Week 6- Cultural

Marching on Women's Day

Holy Cross and Zambezi Basic outfits

We had a rather exciting end to this week as we celebrated International Women’s Day with many Zambian women in Livingstone. Our school had been planning this day for a number of weeks and sorted us out with matching outfits of purple and grey. This day of the year sees women from many types of organisations- schools, churches, shops and many other businesses and professions come together and march through the town in an array of patterned dresses and designs. We were told to meet at 8 in the morning but thinking we would be running on African time we only woke up at 8 and as we were clearing away our breakfast dishes in Jollyboys we could hear the beat of the drum approaching. We ran down to the main road only to find a mass of women marching, singing and dancing as they went along. When we eventually caught up with our school, we got to participate in the marching to a huge field where we experienced even more singing, dancing, drumming and acrobats as well as a guest speaker. It was such an amazing experience and great to see all women no matter where they are from unite and celebrate together.  

Ashleigh and I with our class teacher

Teachers from Holy Cross

We have come to discover that there are over 72 languages spoken here in Zambia which are derived from the many tribes found all over the country. Many a Zambian has been teaching us some of the language whether it’s the pupils or teachers in school or shop assistants in the supermarket. We have been trying our hardest to pick up some words and phrases but get very confused changing from one Zambian language to another. Having said this, with the help of the pupils in our class, Ashleigh and I have learnt a full song in Bemba which we are rather proud of but that’s about the height of our language abilities. Although hopefully over the next few weeks we’ll be able to pick up more words and phrases since it’s always nice to greet people in their native language. As said by Nelson Mandela (2013), ‘if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart’.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been having a bit of trouble with our visas and what we thought to be a simple task of going to the immigration office to renew them turned out to be a completely different story. After many hours spent sitting in the office over numerous days feeling like we had committed a crime, we eventually got our visas sorted with the help of Patrick from the David Livingstone College. It turned out that we had been given the wrong visas at the airport and we ended up getting a study permit after a lot of consultation between Patrick and the boss at the immigration office. This was yet another occasion where we’ve experienced a lot of waiting around for matters to be done and it seemed as though we wouldn’t have had much success if we didn’t have Patrick there to help us.

Our Zambian study permits

Now we know that we won’t be deported anytime soon, we can continue to enjoy the culture, the people, the food and the wonderful sights found here in Zambia.