Our Last Trimester

We’re already half way through our last trimester; it’s just five more weeks until final exams. Our school principal, Mr. Sandwich, got promoted to be in charge of a neighboring administrative post, something akin to a small county, so the top position on campus is now vacant. We really liked our principal, so we’ll miss him, but we always suspected this would happen given how competent he has been and how cozy he is with all the provincial big shots in the ruling party. Luckily we have great assistant principals, so our school should survive. The last trimester here is basically equivalent to the push from after spring break to the end of the school year in June in the traditional American calendars, so any student or teacher back home knows how that is. Basically everyone is running out of gas and starting the countdown for summer break, which starts on October 29th. We’ve had trouble keeping our afterschool clubs going since everyone is tired or busy preparing for national exams if they’re in 10th grade. We had to rally to get something together for the September 7th national holiday here commemorating the Lusaka Peace Accords, which ended the colonial conflict with the Portuguese in 1974. Luckily Liston, one of our most dedicated activists, got a theater piece together at the last minute. He had to run to a couple of students’ houses to drag them to the performance, but he made it happen. He’s become such an outstanding leader; he even got a group of kids together to play games before the ceremony to draw the local townspeople into the plaza so we could get started.

Next up is getting our English Theater team together for the provincial competition down in Tete next month, which as the only second year volunteers in this part of the country, we are in charge of organizing. Luckily one of our friends has a theater he is willing to lend us free of charge (we love Padre Ricardo)! If that’s not enough to keep us busy, we still have four more holiday performances for our Youth Activists. Next they want to do a piece where all the girls and boys play opposite gender roles. So we’re not expecting too much free time in the next couple of months, but as we head down the home stretch of our Peace Corps experience, we’ll try to remember to savor our last moments because before we know it, we’ll be flying home. Speaking of which, we need to buy our tickets!