Thursday, February 9, 2012

Long long week

Last week was incredibly long for me.  I think it was a lack of sleep and a lot of new things going on.  Monday the Grade 9 English Educator asked me to help him, so Tuesday we passed out notebooks to all his Learners, explaining that this is a personal journal or diary, to be written in every day.  I wanted them to practice English and see that writing can be fun and therapeutic.  I said I’d read them once or twice a week, leave notes, and ask for more information from them.  Most kids just rolled their eyes at the extra homework and put their books away.  A few asked me questions; journaling is a totally new concept here.
Tuesday was also the first Boys and Girls Club meeting.  I hosted the first meeting of the village’s new Boys and Girls Club.  Percy is going to help me with the Boys part, and sometimes we’ll meet together and sometimes we’ll meet separately.  I’d announced Monday morning at Assembly that all the Middle School students were invited.  Out of 870+ students, 5 came to the library with me. 
It was definitely a smaller group than I’d hoped for, but we had fun.  We made name tags and told a little about ourselves, I explained how I want this club to be a safe and fun place to talk about anything, and then we played cards.  I amazed these girls with my shuffling skills.  One girl showed us a card “trick” (she had us pick a car from a grid pattern on a table and asked us which row and column it was in, and then she magically chose our card) and so I decided it would be safe for me to show one too.   Mine was a bit more complicated and left the kids speechless. 
I’m planning on a Boys and Girls Club meeting every Tuesday at the local library.  The women who work there seemed excited about it, I think they are supposed to be reaching out to members of the community but they don’t know how.  They asked me lots of questions, got an attendance list of our meeting, and offered to help in any way they could.  I’m excited about all this.
Wednesday marked five years since my dad died.  I went to bed thinking Tuesday night about it and woke up Wednesday morning feeling really sick.  I went to school and sat cross legged in a chair in the office reception area with my head in my hands.  The deputy Principal sent a teacher to buy me some antacids and decided that I’m too white to handle this heat.  Right.  I was supposed to go to Vryburg with some of the SBG members, but the only guy who had a car is this really sleazy man who no one really likes.  When the Principal saw my face he pulled me into an office to tell me how they were going to stall the trip and I should please go home and rest.  He even called the Middle School Principal to tell her I was unwell.  I gladly went home, changed into shorts, turned the fan directly on me and slept the day away.  Maybe it was all in my head, but I’m glad I got to relax that day and my supervisors understood.  I ate a special dinner in memory of my dad that night.
Thursday I went back to school to find that it was Sport’s Day, and that all 4 schools from my village would gather in a field behind my Primary School to race and determine the team of Learners who would go on to compete at a Cluster Competition this Saturday.  So I walked around a little and then sat under the tent the teachers had put up in the middle of the field.  The men were all out organizing races and the women were all under the tent recording runners and statistics.  I just sat, watched the 2000+ kids, and got stared at a lot by the kids from the schools I don’t work at.  The kids crack me up, they don’t care, no modesty, I saw boys and girls just strip and change their clothes in the middle of the field.  No big deal.
Friday deserves its very own post.

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