a party and more

Our good friend Lolly (sometimes called Lorry) in the mud outside Sineads room.
Traditional (I think) houses that are near the church by my house- I don't think anyone lives in them now, and I'm not sure if they are used for anything.
Me and a cat at our friend Kate's house.
Girls dancing at a farewell party at Sineads school.


Another week of teaching has come and gone, and we are beginning our third weekend here. Despite my negative post below, this week was probably the best in terms of teaching, my learners are starting to get more comfortable with me and vice versa. I’m still disappointed at how poorly many of them are doing on the tests I give them- I would say the tests are too hard, but then one or two students ace them every time. I just need to get used to dealing with a wide range of abilities.

It seems the weather here is following a pattern of rainy for five days, and then sunny and hot for three. Yesterday everything was a huge mud pit and I was cursing the rain, but now it’s so hot I want the storm clouds to come back- I guess I’m hard to please. Fortunately there have been very few mosquitoes lately, despite a whole lot of standing water, so I have something to be thankful for.

Yesterday I crashed a going away party for a former principal at Sinead’s school- it was a long affair, but also really fun to see people here celebrating- the food was really good too, though very meat heavy. I also tried traditional millet beer, which is very interesting and maybe I’ll someday get to like it, but yesterday it kind of made me feel ill. It’s good to start to get plugged in with the community, I think both Sinead and I are going to make a bigger effort to do that in the coming weeks.