Muli bwanji umoyo?

We're in Mumbwa now, camped in the deputy's office of the Kabwanga Basic School. We were originally going to stay in a vacant teacher's house, but after a 3 hour cramped bus ride, another hour in a land cruiser beating its way over a narrow path and through African bush, we were told the house wasn't ready and in the meantime we could hang out in the deputy's office. Since then, we've slept here for two nights.

It's a nice place—bats fly around in the rafters (hopefully eating all the mosquitoes) and each night a toad hops under the door into the room before we can herd it out again. The walls are covered in meeting agendas, grade rosters, and posters advising us to avoid early pregnancy and HIV. This narrow space looks otherworldly at night when we fill it with 6 mosquito nets and the light from our head lamps flickers across the walls.


Yesterday, the torrential Zambian rain beating on the tin roof held us captive for the morning. Today, our jailors are school children. It's the first day of school (we thought for sure they'd want us out of the office by now) and there's a worker stationed outside the door, but we can't tell if he's there to keep other people from disturbing us or to discourage us from leaving and causing a wild ruckus of a distraction for the hordes of wide-eyed school children in faded navy uniforms who wait in the front yard for classes to begin.

Today we'll start working on the biodigester at Kine Community School across the way. Fingers crossed...