After a couple of hours of painting and listening to chaotic chorus of playing children, I washed my paintbrushes and my hands in the bathroom sink, and I marched outside, straight into a game of soccer. (Though I use that term loosely—it looked more like a game of hackey-sack, consisting, mostly, of bigger boys tossing the ball back and forth, each showing off his moves.) I stole the flat ball, and we took the game to a mighty new level: we reached a glorified version of monkey in the middle, broken up by their fits of laughter every time I tangled my toes with the ball with the cement. Then, a tiny voice, practically a squeak: “Auntie! Auntie! Over here!” The little girl who had tapped on my window earlier was huddled uncertainly with two other girls in a corner of our cement soccer field. Marita, Precious, and Blessing—I learned their names that night. Three sisters, daughters of one of the school employees. I whacked the ball at them, and we all played. Marita, the smallest, spent a lot of her time bouncing around in the middle of the fuss while the big boys kicked it over her head. I chased the ball and fumbled it in her direction so she would have a fair go at it. She picked it up and took off with it. I ran her down and swept her up, squealing, and kicked the ball back to the others.
The boys eventually wandered home, but the girls live on the school’s property. They hung around the guesthouse while Dru and I made dinner. We finally chased off the girls long after dark. Before we ate, Dru prayed over our food, and among her other honorable mentions, she asked God for my time at the school and with the children to be enlightening. Uplifting. “And refreshing,” she finished, after a pause. I love her quiet confidence, the kind I long for, the confidence prayed out of a loving relationship, not neediness. She prays like she knows the difference.
It’s about 6:45, nearly light enough to work in the classrooms, now that I’ve already stumbled across the school yard to check my email, and back. Dru is up and moving. I yawn, put aside my book, my journal and pen, stand and stretch, and pad to the kitchen to put my teacup on the sink. “I’m headed out,” I call down the hallway to her. I hear water trickling in the bathroom sink.
“Be over soon!” she calls back, mouth full of toothpaste.
My backpack of supplies is waiting for me at the front door. I sling it over my shoulder and step out the door into early morning cool. And cutting through the quiet, from across the school yard, I hear them. Scrrreeak, and a metallic shudder. Scrrreeak. Metallic shudder.
No way. I blink and squint.
Two girls, small, dark shapes under a dimly lit sky, are working the swings, heads tilted back, giggling, and each one pumps her skinny legs furiously. Scrreeak, shudder. A small handful of children are scattered on the playground. Several of them kick another floppy red soccer ball back and forth, and three girls sit on the edge of a cement slab, bare feet in the scrubby grass, playing hand-clapping games. Tinny voices chant in a language I can only assume is Bemba.
It’s not even seven yet…These children are warriors, champions of playtime, dedicated to their cause. Or—
Home is not warm enough, safe and comforting enough, to make them want to stay. School, apparently, is.
I shake my head, amazed, hike up my backpack, and walk to unlock the building. I lock it behind me because I don’t know if the children are allowed in, on holidays. I unpack and pick up where I left off the day before, with yellow letters. I’m back to teetering on my perch, feeling whole and happy for the first time in weeks, completely immersed in color and shape and clean, bright lines.
By 7:30 or 8, the playground is teeming with, must be—what? One hundred? Maybe more? Squirming, shrieking, raucous children, and the school staff are setting up shop as though it’s a fairly normal day. The lunch-smells of cooking nshima and—unfortunately—fishy kapenta waft from the small kitchen through the window of my classroom. The teachers and kitchen staff have already called the students to the front doorway for bread and jam and small mugs of milk. I hear the soft clattering of plastic cups against plastic plates. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch even the youngest kids eat enthusiastically and, if not tidily, then carefully, savoring the meal. Dishes are discarded. Play resumes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Dru in jeans and a blue and pink tshirt, white ponytail swinging, marching across the schoolyard. With each step she takes, small children latch onto any available part of her body. If none are available, then they latch onto the child closest to her. She’s told me that her kids don’t see her as often as she would like or, apparently, as often as they would like, and I grin as she approaches the school, wobbling under all her extra appendages.
She pries her hands and arms from theirs and puts her head inside my classroom to call me outside for singing and prayer time and an introduction. I stick my paintbrush into my messy ponytail and scrub my hands in the bathroom sink. I am used to the odd assortment of frayed, patched, dusty clothing that so many Zambian children wear; I’m quite comfortable surrounded by folks in brazenly mismatched outfits—winter sweaters and short, frilly pink skirts, green tshirts and wild orange and blue chitenges. Still, I’m conscious of the gaping holes in the thighs and knees of my jeans as I walk to front of the school building and stand to the side of the crowd of children.
John Mumba has had them organize themselves in lines in front of the school. A noble idea, that—like asking one hundred puppies to line up. I’m surprised to see, for the most part, the kids have obeyed, with only a handful of arms and legs poking out the sides. By the time I’m outside, they’re singing the last verse of their first song, and their eyes shift to sneak peeks at me. I clap along awkwardly until Dru, bless her, stands in front of the children with her hands on her hips. “Which song today?” An excited murmur ripples the lines of squirming kids.
“Tikki!” Little pleas burst from a few.
“Tikki?” Dru raises her eyebrows, mock surprise. “Ah tikki ta?” she asks, to delighted laughter, as kids poke each other in the sides knowingly.
Dru claps, and the kids follow. “Ah tikki ta, ah tikki ta, ah tikki tat a TAH,” she calls, once or twice. Then, “Arms OUT! Chin UP!” She sways back and forth as she sings, again, “Ah tikki ta, ah tikki ta, ah tikki tat a TAH!” Dru and her army of children progress through “arms OUT, thumbs UP, shoulders BACK, KNEES in,” each time reverting to ah tikki tah!
By the time we arrive at BUNS OUT!, the children and I are howling with laughter, hardly in tune or in time, hands and feet and butts wagging everywhere, and Dru is swaying and clapping with her thumbs up, arms and legs akimbo, and buns swinging.
It’s a trick to quiet the kids down, after that performance, but John settles them and gestures to me. All one hundred or so wide eyes turn to me. “This is Sarah,” John explains, beaming. I flash a grin and wave quickly.
“And she’s giving us a gift.” Another ripple of excited whispering, and I see smiles hidden behind hands. Ah… I glance at him, startled, again, at his choice of words, but I warm to them. He knows to articulate the situation using words that children will understand. He explains that for the next couple of days, I’ll be painting in the baby classrooms and the sick bay. He asks the children please respect my space and be kind to me and would they please welcome me? They burst into wild applause. My cheeks are hot, and I grin sheepishly at Dru. She smiles sympathetically and claps along. John holds up his hand, and the children bow their heads for prayer. He prays quietly in Bemba, but his voice carries over our little huddle. I hear my name and know his prayer is for us, which includes me.
I’ve had my MP3 player tuned to the BBC station out of Kitwe for the last hour. My internet connection at Ken and Deb’s house is too slow and costly to load NPR or CNN regularly, and I don’t buy the local newspaper. BBC is better for me, anyway. Gives me a healthy perspective on world news, one I wouldn’t necessarily find in the States, given that the U.S. is so often making or involving itself in world news. Besides, I was flying over the Atlantic Ocean while Americans inaugurated President Barack Obama. I chose to leave my country at the beginning of what looks like a wild four years. While I’m not hungry for news from home, necessarily, I don’t want to lounge on a little island of ignorance, living here. I suppose it’s ironic that I traded one hotbed of controversy for another. I’m in the heart of a continent that the media loves. Africans make such interesting news, eh? Not Zambians, though. Even after the recent elections, Zambia’s a pretty calm, stable country—like a leaky faucet, here it’s just the quiet, steady drip-drip of poverty. The search for day labor and minimum pay. (I am already tired of avoiding accusing eyes and sidestepping outstretched hands.) Nursing children with malaria, housing children orphaned by AIDS. (It’s rainy season. The sick bay at Lifesong already has patients. Most days, it’s full.) No fuss, nothing big or flashy.
Apart from rugby scores, the BBC doesn’t deliver sunshine and sprinkles, and I want to believe in something good today.
I turn off my headphones and, from my desk, toss my MP3 player into my backpack, mildly pleased that I sank the shot. I raise my brush again and pause. Tuning in: the steady drone of clapping and chanting, punctuated by happy shouts and indignant howls, the soft thwap of a soccer ball on concrete, and the screeak and shudder of swings. I soak in the happy babble of playing children.
I’m no longer startled when I catch sight of tiny brown faces and wide, dark eyes peeking in the windows of the classroom. Every time I turn around, it seems, they’re grinning (tiptoes on the desk!) or gasping (breaking the rules!), all watching me intently. They scan the walls: letter A through letter Z, nine different shapes in nine brilliant colors. The bravest kids point and shout the names they know.
“Cuh-lah red!”
“Cuh-lah blue!”
“HEART!
…AH ha ha HA!”
I’m working my way through the numbers, one to ten, when Lucy shoos the swarm of kids away from the windows.
By the time lunch hour rolls around, my hands are covered in paint and my clothes smell of nshima and kapenta. I’ve finished one baby classroom and started in the other. I’m ready to eat and after, I’ll be ready to play for awhile. I put away my materials and close the classroom door, and as I walk barefoot across the schoolyard towards the guesthouse, kids race to my side. Marita is at the head of the pack. “Auntie! Auntie!” she calls, and I hold out my hand for her. This is, of course, an invitation for every other child to take my hand, too, or my arm, my pocket, my thigh. It’s awkward as hell to waddle across the grass covered in children, but I’m content to try.
