A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I went for a run in the morning along the dirt road.  I made a baby cry, just by being white, and by doing this weird thing, running, in these weird clothes.

I spent the morning with Sr. Martha, Nathan, and Andrew visiting three other schools in the area.  Andrew took some crazy videos of the primary school children gathering around us, just swarming to get a closer look.  “Witwande?”  “What’s your name?” we kept asking them.  We went into five different secondary level classrooms, greeting the students and introducing ourselves, thanking them for letting us interrupt class.  I felt a little uncomfortable pushing ourselves on them as though we were celebrities, though we were a hit, especially when Andrew said he liked to sing and the students asked him to do so.  We did a few bars from “Let It Be,” which was actually a lot of fun, and needless to say the kids erupted in applause.

The Geshora School, the third school we saw, is a high school, levels Senior 4 through Senior 6.  It is a new facility, an American built school, like ours, but it is built 40 minutes further out of town on an incredible lake.  We were told that they can’t use the lake because there are hippos and crocodiles!  We met several Maranyundo graduates there and also talked with the headmaster (a Bostonian named Peter) and one of the American teachers (they have three).

After school, I tutored my senior 2s for the first time.  I have 8 students, which is a lot in that small tutoring room!  I asked them to draw their home and talk about it, as a way of introducing themselves, to assess their skills and just get them talking.  They were reluctant to begin drawing with pens, without rulers.  A few of them made their drawings with tentative dotted lines.  Afterward, they asked if they could meet on Friday as well.