Monday at the Farm

Posted on September 12, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

It’s crazy how clear the absence of one person in a big group can be. I guess I didn’t realize before how much our personalities all balanced one another, but something about the group dynamic has felt kind of off since Fernanda left. Besides that, I’m personally in a bit of a mental funk right now and I know it, but I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get me out of it. Hopefully we just need a couple days for things to balance back out, and my mood will follow.

The bed where we planted the eggplant seeds. We loosened the dirt, made little trenches with our fingers, sprinkled seeds inside, and covered them with a thin layer of dirt. After that, they get covered with palm branches to hopefully discourage the chickens from eating all of the seeds.

Otherwise, the day was good! We planted eggplant seeds at the farm and checked on the tomato plants that we planted in the bed a couple weeks ago. From afar, it looked like the chickens ate all of the seeds and that everything left in the bed was a weed, but after checking things out more closely, we found some tomato plants!! The stupid chickens definitely ate most of them, but HA! Take that, chickens! You may have won the battle, but we’re going to win the war!

Amber pulling the weeds around the tomato plants.

Sorry… phew… deep breath. The chickens really get me all riled up. They’re vicious! One time, I accidentally injured a frog when we were hoeing, and when I looked back at it 5 seconds later, it was gone. I thought maybe it had hopped away until that same day we saw a gang of them work together to kill a big frog. Another one snatched a cricket out of the air, mid-jump. We’re always throwing sticks at them and threatening them with machetes and hoes, and they move just enough to not get hit and then chicken laugh at us. Yeah, I didn’t know that chickens could laugh either, but just trust me on this. You can see it on their smug little faces.

The rest of the day was chill because school doesn’t start until tomorrow. We spent some time digging the poop hole at the farm (a hole for the pig poop to be converted into fertilizer) and then played outside for the rest of the day. I also went back to the clinic to weigh myself again, and I haven’t lost any more weight! Well, that’s not completely true. It said I lost 2 more pounds, but I’m not worried about it like I was last time. That’s just 2 pounds in 2 weeks, unlike the 10 pounds in 2 weeks from before.

One of the plants from Nico’s seeds. It’s so big!

Tomorrow, real school starts, and I’m excited to see what it’s like! Apparently the first day is mostly cleaning and getting the school ready, but it will be interesting to see how it all works since my only school experience here has been summer school. Also, it looks like I’m going to be helping James with the PE classes, at least until another sports volunteer comes, because he said it’s hard to manage all of the kids, and generally the girls just don’t participate because the boys are ball hogs. Ha. Some things are the same no matter where you are. I said that I’m more than happy to help out and work with the girls. We’re going to have WAY more fun. Anyway, that won’t start until next week probably, so I have some time to mentally prepare. That’s good.

Goodbye Fernanda :(

Posted on September 9, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’ve been doing a great job of mentally blocking out the fact that Fernanda is leaving, but today it finally reached the point where I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. Her flight is late tonight, so she left here right after lunch. Being here feels like a time warp, so whenever something happens that makes it clear that time has passed, it’s a little jarring. When we got here, Fernanda still had a month left. Thinking about a month felt like a lifetime, but now here we are. I’ve been here for a month (!!!), and Fernanda’s two months are up. It really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.

Front row – Avy, Fernanda, me Back row – Nico, Amber, James, Evans, Sosane

Saying goodbye to Maria was hard, but at least there were still five of us left. With Fernanda gone, all I can think about is how Nico, Amber, and Sosane are next. I know I shouldn’t focus on that, but right now, it’s hard to push it out of my mind.

Before lunch, Fernanda and I did one last lap around the town so she could say goodbye to some people and we could have a little time together. Then we ate, took a farewell picture in front of the house, and she started give out goodbye hugs. I was determined to hold it together, but let’s be real… I obviously cried, went into the house to pull myself together, and cried again as she was getting on the tro. And then that was it. She was gone, we walked back to the house, and I convinced myself that she was probably coming back in a day or so.

Everyone being sad that Fernanda is leaving, except Sosane who apparently missed the sad face picture memo

The rest of the day (after I stopped crying… come on, pull it together, Lara!) was just spent around the house until about 4:30 when we went to keep working on our poop hole (a hole for the pig poop to be stored and converted into fertilizer). We were there for probably 45 minutes before Avy showed up with a whole pack of kids and three volunteers from Gold in tow (they’re visiting the waterfalls this weekend and are staying at our house). Apparently the kids led the group to the farm (why the kids know how to get there is beyond me), and as soon as everyone showed up, our productivity went to about zero. One of the kids did help us out a lot by using a machete to chop up a root that was blocking our way. He originally gave the machete to me, but after I did about three hits, he shook his head, took it from me, and completely destroyed the root in about 10 seconds. The kids here really know how to use their farm tools.

We stuck around the farm for maybe 20 more minutes before the group made its way back to our house for dinner. Afterwards, we sat around and talked until bedtime. Fun fact – the girl from Gold went to my high school. Small world, right? We graduated 7 years apart, so we don’t know any of the same people, but it’s still pretty cool. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to talk about something familiar when you’re so used to everything being new and different.

Goodbye Summer School

Posted on September 8, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our class, pretending for 5 seconds that they’re well behaved

Happy last day of summer school!! Nico and I were excited for school today because we had games planned in every class. In English, we had a spelling bee and played hangman. In Math, we split the class in two and did a math problem competition where each team sent one person up to the board and they had to race to solve a multiplication problem. The elective was the same as yesterday, the balloon game, because the kids liked it so much.

There must have been something bad in the air today because our class was behaving horribly. We had 9 kids, and some of them had never been to summer school before. That was most of the problem because those kids were misbehaving, and as soon as one kid starts, it’s so hard to control the rest. In hindsight, there was one kid who I should have just sent home, but I was so determined to have a good last day that I couldn’t do it.

One of the kids solving a problem from the review of yesterday’s test

I was also really struggling with patience today, so instead of being able to work through disciplining the kids, I just shut down once I started getting annoyed. I know that’s not good, but it’s the end of the week and I’m thinking that this weekend will be a good time to reset and recover. In normal life, a teacher gets to go home and have some time away from their students. In our case, we come home and we STILL have to deal with the kids. They play outside our house and come on the porch even though they KNOW they aren’t supposed to. So you go to school and have to reprimand the kids who are breaking the rules, and then you get home and have to reprimand more kids who are breaking the rules. There’s no time to reset your patience.

Our afternoon activity consisted of making chalk outlines of the volunteers on our porch. This is what happens when the power goes out and it’s too hot to be inside without fans. It started because, as you can see, Amber is napping outside to avoid the heat and looked pretty unresponsive, so we decided to have some fun with it.

Sometimes you just want to do something without having kids around, but they’re EVERYWHERE. I go for a run and they run with me. I stretch and they stretch with me. I sit on the porch, trying to relax, and they can’t just leave me alone. We go to watch the soccer games and they’re always trying to sit on your lap or braid your hair or ask you questions. This is probably similar to what it’s like to have children, except when that happens, it’s your choice and you’re theoretically somewhat prepared for it. In this case, I don’t have my own children, and I certainly don’t want them right now, so I think that means I should be able to get some peace and quiet every once in a while.

Nico retrieving Amber’s boot from the poop

Okay, so after re-reading what I just wrote, I think I need a vacation. I definitely need some kid-free time to mentally recover because I’m not in the best place right now to be able to help the kids. Mostly I’m in a good place for being annoyed at them.
In other news, I had the chance to get some of my frustration out this afternoon because Nico, Amber, and I went to the farm to get started on the poop pit/fertilizer hole (and Fernanda and Avy came along just for fun).

There’s nothing like a little manual labor to take your mind off things. We decided to put the hole in the same place where they’re currently putting the pig poop, but that meant that we needed to dig through a layer of poop before getting to dirt. Amber was digging for about 5 seconds before her boots sank completely into the poop. Gross. By the time we left, all of the poop was out of the hole, but we still have a long way to go. At least the dirt doesn’t smell so bad.

The walk home ended up being my favorite part of the day. We were listening to music while digging the hole, so we just left it playing for the walk home and ended up basically dancing our way back. We have to go past a bunch of houses, and when we were almost home, a woman came outside (she was probably about 70 years old) and started dancing with us. The whole thing was so spontaneous and we were all acting like total goons. It was awesome. That energy extended into Fernanda’s goodbye bonfire, and we had a good end to what started out as a poopy day.