Goals, Chips, and an Almost Overloaded Circuit (Friday 6/26)

Today was an early start as I needed to get to the office earlier to teach this morning! Class starts at 9:00am and since I’ve been getting there after 9:00am most days I definitely needed to set an early alarm! I boiled water with the kettle, got ready and left with the router back to the office. When packing my backpack I remembered to put in a t-shirt and shorts so I would be properly prepared to play soccer!

Miraclin, Eli, and Henry were already there when I arrived at the office and I proceeded to get my stuff for Kolibri ready (there were too many cables and things to carry around!). I made my way to the school with Mr. Chesco with Henry as Eli and Miraclin stayed back to review more Math Club content. Now that every form has been taught the basics for typing, I just need to give them a space where they can practice and refine their skills. 

I was supposed to teach Kolibri to Form 1 today as they haven’t seen the program, but they were stuck taking some sort of quiz. I was left with Form 4 and Form 5 for the time being and let the kids type while I got Kolibri set up. Once finished, I went through my regular spiel to teach them. I was able to use a projector this time around which made everything so much easier to show how to do. Carrying around a Chromebook at the front of the classroom isn’t a very effective way to show the students where a small button is located on the screen. 

I directed them where to click and showed them around the user interface of the laptop (how to create a folder, how to find the WiFi, and so on). It would’ve been better if I could’ve shown them more, but the laptop I was using could only be used in “Guest mode” which severely limited the capabilities of the device (no downloads, no customization, ect). In total the class period went okay. The students were very difficult to get any feedback from which was frustrating. I would ask the class a question, making sure to be very slow and simple with my English, and nothing! I understand this is just how classrooms work here but I felt very disrespected as a teacher at that moment. In my mind, someone should be able to answer the very simple question of “does your screen look like mine?”! 

With lots of patience and compassion, class eventually ended and it was time for tea! I left all of my stuff in the classroom, locked it up, and walked down to the kitchen. I noticed that the students were also served tea time. I’m not sure if I saw it all but it looked like one mandazi per student and maybe some tea? I don’t know if this is just a summer break or the regular here as I figure it would be quite expensive to feed a whole high school when school’s back in session.

(photo from weeks earlier)

In the kitchen area we had tea, mandazi, and eggs! Michael had failed to show up in time which meant that we got his portion of breakfast. It was all fantastic and we cherished the warm food amidst the cooler weather. We went back to the office to get ready for the next period of teaching when I got some amazing news. There were 20+ Chromebooks for us to use! This is huge for not only the students, but for my project as well. With this many Chromebooks, the students can learn better and allow me to stress test my project to see if it’s truly viable to be implemented across the entirety of VST. Unfortunately, all of them needed to be charged and set up correctly so for now we just have the regular 6 (the batch of 20+ should be ready by Monday). 

I went back up to teach Form 1 as they were finally finished with their quizzes. When I got in the room it was incredibly packed as both Form 1 and Form 2 were in the tiny office classroom. They were all typing in their own groups and I figured I’d wait to actually teach them Kolibri when they all had their own device. Sharing devices with Kolibri is possible, but makes it harder for the students who are not in front of the computer to learn. Mr. Chesco came in and kicked out all of Form 2 as there were simply too many bodies in the room. The students are very well behaved and independent which gave me time to work more on my IT application (finishing little by little!). I would occasionally walk around the classroom when things became a little too rowdy; they’re all getting more comfortable in front of the computer now! A great idea that Mr. Chesco came up with to keep the students on task was to have the groups record their typing states (speed, accuracy, and time) so they could compete and be more focused!

Eventually time ran out for class so I packed up all of my stuff and went back to the office! Michael was there and thankfully didn’t show up at 12:00pm like yesterday! It was time to review, but first I needed to make sure that all of the Chromebooks were actually charging. I set up 10 of them to charge at the same time in the same place! The final product looked very sketchy as we had so many plugs coming from one extension cord that I thought we might be overloading something. Thankfully everything worked as intended and nothing caught on fire.

(all from one outlet!)

Since we like to work in pairs, I was with Henry this time and Miraclin with Eli. When we started, the WiFi was laughably slow which halted progress significantly. To our satisfaction, the WiFi got better and Henry and I ended up being a good team. I think we’ve let bygones be bygones and he’s out of his slump (or I’m being less annoying). Throughout the reviewing session, I swapped out Chromebooks as needed and waited for something to blow up. At one point Mr. Chesco came in with water bottles and Embe bottles, epic! It was starting to get late for lunch as it was around 2:30pm and we were all very hungry! To our luck, we were called right then to go eat.

For lunch we had rice, beans, chicken, cabbage, and spicy sauce. Our truck that we used as a table to eat on and the tailgate we played see saw on was completely gone so we ate on some scrap doors near the kitchen. The sun was lovely from this spot and the food was absolutely amazing. Half way through our meals Mr. Chesco came by to relay some news to us, today would be the last day of meals supplied by the kitchen as the women are finally leaving. It was devastating to hear this news but I am so thankful for all of the food they made for us. We’re talking about dozens of fantastic meals that were served day in day out for almost a month! I made sure to give the best thanks I could. From now on, we were to get all three meals from our host’s house and I think everyone’s excited about that but me! I’m not complaining but if our other meals are anything like dinners at Paul’s house, I’m going to start losing a lot of weight!

I finished the meal and then laid on the door to take a short nap. With a full stomach and the warm rays touching my skin, I was in heaven! To add a cherry on top I was sipping on some wonderful Embe as well. 

After a good chunk of time on the door, I figured I better get back to the office. Eli was out front so it only made sense that we enjoyed the nice weather even more and played some hacky sack! Michael joined us and it was obvious that Eli and I were sore from the soccer game yesterday. Miraclin and Henry were also soaking up the sun and working on their laptops at the front of the office. Now we didn’t want to be completely unproductive so we finished up our game after a bit and went back inside for one more hour of reviewing. It was sort of productive but due to our sitting arrangement that we were too stubborn to change, we were all yelling over each other. Essentially I sat between Miraclin and Eli and with Henry to the right of Eli. This made it harder to communicate but also funnier since it was just plain stupid that we were working this way. 

5:00pm came very quickly and it was time to go play soccer! I already had all of my stuff to play so I went to an empty room in the office, changed, and then headed down to the field. Unlike America where I could walk down to the field with my shorts and t-shirt on, I needed to make sure I still wore my pants and long sleeve shirt over everything until I got to the field to undress. We all warmed up by passing the ball around while we waited for more players to show up. It was decided that we would keep the same teams as yesterday which made it easier for me to know who to pass it to! 

Paul showed up late to the game completely unintentionally. I think he might’ve been coming to pick me up or walk somewhere, but seeing the fun of the soccer game he had to come in and join. Right before he entered the field, he saw a banana on the ground and asked whose it was. The banana was Eli’s and before Eli could say anything Paul yelled out that he would be eating it leaving Eli extremely shocked and disappointed (he was looking forward to that banana after the game). It ended up being a 6 on 6 game, a lot of people for a tiny field. The ball was always being booted out of the field leading to Henry getting quite upset! Kicking the ball out meant that someone had to go run and grab the ball typically taking the momentum out of a play. 

During the game, Eli almost had a goal that was “stolen” from another player and I got my foot completely smashed by a pair of cleats. My outdoor shoes did very little to protect me and I had to take a minute to let my foot return back to normal! I suppose I should be thankful that I was even wearing shoes as Paul was playing with none! As I said before, he wasn’t planning on playing and was wearing flip flops that ended up being too cumbersome to play with. He must have some strong feet to not be completely crippled from that game. We ended up winning 3-2! The more that I play soccer, the more that I enjoy it as a whole. I think it’s the smaller field with the tiny goals that make the game less daunting, more fun, and frankly less work (it’s still great exercise!). I’m not sure if I’ll ever truly enjoy watching soccer but now I do enjoy playing it!

With the game over and the dark coming in, I left with Paul and grabbed all of my stuff including the router from the office. We walked down to his house and relaxed when we got there. The power went out for a bit, but the battery operated WiFi didn’t go out! The neighbor Peter was over for a little while to use the WiFi as well and talk with me. When the power came back on, it was time to make dinner! 

I made the rice all by myself which really isn’t that hard but with the equipment we have it is. Rice is Swahili is “wali” but the “l” is pronounced like an “r”! After the rice it was time to make the sauce for the beans Paul already prepared. Since I had not been taught this, Paul briefly showed me how: chop up onion and tomato into a pot with some oil, saute the mixture over the stove, and then add the beans and water into the pot and let the sauce reduce! While waiting for the sauce to finish, Paul ordered us some chips which are essentially small potatoes cut like french fries. A “boda boda”, motorcycle driver, delivers the food to us which is like the Tanzanian version of DoorDash! 

When the chips arrived, I plated us the food and we sat down to eat. Rice, beans, and avocado made for a good meal!

The key to making the food even better out here is to add salt to everything! Once finished with that food, it was time for the chips that turned out to be completely amazing. Paul bought them already cooked which meant no work on our end even though it’s pretty simple and a lot cheaper to make them yourself. The chips were fried with egg and peppers as well which was something I did not expect and was quite delicious. 

After asking, I learned that the chips cost 2000 shillings not including the delivery fee which is always changing so I did not get a concrete answer. Safe to say I had a full stomach tonight! We watched some WWE wrestling on Paul’s laptop (something I never would’ve thought I would be doing) before I went to my room, blogged, and then fell asleep! I’m hoping to be very productive tomorrow and get a lot done as there are many things I need to catch up on!