chicken at last!

back to fajara this weekend for a day or two on the beach under the palapas. i've not yet spent a weekend in the village, but i know exactly what would happen if i did. (the same thing that happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before - only MORE of it). so i don't feel bad. in fact, i've gotten over the small guilt i was feeling at the time i spend away from the family/compound. i don't feel, as i think i did the first week, that i must spend every waking hour under the mango tree with the ladies, or playing with the kids. i have my routine and that involves sometimes hours at a time on my own, locked away in my room reading, or listening to podcasts or whatever it is i feel like doing on my own. (i have to lock myself in or the kids, chickens or goats might wander in).

speaking of chickens, we had chicken for dinner last night. i saw the chicken we ate when jainaba caught it with her two hands and grabbed it by the legs and took it into the kitchen to slaughter it. i can say that it made me think twice about eating it, and i pondered the benefits of vegetarianism (the way it squawked was horrific, and then the bile that came up from its stomach as it continued squawking!) but only for a few minutes, because IT WASN'T FISH and it was delicious! (from the looks of it, i thought it might have been a rooster, is that the same? who cares!) the sauce was amazing - the equivalent of an african BBQ, i think. i'm not sure what the special occasion was, i think perhaps because it was friday. so i'll make it a point to be home on fridays from now on!

though fridays are also rather slow because school lets out at noon. so i have the whole afternoon to lounge around the compound. yesterday i sat for awhile in jainaba's living room with her husband osman working out the sarr family tree. it's very complicated, but i think i get it. it started when he tried to explain to me that he'd married his sister. i told him that would be illegal in america and then worked out that he'd actually married his second cousin, and not his 'sister' (much better). the confusion comes here because everyone is 'sistah' or 'brother' ... so you have to be very specific in asking, 'do you have the same mother and father' 'do you mean blood sister'??

school has been successful this week. i consider a day successful if i feel like i've been able to get through to the kids to teach them one lesson, however simple. i've been assigned to work with the 5th grade, and sometimes the 6th grade - but the highest two grades. which i'm happy about because they can understand and speak a bit more english than the little ones. this week i taught the classes about opposites, pronouns, adjectives, and how to tell the time on a clock. they respond well to quizzes and group games where there is competition, and also to exercises that give them a little artistic freedom - although that one took a while to describe because i don't think they are used to being allowed to be creative. when i asked for them to draw a picture of two things opposite - most of them drew man/woman, boy/girl - and the pictures were hilarious, i wished i had my camera with me. only one team drew something different 'church/mosque' .... i let them have a point for that because i didn't think their english could handle the philosophical question of whether, in fact, the church and the mosque were really opposites.

i go back and forth in my reaction to the school, and my experience with teaching. one the one hand, i am extremely hopeful and i leave the school on most days feeling like the day was a success and i made a small difference. (which is fine, and exactly what i said i wanted to do). but other days, it feels so hopeless and i feel so sad at the 'school' experience that these kids are getting. and i feel like i could just charge in and tell them what they could do to improve things and what they'd need to change and how best they might do that. but things just don't work like that here. they wouldn't respond to that (indeed, the previous volunteer wrote up a report that said as much and the staff was very upset). they need encouragement with the staff that they do have (when they show up) - and not condemnation. so i am reserving those thoughts and just trying to do the best i can with the resources that they have. (chalk). if i were going to be here longer than 3 months, i might attempt some kind of shake up. but it just feels futile to rock the boat when i won't be around to ride the waves afterwards.

but it still feels early for the 'this is what african schools are like' blog - because even though it's been 3 weeks, i am still trying to get the hang of how it works, the timetable, the staff, the discipline, etc. so more on that at a later stage.

in other news, my eyedrops that i laughed about in an early blog (eyedrops? why am i bringing eyedrops?) have come in very handy! kaddy had something in her eye and was terribly upset and crying and i brought them out again and put a few drops in her eye. i think she was shaken a bit by the sting of them and cried even more, but then we layed down on her bed and i rubbed her head and sang just about every song i could remember from 'the sound of music' while she calmed down. i think she liked that because she put her hand on my hand as i rubbed her head to make sure i was still there (i'd covered her eyes with a wet cloth). i sometimes feel sorry for the kids because while they are so good at playing with each other and so independent and free-spirited, i don't think they get a lot of physical love from adults. so i didn't mind sitting with kaddy for awhile. and after awhile, she got up and said it was all better. and we shook our hands in the air like champions and ran around the compound in a victory march. (this was my way of letting the grandmother know that she was fine, and she quickly followed suit raising her arms in the air as well and laughing). i wish she spoke more english because i'd love to know more about the matriarch of the family. alas, we get buy on laughing with each other at our attempts to mime.

so onwards to the beach for a relaxing day of reading and listening to the waves crash. the program manager is leaving on tuesday so a few of us are going out for dinner tonight and i'll stay up in fajara with my friend (from last weekend) in her palace. to recharge myself (and my ipod!).

happy early birthday to my grandmothers who have birthdays on monday and tuesday!
enjoy the weekend!