No funny business, just another day. Yesterday was mellow. I was in a good mood the minute I woke up. The weather seemed like it was going to be nice throughout the day and I was excited to be avoiding the rain.
Yesterday morning I saw something that gave me a reality check. I’ve been getting so used to life here—the scenery, the daily activities, the food—that this environment has become normal. I don’t look in wonder any more at a motorcycle packed with 3 people plus a baby riding on the handle bars; a herd of cows, goats, sheep and ducks wandering through the unpaved, muddy streets holding up traffic is expected; seeing something that left me awestruck used to be a daily occurrence, now it’s rare. A grave, standing alone out front of a home’s gate, peaked my interest. The rest of the morning I had it on my mind and kept noticing them. It also reminded me that Lucas’ mom is buried in the backyard of his previous home. This practice is very interesting to me—I’m sure it has to do with the family being more important social structure than in America. Although I’m sure it’s a way to honor family it feels a bit inhumane; for an American like myself I would bury a dog in the backyard. Sorry mom and dad, you’re going in the cemetery or an urn.
I utilized an unproductive school day very well yesterday. I planned to teach Pius’ lesson, but he had lost his lesson book. Normally I like to make a lesson plan from the book, Pius likes to teach directly from it, but I find that there are many spelling and grammar errors and teaching inconsistencies. So, without the book, Pius has no way to teach the lesson and I have no idea what the lesson is. Anyways, my assumption was correct that Pius was going to have me teach his class, but I was upset when he; didn’t take responsibility for not having the book, told me to go teach whatever I wanted, and then went on to partake in a class 5 birthday celebration. Maybe it’s my fault I’ve let him rely on my help for teaching his class, maybe I’ve encouraged him to stay out of the classroom, but yesterday was a day when he needed to step up as a teacher and show he could teach the curriculum to his students.
It may seem like I’m complaining, but I actually was glad of the situation. I needed to have some extra time with the kids to review some of the topics they were struggling on. I was, however, pretty mad a Pius for his lack of commitment to the pupils. Like I said: unproductive day utilized very well. The whole reason I needed the extra time was also because of Pius—-he has been jumping over some parts of the curriculum which was starting to show on the exams. And then there was Riveting Results.
It seems the teachers value quantity over quality. We had RR yesterday in the afternoon and again I was disappointed with the preparation. Every RR session in the past I have made sure that the teacher computer has the correct presentation so we can keep students, teachers, and lesson all moving at the same pace. Yesterday was the first day we needed a new presentation. Over the past month we made it through our first lesson (8 sessions to do what should have taken 1) and needed a new presentation set up. Keep in mind this is whole curriculum is already prepared and sent to Samuel (the coordinator of Riveting Results at Hope) by a third party outside of the school so all that’s needed is for the files to be downloaded. Last Saturday Samuel said he had the next lesson handled. Yesterday nothing was prepared and he left the other teachers to handle the classes because he had an overlapping class session.
Again, situation turned out fine but aye, aye, aye—these teachers work so hard to get so little done. We had kids work on writing short stories about their favorite games and then sharing them which worked out great. All of the kids were very proud of their writing and everyone wanted to share.
The moral of all this is that these teachers take on too much thinking it will help the kids when in reality it’s hurting them. I may not be trained in education, but I know that when someone is stretched too thin in any role it leads to poor performance. I’m worried because Global StoryBridges has become my deal. Samuel was the one who took this project on as well and wants to be known as the “coordinator” of it, but I’ve been the only one to go to all of the meetings, the other two teachers switching on and off and our coordinator not showing up to a single one of the meetings (and actually hurting the program by recruiting 30 kids instead of 10 setting us back to the start). But then again, I could be wrong and things just work like this.
I did have some free time during the day which I was surprised to find! I happily spent it with my buddy Ezekia who surprised me by showing up on his day off. We played some music and I my fingers are now getting nice and calloused.
Today I leave for Serengeti! I will be back on Thursday given I’m not eaten by a lion. If there aren’t any posts for the next couple days, don’t get worried—I’m just out of service range. If this problem persists longer than Friday, start a search party in the stomach of lions and crocodiles!