July 12, 2011
Did not bother to run today. I love the morning yet the teaching is so tiring I slept in 30 minutes.
I now have 12 students. I tried to instill some discipline at school today; admittedly things go better yet young kids like these need new stimulation every few minutes. None can read or write. Piorot and Guy shout the answers piercingly loud yet luckily with good English pronunciation. Sam dares barely a word and spends his time looking down or behind him. Niclolet says nothing at all. Carlos grabs a dead balloon and starts to eat it while Frank once again wants to go to the washroom for the fifth time this hour. I do team work games, draw monsters and make spiders out of black paper with accordion legs. I clap in time to Raffi’s “There’s a Spider on the Floor” and dance a jig - to their delight - as I have my paper spider crawl my body. I look at my watch. Still another 30 minutes of class…
July 13th
Anna and I are falling into step with the rhythm of life here. We learn to dodge the piles of silt that are deposited on the pedestrian part of street daily in ever increasing numbers. We ignore the calls of “Muzungu”. We wave at the mini buses full of Burundians chanting in unison, at the toothy women with babies stuck to their backs and at the cyclists who heave beneath piles of firewood, rice sacks and bricks.
We know the best orange and banana sellers as well as where to buy bread, change money and email. We’re accustomed to the back outs at 7:30 each night and haul out candles and flashlights.
We’ve found the mosquitoes like to hang around in the evening. They’re not at all like their Canadian relatives but are much more insidious. They’re small and don’t buzz or whine but prefer to come stealthily under dim candlelight. They don’t make an appearance by day and are more like a thief, working only in the shadows. With Burundi having the highest rate of malaria in the world, I dutifully take the anti malaria drugs each day, sleep under the mosquito net and spray bare ankles.
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