Parent Teacher Meeting

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

The morning started off with hoeing again, and this time was even worse than yesterday. With the eggplants, all we had to do was kill the weeds. Today, we were working around the corn, and we had to kill the weeds and move them/some dirt around the base of each corn stalk to help keep the moisture in and protect the plants. There are so many plants because they’re only about a foot apart, and the progress was incredibly slow. At least Clarina and Anna were there with me because it would have been a million times worse by myself. All I can say is, no one is going to complain about sowing again after this.

The whole school in one classroom for worship. I’m still not sure that you can see from this picture how crazy packed the room is.

School was a little different today because it was the parent teacher meeting (during school hours, of course). Avy and I helped in P3 for part of the morning because their teacher was at the meeting (along with all of the other teachers as well, but we can’t teach 8 classes), and I eventually went to sit in at the meeting. Even though every meeting I’ve been to here has been exhausting, I think it’s important for us to have at least one person representing the group at them. Then it’s more like we’re trying to be a part of the community rather than just existing alongside it.

The parent teacher meeting was no exception; it was long and exhausting. The difference with this one was that it was in Ewe, so I didn’t understand anything. The headmaster sat next to me and translated a little bit, but it was more like people would talk for 10 minutes and he would turn to me and say, “now they’re talking about PTA dues”. Ten minutes later, “they’re still talking about PTA dues”. Ten minutes later, “now they’re telling the parents that they should make sure their kids have all the school supplies they need.” So even with that, I still didn’t really know what was happening.

I stayed for about 2 hours until lunchtime when I was happy to have an excuse to duck out. At that point, they were just electing PTA officials (aka probably nominating people for jobs they didn’t want), so I didn’t feel bad leaving. All in all though, I felt like it was a productive meeting. There were maybe 80 parents there… they told us to expect 30, so I thought that was pretty good! The parents also mostly seemed attentive and engaged (though I don’t know what they were saying so I could be wrong). I left feeling encouraged!

Trying to stabilize the desks and chairs but actually just bending nails.

Avy, Clarina, Anna, Yara, and I went back after school ended to get started on our desk repair project. I think I mentioned this before, but the desks at the school aren’t in very good condition. Many of them are missing pieces and have random nails sticking out, and all of them wobble. We bought some nails last week to see what we could do with those, and if we need to buy some wood in the long run, we’ll do that later.

We had only been working for maybe 20 minutes when some guy randomly came and started helping us. After about an hour, we were out of nails, and Avy went on a quest for more. Our biggest shortage was of hammers, so when she saw a couple of guys carrying shovels, she asked them if they had hammers (because apparently having one tool means that you must have them all). They said yes and that they would bring them to the school. Better yet, they brought their hammers and stayed to help! The one guy was actually a carpenter, so he was awesome and we learned a lot from him.

The only thing that stopped us was the fact that got dark around 6PM. We weren’t originally planning to stay that long, but when you have 4 local volunteers helping and there’s a lot being accomplished, you don’t stop until you have to. We fixed all of the desks in the P2 room, plus the ones from the rest of the school that were in really bad shape. Some of them are definitely in need of additional wood. We’ll take an inventory of the pieces that are missing or broken and see how much it will cost to replace them. The nails went a long way though, so we’ll call it a successful day! It was nice to do something helpful that wasn’t expensive, and it was even better because we had some people from the community working with us.

Outdoor Classes

Posted on October 6, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

The P3 outdoor chalkboard. We’re really excited about the P3 teacher because he was so determined to not let the day go to waste. With this, they were able to have normal class, just with better ventilation.

Okay so I apparently know nothing about the size of our farm because when we got there this morning, guess what John handed us? Machetes. More sowing. I could tell that Anna was a little bummed that we were doing the same thing, but like I said, it’s just because this is her first week. I’d be happy to sow every day until I leave if you told me I’d never have to hoe again.

Mixing the sand and cement for the new floors.

This time, we went to another field that I didn’t even know existed. How have I been working on the farm for 2 months now without having any clue about how big it actually is? Crazy.

P3 classroom – “Before” shot. The light parts are where the floor still is and the dark parts are all of the holes.

The floor after they tore out the old one.

School today was kind of awesome. They’re redoing the floors in some of the classrooms because they’re in such terrible condition (I think I mentioned this before?), and the work started today on two of them. That obviously means that those classes (P2 and P3) couldn’t use their classrooms, so they moved all of the desks outside and they had class underneath the big trees in the schoolyard. The P3 teacher had a makeshift chalkboard, and Avy and I taught P2 using little whiteboards. One of the things I love about being here is that there’s a much smaller separation between the indoors and the outdoors. At home, we’re so cut off from nature. Here, it feels like the indoors and outdoors are less segregated… each one is like an extension of the other.

Avy doing song time during one of the breaks.

The P2 teacher, Everlasting, was overseeing the construction, so Avy and I took over his class for him. Avy did some reading stuff with them and I taught them about greater than, less than, and equal to in Math class. The difference in where the kids are skill-wise never ceases to amaze me. Some of the kids got it no problem when we gave them exercises, and others totally did not. I spent some extra time with one girl in particular who got all of them wrong. I wrote out all of the numbers from 1-100, and I pointed at them one by one while she said their names. We got to about 49 with no issues and then everything fell apart. No wonder she couldn’t do greater than and less than… she didn’t even know what the numbers were. We practiced that for a little while and then I moved on to the greater than/less than stuff. I can’t say that I think she understood it completely when we finished, but hopefully it was a bit better. The other thing you need to remember is that we have a language barrier, especially with the younger kids, so me explaining anything is a lot of hand motions and acting and pointing. Not ideal.

Me teaching about the greater than/less than fish who likes to eat the bigger number. This is actually still how I think about which way the symbol goes…

After lunch, Avy and I went back with Evans, one of the staff members from VCO (the org we’re here with), and checked out the drainage issue at the school. Evans has some architecture training, so the two of us tried to come up with an inexpensive but acceptable solution. Basically, the school is a U-shape and all of the water pools inside the U because of how the land slopes. There are two drain pipes at the bottom of the U, but they are way too small to handle all of the water. So the schoolyard floods and eventually overflows into the school building and the classrooms. Good, right? I mean, I look at the design of the school and where they decided to put it on the site and just shake my head. Anyone who took one second to think about it would have been able to tell you that there would be a problem. We came up with something, and hopefully they’ll get the funding to do it.

Seriously the best classroom… as long as it doesn’t rain.

We have another project planned for the school, so after we left, Avy, Clarina, and I went to Juapong (about 3 towns away) to buy some nails. Some of the desks at Baptist are in really horrible condition. Some are missing pieces, some are clearly falling apart, and ALL of them wobble. I can’t even imagine trying to learn while also trying to avoid getting stabbed by the nails sticking out of my desk. Anyway, we bought some nails and we’ll see how things go.

So Much Corn

Posted on October 5, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I bet you’ll never guess what we did at the farm this morning… more sowing!! We finished the field that we started yesterday (over all of the bean plants). It was just Yara, Anna, and me today, plus John and Anthony of course. We finished the field with about 20 minutes to spare, so John took us to a random little patch of ground, probably 15’ x 20’, in an area where I thought we didn’t plant anything and told us to plant more corn there. They’re just putting corn everywhere now. You can’t find a patch of land on our entire farm that doesn’t have it.

Yara and Anna seemed disappointed that we did more of the same thing. We’re coming from completely different mindsets because they’re trying to experience as many things as possible right now, and I’m happy to plant corn forever because I know that most of the alternatives aren’t any better. Like we could be hoeing.

At school, I decided to observe another teacher and went to P6 math class to learn about fractions and greater than and less than. I was pleasantly surprised by the teacher… she did a really good job of teaching the concept and checking to make sure everyone understood. When someone answered a question incorrectly, she figured out what was causing their confusion and explained that part again to make sure the entire class was on the same page. I think that summer school warped my perception of normal school because I saw how much our kids didn’t know and kind of assumed that normal school wasn’t very good. There are definitely a lot of things that could be improved, but from what I’ve seen of the teachers at Baptist, I’m impressed. Yes, I’m sure the teachers all have areas where they can get better, but they seem to care and keep thinking about ways to help get the kids up to where they should be.

I stopped by Everlasting’s class to experience a little RME (Religious and Moral Education) because I wanted to see what it was like. The kids were learning about religious families and where people from different religions go to worship. It’s pretty interesting that they have a class like RME. They learn a lot about Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions because those are the primary religions in the country. They also learn about building a solid moral foundation – things like helping people, honoring your parents, doing good work, etc. It seems like it’s a class that kids all around the world should have to take!

Teacher Meeting

Posted on October 4, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Another day of farm friends! Yara and Anna came back for round two, and Sal joined as well. I thought yesterday that we couldn’t possibly have any more fields to sow, but they managed to find one. Well, I thought today we DEFINITELY wouldn’t be doing it again… I was wrong. This time, we went over a bean field that I didn’t even know was part of our farm. I asked about the bean plants, and they said that they bought the wrong bean seeds and these weren’t good to eat. I think they just like growing corn the best, so now there are going to be like seven corn fields. Also, in case you’re wondering, since the sowing/machete/pinky finger incident of a few weeks ago, I’ve been extra careful with my machete and have had no further issues. Hooray for that!

The corn in the very first field we sowed.. I think it’s been like 6 weeks now since this was planted

At school, Avy and I were planning to observe the P3 teacher, but he didn’t show up. He’s been sick for the last few weeks, and Avy has been getting more and more annoyed that he hasn’t been doing his job. She went home because she said that she was losing even more faith in the school system because a teacher who has been completely blowing off his responsibilities hasn’t been replaced. She didn’t want to teach P3 because that would almost be encouraging his behavior, but then she didn’t want to stay at school in another classroom while knowing that P3 had no teacher. I stuck around and stayed in Everlasting’s class again and helped grade exercises while he taught.

I stepped out of the class for a minute before the first break, and there was a new guy teaching P3! I was super confused. Everlasting said that they had requested a new teacher to take over, but I didn’t think he would be there already!
Around 9AM while I was grading, a paper came around with a sign up for a teacher meeting starting at 9:45 (the beginning of first break). Apparently I was invited, and I figured why not? I was interested to see how it went. At 9:55, Everlasting said, “we should probably go to the meeting”. Oh right. At 10:05, five minutes were spent deciding who was going to do the opening prayer. At 10:10, the meeting minutes from the last teacher meeting in July were read. We all looked at each other for about 10 minutes while the headmaster asked if anyone wanted to add or change anything before accepting them. Only about two of the current teachers had been at the meeting, and they both said they didn’t remember it. Five more minutes. Okay, accepted.

During introductions, one of the teachers asked who the new guy was (the one I saw teaching P3), and the headmaster gave an explanation that didn’t really clear anything up for me. What I got from it was that they needed a new P3 teacher, and this guy just walked into the classroom and started teaching and the headmaster was happy that the problem was solved. Huh? I’m sure I missed something, but I’m glad that they have a teacher now. Hopefully he’s actually a teacher and not just some random person off the street.

Next they talked about forming a committee to collect the printing fees from students for the exams. That discussion probably took another 20 minutes, and three people who didn’t want the job got nominated and assigned to the committee.

The next topic was actually more interesting. For the exams, the teachers often end up reading the questions to the kids because they can’t read them themselves. The headmaster was saying that he wanted to mix up the students in each classroom to make it harder to cheat, and one of the teachers brought up the reading issue. That launched into a whole discussion about how reading is a big problem at the school, and the final decision was that the non-readers in school will be identified and have to attend additional phonics classes after school. I was excited because I think it’s going to be good for the kids, and it was encouraging to feel like the teachers really care about the students.

I left the meeting at noon to go to lunch, and they still weren’t finished. Oh yeah, and during this whole meeting, the kids were all just running wild and not in class. Teacher meetings apparently always happen during school… because that makes total sense. I don’t know. TIA. I’m choosing to focus on the fact that some really good things happened during the meeting and ignore the fact that no one was teaching during that time. I’m interested to see what happens over the next few weeks with all of this momentum!

Back to the Farm

Posted on October 3, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I have farm friends!! Clarina, Yara, and Anna all agreed to come with me this morning! They haven’t fully committed to making it a regular thing, but I’m hoping. I only need them to commit to two weeks because my college friend, Nick, is coming on the 15th (!!!). and I’m planning to force him to come with me.

The sunrise on the walk to the farm this morning

It’s been a week since I last went to the farm, so I had no idea what we would be doing. I was happy to see that the hoeing we started a couple weeks ago was since finished by someone else. Hoeing is the worst. It turned out that we were sowing more corn. Yay! That’s one of my favorite things to do. I was a little confused about what fields we had left because I thought all of them were full. John walked us over to the biggest eggplant field and said that we were going to plant there. Apparently the eggplants are nearing their end of life, so we’re just planting corn around them and I guess they’ll die when the corn gets big enough to block out the sun. I’m not really sure because some of them still have eggplants on them… I’ll have to talk to Joe and see if he’s planning another donation soon.

One of the pumpkin plants that we planted during my second week here. It’s getting so big!!

Anyway, we sowed the eggplant field, and I stopped by the poop hole on my way out. With all of the rain last week, there’s a little lake inside and some of the walls need to be straightened out a bit. I know I need to just suck it up and finish the job, but it’s no fun alone. Maybe I’ll take this week to get back in the farm groove, and NEXT week I’ll finish the hole. Yes, I know I’m making excuses. It’ll happen though, I promise!

Another one of the plants we planted. I don’t remember what this one is… I think Nico called it courgette and according to google that’s the same as zucchini.

After breakfast, we took the new teaching volunteers around to all of the schools so they can start deciding where they want to work. We started at EP, then went to Baptist, and finally to the junior high. Avy and I headed to Baptist after making the rounds because we wanted to observe Everlasting, and we didn’t have to feel guilty deserting P3 because the new teacher was finally there! It’s actually the old P1 teacher, and the new teacher that the government sent is teaching P1.

The P2 kids working together to form groups of 10 bottle caps

It was cool getting to see another teacher in action. I hadn’t done any observation of a local teacher before today, and I think it’s really important to get an understanding of what the kids are used to. I thought he did a really good job with them. He teaches P2, and there are 32 kids in the class. There aren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of them have three people sharing instead of the two they’re made for. Apparently they spent half of last year requesting new desks from the government, and at the end of the year they got sent ten wooden chairs. Unhelpful. So they still don’t have enough.

Speaking of limited resources, here’s how you teach a class when you don’t have enough textbooks for the kids. Most of the classes don’t have a textbook for each student, and you’re lucky if there are enough for each desk to share.

Even with a big class and limited resources, he’s so good at keeping the class under control. They were learning about the number 100, so he did an activity using sticks and bottle caps that the kids brought in (I told you, they’ll bring in anything you ask for!). After Math class, they had Language and Literacy and were learning about morals. Everlasting told a story in Ewe and then told the same story in English, and the kids talked about the morals of the story he told. I liked getting to see a class taught in Ewe. They were learning some English words, so at the same time, we learned some Ewe words. The Ewe alphabet is the same as the English alphabet but with I think 10 additional letters. After class, he taught Avy and me some of the sounds of the additional letters. One step closer to being fluent! Actually though, that’s never going to happen. Ewe is HARD. It’s more musical than English and you need to pay close attention to your pitch and emphases. I’m going to keep trying though!

We checked out a class at the junior high after lunch and learned about vitamins. They have to know all of the alternate names of the vitamins, why your body needs them, and the symptoms of a deficiency. It’s kind of intense… I never even learned most of the stuff they had to memorize. Education is so interesting because different people have different ideas of what is important, and there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer. Here, the schools don’t get a choice of what to teach because all of the curriculum is set by the government and standardized across the country. I can see how that has its benefits, but at the same time, it can be kind of limiting and assumes that all schools and kids are at the same level.

Sand Delivery!

Posted on September 30, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Normally we don’t work on Fridays because we’re travelling, but we’re staying in town this weekend to be here for the new volunteers. I think Avy wanted to take a mental health day, but I pressured her into coming with me. Pretty sure she was just going to come along for moral support and then ended up teaching English. I helped though! Sorry, Avy…

The front of the classroom.. Try teaching with the floor like this and not tripping. It’s a challenge.

I graded the homework while Avy did some phonics work. It took me forever because it was HORRIBLE. For English, they just had to say what greeting they would use at five different times throughout the day. For Math, they had to write five numbers in words. It was so bad that probably 25% of the class got “3” wrong. This is what I’m talking about with the whole “the kids are unlearning what they already know” thing. They absolutely know how to say “3”, but they panic because they think it’s more complicated than that. We re-taught the greetings and the numbers and then gave the kids a math test. I honestly don’t even want to grade it because I don’t have high expectations.

Today’s big event of the day at school was a sand delivery! Exciting! Somehow, nothing here ends up being simple. The sand delivery is because the floors in the school were constructed horribly when the school was first built, so now the classrooms all have giant potholes in the floors. They’ve since fixed three out of six of them, and Avy is using some of the money she raised before coming to fix the rest. The sand truck came to bring the sand they’ll need for the project, but the ground is so soft from all the rain we had recently that the truck got stuck and just dumped the sand there. Luckily, Everlasting, the P2 teacher who has been helping to coordinate the job, said that it was okay because he thought that might happen and asked the kids to bring pans to school. The upper primary kids spent part of the morning carrying sand (on their heads, of course) from the dump location to the school. I think it’s hilarious that all of the kids actually brought pans with them, and it’s awesome that they’re always doing things to help out around the school.

The relocated sand pile. You can see more kids coming with sand on their heads from the left side of the picture.

We headed home after lunch, and guess what??? Best day ever!! (Yes, I know that I claim best day ever pretty often, but so what?) Everlasting has a bike, and he offered to let me borrow it for the weekend when Avy said something about how I miss my bike. With no hesitation, he said I could take it over the weekend. How cool is that?? I haven’t decided how I’m going to handle riding on the road here, but maybe if I go early in the morning, there won’t be many cars out.

The rest of the day was spent just cleaning and organizing to get ready for the new volunteers. Avy and I moved my bed around, so I hopefully will get better air circulation from the fan and won’t wake up every morning feeling melted and gross. I actually think I like the new setup better anyway. Fingers crossed that Joe puts all of the new volunteers in the other room, and our room can stay just the two of us! We finally found out (maybe) that we’re getting six new volunteers, 4 girls and 2 guys, 5 teaching and 1 medical. That means zero agriculture (unlike the 2 that they told me before), but I’m thinking that maybe I’ll be able to convince some new people to come along anyway. I really hope so.

RIP Couch… and Another Mouse…

Posted on September 29, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m really liking this whole school thing… and the not waking up at 5AM thing. I promise though, if someone comes this weekend who is willing to come to the farm with me, I’ll start going back. I still have to put the finishing touches on the poop hole, but it’s hard to find the motivation when I know that it’s just going to be me.

Song time at the beginning of class. The kids get super excited about this, so Avy likes to do it at the very beginning of class to encourage the kids to show up on time.

I went back to school with Avy today. I’m starting to feel like myself again, but my stomach is still a little out of wack. It was such a good day because the kids were well-behaved! It’s amazing how one day, the class is so bad and you leave feeling discouraged and exhausted, and the next day, the class is so good and you leave feeling elated and still exhausted. It usually seems like a good day is immediately followed by a bad day, so right when you’re feeling like maybe you have things under control, you get an aggressive reality check.
Today’s English lesson was about greetings: Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening. We talked about what times you say each of them and then had the kids practice for about an hour. All of the things we’re teaching seem like they should take about 5 seconds to explain, but that’s never the case. It’s hard to tell how much of that is the language barrier, how much is the kids being behind, and how much is just because they’re kids and I’m not used to their learning speed. I don’t think they really know how to tell time either, so that doesn’t help when you’re trying to use times to explain something. It seemed like they were kind of understanding it by the end. I guess we’ll see on their homeworks tomorrow!

Baptist is part of a government program that provides lunch to the kids each day. It’s currently the only school in town that provides lunch, and because of that, the enrollment is higher than at the other public primary schools. There are women who cook for the whole school, and when it’s lunch time, one woman delivers bowls to the classroom and two deliver the food. It’s pretty cool, and it’s good to know that the kids are all eating at least one meal each day.

Math was more of the same number talk we’ve been doing for the last few days. If you’re wondering how many times you can teach the same thing, and have a bunch of the kids still be completely lost, the answer is at least five. It seems like they’re almost unlearning the things they already know because they try to make things harder than they are. For example, they definitely know how to say two digit numbers, but now they’re getting confused and they’ll say something like “two thousand, four hundred” for 24. Noooo!! It’s one thing when they struggle with the new concepts… it’s another when they regress because of the new concepts.

Avy and I had a mouse adventure today. When we were sitting around doing work after dinner, a mouse ran across the room into a kitchen. We managed to trap it under this bucket, but our plan didn’t go much past that. Honestly, I didn’t think there was any chance we would actually trap it. Anyway, we didn’t want Agnes to move the bucket in the morning without being ready for it, so we left a sign. I’m almost positive that the mouse is going to suffocate tonight though… I feel bad about it, but what are we supposed to do???

One of Avy’s big classroom management strategies is to keep a running score of the class vs. the teacher. When the kids are behaving and following the rules, they get a point. When someone breaks the rules or the class is misbehaving, the teacher gets a point. You pick an end point for the competition, and if the class wins, they get a reward. Today was the end of this round of the competition and the class won, so their reward was that we came back after lunch and did drawing time with colored pencils. It was good that we didn’t try to do anything that required a lot of concentration because the kids took their medications during lunch, and all of them came back feeling sick and dizzy. We spent about an hour trying to get them to draw things from their imaginations before heading home, totally exhausted.
The ultimate bummer of the day is that the couch is gone. I think Joe wanted it out, so Agnes said something about it removing it this morning. I am so upset. How am I supposed to get comfortable in a bunch of plastic chairs?!?! RIP couch. The ultimate awesomeness of the day was a hot bucket shower. I was dreading showering because the water is always freezing, so I heated some up in our tea kettle and combined it with some cold water in the bucket. I can’t even describe how incredible it was to take a warm shower. Life changing!!! What have I been doing for the last two months??? A warm shower is the answer to every problem.

Baptist Primary

Posted on September 28, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I feel mostly better today! Though I’m not sure if that’s because my body is actually recovering or if the meds are just masking the issues, and as soon as I stop taking them I’ll be right back to where I was on Monday (dramatically laying on the couch). For now, I’m just going to be happy and not question it.

Our classroom! When the weather is nice, it’s actually not bad. We brought rubber bands to tie the window shutters open so that there’s more light and air circulation, and that makes a huge difference. We’re trying to figure out a better way to hold them open that can be implemented in all of the classrooms.

When we got to school this morning, the place looked deserted. There were no kids or teachers anywhere to be seen. As we got closer, we could hear some noise coming from one of the classrooms. It turns out that first period on Wednesdays is Worship, and they had somehow managed to squeeze the entire school into ONE room. I seriously don’t know how they did it. That’s probably about 200 kids in a single classroom, plus the windows were closed so there’s no way it wasn’t 5000 degrees in there. It ended maybe 5 minutes after we arrived, and kids just kept pouring out of the room. Next week we want to get there early so we can see the whole worship and also understand how it’s physically possible.

One thing that’s in terrible condition is the floors. They didn’t have a lot of money when they built the second part of the school, so the quality of the floors is terrible. One of the teachers told us that they started breaking within 6 months. Avy is planning to use some of the money that she fundraised before coming to help fix the floors.

Avy worked with the kids on phonics again while I graded the homework. I actually really like grading. I think it’s fun to see how the kids are doing (though if they aren’t doing well, I start getting annoyed). Avy also said that when she first started with the class, she had a lot of trouble getting them to do homework. Now, more and more of them do it each day, and today, everyone turned something in! I can’t say that it was all good, but at least it’s a start. The homework we give them isn’t even that much of a time commitment. It’s usually 5 English questions and 5 Math questions that are exactly what we did in class, so if they paid attention and understood anything, it should take maximum 20 minutes.

Machetes all over the ground during the assembly. This is so typical, and I’m starting to just get used to it. I had to consciously remind myself that this is funny, not normal.

During the first break, there was a surprise assembly (as in, a surprise for us but pretty sure all of the other teachers were aware). First, they split the whole school into three teams which apparently they’re going to use to have a competition throughout the year. The headmaster kind of explained it, but I’m not too sure about how it’s going to work. I think it’s a way to break them up to do the different chores at school (such as machete-ing the grass, sweeping, cleaning up the school grounds, etc). Second, they appointed the class prefects. I also don’t know what that means, but I do know that each time someone’s name was called, the other kids cheered loudly, and the person who got picked didn’t seem thrilled. Third, they let the kids know that tomorrow there will be a mass drug administration to prevent worms and bilharzia (you can google them if you want, but if you don’t know I recommend preserving your ignorance). This whole thing took about an hour and a half, and then it was time for lunch… so much for math class. We let the kids eat, did a quick math lesson and assigned some homework, and headed home. Not the most productive school day, but I’m starting to get used to that.

Goodbye Nico

Posted on September 27, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I skipped the farm again this morning, partly because Nico wasn’t going and partly because my stomach is still a total mess. All I’ve eaten the last two days is plain spaghetti, plain rice, and I had plain toast for breakfast this morning. What could it possibly be complaining about anymore? I’m thinking now that maybe it wasn’t food poisoning..? How long does that last anyway? It’s times like these that I really wish Amber was still here. We were sending her messages all day yesterday with our symptoms and such, trying to get a diagnosis, but it was way better when she was just here to stitch us back together herself.

So that I didn’t feel totally worthless (and so that I could pretend for a little longer that Nico wasn’t leaving), I went to school with Avy this morning. She’s been teaching P3 at Baptist because they still don’t have a teacher. They’re supposed to have about six different subjects, but she’s just doing English and Math during the morning, and the P2 teacher combines them with his class in the afternoon.

Our small, sad family picture.. James, Avy, Nico, and me

In English, they’re just working on phonics. Avy went over the short vowel sounds today. Watching her in action is kind of crazy. I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t remember anything about when I was learning how to read. Teaching that to kids is a HUGE job! She’s really good at it though, so I was happy to have a chance to watch and learn (while simultaneously grading their homeworks). I was planning to teach Math, but my stomach wasn’t up to it, so I just observed that as well. It was good to have a day to figure out where the class is and see how she manages the kids. Assuming that I feel better tomorrow, I think I’m going to take over Math. They’re learning about saying numbers in words (for example, 5,698 = five thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight) and I’ve already taught that multiple times, so I think I can handle it.

Me and Nico with his hand washing bucket creation! We all talked about making a bucket with a nozzle for washing hands (they have a larger version of this at the clinic), and he actually made it happen! It’s probably my new favorite thing because one of my biggest complaints about being here for the first few weeks was never feeling like my hands were clean. Now I can!!

After lunch, the moment I’d been actively ignoring for the last couple days finally couldn’t be ignored any longer. Nico left. This might have been the hardest goodbye, partly because Nico and I spent so much time together, but also because aside from Avy, he was the last of our original group. He’s also the last of the people that I came here with, and I think you have a special bond with that group because you’re all figuring out and experiencing things for the first time together. It feels like the end of an era.

The house is so empty now. We’re down to just Avy, James, and me, at least until Saturday when we’re supposedly getting six new volunteers (I say “supposedly” because we can never get a straight answer from anyone about who is coming or what program they’re doing, and anything they do tell us ends up being at least a little wrong). It’ll be interesting to see the house dynamic with so many new people. Fingers crossed that it’s still good! They said we’re getting two new agriculture volunteers, thank goodness, because I’m really not into the idea of going to the farm by myself every morning. Maybe this week I’ll just focus on teaching and get back into the farm groove next week.

An Action Packed Day

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

I’m finally starting to feel like I hit my groove at the farm, and that’s usually when things start going wrong. As soon as you’re feeling too confident, something happens to put you back in your place. We sowed another corn field this morning, and I was actually managing to move at an acceptable pace! I think I have the technique figured out. Things were going great! Anddd then I was an idiot and started being overconfident and managed to cut my pinky finger with my machete.

I was so embarrassed and we only had about 15 minutes left and I didn’t want the guys to know what had happened, so I was planning on just pretending nothing was wrong and finishing the work. Great plan except that apparently fingertip cuts bleed excessively. After about 1 minute of trying to keep going, I had to stop and signal to Amber to come help me. We didn’t have a band aid and didn’t want to ask, so she took the random objects (some string and a water bag) I had in my bag and pulled something together. Once we got back to the house, she cleaned it out and put an actual band aid on. It’s really not that bad (so Mom, stop freaking out).
After breakfast, we went around to the three schools we’re working with. We’ve spent a lot of time at EP, but I hadn’t been to Baptist or the junior high yet. We met the headmasters of both schools and talked a bit about what we can do to help out. Baptist still doesn’t have a teacher for P3, so that’s good…

Anyway, today was still a cleaning day so the kids were outside, chopping down some of the tall grass around the school with machetes. I’m glad that a bunch of 10 year olds can handle their machetes better than I can. It was a good morning for my ego.

In the afternoon, James had plans to go to the orphanage to train their soccer team, and we all decided to go with him. I haven’t been yet, and I was interested to see it. That’s where the food from the farm goes. It’s about a 20 minute tro ride and a 15 minute walk from our house. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the situation there. They have about 35 kids, and they all have their own beds and there are flush toilets and running water. They definitely aren’t living in luxury or anything, but it’s actually probably a step up from our house. The floors are even tiled!

WAIT. There’s more. They have a washing machine. Yes, an actual clothes washing machine. And it works! I almost lost my mind. I actually had a dream last week where we got a new house with a washing machine and I almost cried I was so happy. It’s funny the things you end up missing… I don’t think I would have put that on my list ahead of time. I probably would have mentioned running water, but I’m actually doing just fine without that. Anyway, they also have an oven and a microwave and a couch. Mmm I also miss my couch. It’s okay though. We’ll have a beautiful reunion in November.

A couple of the kids insisted on borrowing Amber’s and my sunglasses and then begged me to take a picture

Okay sorry, I got distracted. Like I was saying, it was nice to see what we’re working for at the farm every day. We got home just before dinner and then spent the night assembling school supply bundles for the kids at EP and Baptist. Avy raised money before she came to be used wherever she saw a need, and after seeing how many kids don’t have what they need to be successful at school, she started looking into getting some supplies for everyone. Each kid is going to get a notebook and a pencil case with a pencil, pen, eraser, sharpener, and ruler. They’ll still need more notebooks and the pencils won’t last all year, but it’s a start! It’s also good motivation for the kids because who doesn’t love new school supplies? We all helped put the pencil cases together, and they’ll be distributed to all of the kids later this week.