Forty Days to Go

Exactly 40 days from today I'll arrive back home. It seems to be coming shockingly fast. It's really hitting home now that Isaac, my good buddy in the region who was in my training group, is leaving his site in about ten days. In a month I'll be packing up my things and getting ready to go. As I've written before, I have mixed feelings about this. I'm excited to go home, but I also like it here a lot. It doesn't help that the girls are already starting to lament my upcoming departure. "Sir, when you leave we will cry so much!" is a common comment. Enough of this, it's been quite awhile since my last update, so I should say what's been going on.

The Form 4s have started their exams. The math exam was first. The test was a bit tough this year, so I hope they'll get through alright. The results won't be out for another three months, so nothing to do but wait. Before their exams we had graduation (I'm not entirely sure why graduation is first, but it is) and several other volunteers came for the party. It was a good time. I have a lot of pictures of the event and after party which sometime in the future will be put online. Now that the Form 4s are finished with everything, my teaching load has decreased and I can focus on the Form 2s, which means a lot of testing and grading to get them ready. It's been a lot of work, but I'm finally starting to see some serious improvement, which I think is the result of these kids finally taking things seriously. I think we'll have some good results from them.

As I've mentioned before, most of my teaching was to the Form 2s, so as a result these are the kids I'm closest to. They really are quite upset about me leaving so I've been spending a lot of time after school and some weekends hanging around and chatting with them. I also finally gave into their oft repeated requests and let them play with my hair. Despite the fact that they have to keep their hair cropped short a lot of them keep combs and there have been a couple of times where several of them will be around my head working away. There's always a crowd around watching and vigorous debate about how it would look best. It's all very cute, if a bit overwhelming sometimes. There was no reason not to give in, though. Before I let them, girls would sneak up behind me to touch my hair and sometimes give it a little tug. They've also begged me to find pen pals for them when I get home, so anyone out there, particularly girls around high school age, interested in swapping letters with a kid in Africa, let me know.

There's not too much else to talk about. There will probably only be a couple more posts before go home, but keep reading after. There are a lot of things I want to write about here after I get back. I'm not writing them now for a few reasons. One is that I need a little distance before writing about a lot of generalities of life here. Two, now I don't have time to write to much and since I only get internet every couple of weeks, at most, often I only write what is on my mind that particular time. Also there are certain things that I can't write about while in the PC. I'll leave it at that. Good bye for now.