Christmas 2019… where has the year gone?

It’s nearly a year since we last posted! I have to start as I always do by thanking everyone who has donated to the project,   and of course to those of you who make regular donations.

Once again Ketty has proved that her schooling has given an outlet for her bright intelligence by coming top of her class. So it’s all because of you, thanks so much!!

Last year we scraped together enough money to get to the game park. This year we needed a replacement bike; Ketty has outgrown her pink bike that Alice bought for her a few years back (no easy task when you earn a dollar a day!). So we went to Chipata a couple of days ago to see what we could find. Lots of brand shiny new Chinese bikes! Awful quality you can tell just touching them; probably they’ll fall apart within a

week. And a gem of a store selling second hand Japanese bikes. There it is… the next pink bicycle, Shimano gears, solid. One satisfied little girl!

Ketty and her mum Alice, along with two other great friends Ennie and Jason, are helping me with Yoga classes here. Most of you know me from our contact at Mandala ashram,  how cool that the influence of Swami Nishchalananda and the ashram he founded is now resonating halfway round the world in this awesome continent that is Africa. We started with some impromptu groups of 6 or 7 enthusiastic people, then the Director asked if I would teach twice a week in the ‘Great Hall’… a space build with sponsor money years ago which is used for large meetings and parties, pre-school kids, silo storage of maize and soybeans, and now Yoga. I’m a trainee teacher (even though I used to teach 50 years ago when I was at uni and a student of my first Yoga teacher, Swami Jyotirmayananda fresh out of Bihar School) so kind of ‘in at the deep end’ as 18 people show up for the first class, most with no English, ages from 10 to 70. It was very different from the  classes we see in the ashram!!! But we held it together, me and my helpers and we’re up and running. We have great hopes for the future.

Ketty has become a girl suddenly, no longer a little child. Well what did I expect. Like almost-teenage everywhere probably, attention span of 30 seconds. All the logic games I bought to help her with maths logic, well they get a few minutes before something else wins her attention. That’ll teach me to get stuck in concepts of what’s going to happen! But soon I see what she and the girls at school are getting up to (with the help of MTV when Zambia Electric graces us with power for the little telly at home). They are practicing their moves.  She has no hearing, but a very cool sense of rhythm and movement. That’s many of my sisters and brothers here… see them and weep, they’re born with rhythm and grace. Here’s a video. Me and Alice and Martha sitting in the back of the kitchen and Ketty decides to put on a show. Amazingly the music, ‘Domoro’, that I dubbed in fits exactly with her timing… Durban House sounds… Gqom it’s called.

Happy Christmas Everyone.

Love from Us.