Seriously, what's going? - I don't know. Ask mister Anania.

Monday – 28.04.2014

On Monday, the school opened again, but after the week we'd had  we were still tired. Nevertheless, it was back to being madam Laura and madam Astrid. The first thing we had to do was hand out the examinations of mathematics, which was not a fun chore. Some of the students expected their grade, but it was obvious others thought they had done better. Even though the teachers told me these kind of grades were normal, I wanted the students to give me a reason, I wanted to know what they thought was the problem. Maybe if we know the problem we can do something about it. So we gave every single student a paper and two questions: What do you think went wrong on your examination? What are the topics you have difficulties with? We told them to give us back the papers during the next mathematics lesson.

After going over the most common mistakes, class was over and we went on to do the second thing on our list: talk to the head master. First, we told him about the corporal punishment I had seen before the holidays. It was obvious he wasn't pleased with the event. He told us he would discuss what happened with the teacher and ask for an explanation. He assured us that he would keep a closer eye on the use of the cane at school. When the talk about the corporal punishments was over, Astrid told the head master about her accident. His response was quite minimal. We noticed that he felt sorry for Astrid but that he didn't know how to respond. A deadly accident is normal here. It's an everyday thing and it's part of life. Therefore, people are surprised by Astrids emotional reaction (and we are surprised by their rational reaction). The third thing we discussed was something the head master brought up. He had received an e-mail from the Belgian organisation supporting the school and he wanted to know our opinion on future projects. We went over some of the ideas of the organisation and he told us that he wasn't looking forward to the meeting about this topic, because he knows his teachers and he feared the meeting wouldn't go well.

When we were on our way back to the staff room, we noticed there was a girl from form 2 in front of it. One of the teachers told us that she was bitten by a scorpion. A freaking scorpion! Mister Fikiri asked if we had a pair of small scissors. Without asking questions, I ran back to the house to retrieve one. By the time I got back, mister Stephen had already killed the scorpion. It had been hiding in the girl's backpack and bitten her when she tried to take a book. It was lying on the ground and was a lot smaller than I always had thought it to be, only about two centimetres long. Mister EPA took my scissors and cut the girl's finger open, then they put a coin against it and after that salt on it. I had no clue what was going on, but apparently it was supposed to help. I called a doctor from the Lutheran Hospital in Karatu I am friends with and asked him what to do. He advised us to give her a pain killer and told us that the poison of a scorpion is very painful but not deadly. I ran back to the house to get one and brought a bottle of water for the girl as well. I sat with her on the bed for a while and kept rubbing her arm softly because she said it relieved the pain a little bit. Unfortunately, the pain killer didn't do much. The girl was still hurting a lot. Mister Darma, aka baba Leonie, called the dispensary and asked if it was possible to get an injection for the girl. The dispensary has few materials to work with and sometimes they use needles again. So I ran back to the house to get a needle and then we went to the dispensary. There it all went very fast, she got the injection and hup, it was done. It seemed to work fast and the girl's tears eventually stopped.

When we got back to the school we got some breakfast for the girl and this time she got a chapati, instead of the usual porridge the students always get. She asked us to stay again and for another hour I kept rubbing her arm. Then we had to go and teach in form 3. After that lesson it was lunchtime so we went to get some ugali with beans for the girl. We brought her some of the teachers' ugali, which apparently is the good ugali. After eating the ugali with beans, she felt a lot better and joined the other students again. By then the lessons were over though and all that was left to do were the chores.

Tuesday – 29.04.2014

The next morning I checked with the girl again and she was feeling a lot better. Unexpectedly, I had to take over a lesson in form 4 from Paul, because he hadn't finished correcting his examinations yet. It seemed as if the form 4 students had forgotten every single thing they had seen before the holidays and the students weren't very cooperative. After the tiresome days we had had, it was even more exhausting to get them to participate than usual.

After going to the jiko (kitchen) to visit mama and baba mpishi, we had a cup of tea and a couple of chapatis. We went back to the staffroom because break-time was about to start and during break-time we would have a short meeting. There was a meeting... When break-time was over. The 'short' meeting lasted about two hours. It was mostly one teacher talking and the others looking in front of them with a sour look on their faces. Suddenly they switched to Kiswahili and then the meeting was over. That was that. It was a close cut to be on time for Astrids class in form 4, but we made it! (We had half a minute to go from the staffroom to the classroom, it's more than enough ;) )

During lunch one of the other teachers asked us if we were going to go to Endallah the next day.... Endallah? Why would we go to Endallah? Because there is a new school tournament of course! Ooooh, wait what? What's going on? - I don't know. Ask mister Anania. That's what they told us and when we asked if classes would continue on Wednesday or not the answer was: I don't know. Ask mister Anania. See if you want to ask mister Anania, you have to be able to find him first and that turned out to be a slight issue.

While we were on our way back home, Anna, a form 3 student, ran up to us and asked if we could take a look at her knee. She had fallen with her bike during the holidays and it was still a big open wound. We asked her to come with us to our house, so we could disinfect it etcetera. I think I spent an hour trying to get little threads out of the wound. There was a lot of dirt in it and it was obvious that she was in pain. We tried to distract her by asking questions: about her examinations, her home, her favourite subject and so on. Eventually we succeeded in cleaning out the wound and we disinfected it before putting a huge plaster on it. We told her to come back the next day, so we could check it out again. Anna kept saying thank you and assured us she would be back the next day.

Right after that, Paul gave me the examinations of form 4 to correct my exercises. I knew before that the examination was incredibly long for the time they had, but now it was painfully obvious. Most of the students hadn't even made half of the exam. Since my exercises were at the end of the examination a lot of students didn't even get to them. The students who did make them though, scored very high on them. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to change their failing grade into a passing one. Few form 4 students (only one) passed the mathematics examination. I especially hate this because I know how hard they tried. They really worked their asses off. I want to help them. If they try, I'll try. So right then and there, I made the decision to hand out papers in form 4 as well and ask them to write down the topics they have difficulties with. Using the papers of form 3 and form 4, I can check which topics are mentioned the most and those will be discussed in remedial (after I get the head master's permission of course).

Wednesday – 30/04/2014

Up to Endallah! Right? Nope, no school tournament this Wednesday. Astrid and I did what we do every Wednesday: teach mathematics in form 2, 3 and 4, run home to eat, teach civics in form 3 and supervise the debate. Except not entirely. As usual we went to eat at home in between our classes, because normally lunch for the teachers is only ready by the time the debate starts. So we were ready for the debate! But nobody else was. The students had disappeared and the classroom where we usually hold the debate was locked. Seriously, what's going on? - I don't know. Ask mister Anania. Again, before you can ask him, you have to be able to find him.

Consequently, Astrid and I went home. We got some work done, while enjoying the sun until we suddenly heard our students. They were laughing loudly. Something was going. This time we didn't look for mister Anania to ask him, we just followed the noise until we reached the sport ground. And THERE was mister Anania. This time we didn't need to ask what was going on. We could see it clearly. Our students were doing the high jump, long jump, etc. We were so happy that we went to check what was going on and we were disappointed that we had missed the beginning. They were selecting the best students in every discipline to participate in the school tournament against Endallah, which would be on..... I don't know. Ask mister Anania. He didn't know either though. He was waiting for Endallah to let him know. Even though the students took this very seriously, they were having fun as well. They were laughing and encouraging each other. It is nice to see our students doing something like this. They are more relaxed than in class and they were having the time of their lives.

While we were on our way home, we ran into Issack, one of our neighbours and a form 3 student. He was disappointed in his grade of mathematics, which came as close to passing as you can get without passing. He asked if we could take a look at the examination with him, so we told him he could stop by that night. He said he would, but he didn't though. We were wondering if maybe he had mixed up the words tonight and tomorrow.

Thursday – 01/05/2014

Thursday was May 1st so we had a day off. The night before Astrid and I had decided we would sleep in. Which we sort of did. I think we woke up at 7.30 am. We spent the rest of our morning working in our pyjamas and laying in bed. Around 11 am we could see Issack, the head boy and a third student coming in the direction of our house. Five seconds later there was a knock on the door. We were still in our pyjamas. In our pyjamas! And our students were in front of our door. Issack, you know, the one that didn't show up the night before, was standing there on Thursday to correct his examination and he brought friends. 1st May is Workers' day (it rhymes!), so that's what we did. We worked. They're all very smart boys though and most of their errors were due to wanting to be too fast and not reading the question entirely. They picked up quickly where they went wrong and within 15 minutes their tests were corrected, but I was still sitting there in my pyjamas and with my hair a mess. Just peachy.

After the boys left, Astrid and I wanted to avoid a repeat of the situation and immediately got dressed. The rest of the day went pole pole: a lot of time was spent on preparing lessons, but we took some time to relax as well.

Friday – 02/05/2014

After a day off, classes were back on for Friday. Or not. When we got to school one of the teachers asked if we were going to Endallah that day. Seriously, what's going on. – I don't know. Ask mister Anania. We found him this time! Yaaay! He told us the school tournament would be that day but he couldn't tell us whether the students that weren't going to participate had classes or not. Actually he said: I don't know. Ask mister Ndetio. So we went looking for mister Ndetio.

The students that would participate in the tournament had already left on foot by the time we found mister Ndetio. He told us none of the classes would continue. Well, if we didn't have to teach we wanted to go to the tournament to support our students, but not before we could find Anna, the form 3 student that had hurt her knee. Since the day before had been a holiday, we hadn't seen her, so we wanted to check out her knee again. After disinfecting the wound again and putting a plaster over it, we asked mister Ndetio to bring us to Endallah Secondary School. Our students were already on their way for half an hour and we would get lost on our own.

When we saw our students again, they were really excited that we were there. It was obvious that they appreciated us being there. I didn't want to be anywhere else at that moment. Okay, maybe that's not true. I was really happy I could be there for our students, but the I was appalled by the behaviour of the Endallah students. They were insulting our students and making offensive gestures. It was obvious our students were distraught so I made it a point to tell them exactly how proud I was of them: of their performance, their attitude and just them as a person. I told them I was extremely happy that I could say that I was THEIR teacher. It helped them a little and again they showed their appreciation, but it didn't matter what I said, the insults still affected them. Their performance went down hill and so did their mood (and mine). I wanted to help our students, but there was not a lot I could do. I was surprised by the fact that not a single one of the Endallah teachers told their students to keep quiet. And all I could do was keep telling our students how proud I was and that is exactly what I did.

Blog you soon, Belgium!

Laura