I’ve been very antsy lately. I keep
looking at my calendar, seeing how many days and weeks are left for me to be
here, the few events I have lined up between now and when I leave, anxious for
the next month, the next milestone to roll around. Maybe it’s because I ran out
of data so I can’t entertain myself with the internet…
The
other math teacher finally came back to school after being gone for 2 weeks. My
principal thinks he’s running from debts or financial obligations, but when I
asked him where he was, he just said he “wasn’t feeling well.” Right. And
unreachable by phone too? I’m really disappointed in how people can just
abandon their students like that. It seems to be a common theme with a lot of
teachers in this country, not caring about actually teaching.
Today
that Form B student who wanted to start an HIV awareness club put together
their first meeting. Today there were 7 students who were supposed to get
together to just plan club logistics, but it turned into me giving a crash
course on HIV while they furiously took notes. I was fielding all kinds of
ridiculous questions. Can it be spread by pimple to pimple contact? What if you
have a cut on your finger and you touch HIV-infected blood, then cut off your
finger really fast- will you still get infected? What if you’re on one side of
a stream, and your HIV-positive friend is on the other side and gets cut under
water and is bleeding, and you happen to have a cut on your leg- will you get
infected then? These kids have an endless supply of “what if” questions. After
the crash course, I helped them come up with some activities they could do as a
club, and reiterated the need for a non-me teacher to be able to explain in
Sesotho and bring this club into the future without dying when I leave.
In
my usual weekend adventure, after going to the orphanage to teach and have
lunch, Andrew and I went to this enormous waterfall about a 2 hour walk away.
It’s so awesome! I wish I knew about it a long time ago. As we got up higher on
the path, there were a hawk and ibis hovering on the winds, basically at eye
level, with the backdrop of a cattle post on a mountain across the valley. The
waterfall was the victim of pre-storm winds, and most of the water was actually
flying up and making it rain above the level of the river before the drop. It
was so cool!
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