L is for Last Man Standing

“Chupa, Chupa, Chupa” This is what our supervisors came out chanting in a single file line wearing chetange all over their body in every which way.

We had been informed we were having a meeting last Saturday night. We had no idea what it could be about and quickly began trying to figure out if we had done anything wrong that day. We gathered in our living room 20 minutes before the meeting was set to start anxious to see what our supervisors had to say. A little later our youngest supervisor came in to direct us in moving furniture out of the way. At this point we were beyond confused. We had also just had an amazing taco bar dinner complete with homemade tortillas so the open floor space made us nervous that we were going to have to participate in exercise of some sort.

Right on time at 6:30 our supervisors came out of the back bedrooms chanting “Chupa.” They lined up in front of us and announced that it was time for the fifth annual HIZ-Path Olympics. We picked countries to represent and were split into teams. We competed in Haven Trivia, Sock Slide, Mango Tree, Supervisor Swaddle, Children’s Songs, Riff-Off, Mono Purchases, Leg Hair, and Tongan Knowledge.

Haven Trivia consisted of questions regarding the kids at The Haven like “What’s the name of the newest baby?” The Sock Slide was just like it sounds. We took turns seeing how far we could slide from one end of the living room to the other. We were each given a theme song and all had to wear the same socks so that it was completely fair. Mango Tree is a song the kids sing at The Haven. It goes a little something like…

“Mangooo mango tree”

“Yeeessss mango tree”

“Mangooo mango tree”

“Yeeesss mango tree”

“I eat under the mango tree”

“I dance under the mango tree”

We made it into a competition by splitting up into teams, standing in a circle, and each person had to say a different verb that they did “under the mango tree.” You couldn’t repeat and if you hesitated too long you were kicked out. I’m very proud to say that I won this particular competition; my Odyssey of the Mind coach would be extremely proud.

Supervisor Swaddle was also exactly as is sounds. Our two teams took turns to see who could swaddle a supervisor the fastest. Children’s Songs was going back and forth, not repeating, as many children’s songs that we sing with the kids as we could think of. If you have seen Pitch Perfect then you know what a riff-off is. Everyone loves the movie and I love that it was filmed at LSU. In the movie they have a riff-off so the supervisors thought it would be fun for us to give a shot. Needless to say the movie makes it look really easy.

Mrs. Mono is a woman who lives at Namwianga and makes anything you could ever want out of chetanged. She lives two doors down from us so we all make frequent visits over to her house to shop. Some people have bought quite a bit more than others so the Mrs. Mono challenge was we had 30 seconds to run to our rooms and come back wearing everything we had bought from Mrs. Mono and whoever had the most won. The winning number I believe was 30.

Leg Hair is also fairly self-explanatory. Seeing as we are in Africa, shaving our legs isn’t exactly our number one priority. This was to see who had the longest leg hair out of our group. Unfortunately we have a boy in our group so he won by default. Tongan is the language spoken here so Tongan Knowledge was to see just how much Tongan we’ve picked up during our time here. The conversation didn’t have to make sense, you just had to respond in Tongan, not hesitate, and not repeat; it got pretty heated.

Lastly we had HIZ-Path awards. We had “Most Likely To Get A Zambian MRS Degree” for the girl that has received several marriage proposals, “Estrogen Survivor” for the male in our group, “Chetange Hustle” for the girl with 30 Mrs. Mono purchases,  “Pink Makuwa” for the girl that is sunburnt from walking everyday, and “One Night Stand Award” for me for staying a night in the bush. I personally believe that this award was well earned.