Slices of Life

Yesterday
Sitting on my porch at sunset, writing in my journal, the horde of children approaches. One of them pulls out a change purse, seriously hands me a red cough drop wrapper and says "Cobiri! Cobiri!" (money!money!) We then proceed to have a ten minute bad susu conversation about what the money is for and if its mine now. it is now mine; I have become wealthy! Suddenly all the kids want to give me money, and i'm sitting with a pile of used candy wrappers. Thanks guys. I went and got them lifesavers, of which the mint flavor was least popular, btw, and then told them I needed them to keep my money for me. What was I going to do, sit on it to keep it safe? Since, of course, I dont actually speak Susu, this was done by gesturing. Finally the children took their money back! so I'm back to being poor. Ah well.

a week ago
My eleventh grade science kids always whine if they have to stay past 12 qnd definitely after 1. In some ways I cant blame them, I know they are hungry. Solution? To teach them fractions, I bought a bunch of clementines and 5 loaves of bread. we demonstrated how the pieces made a whole, half, third etc. then we did fraction addition and subtraction with the bread. And then I taught them physics and told them to stop whining, they couldnt be hungry. Total cost, two dollars.

Every day
 I am the queen of fist bumps, known as beeg ups. I give them on the way to and from school, at the market, and occasionally on the way back from the well. I go to the well now! At least three times now!

Last Wednesday
Basket head should be my new name. I got my hair braided into one continuous braid from my hairline in. It looks and feels like a basket, but its my favorite "tresses" so far. My hair is totally out of my way and its significantly less itchy. However, braiding is just not good for white hair, so I think I'm gonna need a trim after I take this out. Goal of one week to keep it in. It's also nice for runs for keeping my hair out of my face. Maybe I'll run a marathon in the US like this. Another upside is that I now know what I look like bald and I think I have a pretty nice head shape. Ah, self discovery.

Yesterday
My supervisor came to check out my site, see how I am, and watch me teach. All went well, and he actually was very supportive of my teaching math, which along with english and physics is now my third subject to teach. We talked to my provisor and went over my role, blah blah. Then my provisor aka the principal said, "Mary is always working. She does what she can to telp out and we really appreciate her. Now that she is here, she has given me hope. I have hope now."

It's a good life here.