Better to Eat the Croc Than to Be Eaten by the Croc!

          Today  has been another interesting day.  I gave my first quiz in class.  I know the students were anxious as they waited for me to hand out the test papers.  After they had finished their quizzes, I gave them the gifts I had brought.  Each of them received a Carolina Strawberry Festival tote bag.  Inside each bag:  Tootsie Roll pop, notebook, pen, and folder.  They were most appreciative and clapped!  The gifts were from me and a church member.  I asked if I could take their class photo at break.  Here it is:

         When they returned from break, most of them had Tootsie Roll pops in their mouths!  The rest of class was spent reviewing contract verbs and the use of the word for "all, every, whole."  We translated lots of sentences.  For the most part, the class did a very good job with translating sentences.

 

 

          After class, Dustin, Marty, Clayton, and I headed out to eat our croc burgers.  We went to a place about 10 kilometers from the school.  We were riding on dirt roads and Dustin said, "You are now riding in the African bush."  We went past a village.

 

 

          Dustin told me that many of the students in my class probably grew up in villages like this.  We talked about what an adjustment it would be to come from a village to the school and to live in a dormitory or apartment or house.

 

          On the way to where we ate lunch, we drove through a nice cemetery/memorial garden.  I was overwhelmed by the number of fresh graves -- row after row after row.  Dustin said if you walk through the cemetery and look at the markers, you will notice that the majority of the graves are of young adults between the ages of 18-35.  HIV/AIDS is a great problem here.  The U.S. government provides free medication that is available in clinics.  However, if a person does not have easy access to a clinic, the medicine is hard to get.  Also, constant good nutrition is necessary when taking the drugs.  Otherwise, the drugs themselves can be fatal.  This cemetery was a very unsettling and disturbing sight.

 





          We finally arrived at the crocodile farm.  It was started by a guy from the United Kingdom who heard on the news that people were encouraged to kill crocodiles because so many people were being eaten by crocodiles.  He came to Zambia to be a crocodile hunter and to make money.  He soon realized he could make more money by starting a crocodile farm and selling the hides (primarily to Asian countries, especially Singapore) for handbags, belts, and shoes.  He now grows approximately 6000 crocodiles.  The facility is like a Zambian "Mike's Farm."  There were school groups on field trips.  You pay an admission fee (30 kwacha, about $6) and you can walk through and look at the reptiles (huge African snakes), tortoises, and hundreds of crocodiles.  These animals are huge!!!!  We didn't even see the crocodile terraces where most of them are kept.

          I really liked this warning sign!

          After we completed our tour, we sat down for our lunch of croc burgers, chips (fries), and Cokes.  Lunch cost about 20 kwacha ($4).  Clayton was right:  a croc burger tastes like a mix of chicken and fish.  It was good!

 

          The grounds were full of beautiful flowering trees and bushes.  One large tree had lovely red flowers.  From a distance I asked Clayton what kind of tree it was.  He said, "Poinsettia."  Believe me, it's much bigger than any Christmas poinsettia I've ever seen!

 

 

 

          The grounds had play equipment for children and a nice swimming pool for public use.  I took this picture of Dustin, Clayton, and Marty by the pool.  Dustin said, "Please don't tell people that's our back yard!"

 

 

 

 

          When we returned from lunch, a driver from the school named William took me and Marty into town to do some grocery shopping at Spar.  As we drove home, we stopped at an intersection where I bought a "scratch card" to put more minutes on the Zambian cell phone I'm using.  I loaded 50 kwacha worth of minutes ($10) onto the phone and called Nancy.  We talked for 15 minutes and the call used about 24 kwacha (about $4.50).  That's not bad for an international call.

           We're on our own for supper tonight, so Marty and I will probably fix some sandwiches here at the house.  I've got lots of work to do:  grading today's quizzes, working on a lesson plan for class tomorrow, working on my sermon for Friday morning chapel, and starting to work on the final exam (I have to submit the exam and some paperwork to the dean some time next week).

            Zambia reminds me very much of Tabasco, Mexico, except the signs are in English and people drive on the other side of the road.  I am so used to traveling to Tabasco, I have found myself responding to the students occasionally in Spanish!  Dustin said he responded in Arabic when he first came to Zambia, after being in Egypt for four years.