School Daze

So I've started teaching and it hasn't exactly been easy. Teaching is something I'm completely new at, and the language and culture barriers I must overcome are often difficult. Also, with recent health scares from two of my grandparents, I've felt guilty about being away from my family during tough times. I've also been profoundly disturbed with the practice of hitting the students with wooden sticks for pretty much every misbehavior, however minor. At one point I was watching a student getting hit and I wondered how I could possibly stomach that for two years. I still don't know. However, having said all that, teaching is getting easier, however slowly, and the students seem extremely grateful that I show up for class--get this--on time. I found out the day school opened I'd be teaching Form II as well as Form III. The Form III classes are great and there are only about 25 students each, but each of the Form II classes has around 60. That makes things extremely difficult and means I can give almost no individual attention. Of course, I expected difficulties like this when I came, so I'm sure I'll manage. As often as I wish I were at home close to family and somewhere I can walk down the street without sticking out like a sore thumb, I feel like I'm doing the right thing and that I will get more and more out of this experience as time goes on. Time, as always, will tell.

One of the more interesting, and I admit quite nice, things recently is that I've become somewhat of a celebrity at Nganza Secondary School, and all-girls boarding school about 1 km from my all-boys boarding school. There is another PCV there, Ryan, so I go down and visit now and then. Ryan tells me that many of the girls were quite taken with me (don't worry, he teaches Form VI, so his students are 20-22). One told Ryan she'd even be willing to marry me if I shave my beard. I must say, it's nice to be a celebrity among those girls in their early 20s. Since they are also graduating in a few weeks, I suppose any relationship can be completely guilt-free, right? With the Nganza girls and a university across the street, opportunities abound.

In other news, the continuing East African drought is fortunately not causing water shortages for those of us lucky enough to be less than a mile from Lake Victoria. However, low water levels are causing problems for hydroelectric dams and there is now power rationing all over the country. I know many PCVs don't have power at all, but it's still nice to have the lights on at night. Hopefully rain will come and we'll be able to have power all the time. It's particularly annoying because I've just gotten my conflict with the power company resolved. They had cut me off because the PCV there before me hadn't paid his last two bills. We'll see how this goes. In reality I'm lucky because as you may have heard the drought is causing famine in NW Kenya. While food prices are rising here, there certainly isn't a shortage. Next month the long rainy season should start, so we'll hope it does better than the short rainy season and actually show up. If it doesn't, the lake may drop low enough that I will no longer have running water. This would be much more annoying than the power problem.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and keep them coming. The next two months will be busy, but it's only two more months to Easter break! How sad that I already count the days...