Today was surreal.
When we arrived at school today the teachers either had not
shown up or were refusing to teach. I am
not exactly sure why but it seemed to be a mixture of: people being sick;
testing for the students starting Monday; teachers needing additional time to
write tests; it being Friday and a focus on physical education and/or frustration being expressed by the
teachers? We tried to follow some
routine and we were able to get four reading groups together before things fell
more or less apart in terms of structure.
The flipside was that the kids got to play a lot and Sylvie has now
mastered the clapping/jumping game – ampe – that most girls play. Even
though we have not been here that long, I have to admit that I have grown very
fond of many of the children at the school.
I am excited to see Bless more or less write her own name, and to take
on the sassy Selena, who stares defiantly at me when I tell her it is time to
stop colouring and hides a pencil crayon in her dress to finish her drawing of
an egg, and to encourage Cynthia’s imagination as she tells us the outrageous story
of her mother who keeps an elephant at her house, which travels with her mother
to the fields to help with farming. When
challenged by Dzidom regarding the truth of the story she very accurately states
“Now Dzidom, have you been to my house?
No. So how would you know what is
true?”, and for Rosemary who finally wrote her ‘e’ right side up and did not
look completely lost when I was speaking to her. As you might have figured out, we were
working on the letter Ee this week.
After school we walked to town. Many afternoons there are rumblings in the sky
and it very often looks like rain will come.
Most often it does not. Today
when we started it the sky was rumbling and it looked like rain. By the time we got to town and the bank it was
just starting to rain, but the sky was very dark. We decided to take a taxi back to “1st
wash basin” (the closest communal taxi stop to our house) and by the time we
got out of the taxi the sky had opened up.
We were completely soaked by the time we got back to the house and the
wind was fierce. However, walking by the
Kente weavers, with their open air workspace, you could still hear the clickity
clack of their looms as they weaved through the rain.
But the most surreal part I will save for another post, as
the computer is driving me crazy.
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