1 - I come to school to hear that there was someone on
campus in the middle of the night so they locked him in one of the classrooms
to wait for the police to come.
Classrooms here are in cement buildings and the windows do not have glass
on them, just bars. Watching all the
students look through the bars at the spectacle inside and realizing the
similarity between my school and a zoo just made me laugh. Attractions locked in cages, monkeys swinging
in trees, exotic birds over yonder, and, well, the entire place is an insect
exhibit. Karibu. No charge.
2 - After asking a
couple of teachers about why students eat paper, I find out that they also
frequently eat dirt, chalk, and even charcoal if it’s available. As my mouth dropped further and further, one
of the teachers informed me that even she likes to eat dirt sometimes. My next question was “so you just go outside
and pick dirt up and eat it?” This
apparently was hilarious and preposterous.
OF COURSE she doesn’t eat it off the ground. She goes to the market and buys it. Only 100 shillings! She said she’d show me someday. I’ll let you know…
3 – I get an
unexpected response to the fact that I am leaving. Frequently the response from my students when
I inform them I am leaving is a concern about who will make their cake for
graduation. This shockingly always
makes me laugh and is the exact response I would expect from them. One day, though, I was talking with one of my
Form 3 girls and it came up that I would be leaving soon. I was ready for the “But madaaaaaaam, who
will make us cake for graduation?” but instead what I got was “But madaaaaaaam,
who will we laugh with when you leave?”
Of everything I have heard in the last two years, this is my most favorite
and most memorable of them all. It's small but it's pretty
great, right? I think so.
