An easier day, sorta (July 1)

I woke up this morning in the exact spot I had fallen asleep in, which hadn’t happened at all since I’ve been in Africa. Despite the fact that I slept so heavily, I still managed to be absolutely exhausted all day and fell asleep for a little bit in the teacher’s lounge after class. It was freezing today and it rained, same as yesterday and last night. It’s crazy. I just want it to be warm again!

Our lesson today was a lot easier than yesterday, but I came to realize that the majority of these kids really do not understand what we’re teaching them. We use the teacher’s lesson plan so when she teaches them, they don’t even really understand. And I start thinking about how they got to this point. Today we had to re-read the story from yesterday so they could listen, and answer the questions we had written on the board. The first problem was: Birds use _______ to fly. They had to select their answers from a word bank. While we walked around to check answers, a lot of children had written “warm” “nests” “eat” or “useful” instead of wings. I don’t think they know their English vocabulary yet, so how are they able to teach them these stories? I was amazed. But once again, we stopped at each child to explain the correct answers, and this took awhile. Jess and I are planning a few of our own lessons to really focus on comprehension because we want so badly for them to be able to understand the material and succeed. After all, Standard 5 is taught entirely in English, so we worry how they will do once they move up in a few months.

Math was successful! It has been really consistent. They understand numbers much better than English. This lesson went pretty fast, we focused on length. The groups had to measure different objects in centimeters and then come up to the board and write the lengths of each object. Everyone got the correct answers! I was very proud of them. In their down time they sang to us again, I’m beginning to think that’s my favorite part of my day. We left early and walked with Dr. Kelly to Malemia because the Radford group is working on painting the classrooms there. It’s coming along great, and I really love that school. It was feeding day, so we got to see the food program at work. The youngest kids are fed first, and the oldest are fed last. It’s sad though because if the kids come without a cup, they don’t get fed. This is an unfortunate reality for many kids there. A bunch of them just sat along the walls of the school buildings playing together or watching everyone else eat. I made it a point to spend some time with them, as much as I could spare anyway, so it took their mind off it for a while. All the kids are so adorable though, at every school, so I pretty much love wherever I’m at for the day.

Early dinner at Tasty Bites tonight, it’s cheaper and we were starved. It was alright, half of it was cold. I was thinking about it today, American’s are so used to instant gratification. Everything is much slower here. It’s like we’ve gone back a hundred years. It takes forever for food to come out and when it does it’s not guaranteed to be what you ordered, or even warm, but you eat it anyway because it will take too long to fix. The power goes out everyday, sometimes multiple times, so when something needs to be done we make sure to take advantage of our time with electricity. The Internet has been really bad lately, when we want it, we can’t have it, when we don’t need it, it works perfectly, of course. Phone calls don’t transfer through too well. The shower isn’t always hot. Our cable doesn’t work very often and when it does our choices are Soccer, a channel in Chichewa, or some crazy American movie too shitty to play in the states. We can’t even get a drink of water when we want it, or eat an apple, or make a salad.

But that’s what I mean, we have so many expectations, naturally, so being here is a challenge for most of us. Don’t get me wrong, this has been an incredible experience so far, but I’m already looking forward to being able to open my mouth in the shower, at the very least. If you think about it though, we lose so much in America spending all our time perfecting ways to make our lives easier, that we lose focus on some pretty amazing things. The people here have a greater appreciation for everything you can imagine, because of the amount of time they put into everything. I also feel like I’ve met more genuine people since I’ve been here than some of those I’ve know for years at home. If anything, this makes me want to travel more, meet more people, see more places, I’m glad I’ve chosen this major after all.