I haven’t written in a little bit, but nothing really too exciting has happened. Thursday was Thanksgiving, so we all went to the country director’s house in Maseru. The food was incredibly mediocre, obviously mass-catered, but we all stuffed our faces anyway. The best part was definitely when we all (trainees, a bunch of current volunteers, and some staff) stood in a circle in the back yard under a tent while the rain poured down. We went around and said what we were thankful for, the staple activity of any self-respecting Thanksgiving. I happened to be last, and after I gave thanks (for the fact that all the trainees were all together now because I knew I would soon miss this when we all went to site, for a sweet, orange-checkered tie that I borrowed [Thanksgiving is a formal occasion, right? Not necessarily? Who cares.], and for my upcoming musical partner Jeff), Jeff and I launched into the rap/poem/rapoem that we had written the previous day. I rapped while Jeff accompanied on Alyssa’s ukulele. It was such a hit; everyone loved it. I’m sure I have a video somewhere…
The next day, we started practice teaching. Now that we had been to site and knew sort of what we would be teaching, we tried to teach the same grades during practice teaching. I had the form As and one class of the form Bs (the Bs are a big grade, so they are split into 2 classes, or “streams”) at a nearby high school. School was technically over, but the students stayed for us to practice on, and they also got lunch. The latter was probably a bigger attractant. They were pretty easy for day 1 because all I did was just explain the rules and expectations and I had them vote on their choice of a life skills topic. We would be teaching math, but one day we were expected to teach life skills, just for kicks, because some of us would be teaching that at our sites. I just tried to be very clear, outline the topics I would be teaching for the next week, and be firm about what I expected from them. Monday (today), it was actual math teaching instead of just intros, and it was pretty easy peasy. I’m going really slowly with them. However, to my surprise, midway through my Form A class, my observer lady (we were being observed by PC staff and ministry of education people) came up and whispered that a student had been raped on the way to school and that she had to go help take care of it, but oh no don’t worry, just keep teaching. Uhhhh, ok then. It occurred to me then that someone needs to teach thse girls some basic self-defense. Maybe I can do tha in my life skills class at site. Phew.
Yesterday, we had a weekend potluck where we normally have training. The dumb ones (me included) showed up on time, and proceeded to wait around for three hours, playing Pictionary on the white board and otherwise generally trying to amuse ourselves. After that, we played a most raucous game of Judgment (an awesome card game) where there was much spontaneous singing and banging on the table. Most of the time when I let a little crazy out, I’ve found that people catch on and add to the crazy. After the food, somehow the decision was made to go back to our houses and make more food. Makes sense, right? Today we decided to make makoenyas (“ma-kwen-yuh” fried balls of dough that they sell at some of the shops here), but instead of just plain ones, we would make them have fillings. After mixing up several combinations of apples, banana/peanut butter, and chutney, we formed and fried the little suckers. I was gonna bust from eating so much. They’re normally about the size of baseballs, but there was one that we put so much filling in, it was huge. We left it in for a long time to cook all the way through, but it kind of burned. It sort of looked like a little football. One day we shall start a makoenya stand. They look like they should be sweet, but every time I eat one and it’s not sweet, I get a little bit disappointed. Thus the idea to make a corrugated metal makoenya stand, but charge extra because we’ll put powdered sugar on top. Genius! There’s always money in the makoenya stand.
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