Yesterday morning there was an incident on the route. Before any kids had boarded the bus, we managed to do a little damage to our beautiful machine.
It disappears when you look at the bus as a whole; the dent feels more natural for the state of our half-running bus. We hit a little concrete barrier while trying to move the bus out of the way for some cars who had to pass on the narrow dirt road. At the end of the day, it’s better this way—I was getting a bit too confident in the driver. We had to wait for some parents to bring their kids to the bus, so we spent some time trying to fix it. I cut my hand up a little bit and we didn’t budge the dent—waste of time, unfortunately.
At school I was pretty busy. The first two lessons I was teaching English before then passing attendance logs to all the classrooms and getting some lesson plans set up for today. Unfortunately, Rebecca told me that class 7 will be doing exams all day today, so my lesson will wait until next week. This is what I mean when I say planning is slightly impossible; Pius told me yesterday that I would be teaching today’s lessons. In the end it works out for me—I have music the majority of today anyways.
For lunch I join the drivers. They talked me in to contributing the equivalent of $1 USD for the meat seen on the table here. Most Thursdays the school serves dagaa. Most Thursdays people decide to fast. I won’t call this a coincidence—it’s a direct correlation. The drivers who have a little bit of freedom, however, use these Thursdays to share a nice meal of pork of some other choice meat (as long as it’s not the slimy, salty, wide-eyed sardines). I was very grateful to be invited yesterday and hope they have me back in the future so I can continue my stand against dagaa.
After lunch I was hoping to go to the music room. Ezekia surprised me by showing up to school for the day, but I was bummed because I was real busy and couldn’t practice with him. But, I was looking forward to having some time after lunch to play—or so I thought. The time came for the final class 7 exam to be taken (left over from the day before) and I had to proctor again. It went very slowly; I was watching my watch, counting the minutes until I was able to go join Ezekia. Eventually it had ended, I grabbed my star guitar pupils and went to work on some music! I spent the last hourish of my day at school working with them, and I’m happy to say we’re getting somewhere.
Abby and I went on the afternoon route and then straight home. No English remedial for me to teach and I’ve been snubbing the remedial route recently, so we got home pretty early. There’s been a constant sprinkle the past few days. The sun might peak through a bit during late afternoon, but over night it has been raining nonstop. Along with the rain had been the soothing thunder (when it’s distant and not right on top of me). I don’t know what a jungle or rainforest is like, I’ve never been, but that’s how it’s starting to feel. Green is popping up everywhere and the shimmering beads of water covering everything only intensify the tropical colors.
I would say that everything is soggy, but that brings such a negative effect. I really enjoy the misty mornings and hounding of rain at night. The worst of it seems to avoid the important times of the day and the rain is pretty considerate overall.
When I got home, after a long walk through some mud, I spent some time reading. I am proud to say I have finished The Fountainhead and I am now down to two remaining books, both nonfiction and very long. I’m sure they could be two years worth of reading materials, but I’m not that strong willed and my attention span isn’t quite up to par with Greek philosophy. So, I need to find a book store.
The rest of the evening was spent sitting with Jovin and Rebecca who were doing some homework. I had some dinner then went to bed. Today I have to find a way to balance music and exams, so I’m not too excited for that, but I’m sure it’ll work out alright.