Just a "brief" update on things here over the last couple weeks. Classes have still been going well, and the workload is a good amount. I have class every day but am always done by early afternoon and have time then to work on my next lesson plans. It also gives me time to work on other kinds of practice and review for my math students. I'm trying to do a different review focused on their old math topics from the last three years each week or so to give them enough practice for the national exam at the end of the year. My only concern now is having enough time to get to all of the topics on this year's syllabus since things always seem to move slower in class than I plan on. The test is about 60% old topics and 40% Form IV so they definitely need to review while learning new things.
The new FEMA life skills club has gotten off and running pretty well so far. There are 4 or 5 of the older students who have been organizing and running the meetings. I go just to be available if they have any questions, but they are all talking in Swahili so I usually understand little of what is actually being said. I'm hoping more of the other teachers will come regularly so they can at least catch it if false info is being given out. But I know the student leaders know good amount about the topics and they have the books to go off of too. So far we've had about 250 or so students come each time, which is great. Most of them are the Form I and II students, so it's good that they are curious and interested to learn about these things.
So that is on Fridays, when we have our social clubs, and academic clubs are on Mondays, so I attend the Math Club. It's mostly led by my best Form IV student, whose name is Mansweet a.k.a. the "King of Mathematics" as he's been dubbed. It's actually really great to go to those meetings because it's all students who actually like math! What a concept! And then Wednesdays are for Debates, which the whole school is supposed to attend and is done (more or less) in English.
And I'm still bringing out the computers in the evenings - 3 nights for students and 2 nights for teachers. The students love using Encarta and listening to different countries' national anthems. The teachers have gotten hooked on this typing program that gives out stats on your accuracy and words per minute. It shows them how to type with both hands though, so it's not too bad of an obsession. I guess a couple of the computer charges I brought to get fixed actually got fixed (shocking!) so I'll try to get them this weekend so we can have more functioning computers.
We had a staff meeting a couple of weeks ago - there is usually about a 5-hour minimum, but somehow this one was only like 4. And I brought up a couple ideas as suggestions for this school year, one of which was the possibility of trying to get some sort of solar system set up at the school so that the computers could be used during the daytime, which I had already discussed a bit with my counterpart. They seemed to be pretty interested and the headmaster said he would like to try and do it. From what I've heard, grant writing is always a long process, but hopefully it won't be too difficult. The first step is to get an idea on how much power would be needed so we can see how many solar panels and all we would need. I think it could be very helpful - even though there is the rainy season for a few months like now, there is still sunlight for a good part of the day most of the time, so there should be enough power available.
This past Saturday was the Graduation for the Form 6 students, who will be taking their final exams and leaving soon. Naturally I was the photographer, being the only one with a digital camera. I'll get some of the pictures developed for them in town this weekend. They played this game after lunch called "Jenga" -unfortunately it didn't involve moving little wooden bricks like I'm familiar with. Instead, it was like a fundraising game, I'm not sure exactly what for, maybe their exam fees or something...? So it's kind of like a truth or dare auction from what I could gather. One person tells someone else to do something goofy, like roll across the room on the floor apparently, and puts a price on it. Then the person either has to do the dare or pay/increase the amount of money, and then they can make up their own thing for someone else to do. Luckily for me they all showed the mercy not to drag me into the game, since I still didn't really know what the heck was going on, but it was sure entertaining to watch!
Sunday was a typical laid back Tanzanian Sunday - cooking, laundry, cleaning around the house, and putting in work on my new Risk board. It's not nearly as impressive as the first one made on the ping pong table - just poster board size. I was wishing I had the old crew here to help with it - especially Ray's drawing skills, but it's coming along pretty well. Soon I will be able to occupy my free time by playing myself in Scrabble AND Risk! Yea one-person game nights!
Oh yea, and I finally decided to set up my tent outside in my courtyard to sleep under the stars/rain, but it didn't work out so well. I set it up in the daytime, but when I went outside at night to brush my teeth, I felt some stings on my feet and ankles... and then all over my legs... and then I ran inside and feverishly scrubbed myself and sprayed all over. When I went back outside with a flashlight, there were swarms and swarms of ants all around the tent- it looked like the ground was moving. So I unloaded about a full can of spray. Luckily the tent was zipped up, so they didn't infest the inside, but needless to say I did not end up sleeping in there after all. My only idea was that the ants saw some new foreign object and decided they wanted to take it to their queen, so they sent every living ant in the area to retrieve a giant 7x7 foot tent. Anyways, they were gone the next day luckily, save for the carcasses of the unfortunate spray victims, and I cleaned up my tent and put that idea of backyard camping far out of my head.
But in between ant attacks, life is good, as I hope it continues to be for everyone back home.
