June 28th- Stacia C.

This morning was windy and cool as we piled into the red Munali School bus. Our goal for today was to help some Munali high schoolers (most of them we met on Saturday) learn how to create a basic PowerPoint presentation. The students filed in and sat in the white plastic lawn chairs. One of our teachers, Gabe Cronin, started things off by explaining what our project for the week was. SAAS students were to teach some PowerPoint basics and then eventually help the Munali student create a presentation comparing and contrasting certain topics in the U.S. and Zambia. For example, my topic was religion in school. At the end of the week, our presentations would be shared with each other for a mutual learning experience.
Today, I helped Mary, Stephen, and Nkole create simple PowerPoints about their favorite foods or school life. Their typing was slow and deliberate, but I was astonished at how quickly they remembered the steps that were shown on the example computer each small group had in front of them. After slowly finding the right tabs and buttons, the students I was overseeing quickly picked up the details I explained to them and learned many things about how to make a PowerPoint. After this, our individual discussions began about our topics for the week. I was also working with another SAAS student, Alisha, and in no time we were exchanging questions about the religious happenings in Zambia. We discovered that most of the population is Christian and that praying happens at school every morning. One of the largest differences between Zambia and the U.S., religion wise, is that some Zambians continue to practice old religious traditions while Americans seem to have none. An example for this type of old tradition in Zambia is the continued practice of what I’ve heard to be "bush magic" or worshiping other less known gods. However, no matter where our conversations led us today, I am positive all of us had a great time interacting and teaching these students. Their intelligence and maturity continues to amaze us all and we look forward to working with them for the next week.