No more summer break

So it’s been a while since I updated. This is largely due to the fact that there was a period of doing very little followed immediately by doing so much that I didn’t have time to think. I’m settling into a pattern now and this seems like a good time to let all you folks know what’s been happening.

The new school year for secondary schools started this week (primary schools, grades 1-7, started last week). A lot of schools have been having teacher strikes and a lot of volunteers have been stuck at home, advised to stay away from school while their teachers are negotiating with the Ministry of Education. My school however is tiny and in the middle of nowhere. When I asked my principal about it, she said “we are hiding from the Ministry out here. If we do not teach, our students will not learn.” Understatement of the year. Our school is vastly understaffed and we can’t properly teach our kids as it is. My arrival at the school has increased our teacher roster by a full 25%. I am one of 4 teachers, though since our science teacher is MIA, we’ve been struggling through the week with a grand total of 3 teachers. I am teaching grades 8, 9, and 10 both mathematics and life skills (think sex ed mixed with leadership, conflict resolution, and human rights). I’m already teaching more than I’m supposed to as per Peace Corps suggestion, but there’s literally no one else who can teach it. To make things even easier, the school does not have syllabi for grades 9 and 10 for math. We also have zero textbooks for any grade. I’ve been doing a lot of improvising. But hey, I thinks been going pretty well. The kids are definitely learning. We’ve been working on multiplication, number sets and types, and equations of a straight line. For life skills we’ve been going over human rights and how they apply to the students.

Ahh, the students. I definitely haven’t gotten used to every student standing when I walk into the room and not sitting until I tell them too. I also haven’t gotten used to being calling Madame all the time. The name I introduced myself as is Mme Retha (pronounced Rey-ta) but only the teachers call me that. I’ve got some really bright kids and some kids who lack enough confidence to say even a single word in class. It’s a mix, just like any class in America. I said my school was tiny and I meant it. As far as I can tell, I have the smallest school of any Peace Corps volunteer in country. I have a grand total of about 30 students in the whole school. My grade 10 class is comprised of 5 girls and only those 5. They’re cuties though. Yesterday after class we had about 10 minutes before school ended and we decided that instead of yet another practice problem, we’d have a dance party. We broke out the music and they started dancing in synch. These girls got moves! It was a bit of spontaneous fun.

I’m starting to figure out what my students do and don’t know, so it’s getting easier but sometimes I’m still surprised. Today I got thrown for a loop. I’d been using numbers like 3.5 and -4.1 in practice problems for number sets for grade 8 and today I finally figured out they don’t know what a decimal is. They’ve just been nodding and saying they understand all week. The culture here doesn’t allow for mistakes. In a lot of schools (not mine thankfully), corporal punishment is still an accepted practice though it is technically illegal. The mindset of teacher abuse power in this country doesn’t breed student confidence or a willingness to make mistakes. I’m adjusting and I have hope that they’ll adjust to my teaching style. Of course, they also are dealing with understanding me right now. Some of them don’t speak English super well. I’ve noticed that I’ve started picking up an accent as well as speaking slowly and enunciating as clearly as I can when ever I speak to Basotho. They give me fewer blank looks when I ask questions in an accent. The learning curve continues.

On a separate note, I’ve been having cat adventures. I have a serious mouse problem in my house. They even keep me up at night with the racket they make. It says something about how desperate I am that I’ve decided to ignore my allergies and get a cat. I’ve tried twice now and it hasn’t taken. The first was a cat from another volunteer who is really more of a dog person. I dragged the poor creature in a laundry basket in a taxi to get it home. Imagine being stuck on Disney’s Indiana Jones ride for four hours with no seatbelts, no air conditioning and a cat trapped in a laundry basket on your lap for five hours. Now imagine that said taxi breaks down, twice. Not exactly my best day. By the time I got close to a friend’s place (about halfway to my home) it was getting too late. I would have missed my taxi to my village and been stuck in the junction overnight with a cat and nowhere to sleep. I decided to stay with the friend. Then I had to pack that cat back into the basket and spend another day with him traveling. He was as pleased about that as I was and I still have the scratches to prove it. I can hardly blame the fuzzy dude for running away and never coming back the first time he got out of my house. He’s a tough guy and used to be outside, so I’m not worried. But he’s not exactly scaring off my mice. So when I spotted the kitten in my host father’s shed I knew I had a second chance. The kitten’s mama belongs to my aunt. So I talked to her about it and she said I can have the kitten. So I spent the last several days spending my free time at home sitting outside the shed with some kibble, bribing the little fuzzball into trusting me. Two days ago I nabbed it, but I think it’s still too young and needed mama so after a night of the kitten doing its best impersonation of a car alarm (cat alarm?) I let it out again. We’ll try again in a month or so when it’s a little older. Until then I’m going to continue my quest to perfect DIY mousetraps. I don’t need any more scratches on my hands and arms, thank you very much.

So that about it sums it up for now. Schools an adventure. Cats are keeping things interesting. I’m starting to establish myself and get comfortable. On week down, two years to go.

Fuzz 1