The 9:00 AM Jolt and the Quad Sack (Wed 6/24)

In my last blog, I touted how I was no longer woken up by Paul. Today, I really wish he was there to wake me up. When I opened my eyes from a wonderful night’s sleep, I thought I had a good chunk of time to lay in bed. To my dismay it was already 9:00am! I thought that Paul would’ve played some sort of loud music or talked on the phone loudly to wake me up, but not today. 

I shot out of bed, waited for Paul to get off a call, and used the kettle today to heat up my water. Frankly, it was easier to use the kettle for boiling water than the propane stove! I only heated up one kettle worth of water and found that it was plenty for one quick shower. It felt like being home again with how much I was rushing! 

I got ready as quickly as I could and ended up getting to the office at 9:45am… I had the WiFi router the whole time but thankfully Eli was the only one there and was using a different router. Eli and I started working and talking together when the conversation about jobs for next semester came up. To my luck, one of the guys from my fraternity sent out a message to put in an application for Mines’ IT department and he could help push applications through. Seeing as I don’t want to cold call for another semester, I got to work on the application in between my regular work.

Miraclin came in to tell us it was time for tea! We walked up to the kitchen and met Henry and Mr. Chesco up there. Michael loves to show up late and eventually joined us as well. We had the regular tea, mandazi, and boiled egg. Our regular tea time talks continued as normal before going back to the office to pick up the laptops and teach Form 3 and Form 5 more typing (Mr. Chesco was once more on top of his game!). I got set up in the classroom I’m always in and waited for the students to show up. They slowly trickled in as Form 3 was finishing up taking a quiz (not sure for what or why). In the meantime, I worked on my application some more.

Once they all showed up, I did my regular run through of teaching and letting the students run wild. Whether or not they learn to type is fine with me. The big thing I care about is the students getting more familiar in front of a computer and knowing how to interact with it. I think the best way to cultivate this exploration is letting the students have some freedom with the program (as long as they’re not being disruptive or not working at all). There were only 12 of them in class today which meant smaller groups for the students to share laptops. Obviously less sharing meant more learning and hands-on experience for the students! The mix of Form 3 and Form 5 students meant they were very well behaved and I didn’t have too much in terms of monitoring the class. I continued to make progress on my application and periodically walked around the classroom to check on everyone. 

Class ended and once again a student brought the heavy laptop bag back to the office. Getting back meant getting to work on Math Club reviewing. We got a decent chunk done and Henry was great to work with! Michael is doing his classwork (this is his last week of class) and Eli will periodically jump in to help between his individual work. Between document reviews I’m generating Form 5 and 6 content that we’ll hopefully review in the next week.

We worked until lunch time and had rice, beans, and cabbage. It’s very good, but I can tell by the size of portions that everyone is kind of sick of eating the same thing everyday (we’re all very grateful to have food). With our meal we got yummy Embe which always makes me happy. After lunch we went back inside the office to play Cardi! Eli, Michael, and I played for a couple of rounds before Henry eventually jumped in. I didn’t win any rounds but it was still heaps of fun! Even Mr. Chesco joined in for our last round.

It wouldn’t be a work day if we didn’t get back to reviewing and making some more good progress. We’re finally finished with Form 1 (for some reason the form with the most content) and now on Form 2. The content in Form 2 is very graphic heavy; a time consuming process. Most examples and questions need some sort of graphic either designed by hand on Google Docs, found on the internet, or generated by AI. We all work together very well as a team and are quite productive. Two and half hours flew by and Eli and I left to go play some hacky sack. It was 5:45pm at this point and the sun would set in 45 minutes! We started our regular passing back and forth when Luka came to join us (not Eli’s host). 

Luka is a part of the Masaai tribe indicated by the fact that he is always wearing vibrant, red, striped, cloak (I know all of this from looking it up a couple of weeks ago). The Masaai tribe is very prevalent in Tanzania and are known to be watchmen which is exactly what Luka does here to my knowledge! To protect himself and everyone else here, he carries around a wooden club on his waist that looks very cool! 

Example of Luka’s Club: Rungu Club 

Example of Luka’s cloak

I’ve played and watched soccer with Luka and I figured he would be decent at sack. However, my assumption was wrong as he was amazing at hacky sack! It was some of the best hacky sack I’ve ever played! We would keep the sack in the air for many passes and even incorporate some tricks to show off. On Luka’s first attempt “stalling” (landing the hacky sack and keeping it still), he got it! At one point, we got something called a “quad sack”. Every time everyone in the group touches the hacky sack, it counts as a “sack”. If you get everyone to touch it again, it’s called a “double sack” and so on. The only thing that I did not enjoy while playing was some bad acid reflux out of nowhere. I think there’s something I’m eating that makes me feel this way often out here.

We played until it was dark and turned on the outside office lights to play even a little while longer. Paul came to close up the office so we were done playing for the night, however Paul wanted to get in one kick of the hacky sack. He proceeded to launch his flip flop high in the sky making us all laugh! 

Everyone packed up their things and Paul and I left for the house. When we arrived, I just relaxed in Paul’s room for a couple of hours. Dinner was eventually served at 9:45am and I had cold rice. At the moment I was upset and confused as to why I needed to wait this late to eat cold rice that was prepared hours ago. I don’t love eating late as it means I need to stay up for a couple more hours to digest before hitting the sack, but that’s just how they do it out here! 

It would be fine if Paul and John were eating cold rice as well, but they had their own individual warm meal (I’m thinking they made fish and respected the fact that I don’t eat it). Frankly, thoughts of jealousy entered my mind as I know that everyone else is eating full meals with their host families and here I am stuck eating cold rice. I cooled down internally and recentered myself to be grateful that I at least didn’t go to bed completely hungry! God placed me here at Paul’s house for a reason and I’m thankful for what I do get. I got back to my room and blogged before going to bed. I’m hoping I can wake up a little bit earlier tomorrow!