(This was a sentence from one of our student's exams. It's pretty hard to teach the present tense of die.)
Week two has flown by. We taught household words, classroom words, possessive pronouns, and many, many, many “action words” or verbs. Each day when we introduce new words we have the students practice writing sentences individually in their exercise books. We ask them to make their sentences at least five words long and to use the vocabulary from class. All three of us go around the classroom and correct the sentences and pick the really good ones to be written on the board. Most of their sentences sound something like this: “I run to school every morning.” “She borrows a book from the teacher.” “We share our pens with the students.” We’re trying to emphasize capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full-stops (periods) on the line at the end.
We’ve also been working on questions. They’re learning question words like what, where, why, when, how much, and how many. I try to explain that we use questions when we want to find out something we do not know. We want an answer that gives information. I’m also trying to explain that we use each question word when we want a particular kind of information. Where is used when we ask about a place or location (Where is the school? Where do we cook? Where are you from?). How many is used when we want to know a specific number (How many chipati can you eat? How many students are in the class?). They’re starting to hear more English. Dot’s been reading a book to them every day and asking them to write down the words that they recognize (again activities are difficult to explain so they catch on very slowly to what we are asking).
Today was Friday so after their exam we sang songs and did puzzles. They’re all pretty sick of “The Ants Go Marching” but today we did the “Hokey Pokey” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and had so much fun! Are of their personalities are starting to come out and it’s really fun to sing with them. Everyone laughs really hard when Madame Hannah, Madame Katelyn, and Mama Dot shake their hips in the Hokey Pokey.
The one thing we really started to struggle with this week was discipline. We’ve been told that they respond well to discipline because that is the environment they are used to from their primary schools. It’s hard to be strict while also being yourself and laughing with them. I think it is especially hard because Katelyn and I are so young. Juma, our oldest student is 19! We’re working on making sure they all use polite English conversation (asking to use the restroom, saying thank you for tea, and calling teachers by their names instead of “Teacha!”). Clean up went much better today which is reassuring.
Dot has been commenting on the rhythm here. Everyday the roosters crow, then the sun comes up and the church bells ring and people start moving around --- tending their fields or animals, running to class, or carrying large bundles of corn on their heads down the hill to the mill. We’re fitting into that rhythm and waving to the people we see everyday. On Thursday, yesterday, that rhythm was completely drowned out by the rain. We woke up surrounded by a fog so think we couldn’t see the church. Everything was white. All of our students were in class but it was very difficult to teach. The rain echoed so loudly on the tin roof of the church. The students and the teachers were shouting to one another throughout every lesson. They also hated seeing the fog blow in the windows and doors of the church. As the day went on, the rain got harder and harder so instead of keeping students late for not arriving to class on time we dismissed everyone at3:00. Some of our girls walk from Itete which is about 10 km away and there was so much rain we began wondering about the safety of the roads if we kept them any longer.
At the end of everyday we ask one student to carry the empty bucket that held the chai back to the dining hall. Yesterday we asked this little boy Zabron because he lives in the same directions. He didn’t have an umbrella so I offered to walk with him holding our umbrella. Poor little Zabron, he started leading me through this banana field in the pouring rain (I mean POURING with wind and mud and water rushing down all the hills) and I just kept slipping in my floor length skirt and trying to keep up and hold the umbrella over his head. Finally, I start wondering if he’s just going home instead of to the dining hall so I try to explain that he can take the umbrella until tomorrow and I will bring the bucket back. He looked at me very confused and wet and points to the dining hall. I hadn’t realized that he was taking me a back way. We both laughed at my being so clueless and he ran ahead through the muddy field carrying the five gallon bucket. We were both soaking wet as we walked back home.
Today, Manow is still in a cloud and the rain has not stopped. Our students from Itete were not in class and a few trees have fallen down. It’s the strangest thing. I’ve really never seen so much rain at one time. It covers up the sights and the sounds of a normal day here. It gives me a feeling of isolation and solitude, there is only one sound, rain on the tin roof. Last night, with the power out, I went back and forth between feeling comforted by the stillness and uneasy because you could not hear or see anything besides what was in front of your headlamp. The rain gets so loud that it feels like it is filling every space. There is only rain.
Our diet here is good but without much variety. We eat lots of starches (chipati, mandazi, rice, potatoes, uji) and lot of avocados, tomatoes, onions, beans, and bananas. We rotate all these food around and try to invent creative ways to combine them. One highlight from this week was Mr. Mwaikema bringing us some of his honey still in the comb! It is such a treat. Dot also baked cinnamon rolls using coconut milk because we want to give some to Mwaikema as a thank you. Katelyn and I also ran into our student Erick’s father again on Tuesday and he has invited us to dinner tomorrow night. We’re very excited to meet his wife who makes the chipati for our class everyday!
Tomorrow we need to walk to Lwangwa to pick up bread and shop for food for the week so let’s all hope the fog clears tonight!
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