I worked with Ju on his own today. A good decision I think, because it allowed me to see exactly how much he relies on Ha to cue him into what I’m asking of him. He was a little obnoxious, but we were still mostly productive. I’m never confident that he’s trying to remember, trying to understand, what we do in the lesson though. Ha on the other hand has picked up so much since Rachel and I started working with her. She’s got a very clear grasp of the language. Ju is still at the parroting stage. But that’s ok. We’ll get there. So, when I went in to get him out of the classroom, Julie suggested that according to what the rest of the class had been doing I should go over suffixes with him. Yeah. Not that I don’t have faith in his intelligence, but there wasn’t a chance of him being able to process something like that yet. I mean, the word ‘child’ had to be defined, let alone getting to the stage of dealing with ‘childish’. We had a fun time learning about neat vs messy though, and making different choices relative to the word ‘or’.

Zoe had promised her class I’d come by in the afternoon to talk about another animal. I decided to go with seals because they’d been demanding that for a while. It was fun, although I’ve since found that my seal drawings are not considered up to scratch by six year old standards. As if! I thought they were fine. Ok, maybe not as good as my sea otter, or clownfish, but hey, they were clearly seals. Gosh. Give me a break! Anyway, we got into a detailed description about thermoregulation and the adaptations necessary for living in the cold ocean. I’m constantly amazed by how well they handle the concepts I’m throwing at them – I mean, I simplify the way I present them, but still, some of it’s complex stuff. We somehow finished up the session talking about pupil dilation and how your eyes regulate the amount of light that enters. They’re all going to go home and get someone to turn on and off the light while they stand in front of the mirror. Haha.

I haven’t written it up yet, but on Saturday afternoon Jess, Marie and I went down to another local school to talk about teaching there one afternoon a week. Well, at three o’clock today we walked over and spent an hour with the kids there. The school is. Oh I can’t describe it right now. Check back later. So so different. So so barely there in any physical sense, yet at the same time as big as any other primary school. Anyway, at the time we got there it was a break between teaching, which in a way was perfect for us. We spoke with the African lady in charge of the school, who knew a little English, and she said we were welcome to do what we wanted with the kids. For Zoe, this may have meant eat them. Thankfully, the rest of us are not so cannibalistically inclined.* So we called over the eight or nine kids hanging round, and took them out into the little dirt patch of a yard so that we had a bit more room. First we took them through some basic greetings, just to get them talking and such. Then, using a stack of laminated label cards I’d made, we played a cool body parts game. This involved me dragging one little boy to the front, where I told him to stand with his arms out like a scarecrow. Poor kid. He had no idea what was happening. Jess then started handing out the cards with a little bit of masking tape, while Marie instructed the kids to stick them on the correct place. Each child got a sweet for sticking a label in the right place. I have no objection to using bribery to get children on your side. Anyway, it finished up with this boy being absolutely covered in white labels, they all found it hilarious and it set the attitude of the lesson off so well...

Inside joke. Sorry.

So, I quite enjoyed typing up some of the Swahili of yesterday. But I figured it was unfair to throw you into it without giving you some of the basics...

----------------------------

Ok. Begin lesson. Enjoy. Or suffer through. Either way.

First of all, background information – in Swahili, words tend to have all the determining factors attatched. As a language Kiswahili is phonetic, so the spelling and pronunciation isn’t too much of a challenge. It’s just the structure that takes a bit of getting used to.

Verbs have prefixes to denote the subject. There are various noun classes that group together similar types of noun and generally behave in the same way. For the M/Wa class of nouns, the prefixes are as follows:

ni – I
b – you
a – he/she
tu – we
m – you (pl.)
wa – they

Most of the other classes of nouns only have a singular (it) and a plural (they) verb prefix. I think this is because the M/Wa class deals almost entirely with nouns referring to people, whereas the others don’t.

The nouns themselves also have prefixes. In the M/Wa class, the root of the word will either be preceeded by ‘m’ if singular, or ‘wa’ if plural.

For example:
mtoto – child
watoto – children

If the noun starts with a vowel however, the prefixes change slightly. The singular prefix will be mw while the plural prefix will depend on the vowel. Wa for a words and we for words beginning with e or i.

For example:
mwana – daughter
wana – daughters

Actually my simplification of the plural vowel prefix isn’t technically correct. For words beginning with a, the wa + a forms wa etc.

There you go. That’s the only noun class I’ve learnt in a grammatical sense. I have no confidence in my ability to disect the others yet, so you’re being spared further grammar for the moment.

-------------------------------------------

The days of the week are easiest to learn in conjunction with numbers. Take the first day of the week as Saturday…

One – moja
Two – mbili
Three – tatu
Four – nne
Five – tano
Six – sita
Seven – saba
Eight – nane
Nine – tisa
Ten – kumi

Saturday - Jumamosi
Sunday - Jumapili
Monday - Jumatatu
Tuesday - Jumanne
Wednesday - Jumatano
Thursday - Alhamisi
Friday - Ijumaa

I like numbers in Swahili. They have a pleasant harmony. Look at four - eight for instance, nne – nane. And then 6/9 is sita/tisa. Neat.

-------------------------------------------

Hmmm… I have a feeling everyone but Mike may have tuned out long ago. Ah well. It’s been bugging me that I haven’t felt like I was learning enough, I just had lots of random words and limited capacity for sentence composition. But writing it out for you guys really forces me to get it clear in my head, I process the language much better this way. And I’m broadening your education. So I’m going to keep doing it every so often, and you shall just have to deal with it. I’m not forcing you to read it anyway. :-P

Nimechoka

Jess has lent me her laptop for tonight so that I can get a whole lot of typing done to upload later. It’s becoming too hard to fit in time to write at school, so this is a good solution.

Tommy came up to me at the beginning of lunch break with a book in his hand. I thought he was going to tell me another impromptu joke, but instead he asked if I’d read with him. It’s so nice when the little monsters of the class show a really sweet side. Anyway, despite numerous interruptions from other kids wanting my attention, we made it through the whole reader by the end of lunch. I kept asking if he wanted to go off and play, but he said he’d rather read with me, and I didn’t mind spending my time that way. I was so impressed by his persistence though – it took us twenty minutes to get through the one story.

I got the impression that the rest of the kids weren’t happy with the fact I was concentrating on someone other than themselves, so I figured I’d make them all happy and spend some time in the classroom. I’ve been staying out of there recently because they tend to get a bit distracted in the euphoria of having my company. (I know, I know, you all feel it sometimes). Miss K set them up listening to a tape (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) (except it was a silly tape because it wasn’t accurate to the book) in what was supposed to be their quiet time. However, Jordan was being particularly hyperactive, and by the very nature of this was stirring up those around him, so I sat with him and helped him with a little project he was doing. He’d decided that he wanted to collect information from and about everyone in the class. So was going around loudly asking each kid one by one how old they were, what their favourite fruit was, what their favourite toy was, who their ‘friend’ was, etc. This of course, was not all that good an idea when the rest of the class was meant to be lying down resting. Luckily, I convinced him that I knew what everyone liked, so spent the next ten minutes rattling off ‘pineapple, teddy, Jake, mango, Frisbee, Jua…’ Yes, I got him to put Frisbee on the list.

Anyway, the class was getting more and more fractious, and Zoe was feeling the strain of a long day, so asked if I wanted to take them for another session. Ah, being put on the spot. Just what I love. Frantically searched through mental database of sea creatures...

S.O.
S.M.
F -> G
J. D.

As we walked in the gate, we ran into April and Marie chatting to Hamisi in the guard house. He's a pretty friendly guy, and must get bored on the night shift, so we stopped by as well. Turned out he was correcting Marie's Kiswahili homework while at the same time getting her to add words to his English vocabulary. With our addition to the group, it soon turned into a somewhat impromptu Kiswahili lesson. Which was awesome, I really enjoyed it. So I thought I'd share some bits of what I'm learning, haven't given you much at all. Mike especially will appreciate this I suspect. It's so much like those linguistics assignments we did - working out the grammatical structure and rules from a series of sentences. Hamisi's English is pretty good, but he couldn't explain the grammar or tenses all that well, so used examples to convey his point.

So if we look at the sentence:

Adam is cooking an egg.
Adam anapika yai.

The verb ‘to cook’ is kupika. In the form anapika we divide it as such a/na/pika, with the ‘a’ denoting he/she, the ‘na’ giving the tense, and the ‘pika’ being the verb root. Yai is egg – if we wanted to make it plural we would add an m.

ie. Mbili mayai – two eggs.

There are probably quite a few inaccuracies. Not only was it challenging to follow Hamisi’s grammatical instruction in itself, but I really don’t have an extensive enough vocabulary yet. I know lots of random words, but no verbs. Useful hey. But yeah, most of the grammar I was assuming from the sentence structure.

The dog is barking now.
Mbwa anapigakelele sasa.

The dog barks everyday.
Hua Mbwa anapigakelele kilasiku.

From what I could gather, barking is actually formed by two verbs in Kiswahili. Kupiga – 'to do', and kelele – 'a bark'. So effectively you’re saying ‘to do a bark’.
As I mentioned, Hamisi’s English wasn’t always technically correct, but I believe the ‘hua’ was the key part in changing the tense of the sentence, rather than a change in the verb structure. He couldn’t really explain that bit though.

Je umechoka? - Are you tired?
Sijechoka – I’m not tired.
Umechoka – You are tired.

Asante sana squash banana

I wonder if anyone can tell me first of all what movie that line is from, and secondly who says it. Zoe and I watched the dvd last night on Jess’ laptop, and were amazed to find this particular character lapses into Swahili every so often. We just looked at each other and burst out laughing. It really was funny to be watching this particular movie at this particular moment in space and time in this particular current location.

I was reprimanded a while back for not putting up photos which I was in. You almost didn’t even get the one of the cliffs of Moher. So I have finally got a few photos to put up, and will take this request into account. There are two with me in them. That should last you another month or so. Haven’t got many photos of the area yet, but they’ll come. Patience.

After dinner we wandered over to Rachel and Brandon's house, as I'd found out earlier that they were both avid card players...

Cannot get the computer to upload photos. You shall have to continue to be patient...

Haven of Peace Academy

What on earth did I do on the 15th?

I think I should describe HOPAC to you. It's the one thing I haven't talked about so far, yet the nature of the school is so integral to all I'm doing here. Actually it's not the one thing I haven't talked about so far. There are many things I haven't talked about so far. But I'm trying ok!

This is Zoe standing in front of the Baobab tree in the playground. It is one awesome tree.

This is what I see

A house is a room where a room is a house
Mud brick and thatching
Or concrete and corrugated iron
It makes little difference
No one here lives under a roof
Life is lived in the front yard
On the side of the road
Spiderweb displays hang between trees
Clothing shoes sports equipment spare parts for bicyles
Things that seem part of Africa
And things that should be a thousand miles away
Little fires in the dust drift smoke
Drift memories of camping
Men idly poking corn cobs
Turning slowly over glowing coals
Sweet potato too
Manned by the women
Slowly roasting
Everything slowly
Oranges balded in a single spiral of peel
Sugar cane stripped by a stroking knife
Ah the street food of Tanzania
Part of the scenery until the night comes
Then the darkness is made by the glowing coals

White Sands

All the kids collected outside the classroom before the end of first break, every single one of them was there and lined up. Ok, lined up is a generous way of putting it. But they were there! Quite amazing, just shows you how excited they were about the excursion, because every other day they’re late back to the room. In typical African fashion, the busdriver was nowhere to be seen. Turned out he’d gone to sleep in the shade. Once this small detail was remedied we all squished on board and were off to White Sands beach. The non private section. Anya and Jahn had kindly allowed us the use of their house as a starting point, and were an enormous help throughout the whole excursion.

I will tell you more about it, but I think photos are the more pressing demand at the moment...

Ah ha! Finally got them to work. I am good. So, this first one is a view of the shore from out on the reef. It was low tide obviously, and we were exploring all the rocks and coral and seaweed and shallow pools.

Here we have a lionfish. How cool is it! That was the best photo I could get sorry, for a start I was trying to keep six or so kids from catching it in their nets (you do not want to pick up a lionfish) and then I had to deal with the reflection on the water and yeah. Seriously though, coolest fish ever. Not sure what kind of crab the second one is, but I will look it up for you sometime. It looks small in the photo, didn't give you anything to match it to scale, but it's about as big as my hand. Also very cool. Although not quite as cool as the lionfish. Doesn't have the 'danger' factor you see.

This last photo (only included so that people don't bite off my head) is of Jordan and myself. Jordan is one of the kids I spend a lot of time working with individually, as he is somewhat hyperactive and can become high maintainence for Zoe when she's trying to look after an entire class. I get on really well with him, he's a great kid but has attention issues. Still, I discovered early on that the one way to get and keep his focus is to talk to him about animals, of any kind or size. Perfect. I can do that all day. So he has enough respect for me now that he does occasionally listen when I need him to behave, and we end up having some really good times together. For example, while on the beach I stuck with Jordan most of the time, and he was constantly asking me what something was (sadly my knowledge of East African sea life isn't as thorough as it should be) or grabbing my hand to pull me over to look at something. He was completely in his element.

Who'd want to be a cat anyway?

There's been a street cat that has wandered into the compound a few times, absolutely starving and apparently with kittens. I tried to feed it once, but it ran away, however I was more worried about what this could potentially mean for my poor scrawny chicken. I mean, he doesn't look like he'd have a hope in the world against a cat. Today it came wandering in again, yowling pitifully and clearly needing some extra body weight. So I went inside to get it some food, turned around and almost stepped on it as she'd followed me in out of desperation. A huge difference from her nervousness of the other days. Anyway, I took the food outside, and she gulped it down. Didn't want to make her sick so ignored her complaints of 'more, more', and just sat there enjoying the sun for a while. All of a sudden the still not yet named fowl wandered round the corner. So I got some food for him, and put it out. He walked over in his slow casual way to claim his meal, while at the same time the cat decided this was a good opportunity for it. All was fine, until they hit that point where they entered into each others' bubble of personal space. Uh oh. Both animals froze, and for a few seconds there was this stalemate while each tried to work out the other's intentions.

Picture this. Cat takes two steps towards chicken. Chicken leaps at Cat. Cat changes its mind. Sits down and steadfastly looks anywhere but at chicken. Chicken remains fluffed up for a bit longer, then decides cat is only mild threat. Eats food. Cat watches in misery.

It was hilarious. My chicken is actually tough! How cool is that. The best thing is I no longer have to worry about leaving him out during the day. I figure he's earnt his independence now.

The humour of a child is beyond me

I got up half an hour earlier to watch the sunrise. Sat on the roof and watch the sky change colour. It was nice. The view is looking out towards the ocean, and that's Rachel and Brandon's house in the foreground. Well, the roof of it anyway. Our roof is the same - concrete, hammock, thatched shelter thingy. The trees are palms and a baobab.

Mama Mwazo came just as I was about to leave for school to clean the house. She does all three of the houses in the compound. It's strange having her, and Mama Linda who cooks pizza for us once a week, and Armani, and the night guards. But as Jane explained, Mama Mwazo needs the work even if we don't feel we need it done, and the 4500 shillings she gets a day (if you remember what I said about Tanzanian shillings to Aussie dollars, that's about $4.50) is what she feeds her family on. And it is nice to have them around. Same goes for Mama Linda with the pizzas etc. Anyway. I'll try and explain that better later. Put the Demented Scruffy Bird outside, went to school.

Rachel had Ju Yeong and Ha Yeong yesterday, this morning was my turn again...

Tommy ran up to me again.
“I have another joke!”
I gently prise a cluster of hugging children from my waist.
“Ok, I’m ready. Tell me the joke.”
“Why were ten people walking down the street?”
“To talk to me?”
Hey, it was worth a try.
“No. Because one of them was you!”
I decided to persevere in the hope of greater understanding.
“But what were the other nine doing?”
“Talking to you!”
You can never win.

“I have another joke!”
“Tell me Tommy.”
“Why do people have two hands?”
“To talk to me?”
Luckily his six year old mind has no ‘smartass’ recognition factor yet.
“No. So they have a left hand and a right hand and one ear!”

I really don't get it.

As I walked off I heard some of the kids clamouring for him to tell them the joke too.
“Ok. Why do people have hands…”

It does make me laugh, he's making these up on the spot and his concept of a punchline is simply that it's a conclusion of some sort, regardless of any assumed need for a twist. In fact, the whole 'walking down the street' theme I think he picked up off the shirt I was wearing the first time (has a picture of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road on it), and he paused and looked at my hands before starting today's second joke. Funny kid. I look forward to tomorrow's.

Again, I got up early to put the chicken outside to browse - we'll let him have the run of the compound when he's settled in, but for now he stays inside while I'm at the school. So I had breakfast, got all my stuff together, went outside to find him, and he was gone! Aaargh! I freaked out, how could I have lost my chicken after only three days! So I went round and round the compound garden even though the guards keep it so neat and tidy that there are no dark corners and if I didn't see him the first time I wasn't going to the second or third. Finally I went and found Armani and fumbled out the Swahili for "chicken" and "where". (I may have picked up quite an extensive vocabulary so far, but I am hopeless at putting sentances together). He smiled at me, and pointed at his feet. The demented scruffy bird was just hanging around him quite happily, and apparently (from what Armani seemed to be saying) (he speaks English to the same extent I speak Kiswahili) (ie. doesn't) had been doing so all morning. Ha. I think we're giving the guards the impression that mzungu are eccentric. I mean, we have this chicken as a pet that clearly should have been cooked up long ago, we take them biscuits or fruit at all hours of the day and night, and we scurry across from one house to the other with pots and jugs and various other implements long after we should have been in bed. <-- Because we still don't have a functioning stove and have to rely on April's household to fufill that purpose.

Tommy came running up to me again at breaktime.
"I have another joke to tell you!"
"Excellent, tell me it." Maybe this will shed some light on the significance of the first joke.
"There was a Chinese man standing on top of a building. What was he doing there?"
Pause.
"Uhm. I don't know..."
"Talking to you!"

I still don't get it.

Obviously there is some joke in there, because Tommy was laughing his head off. But then again, that might have been because of the puzzled look on my face. Ah well. He's a funny kid. If he keeps telling me enough of these, maybe the child part of my brain will kick back into gear enough that I'll stop trying to understand them and accept that they're just funny because they are.

Pool is finally filled. But it's green because they pumped up bore water to fill it. Gosh I hope they have a good filter system. Dad, you know that time our pool went bright green because the ducks had been swimming in it? Well, imagine that but more tinged brown, and even murkier. Fun fun. They're giving it a week to settle and such. I shall reserve judgement until then.

Andrea* had invited us over for dinner, so Kenny picked us and their two kids up after soccer and we went straight back to their place. The family is from Ireland, so Zoe spent quite a while telling them about our trip there and where we’d visited. I went and sat outside on a deckchair and watched skinks on a tree trunk.

Most lots amount

Mish is missing Cath more.

This morning I worked with Ju and Ha for almost two hours. Quite accidentally, things were going well and so we just kept doing stuff until break time. And we're getting somewhere! Did some more grammar work, which Ha is really starting to understand. Ju copies it all, but I think it's more a case of him memorising the phrases not the actual concepts. Still, it's a start. I'm still basing a lot of the lessons on little pictures and diagrams, which often seem to be the only thing keeping Ju's attention from wandering. So for example, I drew a whole series of pictures that fitted into a particular category (ie. duck, chicken, eagle, penguin) and had them writing out sentances of "This is a duck" etc. Then they had to finish it off by circling the group and writing "These are birds". They did the same with items of clothing, modes of transport, toys, food. Next we moved onto verbs, which up until now we hadn't had much luck conveying to either of them. But I wrote them out sheets with 'I ________ oranges' and I ________ doors' and the like. They seemed to grasp filling in the gaps pretty well for the most part, although Ju had a tendancy to fill them with random words sometimes. Anyway, enough rambling about them.

Tommy* ran up to me at first break today.
"Miss Phillips, Miss Phillips, I have a joke to tell you!"
I pause in what I am doing, as nothing is more important than listening to a six year old's joke.
"There was a Chinese man walking along the street. And he was walking along when a building fell down next to him. Why did he put it back together?"
"I don't know Tommy, why?"
"Because you were on top of it!"

I don't get it.

Mama Linda is cooking us pizzas today, so we're going to have a good dinner! Yay! I am too distracted writing emails back and forth with Catski to further update this post for the moment. Sorry everyone who isn't Cat.

*Grade 1

Latido

This morning we were back at Coco Beach Church, because one of the ladies there had organised a lunch afterwards for all the Hopac and IST* teachers to meet. Avril** took this opportunity to cajole me into singing as part of the worship team at the front of the congregation. The worship team being two other adults and a lady on keyboard, all likewise committed at late notice. They have trouble keeping a band or anything together because people move, people go back home, there isn't much consistency. Anyway. It was a little weird, I stopped singing when I was thirteen and since then have sung in front of people on maybe... one occasion. But it was good, I actually enjoyed it, knew all but one of the songs. And it surprised me, but somehow it was still a natural enough feeling for me, that I wasn't bothered at all about being up in front of everyone. Anyway. Wandered down onto the beach with some of the kids to keep them distracted afterwards, went for lunch... aaagh... people serve such good lunches over here.

Went home, Zoe went across to school to do her planning for the next week, I was pretty worn out, finished a book***, started another, finished that too****, got sick of reading, moped round for a bit, was going to go back to reading the last book I'd borrowed on Friday, but no electricity and it was too dark, plus I didn't want to read anymore for a bit, some of the books are quite deep and it's hard to read too many in a row, then the phone rang yay. So no more moping. Zoe got back from school a couple of hours later, so then I made dinner for us both.

Guess what we had. Stale bread with tuna and cucumber. Fantastic! This is the same stale loaf of bread I mentioned many posts ago. It has not got any fresher. However, by pretending to oneself that there is still novelty value in eating such dubious sandwhiches, it is in fact possible to finish the meal. I still find it funny, so we're all good.

Ok that's about my story for the day, more detail later. Like all the rest of these posts.

*Another school in the area
**Principal of Hopac Primary
***A Voice in the wind, Francine Rivers. Very very good, amazing depth.
****Danger in the Shadows, Dee Henderson. Ok, but not fantastic. Then again it may be getting a bad rap because I read it after A Voice in the Wind. Wow you're getting quite the regular book reviews now.

Jess is the most awesomest ever!

This morning Janelle* picked us (Zoe, April, Jess and myself) up at 6:15am to go for a run on the beach. I'm meant to be on complete non-activity time while I'm away, but six weeks of nothing has made me a little fidgety. We went out to the house of a lady with a kid in Janelle's class. She lives on a compound right on the beach, so we set off from there. Jess, Janelle and I were running, while the others walked/jogged with the dogs. We ran for about twenty minutes without talking much, then Jess dropped back to the others. Janelle asked me a bit about how I'd got here, what my plans were, and we had a nice chat about stuff for a bit, but I was just as content to run in silence and watch the fishing boats come in. It was lovely. We only ran for 45 minutes at a fairly easy pace, but I finished up a pretty sore. That was predictable. I'm silly sometimes.

When we got back to the house Lisa made us pancakes for breakfast - delicious! I ate lots of them. One must take full advantage of offerings like that. She also gave us quite a few valuable tips about cooking over here - some ingredients you just can't get, and it's hard to know what to improvise with, so it was great getting the local knowledge. She also wrote out some recipes for us, and showed us how to make maple syrup to go with the pancakes. Good stuff.

So, while we were at Lisa's I had been bemoaning the lack of animal life on the compound. I'm really not used to having nothing around me. I did recognise the impracticalities of having a dog, but surely the three houses could share ownership of a goat? Or even, I said, chickens?

Anyway, we went home, went shopping, went back home, and I thought nothing more of the conversation. I've been complaining to Zoe in a similar vein for days. Then later in the afternoon, we hear the doorbell ring. There is nobody there. Instead, there is a chicken. A chicken!!

Jess bought him from Tegeta market while shopping with Marie and April. They definitely saved that bird from being eaten, I have a feeling the stallholder was pretty surprised at them taking him away alive. They had to carry him in a plastic bag with his head sticking out.

I am so happy. He may not have many feathers, but they will grow back. He may be scrawny, but we will give him a tough name. We have a chicken! He's pretty tame, wanders round next to me when I put him outside. But he is very pathetic looking. Here is a photo:

We've been collecting name suggestions before the compound reconvenes to vote. Here is what we have so far. Feel free to add to the list if you have any ideas.

• Henry (not really tough enough for my liking)
• Charlie the Chicken (the same) (Phoebe, Grade 1)
• Charlie the Crusher (better!)
• Fang (my suggestion)
• Spike (mine) (look, I want him to sound tough ok)
• Brewster the Rooster (Zoe)
• Mr Tok Tok (Jake, Grade 1)
• Chik Chik (Alia, Grade 1)
• Chakula (Kiswahili for 'food') (mine)
• Chamchana/Chajio (both Kiswahili for 'dinner') (again, mine)
• DSB (Demented Scruffy Bird)
• Fowler (put forward by the DSB himself)
• Colonel (again the chicken)
• Tank (Timill)
• Nugget (Bec!)

I should probably be banned from making any further suggestions. Will let you know the outcome of voting.

Dinner was taken care of by way of us being invited over to the Larmey's house to babysit their kids. Ha. We tried to tell them that we didn't need to be paid - firstly, their four monsters are absolutely gorgeous and it was a pleasure to look after them, and secondly, they were feeding us! But they insisted, and well I guess neither of us really wanted to complain. We had a great night. They've got the most beautiful dog, Ginger, who they rescued off the street a few years ago. But she made me miss Tali. We had pizza, went for a swim, watched a movie... I got shown up by a ten year old. Let's not go into detail there.

Jump leads?

I do not understand my own brain sometimes. I was looking back over all my notes from Ireland and the early days here, and there's a whole series of words and scribbles and little diagrams that I have no idea what they stand for. Jump leads for example. What on earth did I see that inspired such an odd choice of word. And why is my memory failing to recognise the cue in? Usually I can picture exactly where and when I wrote something. Apart from the fact it's in my handwriting, I could swear I never wrote it in my notes.

Ah well. Rather routine school day. Worked with Ju exclusively today, actually got somewhere which was fantastic. Then helped Meg with the girls' soccer team. It's starting to get really hot here. Nice. I like it. Ok I've caught up on about four posts already today, this one shall have to wait to be finished. I am le tired.

Shed a tear for Tony*

Ha. There is a gecko next to the keyboard. He's brown, and about three and a half centimetres long. Just thought I'd tell you that. You get lots of little lizards around the place, mainly halfway up walls (whether inside or outside). I like them. Most are natural colours, but there's one type that has a yellow head, and bright blue body. As in BRIGHT blue. (Had to put it in capitals so that you understand exactly how blue it is). I think it's a type of Cnemaspis. But I'm not sure, will find out at some point. Got no idea what the gecko next to me is though, I don't know enough about them to distinguish any more than the most distinct varieties.

I must apologise for being in a grouchy mood yesterday. And you don't actually have to read Stargirl. I just read it yesterday and liked it, but it's a kiddie book. I also read Divine (Karen Kingsbury) which Renee** recommended. I think I scared her a little by finishing it in one night. But once we get home each night, the only options we really have available to us are reading, writing, drawing (in my case), sewing (again in my case), talking (not so much in my case) and sitting there thinking (far too much of).It's amazing how much longer evenings seem, in a good way, when there's no tv or computer or any of that junk. Of course, does dramatically reduce the timeframe for writing up posts. But I'm really enjoying having the space and lack of distractions. Very peaceful.

So, the usual school stuff. I'm not sure how much of these little titbits you guys want to hear about the kids, I'm happy to keep writing it, but a lot of it has no specific reference to being in Africa so I'm not sure how interesting it is for you. Ah they make me smile though.

I spent almost the entire day in the Grade 1 class, because Rachel was taking Ju and Ha for some individual work so I wasn't needed there. Zoe was getting her class to do some drawing first of all, and I have to admit, I was somewhat of a distraction in the room. Every two minutes one of the kids would run up to show me what they'd done so far, which would mean every other kid wanted some praise too and would do the same whether or not they were finished. I have a photo of Phoebe with her drawing of 'dressing the chicken' which I'll put up at some point. Very cute. (They were reading a book about a girl who was told to do a whole lot of chores, ie. 'draw the curtains', and did them all under the wrong meaning).

Later the class did some maths worksheets - having learnt from past experience that her kids have a predilection towards copying off each other, Zoe handed out different sets of problems to all of them, which somewhat solved the issue. Well, no. A lot of the kids were still copying, completely oblivious of the fact that the questions weren't the same. There's a big range in the class - some of the kids are at a relatively normal six year old level, but most of them are quite a way behind. Means that it's actually quite useful for me to be in the room when they're doing particular topics like maths, because many of the kids don't have the concept of addition yet, and if left on their own they just write random numbers. I guess in their eyes that's all everyone else around them is doing, so they don't even realise they're doing it incorrectly.

Tony got eaten by a rat! :-(

So now I can't draw you a picture of him.

*Meg's tortoise
**Librarian

Stargirl

You should read it. It's a good book.

Didn't go into school until 10:00 this morning because wasn't feeling fantastic. Haven't really done much so far, but am rostered to tell the Grade 1s all about seahorses this afternoon. Ah well. They can't tell if I'm winging it.

Finally finished the skirt last night. If I ever get around to firstly taking photos, and then putting them up, it's red and white. Either Zo or I could be wearing it. Probably Zo, it has flowers on it which is a little too girly for me. Haha.

Yeah. Maybe I'll add more to this update later. Or maybe not. I don't know what it is about Wednesdays. Seems to be the low point of every week.

---------------

Went to the Grade 1s just before hometime, hoping they'd forgotten I'd promised to tell them the seahorse talk. But of course I had to show up to cover my bases - if one has said to a bunch of little kiddies that one will show up, one must indeed. Sadly, their memories suddenly become better when heightened by enthusiasm, and as soon as I walked into the room there were shouts of "Miss Phillips!" "Miss Phillips has come to tell us about seashorses!" etc. Me giving them big smiles. My thinking 'Damn'. Nah, it's fun teaching them, and they get so caught up in what I'm telling them. I'm always happy to encourage such interest in animals.

So as I may have mentioned, seahorses are not an area of specialist knowledge for me. I drew them a big picture on the board and went over some basic facts. I'm learning to let them lead me though. I was asking them about what the purpose of the curled tail is, and one of the girls answered that it was to hold onto seaweed so the current wouldn't wash him away. Which was a bit too complex for some of the others so we got onto a discussion about currents and how if the water moved <-- this way, the seahorse would be pushed <-- this way too...
Artemis: "Like if you're playing in the waves on the beach!"
Alia: "Our house is only five miles from the beach"
Edison: "We're even closer, you just have to walk outside"
Jordan: "This one time I was at the beach and I found a clam and my Dad helped me open it with a rock because we bashed it like this *demonstrates with fist into hand* and then we got it open and..."
Miss Phillips: "So which way would the seahorse be pushed if the current was going --> that way?"*
...and from there together came to the conclusion that by holding on with his tail, the seahorse could stay X here when the current moved <-- --> either way. (By this stage my diagram was covered in lots of blue squiggly lines denoting water direction and would have made little sense to a newcomer to the room). Then we got onto reproduction. Haha. I asked the class to tell me who has the babies for humans. Puzzled looks.
"Who has the babies in a people family?"
"The Mummy!"
"But who do you think has the babies in a seahorse family?"
"The Daddy!"
They were absolutely delighted to find this out.
I was absolutely delighted that things were going so well. But of course, little kids have big questions.
"Why?"
Thankfully, Phoebe saved me from having to answer this one.
"So that the Mummy can have a rest and swim round with no kids to look after and nothing to do all day"
Priceless.
I vaguely explained the physiological logistics of this, before realising that I was out of facts and they were amazingly not out of attention. Right. Frantic scanning of brain for more information. Looked over at Miss K for permission to end the mini-lesson. Zoe grinned nastily and refused to rescue me. Apparently there was another seven or eight minutes of class time I was meant to use up.
In desperation, I started an analysis of the differences between seahorses and seadragons, given that we'd been talking about species being related to each other last time. This instantly caught the attention of all the boys simply because of the 'dragon' part. In fact, it worked really well - we then got talking about camouflage because I drew a picture of a seadragon in green marker, and added all the leafy growths coming off the body, then drew green seaweed all over it. I was quite proud of how well it conveyed the concept, and they all understood it. Ok. Don't remember anymore, I'm writing this from a day ago perspective** and that's long enough for me to have lost any further detail.

Uhm... afterschool walked with Zoe down the road to get bananas. Yay! I'd already finished the last lot she picked up. Bananas are now my staple here, rather than any grain. It's so different, just five minutes from our place and the whole scene has changed. Will describe it later...

Sandwiches for dinner again. Luckily, because we found it so funny the first time it remains terribly funny and therefore remains edible.

*Smooth diversionary tactic
**Probably noticeable due to the willingness to expand. Clearly wasn't there when I first started this post.

Thank you for the bread

Aaaah, today was so good for both of our mental states. Ursula picked us up to take us to Mbezi Chapel, which is a local Swahili church although a couple of white families go there. It is within walking distance of the compound, but we haven't been before so it was nice to get a lift. I've realised that I've been completely failing to give you any descriptive details to enable you to picture anything I'm talking about. Sorry. So, Mbezi Chapel was an area big enough to fit about eighty chairs (that's really not that many if you think about it), under a big thatched roof. Not really a building at all. I really enjoyed the atmosphere there, although the entire service was in Kiswahili. But I could recognise the occasional word, and picked up a few more while listening. Everyone was so friendly and greeted us afterwards and welcomed us and laughed in delight when we stumbled through our basic Swahili repertoire.

A whole group of us then went to Ruth's house (teacher at Hopac) for lunch. She has three kids, (possibly mentioned before), all absolutely gorgeous girls that I see around school a fair bit. Eliza aged five, Georgie aged seven, and Susie aged 10. The afternoon was fantastic - their house literally backs onto the beach, and Ruth set up a delicious buffet of well, food! What more could one want? After we'd eaten we all headed down onto the sand, where the other girls mainly stayed to lie there and chat, and I spent about the next three hours straight mucking round with Eliza, Suzy and Georgie. A couple of African girls that they apparently knew walked past at one point, and within two minutes we'd convinced them to join in. Ah. It was good to play with the kiddies for so long. Never gives you a chance to think about anything else when your constant attention is on them. Rick, Ruth's husband, was out windsurfing, and brought his board into the shallows to check on us after a little while. Somehow, I found myself bullied (by three kids who's combined ages only just beats my own!) into having a go. Ha. It was hilarious. I really don't have the weight to lift the sail, but despite my complete hopelessness it was a lot of fun. Found out afterwards that Zoe had been taking pictures. Luckily, being stills, they look like I'm actually doing ok, but in reality I spent more of that forty minutes in the water than on the board. Had to stop though because Eliza was waiting patiently this whole time, cheering me on but clearly wanting me to come back and keep playing with her. Lots of dogs - Tiger, Charlie, Spot, Poppy, etc...

At the end of the day Ursula dropped us off at the school so that Zoe could set up the classroom for Monday morning. Walking home we realised that not only did we still lack any cooking facilities, but it was now too late to disturb Marie and the others for the use of theirs. Ah well. We had some stale bread, tuna, a tomato and a small section of cucumber. What more could one need? The whole concept of putting together such makeshift sandwiches for dinner after the amazing lunch we'd had was in my eyes hilarious, and neither of us could stop laughing. In fact, in some strange way, it became one of most enjoyable meals we've had.

While washing the dishes I spiked myself on a knife that someone had carelessly dropped into the sink. I politely informed the only other member of the household that one shouldn't put sharp knives in amongst the general cutlery. I was blatantly ignored, so felt the need to repeat this wise piece of advice with slightly increased volume. I was no longer ignored, but rather laughed at. At this point Zoe would claim that I began brandishing the knife wildly. I must insist that I was merely showing the knife to her so as to bring to her attention the item in question.

We both congregated in my room and ended up spending the next couple of hours in the kind of blissful idleness that one needs every so often in life. Shared Zo's iPod while she read a book and I stitched a skirt. You don't need conversation at times like that.

Mzungu!

We decided to head into more central Dar today, so caught the daladala to Mwenge, changed onto another one, and from there to Kariakoo where they have a huge market. K/koo market was insane. At least as big as the Queen Vic market, but the stalls were much less defined and much more crowded. And we really stood out. Everywhere you walked people were yelling out "Mzungu! Mzungu!" (basically, white person) both as an exclamation and as a greeting to us. Technically not the most respectful way to say hello, but it doesn't have negative connotations. Still, it got quite draining after a while, you get absolutely no rest from the attention. People would even run ahead yelling out that mzungu were coming. My standard response to hearing someone shout "Mzungu!" soon became "wapi!" (ie. where?) just to keep us all laughing.

Yeah. We didn't last all that long in K/koo. Zoe and April and I caught the daladala back to Mwenge, where we walked along to the woodcarver's market. Now there's a place I could have stayed all day. They have a long row of basic shops crammed full with carvings and beaded jewellery, and the craftsmen/women sit behind them in a big open area making the pieces. It was fascinating, I could have sat and watched them for hours, but as soon as you look interested someone attatches themselves to you to convince you how cheap their stuff is. My Swahili does not yet encompass explaining that I just wanted to be left alone to watch. Plus, Zo and April might have got a little bored sitting there...