A New Year

[written 1-19-12]

Well it's a new year and the start of a new school year here at Wilima Secondary School. The school opened on the 9th, but I quickly learned that there is a difference between school opening and classes actually starting. The first week mostly consisted of students slowly filtering into the dorms and doing cleaning and groundkeeping around the school, which was nice because everything looks very nice and clean now, as opposed to the jungle-like tall grass and weeds that engulfed the school over break. But now with everything clean and soo green all over, it really is a sight to see.

I ended up getting the classes I wanted to teach this year: Form IV Math and Form II Physics. They are the two classes that have their national exams at the end of the year, so I'm very happy to be able to try and get them well-prepared for those. I started teaching for real on Monday. I think most of the Form II's have gotten to school by now, but still probably only half of the Form IV's. It's typical apparently for the students to trickle in over the first few weeks after a long break, especially at a private boarding school like mine, where students are coming from farther away. So I'm trying not to go too fast right now so the late-comers don't get whammy-ed too badly. We're doing Coordinate Geometry in Math and Static Electricity in Physics. I've been having some fun making different things to use as teaching aids. So far I've got a giant rice bag for a coordinate plane, a couple geoboards (slabs of wood with a grid of nails), and some other "works-in-progress" (aka failures) for different physics demos. It is cool though, some Peace Corps Volunteers over the last few years have started this Hands-On-Science program, with all kinds of lesson ideas using simple easy-to-find resources around the country. It definitely helps for the students to be able to see and touch things, rather than just sitting through lectures. And it keeps their attention- they sure loved watching me rub balloons on my head.

I also decided to open up a School Store of sorts for my Form IV students. They get points for coming to class, doing homework, participating in class, doing extra practice problems, and things like that. Then they can use them to buy notebooks, pens, rulers, candy, even paper cranes! I considered using cranes as the currency, but even at full capacity I don't think I could make enough for that. But hopefully I'll get some students to be my apprentices and see how many we can make as a class, maybe even make it a competition. But the big money prizes are things like soccer jerseys and balls. And the top 10 or so from each week will get to use the computers in the evening, so that will hopefully be a big enough motivation for them.

Speaking of computers, there has been a bit of an issue with them lately. I guess they were left plugged in over break when a big lightning storm hit and knocked out the generator, and it ended up frying a few of the chargers. I took them to a fundi (repair man-man-man-man...) last weekend, but I don't have too much optimism for getting them fixed soon. So we're down to 3 or 4 right now that can actually run, which makes it difficult to please the 15 teachers and 500 students, all of whom want a chance to play with them every day. But it's still better than nothing, and with my new typing and geography games, they will hopefully get something useful out of their computer time.

The other thing I'm focusing on now is trying to get a FEMA Club (Life Skills group) started at my school. A lot of other schools have them- it's basically just a club to teach about different life skills like communication, decision-making, relationships, and about diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria. Our first meeting is tomorrow (Friday). I already have a few older students who are interested in leading it, which is great because it has to be led by them if it's going to continue after I leave I feel like. We'll do a True/False type game to talk about some facts and myths about HIV/AIDS.

Aside from that, my free time has been occupied by making Scrabble boards, shotty bamboo furniture for my house, watching the full Star Wars collection (now moved on to Indiana Jones), and reading/listening to some books Christine sent me for Christmas. I got the last straggling Christmas packages in town last weekend, which contained gifts and some tasty, tasty homemade Christmas cookies, so I busted out the Christmas movies one more time and treated myself to Christmas 2.0 on Sunday. Thanks guys!!
I got some passion fruits in town as well, and made some awesome fruit salad with mangos and pineapple. I don't think I'd ever seen passion fruit before, except the juice, but they're pretty dang good. A couple of the avocado trees at school are starting to produce, which is very exciting. I've been closely monitoring the one in my back yard - just tiny buds now, but that won't stop me from checking up on their progress every day...
I hope everyone is braving the winter back home, assuming the snow has started by now. It's still surprisingly cold at my school because of the daily rainstorms, but I like it, it reminds me of home.

Til next time, love and miss you all, and here is the solution to last post's swahili joke that you've all been racking your minds over for the past few weeks:

Recap:
dog = mbwa [MMM-bwah]
Q: What is a Tanzanian dog's favorite breakfast food?
Answer: Mbwa-ffles!