The First Day of Spring??

So you have passed your 1st day of spring. We've had spring-like weather here. A couple of weeks ago we went through a kite flying fad. Kites were made from strong grass stems a bit like bamboo, covered with plastic from shopping bags. Kite string comes from those large woven plastic bags by un-weaving and then tying the strips together.
Encourage by all this fun, Uncle Sam decides they need to see a box kite and I gather the materials. I have kite string! The grass stems seem a bit heavy and slippery, hard to tie firmly together. Several Zambian kite flyers have viewed my offering (as yet unfinished) and pronounced it "dead in the air" or something to that effect. It remains sequestered in a dark corner of my room. Its sort of box shaped. The stem supports are drying and getting lighter, but some have broken even before "feeling" the wind. The splints used to correct this don't look too encouraging. Overall, it has the look of a kite that has been flown for too many seasons- sort of like its maker. The kids here refer to their kites as the Zambian Air Lines.
We've just completed a full week of Ithaca weather, overcast and rainy. My laundry doesn't dry in time to be worn, getting to work with dry feet is a rare blessing, never mind the mud.
Improvements to the school yard should reduce the mud in the class rooms and make it look nicer and feel cooler in the hot season. The space between the wings of the school now have concrete walkways with grassy areas in between.
You lawn builders of the northern hemisphere might enjoy seeing how its done here. No seed, no fertilizer, no mower, almost no tools. The soil is worked up with a maddock. No smoothing the area with a rake, the rain does that. Rows of grass plants are placed in rows about 9 inches a part. It looks very much like short quack grass. Once in place a thin strip of rich-looking, black soil is put down in a narrow along the grass rows. The grass will spread to make a lawn.

Doing remedial math drills can be mind numbing for the students and the teacher. A few minutes of this can make me forget my times tables. Anything for some variety. We get so involved in memorization that we miss some connections.
This week we tool a break, sort of, from multiplication and did some simple division. Most knew that 10 divided by 2 = 5. But then had trouble with 10 divided by 2, even using hands and fingers. By repeatedly doing this and similar problems, one by one they each had an "ah-ha" moment and the right answers. We would conclud each problem as the above example with the multiplication equivalent: 5 x 2 = 10 and 2 x 5 = 10. Any of you have problems following this, I'll see you when i get home. Its nice to have a group of kids smiling together at what they 've learned.
Other incidents are for the teacher's smiles only. I have joked that some of the "finger-counting" math students might like to use their toes for bigger calculations. The other day because of the mud, some removed their shoes to keep from tracking in and sure enough one child was bent over, fingers wide-spread and counting toes! Definity not a time to offer the kid a "hand". I have threatened to make them wear mittens during tests and during drills we sometimes sit on out hands.

I had some late night visitors on Thursday, they slipped passed the our guards and seemed to head right for my house. Once there, they made sufficient noise to wake me. The sound seemed to fill the whole clinic as if it were the source of the noise.
It was an owl, a pair of Spotted Eagle-Owls (ID'ed by their vocalizations). Besides their calls, the males talons made a loud scratching sound on the metal roof. His calls were answered by his shyer mate who stayed some distance away. He may have been using our security light as an aid to hunting.
These birds, Bubo africanus, are listed as "common" in this area. However, these were anything but common birds! They had come to visit me.

Why dis I come to Zambia and why did I return? Have not answered that question to anyones safisfaction including my own. "That should be exciting" some offered. Well excitement by the month aint all its cracked up to be, especially at my age. I have really tried and failed to be excited by months of hand laundry. Its easier to get excited about wearing dirty clothes! And I really don't like to travel for much more than a day.
Perhaps its only fitting and fair that someone who spent so many years "giving UU's the opportunity" to do things they really didn't want to do, should be exiled to darkest Africa for a time, but not twice.
I am somewhat partial to the explaination of Garrison K. (can't spell his name) of P. H. Companion, who tell us that those folks who keep the church going by doing things such as serving on those thankless committees year after year, are not the best people in your organization. No, just the oppositie. They are the ones who are working off their guilt as best they can. I know about that. And don't tell me UU's don't believe in guilt, they may not believe in it but that doesn't stop they from living it. Yet I trust I am not just on an extended guilt trip at your expense.
Been reading Bill Moyers' 'Moyers on America'. He tells of his last TV conversation with Joseph Campbell who was dealing with the "requirement in the human psyche for centering in terms of deep principles."
"You're talking about a search for the meaning of life." Moyers said.
"No, no, no," J. C. answered, "I'm talking about the experience of being alive!" he explained. "People say thats what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.... I think that what we're seeking is the experience of being alive.... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

A few lines from Tennyson's poem, Ulysses, follows:
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life.

Blog pressing (and trying to deal with the rust) out of Africa,
Sam