Secondary Public Speaking

Amano held its Secondary Inter House Public Speaking Competition in the evening of Wednesday 16th July. This year comprised a new set of subjects and a completely different set of speakers, three from each house representing the three levels of competition: U14, U16 and U19.

House captains and their speaking teams

In the U14 category Samuel Kirk spoke with confidence on "the dangers of credit cards" and which the judging panel of Mr Towse, Mr Andresen and Mrs V. Grove deemed to be the best presentation. Representing Kasompe house was Taliesin Lund who ably educated us on the life of "Winston Churchill" and came in second place followed by Nisarg Patel who with somewhat accidental humour talked about "how to use a musket".
  In the U16 category Joshua Phiri spoke and sang on "African music" with good passion and understanding and faced a few challenging questions from the musically minded with good answers. Natalia Reed was the only girl this year and was very informative on the life of "Mahatma Ghandi", though don't ask me what his real name is. She won first place for Kasompe house.

Natalia

Then finishing off for Musenga house was Fungai Chanda with why "being young is over rated"! All the pressures of youth that adults don't need to worry about or something like that!
  Finally it was time for the U19's to begin and Luano's Jean Candy presented the pros and cons of "public vs private schools". A tricky talk to present to educators but done very well nonetheless. The Kasompe representative was Ben Ferguson, who came in first place, with his sermon on "the media determines how and what we think". As always with Ben a methodical and thoughtful presentation was well received and finished with the judges offering the speaking slot at church this weekend! Williamson Walker wound things up with his talk on "don't get married till you're 25!" As you can imagine this raised some emotions, but good thoughts too, on the need for maturity and God's guidance. He took second place.
  I am very grateful to Jean and Nisarg who stepped in on the final days preparation to represent their houses where you must stand on your own in the spotlight. This is not easy but it was not obvious to the audience.
  Thanks must go to the judges and also Mr Boatman who entertains us in between speeches and runs the evening excellently.

Mr Boatman

 It was clear on the night that the popularity of the subject is not what wins the event. The skill of the orator is their ability to use their mouth as a tool to best convey what is in their mind. To enthral the listener, even with a boring subject and win over your objectors with words.
Well done everyone.

Contributed by: Mr S Grove

Under the stars

Seventeen termly boarding boys spent the night of 7th June out under the stars.
Saturday was a busy day with primary ten steps being hosted at Amano so preparations started at 4pm. We got into pairs and began making "hobo stoves" out of empty 3kg tinned food cans. A competition was set and the best looking 'hobo stove' got a chocolate bar. Before supper at 6pm, we went out to the camping spot and collected firewood for a bonfire.
  Two teams were formed with the two tallest boys on opposite sides, team names were picked and they were 'Ghosts' and 'Rangers'.
  After supper at school we went back to camp and set up our sleeping bags and got ready for the night. Mr. Grove called us to the car and trailer that was the main meeting point. He had two tyres with hooks in them and he instructed us to make harnesses  to pull the tyre with two team members sitting on it, through the bush, to the 'power line road'.

Tyre sledding before

  As usually happens with such competitions in the dark, both teams took pretty much the longest way to get to the road [and there were a few accidents along the way] and in the end the Ghosts finished ahead. The next challenge was to pull the tyre back with one person on it, but every person on the team had to sit on at least once before the end. It was a closer finish but the Ghosts won again.

Tyre sledding after!

  The next challenge was to get your whole team up a 3m rock face before the other team [with out any aid except your team mates]. There is a certain amount of strategy involved, such as not leaving the heaviest person till last when there is no-one to push them up! The Ghosts won again both times.

Rock face challenge

  Next up was 'Capture the Flag' at night so we put coloured reflective tape on our hats [to show up team identity in torch lights]. I was a lot of fun and we played two rounds, one which Ghosts won and the other, Rangers won. After our fun we sat round the bonfire and talked [whilst vapourising marsh mellows]. Then we went to bed (sleeping bags).

Camp fire with marsh mellows

  Early next morning, things were a bit cold, but it was time to try out our 'hobo stoves'. We cooked [well, some attempted to!] eggs, bacon, sausages, American pancakes and toasted bread on them. This process took three hours by which time we were to clean up and go get ready for church.

Caleb and his hobo stove

Lots of thanks to Mr and Mrs Grove for organising the night.

Reported by: Caleb Ronald

Primary athletics

Last Saturday a Primary Athletics team competed against 5 other schools at Ndola Trust School. We fielded students in U9 U11 and U13 events.
Once again, an excellent team performance with some of the Amano students competing against children in an older age group.
Xavier Zythow achieved a personal best winning the U11 high jump; Inonge Chitambala came first in the U11 200m sprint.

Xavier Zyktow tied first place

Unable to field athletes in all the events, Amano finished well in 5th place out of the 6 schools.
Everyone’s performance showed enthusiasm, enjoyment and much effort. A special mention to Sunny Desai who helped a pupil from another school limp in after he had fallen in the relay - Amano’s caring attitude!

Joseph Kirk Long jump

Stacey Fergusson cricket ball throwing

Reported by Mrs Kirk

National Athletics

Amano hosted the ISAZ Provincial and National Athletics Meets on 30th May and the 14th of June 2014 at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola for the first time ever. The first event is a tournament in its own rite and also a qualifying meet for the nationals where the best four athletes in every discipline go to the National event to compete against the best four from Midlands area. The 40,000 seater stadium was a beautiful venue and is the only facility like it on the Copperbelt.

  Amano attended with a relatively small team of 28 students of which 23 qualified for events in the Nationals. There are some notable performances to mention here.
  Diana Shakwelele smashed the U16 girls 1500m national record by 18sec with 5min42s and set a new school record for High jump at 1.30m.
  Ethan Milner smashed the boys U16 800m national record by 9 seconds with 2min10s and also set a new school record for 200m at 24.31s.
  Fernulla Milner set a new school record (NSR) for U14 girls 1500m at 5min43s.
  Moses Wikelund set a NSR for U16 boys 100m by 200ths of a second making it in 11.87s.
  Kathleen Kaufman got the school record in U14 Girls 400m with 1min09secs and High Jump with 1.30m.
  Edwin Dingwall equalled the school record for U16 boys high jump at 1.50m.
  Natalya Yoro added 15cm to the school long jump record achieving 4.08m for 1st place for U14 girls.
  In the 4 x 400m relay U14 girls and U16 boys both set new school records.
  With 4 x 100m again the U14 girls knocked off 3 sec of the school record to come in with 1.00.50mins, the U16 boys record now is 49.10s and the U19 boys finished with a new school record of 47.87s.
  On top of this there were a number of first places:
Yannick Kalidas in U14 boys 400m, Edwin Dingwall U16 boys 400m, Msanivute Banda for U19 boys 800m and 1500m races. Diana Shakwelele won the U16 girls 200m and Joyce won U19 girls javelin.
Amano finished in 5th place overall out of 8 schools. This is good considering we failed to have two complete girls teams and so missed out heavily on relay points.

U16 400m boys Edwin Dingwall (in blue)

U19 100m girl Joyce Muteb (in blue)

The Nationals was another day of success for Amano students. Amano now has 5 national records within ISAZ, 3 being added this year. Amano finished 6th place in overall points amongst 17 schools. This comes to 4th place in overall medals at 21. So person for person Amano students prove to have quality if not numbers.

Natalya Yoro U14 javelin

Nkwali Mwetwa and Raymond Amborski U19 4 x 400m

Notable performances:
Kathleen beat her own PB in the 400 down to 1min07s (NSR) and silver in high jump at 1.30m.
Fernulla also beat her own school record to run 1500m in 5min36s (NSR).
U14 girls 4 x 100m relay improved to 1min00.32s (NSR).
Edwin set a new national record (+NSR) with 54.08s in U16 boys 400m and took gold in triple jump, 1 cm behind our school record.
Ethan set a new national record with 2min08.69s in U16 boys 800m.
Fungai Chanda set a NSR in U16 boys 1500m with 4min35.84s beating the old national record too but coming in 2nd place.
U16 boys 4 x 400m also broke the national record but again in second place so they have a NSR of 3min46.31s. They also set  the 4 x 100m school record of 48.18s.
Joyce Muteb put in great performances and got a NSR in U19 girls 200m with 28.19s in silver place.
Msanivute scored gold in U19 boys 1500m with 4min36.25s.

I am grateful to all the students for their hard work which reaps these rewards. As we continue with the athletics season I am sure more records will tumble on sports day at the end of term.
Well done.
Report by Mr S Grove

Youth Prayer Event

In May of this term we had our 3rd annual 'prayer event'.  The students look at prayer differently this week. Rather than just coming to God with just our concerns we try and show them that giving thanks and just listening to God are ways we can communicate with Him as well.  It was once again well attended and I think the students really just had some time to think through some of the issues in their lives and talk to God about them.

Reported by Youth Pastor

ACS May Fair

The 2014 ACS May Fair was held on Africa Freedom Day and was an absolutely brilliant day out for students of Amano as well as many other schools in Chingola and further afield. There was a bouncy castle, face painting, market, fete games, auction, tea room, karate demonstration, 9 teams in our inter-school Tug of War and loads of other fun activities. Our very hardworking PTA and helpful parents served up hundreds of burgers, hotdogs, boerewors rolls and subs to keep everyone going.

The students worked (and played) hard, the grade 12 activities raised funds for their leavers dinner, and as traditional for our May Fair, 10% of our profits will go to a charity which will very shortly be chosen by the children.

We would just like to take this opportunity to thank all our Sponsors, Teachers, Students, Staff and especially Parents who gave of their valuable time and energy to make this year’s May Fair a success. Very special thanks to everyone in the community who came along for the day, the support was amazing!

Reported by Emily Reynolds (PTA)

Inter-house sports

The upper primary students (grades 4 to 7) battled it out in the game Benchball. The aim of the game is to be the first team to have everyone on the bench by throwing the ball to a teammate on the bench and it being caught. However, the bench is located in the opposing team’s side and the other team is doing the same too and trying to prevent balls being caught on the bench. Teams had to be careful, because if one person fell off the bench, the whole team (but one) had to start again.
Results: 1st place: Kasompe, 2nd place: Luano 3rd Place: Musenga

The lower primary students (grades 1 to 3) participated in a number of Target games. One game was the Team Target Challenge where as a house team; the aim was to collect as many cones by aiming and hitting at a cone. This was a race between the other teams, lots of cheering and shouting could be heard. The other games were bowling and a coin toss which tested their fine motor skills.
Results: 1st place: Musenga, 2nd place: Kasompe, 3rd place: Luano

At Amano we want to say thank you to parents and guardians that came and cheered and supported on their children and other students.

Reported by: Mrs Miles

Secondary students participated in inter house Table Tennis and Field Hockey on Thursday Afternoon. 3 boys and 2 girls from each house played a round robin TT tournament. Sets won totalled after 8 rounds resulted in Kasompe boys on 22, Luano on 19 sets for and Musenga boys on 15sets.

Kasompe girls came second on 8 sets for, Luano Girls were first with 11 sets for and Musenga came last on 6 sets won.

Both hockey events were close with some draws and some excellent team plays, particularly by Kasompe boys. The best team goal came from Sani of Kasompe passing square across the circle and Nkwali cooly playing a first touch shot on target. There were lots of learned skills on display too which, as a teacher, was nice to see. Kasompe boys were first on 2 wins, Musenga 2nd on goal difference with Luano 3rd. Girls: Luano first with a draw and win, Musenga 2nd with 2 draws and Kasompe 3rd.

Reported by: Mr Grove

Pictures by: Mr Pflaum