How a deaf girl in Eastern Zambia stole our hearts
….this is Africa. It smells like Africa, it feels like only sub-saharan Africa can feel, it gets in your blood, under your skin, just like they say. Either that or it freaks you out, the poverty, the utterly different culture, the snakes, the spiders, the malaria, and you never come back. I haven’t posted since…
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Wow time flies. It’s a year since I posted almost. The last post I did was indeed quite dark! They were strange times for us all with the cholera and the drought. The harvest was dreadful as we expected and in two weeks I’ll return to wells running dry because the water table wasn’t replenished…
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Cholera, Malaria, drought, hunger. Africa can be a hard place.
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We went to pick up Ketty a week ago for the long summer holiday at the end of her first year at Magwero School for the Deaf. She was so happy to see us; myself she hadn’t seen since last February just after she’d started at the school. I’m struck by how young she still…
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Hi to everyone again, from my hilltop haven in Wales. So I told you wrong in the last post. In fact Ketty started her education proper in her second term. The first was cramming sign language, which I guess continues. But she’s started on mathematics and introduction to science and other stuff. They give school…
Read MoreSeems ages since I posted. The fact is that I’m now living in a Welsh hilltop ashram and everyday life seems so far away. But we’re a busy place, established and run by a renowned Yoga Master, Swami Nishchalananda Saraswati, so there are courses and many people passing through. Many of them now know of…
Read MoreWe managed to keep away for a month! After we dropped Ketty off for her first taste of school (https://ulingana.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/a-very-special-school/) we only had one communication from the head, that Ketty was doing fine. Alice & Catherine bought loads of vegetables & stuff in Chipata, on the way, then we went to the school. Saturday, day…
Read MoreThis year the rains have been good. Very good. The road that I described last time as looking like the road to paradise is even more so; verdant wetlands bordering a lake, big fields of maize every so often, and all framed by the towering wooded hills that bring the rain clouds. It looks like…
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The Goddess of the World says, ‘don’t think you can help my children. That task is mine and you will never understand my ways for I am the chaos and order of Nature, in all her beauty. But for having that wish, I will bless you again and again’.
Read MoreThe driver, badly hung over, the usual pack of supplies, food and drink, forgotten in a bleary rush to get to his locomotive on time. Now, the fireman’s ok, got his supplies for the long trip, no problem. Driver sees him swigging from his water bag as he rues the absence of his own, constantly reminded of his thirst by the foetid post-alcohol dryness on his swollen sorry tongue.
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