Integrating with Play-Doh

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.

http://pcvfunk.blogspot.com/2013/02/those-are-bullets-surviving-riot.html?spref=fb