I was hoping yesterday would be busy—I got my wish. I managed to sleep in an extra hour yesterday morning. Although we had school, I didn’t have to go with the bus route! Normally I leave at 6:30, yesterday it was a bit past 8:00 after the school bus was a bit late. Jovin, Rebecca and I sat around waiting for the bus to come and pick us up. Five minutes passed, I wasn’t worried. Ten minutes late—still normal. After waiting for 20 minutes past our scheduled pickup I decided it was finally time for us find our own way to school.
I served as the bus driver for the few kids who live around us. The other day I was talking about how things here are feeling so normal even though everything is so different, and this driving is one of them. I remember the first time even just being in a car driving on the left side of the road with a driver on the right—I was completely befuddled and bewildered. Now it’s to the point where driving one of these flipped-around upside-down machines is comfortable.
At school I got right to work. I only have 13 days left until I fly out, so I’m trying to close things up before I leave. I know each day might feel long and generous, but I’m sure next time I look up it will be April 12th and I’ll be on a plane to Ethiopia. Right now I’m trying to get GSB figured out. Samuel has completely neglected the program as I’ve tried to offload my role onto him in preparation for me leaving, but clearly it’s not working. The two problems that I tried to get him to handle are getting a finalized list of students and finding a video editing software that can be used offline but is extremely lightweight and not prone to lag (the computers we have aren’t the best and things tend to slow down with any bulky software we install). I’m worried that once I leave, GSB will be completely forgotten, so I’m trying to get everything in place this week so we can make sure the program is going smoothly next time we meet. Anyways, that translates into: yesterday morning at school I was busy researching video editing softwares and finalizing GSB enrollment, which led me into break.
After break I had my two English classes back to back. Pius wanted me to do some “exam revisions”, which ended up being me writing exam questions on the board and the students copying them down in their notebook. The two classes are different rooms of class 7 pupils (12-14 years old). The first stream I was with was very well behaved and quiet, but whenever I was talking to them they looked at me like I was teaching Chinese. They got their work done and listened to what I had to say, but it felt like talking to a wall. The second stream was the opposite. They are very engaged whenever I’m speaking and always have feedback or questions, but they don’t like to quiet down whenever they need to be focused on copying the activities down. I’m not really sure which case is better. Would I rather have a silent and diligent class or a noisy and engaged room? These classes are very distinct in these ways and I always know what I’m walking in to. I find myself more excited to work the second class even though it requires a bit more effort, but I’m always happy and relaxed whenever I’m going to the first class, knowing it won’t be very difficult.
These are a few of the trouble makers who weren’t on task during the lesson and didn’t take their notes. I had to hold them back while all their peers went to lunch so I could be sure they finished the writing. It’s hard for me to discipline the students without using the almighty stick, but over the past 3ish months they’ve started to respect me as their teacher and not just as a guest, so the troublemaking has been on a steady decline thankfully.
After lunch I didn’t have any classes and had hoped to go to the new school site to see what was going on, but Lucas showed up and said he need me to help with moving some furniture. I was a bit confused, but I quickly found out that he’s storing a bunch of furniture that will be at his new Safari site at Hope School for the time being.
The school day ended at 3:30 and I was happy to be going home to rest. Like usual, we didn’t actually leave school until 4:30 and right when I got home I laid down to take a nice nap. The rest of the day worked out pretty good. All the young ones were playing video games. The PS5 gets locked away and hidden during school, but whenever it’s a holiday or break mama brings it back out.
For dinner we had French fries in eggs which is a very popular dish among the kids. I don’t mind it myself, but it was also served with liver—something I’ve found I dislike (which is very rare, I normally can eat anything). I got to bed early last night but I had trouble falling asleep because of the nap. I keep making this mistake and seem to never learn from it. I woke up feeling good today though, which is important because today it’s back to school and I think it will be busy like yesterday!