The end of this week has been pretty uneventful. Thursday
and Friday I taught as usual. Another teacher was teaching Form 1 AB Friday so
I couldn’t complete my lesson with them, but that just means we will catch up
on Monday. The students are still required to do “cleanliness” every day after
school.
Thursday was our last attempt at doing SMILE. After
untangling a wire for 15 minutes, electrocuting myself, and running around like
crazy trying to locate all of the equipment we gave up. There were no plugs in
the intended classroom for the electricity coil to be run to, so then we had to
move everything to the library. Once it was all set up, there was apparently a
problem with the voltage and it wasn’t enough to power everything. So after
speaking to Paul, we decided to allow only 25 Form 2 students in my house once
a week. We will track their progress every week for at least 6 months. Maybe
after the school construction has been finished we can allow some more students
to participate just for fun. Paul needs consistent data of the same students.
Friday Tetsuko and I walked to town in the midst of a rain
storm. We had a leisurely time. We got kiti moto (3/4 kilos of pork), she
printed copies of math worksheets (and I fell in love with the shop owner’s
daughter), I had a pair of Masai sandals custom ordered for me and then debated
on the price, we bought sugar and matches (and found out the store owner speaks
perfect English and she has a cow so we can buy milk from her next month), got
juice from Juice Man, greeted so many people in the market, saw madafu (young,
sweet coconuts that you drink) on the ground and kept being pointed in
different directions, finally asked Juice Man to buy me madafu if he saw them
and I would pay him back. We spent about 2 hours just wandering around and
“integrating”.
Yesterday Kathryn came into town as usual. I picked up 6
packages for Jen and Deirdre (other volunteers) so they don’t need to worry
about coming into town during posta business hours. Because of that I had to
take a bajaj home and since I had a bajaj, I decided to buy flip chart paper
finally. Flip chart paper is just giant pieces of paper that you can use for
teaching. It is really expensive and I was trying to get the school to provide
it, but that hasn’t seemed to happen yet. So now I can write longer passages
and dialogues before class instead of scratching it into the blackboard
tiredly during class.
Some little boys that play near my house came by yesterday.
They kept wanting to practice their English, so they were screaming “Good
Morning, Madam!”. I kept responding to them in different voices (mostly for my own entertainment, haha). I decided to
give them Play-doh as a gift. I explained that it couldn’t touch the dirt or the
color would go away. All 5 of them sat in a circle and helped each other build
things. Usually 2 boys would be at work and the other 3 would hold the leftover
Play-doh or the parts which were waiting to be added to something else. The made
a pikipiki (pink with blue tires) and a bowl and a star. They loved it! Then
some more of their friends came over and so they started yelling “Come-ear”
(come here) and then one of them started saying “Sema ‘come here PLEASE”. So that
turned into “Come-ear-eat.” They wanted me to give some more Play-doh to their
friends.
The weather has improved. It seems as if the tropical
cyclone passed by with no damage. We just have had intense rain (which forced
me to hang my clothes inside after 3 days of them partially drying only to get
soaked again), but today it is finally sunny again! I actually do like the overcast skies because then the jua
kali (fierce sun) can’t burn you up! As I was going to sleep on Thursday night I
was shivering. I was wearing sweatpants, socks, and a t-shirt. Temperature
according to my thermometer clock? 74.5 degrees. Freezing!
Once again, I do feel very safe here and I think Peace Corps
does their best to inform us of any issues. Here is the blog entry from Kory
who was stuck in Masasi the day of the riots. It is very detailed. Thankfully I decided not to go to town that day and I was
sitting safely at home on the phone, communicating with everyone about the
riots.
