This week had its ups and downs. School has been okay, in math we are working division, soon to move onto solving for X, in physics we just started conversions for both 10th and 11th grade. Division for both grades should be review, but I am teaching it as if it’s a new concept, and yet I still have students struggling on the topic. Physics for 10th grade is a new concept, but for 11th grade it should be review. My understanding is that there was not a reliable physics instructor last year, so they don’t know the 10th grade information. This concept is annoying, reason being 11th grade is a year behind in content, so when they get to 12th grade they will be on 11th grade material (if that), meaning when they go to take the WAEC (It’s like the ACT) they will struggle in physics, and It will look as if I didn’t teach them everything they need to know, when in reality they were doomed to play catch up before I even got here.
The biggest frustration with school so far is the lack of studying (clearly not for everyone). When I was in school, I spent time in school, came home (most likely ate and watched Tv first) did my homework/studied, then did any extra chores or whatever else needed to be done. Here they go to school and once its finished they are done for the day. Now I understand there are several chores need to be done and Africa isn’t an easy place to live, but they aren’t spending time looking over my notes. Here is a perfect example, the kids are in school from 8am-2pm. They expect to be in school from those times. If a teacher doesn’t show up (or several teachers) they have “free periods”, well... instead of doing take home assignments, or studying/asking for help during the free period they will go walk around/ leave for the day, even though they have a chunk of (un-interrupted) time they are slated to be in school. A time where the pressures of taking care of kids/cooking/ cleaning doesn’t affect them. They don’t think to put this extra time into topics that are giving them a hard time. This frustration all comes back to in 10th and 11th grade I am doing review/ teaching on topics that they should have learned in 6th grade. I get that the foundation isn’t there, that isn’t the students fault, they didn’t fail themselves in learning the basics, the system failed them, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for me. I also lost my best student this week. He might have been the only student I had that walked into class having all the fundamentals (without needing review). I saw him on campus, yelled at him (well like half yelled) and said, “what you not come to class anymore?”, he brushed it off, then another teacher said, “why you not coming/” and pressed him a little harder, he said that he was having some personal issues with his mom and dad and explained what sounded like a fighting situation in the home. I then felt like an ass for yelling at him and told him he was welcome back whenever.
All week we worked on division, so I told the students that Friday we would have a 10point quiz on it. I reminded them every day that we were going to have this quiz and told them if they wanted to set up a study session that I would make myself available to them (something they did NOT take advantage of). Friday came along and I was walking to school when I passed one of my students, I joked and told her campus was the other direction and she informed me that we didn’t have school, that today was a working day. I decided to carry on to school, just to make sure, I passed 2 teachers who were leaving campus, they told me that the senior high still had school, it was only a working day for the lower grades. I finally reached to campus and talked to our VPA (vice principle administration) where he told me today was a working day, that senior high DIDNT have class and they were to “supervise” the work being done. For those who don’t know what a working day is, it’s a random day that administration deems no school because the campus is “dirty”. This means kids come with tools to clean up the dirt, sweep, cut the grass and so on. This was once again, frustrating/ embarrassing, because I talked all week about this quiz, only to arrive to school and not only not give my quiz but not be informed that they canceled classes for a working day. Our VPA apologized for the oversight and I rescheduled the quiz for Monday.
I found out earlier in the week that my only real adult friend, an old Ma in the community moved. The old Ma and her 4 children all lived with Mr. X (what I believed to be her husband) at the top of the hill as your coming to my community. I have heard 2 versions of what happened. Version one comes from the eldest daughter, she stopped me at school one day and said that they/she got in a fight with Mr.X and he felt she was acting rude on him, there was name calling/yelling involved, the result was Mr. X told them they were not allowed on the property any longer, so they all packed up and went to the farm that the old Ma’s father owns. The second version comes from Mr.X, he said that this rice business (people are harvesting rice all day long lately) has the old Ma really busy and she decided she wanted to live on that side, so they all packed up and left. Now, I wasn’t there so I can’t speak to what the truth is on the situation, I have ideas on what may be true and what may be lies, but I’ll leave you to make your own conclusion. All I know for sure is that the one person in my community I could sit down/have an adult conversation with has been ripped away and it has left me feeling sad.
I figured out the food situation with Surprises auntie and uncle this week. We decided that she would not cook for me during the week, being she teaches and the eldest daughter is the one left to cook at the house, but the days she was home, Friday/Saturday/Sunday, she would send me my own. The days she cooks for me I send over 100LD as to help with any extra costs, s100LD for a complete meal of rice, meat and soup, that’s about $1.00 USD. This weekend I got cassava soup, bean soup and potato greens. All delicious! I considered myself such a good cook in America, I got here, had all my conveniences ripped away and eat bean and veggies every day, when I’m creative, I get sick haha so to have her cook for me is great! I really appreciated/ missed it last night (13th), when I cooked for myself, and ate cabbage/ beans for dinner… yum ha.
Friday being I didn’t have to teach, I went to Sukako early and Rachel so graciously (as she does every week) allowed me to use her house to do some computer work while she was at class. Peace corps had applications out for different committees you can sign up for, the committees being, community economic development, diversity, gender equality, malaria taskforce, student achievement, and ag/nutrition committee. I spent time working on the application to the committee I would want to be a part of (can apply to many but only be on one) and posted my blog. Then I left her place to meet her in the market. The market is always a fun time, gives us a chance to walk around, buy things we don’t have at our site all the time and get our weekly doughnut. This week we got a doughnut from a different lady, it was huge and had actual sugar on it- utterly delicious (better than our typical doughnut). As to not make our original doughnut ma feel bad we got one from her as well, that means so many doughnuts, and I loved every moment of it haha. Jojo’s birthday is Nov 11th, I wanted to get him something nice, I found a little rubber football at the market for 50LD, and bought it for him. Walking around with a football was too funny, everyone made a point to tell me they loved football, to ask if I played, or just straight up ask if they could have it. I explained to one guy in my town (he is like my age) that it was a birthday gift, he went on and on about how his birthday was tomorrow and asked what he was going to get (a big nothing, sorry-o). After shopping, (I got grapefruit, cabbage, okra, and onion) we went back to her house to chat a while before I went back to Gbartala.
During my Sukako visit we decided that it had been a stressful week and deserved a nice cold drink, so we planned to meet in Gbanga at the guesthouse. Saturday morning came and I got a taxi in town and made my journey to Gbanga (about 30 min from my site). We all met at the guesthouse and ordered okra soup/cold beer and got a much appreciated chance to talk about the ups and downs of the week we were having. After lunch Madeline and Mena left, and Rachel and I walked around Gbanga to do some shopping. My shopping list consisted of a toilet seat, peanut butter, and spoons. I took really exact measurements of my toilet seat before leaving (cutting string to roughly the dimensions) and apparently have the worlds largest toilet. I have a seat on it currently but it’s too small (hence the world’s largest) and unfortunately couldn’t find one big enough. I did however find spoons and peanut butter. I have always loved peanut butter, but haven’t bought it in a while because I have no self-control and ate the entire jar in like a weekend, finally I allowed myself to buy it again... but now have to put myself back on probation because I ate like the entire jar again in one weekend ha. I also bought a battery/current fan. This is the best purchase ever in the world of purchases! The fan is a bit pricy for what it is, I paid 10USD, but it is 1000000% worth it and I suggest to any PCT to pack one with you #priorities!
Bug update
This isn’t a section that I necessarily want to add at the end of every blog but it seems necessary lately. One night (I had jogged earlier that day) I went to go take a bath. I took my light and walked into the bathroom to see a cockroach (the length of my pinky but width of my thumb) crawl out of my shower drain and when the light hit him I watched him crawl back into my shower drain. Shower for 2 anyone? Killing cockroaches is a gross process because those things are crunchy! I took a bin and put it over the drain, put another jar on top to weigh it down, and decided I wasn’t feeling a shower that night. I took the Liberian bug death spray and sprayed inside the drain and the next day I took some cockroach gel that my mom sent me and put it all around the drain.
Now I have showered since the incident... and have not seen any cockroaches... but now I know they are there and I’m just not seeing them... which almost seems worse.
The biggest frustration with school so far is the lack of studying (clearly not for everyone). When I was in school, I spent time in school, came home (most likely ate and watched Tv first) did my homework/studied, then did any extra chores or whatever else needed to be done. Here they go to school and once its finished they are done for the day. Now I understand there are several chores need to be done and Africa isn’t an easy place to live, but they aren’t spending time looking over my notes. Here is a perfect example, the kids are in school from 8am-2pm. They expect to be in school from those times. If a teacher doesn’t show up (or several teachers) they have “free periods”, well... instead of doing take home assignments, or studying/asking for help during the free period they will go walk around/ leave for the day, even though they have a chunk of (un-interrupted) time they are slated to be in school. A time where the pressures of taking care of kids/cooking/ cleaning doesn’t affect them. They don’t think to put this extra time into topics that are giving them a hard time. This frustration all comes back to in 10th and 11th grade I am doing review/ teaching on topics that they should have learned in 6th grade. I get that the foundation isn’t there, that isn’t the students fault, they didn’t fail themselves in learning the basics, the system failed them, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for me. I also lost my best student this week. He might have been the only student I had that walked into class having all the fundamentals (without needing review). I saw him on campus, yelled at him (well like half yelled) and said, “what you not come to class anymore?”, he brushed it off, then another teacher said, “why you not coming/” and pressed him a little harder, he said that he was having some personal issues with his mom and dad and explained what sounded like a fighting situation in the home. I then felt like an ass for yelling at him and told him he was welcome back whenever.
All week we worked on division, so I told the students that Friday we would have a 10point quiz on it. I reminded them every day that we were going to have this quiz and told them if they wanted to set up a study session that I would make myself available to them (something they did NOT take advantage of). Friday came along and I was walking to school when I passed one of my students, I joked and told her campus was the other direction and she informed me that we didn’t have school, that today was a working day. I decided to carry on to school, just to make sure, I passed 2 teachers who were leaving campus, they told me that the senior high still had school, it was only a working day for the lower grades. I finally reached to campus and talked to our VPA (vice principle administration) where he told me today was a working day, that senior high DIDNT have class and they were to “supervise” the work being done. For those who don’t know what a working day is, it’s a random day that administration deems no school because the campus is “dirty”. This means kids come with tools to clean up the dirt, sweep, cut the grass and so on. This was once again, frustrating/ embarrassing, because I talked all week about this quiz, only to arrive to school and not only not give my quiz but not be informed that they canceled classes for a working day. Our VPA apologized for the oversight and I rescheduled the quiz for Monday.
I found out earlier in the week that my only real adult friend, an old Ma in the community moved. The old Ma and her 4 children all lived with Mr. X (what I believed to be her husband) at the top of the hill as your coming to my community. I have heard 2 versions of what happened. Version one comes from the eldest daughter, she stopped me at school one day and said that they/she got in a fight with Mr.X and he felt she was acting rude on him, there was name calling/yelling involved, the result was Mr. X told them they were not allowed on the property any longer, so they all packed up and went to the farm that the old Ma’s father owns. The second version comes from Mr.X, he said that this rice business (people are harvesting rice all day long lately) has the old Ma really busy and she decided she wanted to live on that side, so they all packed up and left. Now, I wasn’t there so I can’t speak to what the truth is on the situation, I have ideas on what may be true and what may be lies, but I’ll leave you to make your own conclusion. All I know for sure is that the one person in my community I could sit down/have an adult conversation with has been ripped away and it has left me feeling sad.
I figured out the food situation with Surprises auntie and uncle this week. We decided that she would not cook for me during the week, being she teaches and the eldest daughter is the one left to cook at the house, but the days she was home, Friday/Saturday/Sunday, she would send me my own. The days she cooks for me I send over 100LD as to help with any extra costs, s100LD for a complete meal of rice, meat and soup, that’s about $1.00 USD. This weekend I got cassava soup, bean soup and potato greens. All delicious! I considered myself such a good cook in America, I got here, had all my conveniences ripped away and eat bean and veggies every day, when I’m creative, I get sick haha so to have her cook for me is great! I really appreciated/ missed it last night (13th), when I cooked for myself, and ate cabbage/ beans for dinner… yum ha.
Friday being I didn’t have to teach, I went to Sukako early and Rachel so graciously (as she does every week) allowed me to use her house to do some computer work while she was at class. Peace corps had applications out for different committees you can sign up for, the committees being, community economic development, diversity, gender equality, malaria taskforce, student achievement, and ag/nutrition committee. I spent time working on the application to the committee I would want to be a part of (can apply to many but only be on one) and posted my blog. Then I left her place to meet her in the market. The market is always a fun time, gives us a chance to walk around, buy things we don’t have at our site all the time and get our weekly doughnut. This week we got a doughnut from a different lady, it was huge and had actual sugar on it- utterly delicious (better than our typical doughnut). As to not make our original doughnut ma feel bad we got one from her as well, that means so many doughnuts, and I loved every moment of it haha. Jojo’s birthday is Nov 11th, I wanted to get him something nice, I found a little rubber football at the market for 50LD, and bought it for him. Walking around with a football was too funny, everyone made a point to tell me they loved football, to ask if I played, or just straight up ask if they could have it. I explained to one guy in my town (he is like my age) that it was a birthday gift, he went on and on about how his birthday was tomorrow and asked what he was going to get (a big nothing, sorry-o). After shopping, (I got grapefruit, cabbage, okra, and onion) we went back to her house to chat a while before I went back to Gbartala.
During my Sukako visit we decided that it had been a stressful week and deserved a nice cold drink, so we planned to meet in Gbanga at the guesthouse. Saturday morning came and I got a taxi in town and made my journey to Gbanga (about 30 min from my site). We all met at the guesthouse and ordered okra soup/cold beer and got a much appreciated chance to talk about the ups and downs of the week we were having. After lunch Madeline and Mena left, and Rachel and I walked around Gbanga to do some shopping. My shopping list consisted of a toilet seat, peanut butter, and spoons. I took really exact measurements of my toilet seat before leaving (cutting string to roughly the dimensions) and apparently have the worlds largest toilet. I have a seat on it currently but it’s too small (hence the world’s largest) and unfortunately couldn’t find one big enough. I did however find spoons and peanut butter. I have always loved peanut butter, but haven’t bought it in a while because I have no self-control and ate the entire jar in like a weekend, finally I allowed myself to buy it again... but now have to put myself back on probation because I ate like the entire jar again in one weekend ha. I also bought a battery/current fan. This is the best purchase ever in the world of purchases! The fan is a bit pricy for what it is, I paid 10USD, but it is 1000000% worth it and I suggest to any PCT to pack one with you #priorities!
Bug update
This isn’t a section that I necessarily want to add at the end of every blog but it seems necessary lately. One night (I had jogged earlier that day) I went to go take a bath. I took my light and walked into the bathroom to see a cockroach (the length of my pinky but width of my thumb) crawl out of my shower drain and when the light hit him I watched him crawl back into my shower drain. Shower for 2 anyone? Killing cockroaches is a gross process because those things are crunchy! I took a bin and put it over the drain, put another jar on top to weigh it down, and decided I wasn’t feeling a shower that night. I took the Liberian bug death spray and sprayed inside the drain and the next day I took some cockroach gel that my mom sent me and put it all around the drain.
Now I have showered since the incident... and have not seen any cockroaches... but now I know they are there and I’m just not seeing them... which almost seems worse.