!” everytime they walked past the window from when we taught them “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. We saw Mr Anderson running for the first time (unfortunately to attend another medical crisis) and Mr Christmas even did some work (eventually!). Don’t worry about the medical crisis though – Ross (for some unknown reason) fainted. He was sitting down and plonked his face into a pile of red dust. When he came round it looked like he had a really bad fake tan. He thinks it was because of the paint fumes – we think he was just looking to get out of painting. It was good having everyone on the same site today and we got through a tonne of work.

At lunchtime we met with the Dunblane Likhubula Bursars from Chambe secondary school – one of them would be very useful know as he wanted to be a journalist! We had lunch together and all chatted together about school, exams and each other’s lives. It was quite humbling to hear about how different their lives are from ours and what their hopes are. Some want to be doctors, lawyers, teachers and work in the armed forces. However, they also had a lot of similarities to us. Some mentioned that they preferred some subjects more than others. We also talked a lot about football and what Scotland was like.

We then headed into Chitikale to find a shop that sold snacks (it took three attempts) and we also went into the market. There were loads of different things for sale including empty bottles, loads of different types of food and piles of tiny smoked fish. We were the only tourists in the market and I think we caused quite a stir (especially Matthew with his hair). Vanda bought some fancy looking cloth and Mr A bought some more paint brushes to get us working even harder.

On the way home we stopped at the local carving place and picked up some gifts that we had ordered. Mr Christmas and Vanda took ages to order a carving. When we got home, Mr Boyd had arrived (unfortunately without his luggage) and we had a great dinner of pasta. We then had another chat (we have had these each night) and we talked a lot about the stories we had heard from the bursars. Some of them have gone through so much in their lives and have so many challenges. However, they are just kids like us. We all talked about how good it is that the partnership link sponsors these bursars and we all had quite a few opinions about what other things the partnership could think about. After our chat, we prepared for the Church service tomorrow. We will be performing some songs and we also have formed our mini band which sounded great (they drowned out our singing which is probably a good thing)