Abundant Kindness and Potatoes! (Tuesday 6/30)

Sore shoulders were not something I expected to wake up to! The depression in my mattress has finally got the best of me and it was a sort of restless night. By sleeping in the same place and sitting in the same place when I write my blog, the dent in my mattress seems to get deeper and deeper! Perhaps I’ll flip it around or just try to sleep on the pristine side!

I got up around 8:10am and hung out for a while. It made sense to me that I bathe while I wait for breakfast to be ready yet Paul told me no. He wanted me to wait after eating to bathe! Breakfast wasn’t ready until 9:10am so I certainly could’ve had a bucket bath at that time. Instead I hung out with Paul and listened to music. For breakfast we had rice, beans, and avocado! Now it was time for my bucket bath with a ton of water again, got ready, and went up to the office with the router. It was around 9:50am at this point!

As I left the house, Mr. Chesco was coming down the hill in order to pick up the WiFi so it was good timing that I was on my way out. When I arrived at the office, I began work on Math Club and intermittently helped out Mr. Chesco and Paul who were setting up more Chromebooks to be ready for class (Mr. Chesco made his own burner account to have more devices). For reasons unknown to me, Jonathan did not get back to us with any helpful information or attempt to solve our issue which meant we continued our bootleg setup. My job in the assembly line of computer set up was to install the tying program, called Type Fu, that we use in class. It’s kind of tricky to get the download to work! 

Since my attention was diverted, I was only kind of productive with Math Club reviewing. Henry and Miraclin helped out a bit before going to teach or work on individual projects to help me pick up my slack. Eventually all of the Chromebooks were ready and sent up to the classroom for the students to use. I didn’t go up there as I needed to continue work on Math Club, but I’m curious how effective it is for Mr. Chesco to teach typing when I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to type himself! With Miraclin and Henry gone, I worked with Eli and we’ve made it all the way to Form 4 now. It’s unclear if we’re making materials all the way up to Form 6 or if we’re stopping at Form 4. Regardless, we’ve made a lot of progress the past couple of days and are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The only problem with the higher forms is that their math requires more complex diagrams that AI was incapable of generating and putting into the documents. Therefore we have to painstakingly read through and add many diagrams to each and every document. With over 100+ documents in Form 4 alone, it ends up being a lot of work!

The nice thing with Math Club is that time flies by fast when you’re extremely focused on the work. Mr. Chesco was back with the Chromebooks and once again set up the very sketchy charging system from a couple of days ago and I changed the laptops out as needed.

Lunch time came around for everyone else at around 1:00pm while for me I knew it was best for me to wait (lunch happens at 3:00pm or later at my house). Paul had dropped by a little beforehand to tell me that he was going to the village to get his haircut and pick us up anything we wanted. We all jokingly said chips and he seemed very serious about getting them for us! He promised that he would be back as quickly as he could for us to go to lunch and the waiting game began!

Michael came back early as his lunch was not ready and still no Paul! The work I was doing was quite difficult and tedious which only made the time seem to go by slower (I was making very specific graphs and trying not to make any mistakes). Once I finished and seeing that I had no partner to effectively move forward, I finalized some aspects of my IT application to make sure it looked presentable. 

Eventually Eli and Henry came back as well and still no Paul! This was a little past 2:00pm and Michael had left for real this time for lunch. To distract myself from the hunger that was growing inside of me, I shut down all of the Chromebooks and organized them now that they were all fully charged (shutting down the laptops conserves the battery). However right as I finished shutting them all down, Mr. Chesco turned them ALL back on to set up Type Fu on them again. He claims it’s so they’re ready to go the next time we use them, which I suppose is a fair enough argument (I don’t like having to charge them several times in a week). 

Eli didn’t want to get back to work quite yet so we went outside to play hacky sack for about 30 minutes. By this point in my hacky sack career, I’m starting to stall the hacky sack  more frequently which is some progress I’m super excited to make! Since we’re good at passing it back and forth to each other, we’re now trying to incorporate tricks into our passing to spice up the game! To assist Eli’s stalling ability even further, he tried out a new lacing technique on his shoe that makes a sort of pocket that gives the hacky sack a place to land in! I’d say it worked quite well for him.

With the hacky sack done, we went back inside to be productive for another hour. We’re always very loud when reviewing Math Club as there’s always a lot to debate about on what’s best. Due to our ruckus, Miraclin had to move to another room to focus on her Canva (and to get better WiFi). I felt bad but if there’s no yelling there’s no reviewing! 

During this hour, Luka came in and asked if he could talk with me. I was a little worried at first as I thought something might be wrong, but he was simply checking in on me! He knows that living with a bachelor is difficult and has heard from Eli that I’ve had to cook and even missed out on meals. Luka wanted to tell me that if I ever needed to come by for a meal or even three meals a day, I’m more than welcome. I didn’t want to dog Paul as I know he’s trying his best so I told Luka that I’m doing great and that I love that he’s my host (which is true). Sure I might not be getting the same treatment as the others, but I’m enjoying myself nonetheless. He is the sweetest man ever and I can’t believe how much love and joy he has for everyone. I hope that when I am in the position of having guests, I have even a fraction of Luka’s hospitality. All in all, he wanted to make sure that I was enjoying my time here as a guest to the fullest; a very kind check in.

After the conversation and working some more, I was getting very hungry and wanted to grab a snack from the shop. Paul had yet to show face and wasn’t answering my calls or messages! With a 10,000 shilling in my hand, Eli, Michael, and Henry tagged along. I bought us all crackers and drinks for a price of less than $2 USD; I love how far money goes out here! On the way back from our shopping spree, Henry and Michael exclaimed that they just saw Paul on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle taxi). I looked up to the road and there he was! I ran up to him and the first thing he said to me was, “give me a cracker”. How welcoming. I asked about lunch and he told me that he would get back to the house on the boda boda and then come up to the office to get me. He also mentioned that he was apparently getting all of our chips later and that he did not get a haircut as the barber was “too populated”!

Now knowing that I’d be eating soon, I went back to the office with some pep in my step. We ate our snacks and drank our drinks as we got back to work again. Paul finally came as he said and picked me up! I’ve never had a 4:00pm lunch, but here I am! We had rice and beans that were actually very good; I was simply thankful to eat! There wasn’t a ton to eat but it was nice to have a light meal. I wanted to get back to the office to finish my work, but had to wait around until Paul was ready to go. To my surprise the village dog came by and I gave it some pets with my foot. I also noticed that the water basin outside of the house was quite low so I turned it on to fill it back up! The hose makes quite the noise when it’s spitting out air at the start of gushing water!

Paul was ready and we went back up to the office to find Michael working on a car. He’s finally doing what he came out here to do and not doing classwork all hours of the day. I got inside and finished my work on my chapter. By the time we were finished, Michael came in to explain he fixed his first car here. He told us that by replacing the car’s alternator fuse, all of the car’s problems were fixed (thank you ChatGPT!). With Michael back, it meant it was time to play a game that’s been in the talks for a while now, poker, namely, Texas Hold’em! Of course it’s unwise of us to gamble real money (it would be against VST’s rules), so we used bottle caps and pieces of chalk. We called the game Tanzanian Slop’em and played the game normally. To be honest, I’m not very good at gambling, which I find to be a very good thing, and was the first one out of “money”. Michael ended up winning it all!

With the game finished, we relaxed a little more and Hosea brought in muffins for us to eat! They were a good snack to finish the work day. Soon enough I packed up, got the router, and waited for Paul to be ready to walk down (he was working in another room in the office). Once we got down there, I hung out with Morrine and Paul for a bit, but left to get a little bit of alone time to blog before dinner. Right before dinner started, Paul came into my room to check in on me and how I was doing. It seemed as if Luka spoke with him as well and Paul wanted to make sure I felt taken care of and doing well. I of course told him that he’s doing a great job and I’ve been enjoying my stay thoroughly. In all honesty, we’ve become really great friends over the past month! I’m not a very particular person so if I miss a meal or can’t sleep one night, it’s whatever! I’m simply thankful for what he’s been able to provide no matter what. After our little conversation it was time to eat.

For dinner we had potatoes and even more potatoes. The starting course was like dinner last night, but without the meat; lots of boiled potatoes with a nice sauce. The second part of dinner was chips with salt (fried chopped up potatoes)! I guess I got the chips that Paul told me he would get after all (I suppose everyone else who wanted chips missed out though). I ate as much as I could, but I was simply too stuffed to fit any more starches into my belly! There were lots of potatoes made that night. I even cracked open a bottle of Embe from my Embe stash (I’ve put together one now) to quench my thirst from the salty food.

When dinner was over, it was already 10:00pm which is the unofficial bedtime in the house. I said goodnight to Paul (useeko mwema!) and went back to my room and blogged before going to bed; a wonderful day!