Preparations for the Big Day

We had class on Wednesday morning with 12 students attending. Five young women were trying to master the alphabet A through H. A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for cow, D is for dog, E is for egg, F is for feet, G is for goat, H is for hand. I think we went through those about 50 times…they had the most trouble with apple, egg and hand. We still don’t have them down but I don’t think we’re far off now.

I have been searching for an ABC chart to hang on the wall. I finally found one…just one problem…it was printed in India so f is for frock and x is for x-mas tree…I kid you not! I made an ABC chart that they can take home and study from…I tried to use items they have in their everyday lives…y for yacht is not one of them!

Classes ended and preparations began. The yard continued to be picked up; brush cut, rock piles leveled or moved, a makeshift rock wall in front of the school was built and a tree stump cut down that had been left when we built the school. While that was happening cooking pots, firewood, rolling pins and chapatti stools, and wooden stirring sticks started appearing from out of the horizon. When school ended Rebecca got her nephew Silas who teaches at the local primary school, to organize the kids who live in the area to carry plastic chairs home from the church. Women appeared from every direction and began peeling potatoes in the old classroom.

Have you ever noticed how many men it takes to do a job that one man can do alone...just saying.

It's about a mile walk from the church to the adult classroom...some of the kids carrying chairs were really small. Talk about a community effort!

Women at work!

These women came with a couple of jeri-cans, 99 plastic plates, and a huge pot.

Janet moonlights as a hairdresser.

Even the kids got into the act help pick up the yard…although I think Eliza spent more time rolling in the sand pile, as evidenced by her nearly white legs and sleepy state in the evening.

James, Eliza and Ezekiel, his children and a small boy not wearing pants, pickup stones leftover from construction in front of the classroom.

Eliza spent the rest of the afternoon rolling in a pile of sand. Her exhaustion shows.

When it started to get dark I headed back to Rebeka’s. Silas was cutting sukuma (kale) in the kitchen manyatta when there was a big commotion outside. Silas, James and I ran out of the mayatta. The bulls were fighting, horns locked and were pushing each other around the yard. Dust was flying everywhere. Silas grabbed a stick and went to try to break them up. We didn’t realize until later is that he was still holding a bunch of sukuma in his hand.

We are having alpha male issues. One of the bulls is sick, the former number two bull is trying to take advantage of the situation.

In Silas' right hand is a stick. In his left is sukuma he had yet to cut.

We ate that sukuma for dinner…I tried not to think about how dusty that sukuma had gotten while taking a tour of the yard in Silas’s hand. I hope he didn’t swat one of the bulls with that hand!