Eventful day yesterday! We’ve finally got our regular bus back!
You can see very clearly how we regressed throughout the past couple of weeks. I’m happy to say that this endeavor has really showed me that luxury and comfort are relative. I never thought I’d be happy to be sitting in a bus with broken chairs, no seatbelts, dust everywhere, and exposed wiring—but here we are. Yesterday the kids had exams all morning. I was assigned to supervise and mark as the exams were completed. You’d think with how often these kids take tests that they’d be doing really well; unfortunately, “practice makes perfect” does not apply. After lunch was sports and games (the eventful part of the day). For the first half of the two hours there was to be a musical free for all in the dining hall. The second half was meant to be a drivers versus teachers football match.
The dancing and singing performances start out great. Kids were having fun—only one table was broken from some jumping. Then the real chaos struck. Everybody who was outside came rushing in to the dining hall. Things quieted down a bit and nobody really knew what was going on. We then learned that some angry bees were attacking anyone and everyone who decided to venture onto the football pitch. And more than that, choosing select victims to chase down. We learned later that someone had disturbed a nest outside of the school compound while driving, been attacked by hundreds of bees, went to seek for helped from someone in the school grounds while being chased, and led the swarm to the football field.
This was his abandoned vehicle that we saw later on the bus route. The swarm was still a bit angry in this area and we had to close all the windows of the bus, making it a nice and warm sauna. There were still some people who decided to venture through this stretch of road on foot, but quickly realized the mistake and started running for their lives and seating at their faces/necks. It was pretty funny to watch.
Eventually the bees dispersed enough to where we could safely play our drivers vs. teachers football game. It was so much fun. A bunch of kids were watching on the sidelines, a few bees made for a spectacle when they decided to attack someone, and us teachers got completely embarrassed. The score was 4-0; I don’t think us drivers had a single attempt on goal. And what’s worse is that I, being someone who has never been great at football, was sitting among our top 3 players. I also found that my conditioning is very poor right now.
The rest of the day was nice. I went with the afternoon bus route and then came back to school to mark exams. Class four and seven took 6 exams each and the other classes from class 3 and up took 2 exams each, totaling 18 exams to be marked. Assuming about 100 kids in each class level, us teachers had approximately 1800 exams to mark! I took mine home last night and finished most of the work. The evening remedial route didn’t require my services last night and I think I’ll be off the hook for the time being; another teacher wants to go with that route now because it drops closer to his house than his previous route. I was able to use that extra time for exam marking which was nice. I still had some to finish this morning however, but at least I’m done now and will be going to school with an open schedule.