Village life Pt.1

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must....undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
-Thomas Paine


So here we go this will defiantly take a few posts. We had a "goodbye" dinner with Jackson, Sister B., Eric, Sala and Happy. It was really nice and they bought us a beer each. But when i say beer i mean a 2/6(for those that don't know they're the 750ml). Let me tell you, I've never had a nun get my tipsy before. Since we haven't had booze for a while it may have gotten to us. So we all got dropped off at our villages. When i came to the village i was greeted by my "mother" Ataa and her the father "old man" who is blind. O and about 30 kids. We all had formal greetings and then sat down while Jackson, Erica and Sister B. talked. As i was sitting there Jackson very non nonchalantly informed me that i would be teaching at the school. Excuse me. Teaching. School. Kids. The. At. They then left and the kids sang for me which put a big smile on my face. This was followed by almost no conversation and me trying to figure our what exactly was going on with this teaching business. When i asked about it she just said"you don't think it's a good idea". I said " O no i do" and we went back to them talking but not to me. She abruptly left and left me with a huge amount of children. Children. I'm defiantly not the most "playey" with children but i adapted. I sat down and they surrounded me. I just did stupid silly things and it made them laugh. Its way easier to entertain kids here. Back at home its usually like,"What, your not an electronic device, I have no use for you."I was then told after about an 1 hour of sitting around with kids, that it was time for my bath.

Bathing here is way different and i love it. You get one bucket of water for your bath and its more that enough, I usually have left over water. When you compare this to that fact that at home one min of showering equals one bucket-it means we waste a lot(thank you Pamela and Colleen for that fact i just stole). You take your bath in a cement block out in the open, its in a square shape and at there's a little hole where the water drains out. I use the case that holds my soap to scoop the water. I love bathing here, especially when its night and the stars are out. The day is sweet too cause there's a huge mango tree in my compound(house are) that comes partly over the bathing area. So after bathing we ate dinner and i tried to talk but it never went anywhere so i decided to go to sleep after dinner. I thought it would be nice to get some alone head space but i was informed i would be sharing the bed with another guy my age. Excellent. My bed is just an extremely springy(not the nice bounce kind but the metal poky kind) mattress barley off the floor. It was very hot in the room all the more because the roof was metal sheets but sleep came none the less.

In the morning the no conversation continued and i headed to school. The school consisted of K's Class 1,2,3 (2 and 3 were a shared class). The school system all together works like this K-Class6 then JSS1-4 then SSS1-3. But in this village you would have to go out of it to attend the other classes. I was met by a barrage of children who were suppose to be sweeping. They all stopped their sweeping and came over to see me. Once the class 1 teacher came over he introduced himself to me and told all the kids to go to assembly. Then the K teacher/head mistress introduced herself. I was to be teaching in the class 2/3 room and had yet to met the teacher. As I was waiting in the class room I could hear some yelling and screaming. Slowly more and more kids started crying and as i went to poke my head our to see what was going on the class 2/3 teacher came in. I later found out from Ataa what had happened when i went home for lunch. Laughing she said"Did you see all the children getting beat, they didn't do there sweeping." O, great because of me the kids got beat, super. And the beating didn't stop or for that matter the lack of education or the lack of proper teaching. Over the next 4 days that i went to school my ability to stay sane and happy slowly deteriorated but I'm good at pretending and hiding how i really feel so no one was the wiser. But i don't think if i did so any inkling of change they would have asked if i was alright. So the beating/canning, lets begin. Actually at this point extremely tired and i need a nap. But don't worry things have changed some what, you'll understand more once I update next which will be within the week. Now I'm at a much happier place than before. O and drinking coconuts is awesomely delicious. All right I'm tired, till next time. PEACE(don't beat your kids, you'll get wrinkles?)