Day in the life of Kari
5:00 am. Usually I wake up for the first time about now because I have to pee. Sometimes I try to roll over and hold out, cuz I dont feel like walking outside to bare my ass in the mosquito infested outhouse. But if thats not possible, which usually its not, I get up, grab my windup flashlight, wrap a 2-yard around me like a towel-its usually too hot to sleep clothed, slip into my charlies (flip flops) which i keep by the door, and truck outside. You have to be careful not to step on the toads- they are everywhere, usually i end up kicking one or two accidently. After taking care of my business I greet whoever else is up on my way back (everyone wakes up at about this time) and go fall back into bed.
7:00 am. Rebecca, my small girl who lives next door and is the daughter of another teacher, bangs loudly on my door and yells my name. Most of the time I'm still asleep and if not am definitely still in bed- my favorite thing is to just lay in bed and think about things for awhile before getting up in the morning, nothing in particular, just whatever comes into my head. Rebecca is wanting the bottles of water she had stashed in my freezer of my small square fridge the night before so she can take them to school for her and her sister. After this I stay up and putter around, I either read or take a bucket bath or cook breakfast or add to whatever painting i'm working on or do some small laundry (this consists of a bucket and bar of soap and my knuckles.)
8:00 am. I walk across the soccer field which also doubles as pasture for the school's herds of goats and sheep. I cut over to the main part of campus where they are having morning assembly- its interesting because the teachers usually don't do anything, they just observe, and the prefects take care of all the pledges and announcements and lost and found. All the students stand in a semi circle around the flag pole in lines according to their class and height- JSS on the left, shortest in the front. I always wave to Zaratu, she is my other small girl, she is in JSS and always at the front because she is short. Then, I go to the headmistress's office to sign in and greet all the other teachers who are coming in. I don't think a day goes by when I don't greet every single one of them. I kind of like all the greeting, because it makes you feel like people care, and that way there isn't anyone whom you don't talk to at all.
8:45 I head over to the art building to make sure everything is in order for classes. I brief Shahad on what we're doing that day. Shahad is the teacher who is assigned to be my partner. Except it is more like I plan everything and run most of the lesson and he kind of helps out, which is fine because i'm not very good at group planning.
8:55 Class starts- this is my schedule:
Mon P1 8:55-10:10 and P2 11:30-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Tues P5 8:55-10:10 and P6 12:10-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Wed P6 8:55-10:10 and P5 12:10-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Thrus P4 8:55-10:10 and P3 11:30-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Fri- free
i'm pretty happy with it :) "P" just means primary and is equivelant to elementary of the same numbers... although the ages are all over the place, i have a 21 year old in my P6 class. crazy. they were all excited when i took all their pictures (5 & 6) and am going to print them at the suboffice so that they can make picasso style portraits of themselves. i also had them write "stories" about themselves to put on the back, which just means they answered some questions like age, # siblings (some where like 18), fathers job (most were farmers), fav subj in school, their fav. game, and what they want to be when they grow up....it was interesting some of their choices for what they want to be. one boy just wants to sell water bags in the market...another boy said he would be a doctor and when another boy told him he coudn't i made sure and told him many times that he could! lol, and another boy said he wanted to be someone on tv. it took me awhile to get them to even understand the question. i don't know if anyone has ever asked them that before, but they got really excited once they understood :)
I havent gotten to do much with my younger kids yet, because most of the class is taken up by going over rules and me getting their names and sign names written down...my rules are:
DO- share art materials, be creative, have fun/smile (this one makes them laugh because the sign for funny is scratching your nose with 2 fingers and the sign for smile is smiling real big and using your fingers to extend out from corners of mouth)
DO NOT- beat each other, come to class late, go in store room....lol, i figure that covers most things
i wrote DO and DO NOT on opposite sides of the board and then they had to choose where each rule went.
The kids are so cute and excited to be in art class. School is really hard for most of them and art class is when they dont have to think as much and they just get to DO. :) My sign language is getting a lot better. I'm usually able to say about anything I want to say. The problem comes when I put things in the order they go in English and not in Sign Language order. Example: English- Use the green pencil to trace your hand. Sign- Hand trace pencil green use. And its always hard for me to understand what they are saying to me. I get lost when i forget a sign and by the time I remember what it is, I have missed the 3 or 4 signs that followed it. They go so fast!
10:10 am. break. If I don't have a meeting to plan something or other I go over and sit in the shade with the other teachers and hang out. Usually its nice because they are speaking English (about half speak Twi and half Dagbani) sometimes they are all talking in Dagbani though, its weird because I can understand random words, but never really know what they are talking about. Sometimes I go back to the house to get water during break. I have developed this thing where if I start getting dehydrated even the tiniest bit, my ears clog and my voice echos in my head. It took me awhile to realize it was correlated with drinking water, i just thought I had some weird wax thing going on that would come and go.
11:30 am. next class
12:25 pm. class is over- usually I go chat with the other teachers for a few and then head back to my house for lunch and a nap. Here is a list of the food items I have that I can make things from: tomatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, apples, bananas, groundnut paste(peanut butter), yams, eggs, honey, mustard, oats, pasta, flour, sugar, margarine, tomato paste. Period....I've gotten good at getting creative :)
4:00 pm.ish I usually head back over to campus and stroll around or work on some project in the art room and let whoever wants come in and read kids books at a table. They LOVE this. I wish I had more children's books for them to choose from. I don't think they ever really have the opportunity to read any books at all. Let alone a book that isn't for school. The boys love the dinosaur books and are always amazed when I explain how they are real and lived a long long time ago. When I'm ready to go back and tell them to clean up there is always double handed and repeated thank yous. They are such good little students :)
6:00 pm.ish I head back to read or chat with the teacher neighbors who live in the compound next to me. Maybe eat something small for dinner. Do whatever chores need doing with Rebecca or Zara while listening to music turned up loud. Rebecca's favorite is Regina Spektor. Zara just laughs at us dancing to something she can't hear. I hate doing dishes. The way it works is I have two basins, one for soapy, one for rinsing. Then when finished I dump the dirty, soapy water outside and save the rinse water to be the soapy water for tomorrow. Water is scarce though, so I've gotten good at not using any. I probably drink about the same amount as I use for bathing, laundry, and dishes combined.
7:30 pm. JSS art club. I've only had one meeting so far, the others keep having to be put off for different reasons- either there is a thunderstorm or lights out or I have to leave because they are toxic smoking my roof to make the bats and bees who live there leave (thats why i'm at the sub-office this weekend, I had to stay out for a couple days while the fumes subsided) But about 50 kids showed up to the first meeting. I let them look at lots of different pictures of famous artwork I had. The couldn't stop looking! It was great to see them so interested in the different artists, they especially liked frida kahlo and salvador dali and they all thought the mona lisa was mary(mother of jesus). It was hard to explain how noone knows who the Mona Lisa is but that it is one of the most famous pieces of artwork in the world and the reason it is so famous is simply because Leo said it was the best thing he did and carried it everywhere with him. Don't forget all this is in sign language.... I tried though. After everyone finally showed up I told how I was going to be teaching batiking in the after school program and how they needed to bring some sketches for the next meeting or else they had to leave. This is my way of weeding out the ones who aren't serious. 50 people is too many! So Monday is the next scheduled meeting and we will see how many actually do the drawings. It could be of anything they want, however they want. Just the effort of them remembering to actually do something and bring it will show me they mean business about learning art.
9:00 pm. I head back across the field home. If I'm tired I go strait to bed. Sometimes I read for awhile and fight all the stupid gnats that come through the screens when I have the light on at night. I take a quick rinse bath-I'm usually too sweaty-sticky from the day to not. I send some texts to peace corps friends to see how they are getting along....then it starts over :)
Shoo-doop :)
