My site placement

Sigh. This is the second time I am writing this blog post this afternoon. That is the problem with using desktop computers and unreliable power sources. The moral of the story is to save early and save often, I suppose.

Anyway, here is my overdue post on my site placement. I am stationed in a village called Maktau (or Mwakitau) which is an hour or so west of the city of Voi in Coast Province. I can still see Kilimanjaro, but now it is in the west. I like my community. The people are very nice and they have helped me with the adjustment. A lot of people raise livestock, but the area is going through a bit of a drought, so I may explore some other activities.

My house is very nice. I have lights and electricity and two rooms. I haven't bought furniture yet, but my kitchen has a gas cylinder and some buckets, while my bedroom has a mattress and my suitcases. Hopefully I will get furniture this weekend. Just outside, I have my own bafu (the room where I can take a bucket bath) and my own choo (the room with a hole in the ground and lots of flies and cockroaches).My house is located near a main road that leads from Tanzania to Mombasa (I think), so there are a lot of trucks that pass through. I think the town gets a good amount of business from trucks during the day. That works out well for me, since the cafe and shops are placed right next to my house. My house is actually about 2 km from school, but I walk to school before the hot part of the day and I come home when the heat is going down.

The school is only a few years old, and has about 100 total students. I am working as a chemistry teacher, which is a bit of a challenge, since chemistry is not exactly my specialty. (Of the 9 science teachers who swore in, none of us had chemistry as our primary specialty. You may be noticing a discrepancy between how many teachers we originally had, but alas I am not at liberty to discuss that on my blog.) I am very grateful to my mother and the chemistry department at OPRFHS for helping me to get a comprehensive chemistry textbook to fill some gaps I have here. The students take subjects for four years in high school here and have exams at the end of four years. They have to do very well on exams to go on to university (very small percentage manage that). I have to adhere to a strict curriculum, and I worry that it lacks are some fundamental topics that would help students to succeed on their exams (e.g. dimensional analysis). The students are energetic, so hopefully we can work together and really solve the KCSE (Kenyan Comprehensive Secondary Exam, I think). The teachers (I think we have 4 others, but we need to cover 7 subjects...) and staff have been helpful with everything so far. I was sick (see next paragraph) earlier this week, so Thursday was my first day teaching. Then on Friday (today), I found myself as the only teacher in the school. When that happens, I have to sit in the office (where there is a computer) so that students don't realize that there is no other teacher in the school (hence the blogging). The curriculum calls for a lot of memorization, so when there is no teacher, the students are usually well disciplined and work on their own. Hopefully this won't be a regular occurence.

So after arriving on Saturday, I was feeling somewhat sick. I will spare you the symptoms, but I will say that I love my cipro. I think that between Saturday and Wednesday my total calorie intake was less than 2000 (Medical, if you're reading this, it's really nothing you need to worry about). Now I am almost up to full strength, and eating meals again, so that is exciting. When I was sick, I had a lot of time to stay at home and read, but it feels good to be in the school now. I should be 100% soon.

No more posts for two weeks, probably. But I think they'll come in a fury then. Feel free to email me in the meantime.