The Cold Season Approaches

11 April, 2008
My head is spinning with information and ideas at the moment. My training group [the 25 that I came into country with last September] just finished our IST [in-service training] after our first three months at our sites and teaching. We spent a lot of time talking about potential secondary projects and how to go about finding available funding – and all the associated grant and proposal writing that comes with that. I have a renewed sense of wanting to investigate my community. I have visions of school lunch programs, bee keeping, new boreholes. But all of those visions are mine and not my community’s – and that’s where is needs to start; with my students, with my counterparts, with my neighbors.
We’ve also started planning for summer school; which happens for two weeks after term three ends in November. Each education volunteer chooses their best 2 form3 students to send to the 2 week long camp. This year it is our groups turn to lead and organize so we started planning and are still naively enthusiastic. We’ve come up with a neat class structure for the camp: the first week will be focused on the exam-able subjects and students will choose their electives. After that first week we will have ‘career counseling’ and talk to the students about this career goals, while realistically looking at their strengths. Then the second week will be more ‘track’ focused in specific career tracks with related field trips and practicums. At the moment we are still focused on preliminary work – what site we want, enrollment applications, fundraising; but it’s been exciting to start this project.

17 April 2008 – Thursday
Not even a week back at school and it’s already crazy. This was the third morning in a row that I have met with for from4 at 6am for extra math lessons [we’re meeting again tomorrow]. But it’s paying off in that we are making amazing progress. Even the stragglers seem to be following [which with quadratics is saying a lot]. My first period of the day was form1 math. They don’t fit in their classroom so groups inside is impossible, while groups outside, I found, is MASS CHAOS! But only until I started shouting instructions in Chichewa…then it went ‘smoother’. I literally ran to math in from3 and then finally had a short break before going back in to teach biology. The whole time during break I had students coming in asking about their homework assignment, I met a new student and was amazed to learn that one of my students has been cycling 25k to school each morning…but now is self-boarding within the catchment area. I’m paying a second student’s school fees – I almost thought he wasn’t coming back. Turns out he had gone over the border to Mozambique [on his own] to work for three weeks and only make 800mk [roughly $5]. School fees at 1400mk for this term. He can’t be more than 15yrs old.
After tallying up exam numbers for the head teacher, I headed home running into a student along the way that informed me that he would miss class tomorrow. He needed to buy boarding supplies – which I suppose is code for buckets and a backpack. This new attendance policy of mine is working well. Now I know WHY my students are gone. I know that Jam had to go to his grandfather’s funeral, that Danwell is working fulltime at the clinic, that Roderick was harvesting maize. All these things help me know my students better. But it’s a balance – the closer I get to my students, the more disconnected and disillusioned I become with my fellow teachers.
Finally getting home [after multiple more greetings] I went to get water, but was distracted by Revsoni [the 9 month-old next door] waddling through a maize field. He couldn’t even walk when I got here…and now he is getting himself lost. Then came the best part of the day – because it just flowed so well. I built a fire, and put water on [for a bath later] and then put my shoes on to get my phone from the shop. Again I got distracted by my Soya beans, and thus my skirt ended up covered in all sorts of prickly sticky seeds. As I was picking them off three students walked by and proceeded to help. What a picture we four must have made attacking my skirt. I finally got my phone and after meeting my neighbor near the tomato stand he walked me home. Well, almost. He veered off to visit a sick friend along the way. I brought oatmeal over to my neighbor and pop rocks for the kids J While we chatted, kids were sliding down an enormous rock façade using leaves as sleds! Getting home, my water was boiling and I took a hot bath and shaved. Mmmmmm.