The First Day of School

We skipped our walk this morning to prepare for the day ahead. The water was off this morning, so Sasha took a page out of the Vanuatu play book and went for a quick bucket shower. Ryan slapped some deodorant on and called it good. Since it was a special occasion we broke into the cereal and non dairy milk to fortify us for the day. We got dressed up and Ryan was thankful that his muscle memory didn’t fail him in remembering how to tie a tie. Sasha wore her beautiful flower dress that was a thrift shop find (Thanks My!), though she did take out the impressive shoulderpads. Precious and his Big sister stopped by for photos of their first day, Precious posing with the binoculars.

We walked up the hill to the school and joined the other teachers in the office so we could all walk down to the assembly together. The students saw us coming and gathered in rows by grade expectantly. Jolly (the head teacher), addressed the assembled students, around 75 of them, with a prayer and words of welcome. He then took a rather hard turn in his speech and very bluntly told everyone that they had done quite poorly last year and they should all try harder. He explained that he had posted everyone’s grades for the whole community to see so that they would be more motivated this year. I guess when 85% of you class fails you have to take some drastic measures. Jolly then introduced the new teachers including us. He warned that we spoke only English so everyone must be disciplined and be able to answer our questions without blank stares. We gave a short speech and received a round of applause, though I suspect it was not fully because of the content of our introduction. Jolly said he could tell who could and could not understand what we said based on who kept trying to clap early. He called for a form 4 (grade 12) to lead us in the national anthem, and then the students were dismissed to class and the teachers all went back to their offices.

After a few minutes several teachers did go down the hill to teach. Ryan was invited to watch a form 4 math class to start the day. On the walk down he informed Ryan that he would not only be teaching English, but also Math and Life Skills. The first day of class was spent reviewing the final from the year before. The teacher worked through each problem on the board. Ryan followed along, to make sure he still remembered what he had learned and was surprised when the teacher tried to take the square root of negative 36 by just moving the negative sign outside of the root. Not to get too into the weeds, but you can’t do that! Ryan held his tongue during the class but asked him politely about it after we were back in the office. He admitted that he wasn’t sure if it was right and that the answer really didn’t make sense, but he said that in Malawi they did some things differently. It was a little disconcerting and it will be interesting to see what other misconceptions we run into while teaching.

Ryan was then taken to an English class. We had both been expressly told that they weren’t sure what classes we would be teaching and that we didn’t need to prepare for the first day. So we were both a little surprised when we were led to our separate classes, introduced and then the teacher left. Sasha had around half an hour to prepare the first form 3 (year 11) Chemistry class after being told she was doing form 1 and 2. The form 3s know English better than form 1s so it may be a good change. According to the textbook, the first week should be spent learning about the lab and what to do with dangerous material. We have no lab yet and nothing very dangerous so it was difficult to make a lesson out of it with so little time. The next section was about the scientific method and had to be prepared well so we couldn’t just go on. The teacher came in and handed out last years exams (of which most people did very poorly) and left. After asking them to raise their hands if they understood English and only 3 students raising hands, she was a bit nervous. She plowed ahead and they gathered in groups to discuss the only doable activity in either of the textbooks. After chatting for a bit a student waved her over “Excuse me we don’t understand, can you ask it better?”. The activity itself was quite confusing, so no not really. After running through what we were looking for, and a summary of the long lists of dangerous waste, there was still 20 minutes so we pulled out the old tests to read and see if we can understand old problems. Only around 5 students pulled out the test, the rest she asked said they were new. So they buddied up and tried to pretended to figure out what they did wrong. Sasha picked one up to try to help but where do you begin when every question is incorrect? So with the remaining time students said their name and a fun fact proving that most could speak some English. Meanwhile in Ryan’s class, he made an attempt to learn a few names, establish how much English people spoke (a little) and ask a few questions that were almost exclusively met with blank stares and a few murmured responses.

We regrouped for a lunch of rice and beans and then headed back to the school. Ryan attempted to find the Life Skills teacher (Moses) to get ready for his class later in the afternoon. Or at least find out if he would be the one teaching it. Apparently, Moses was at a funeral for the afternoon. Ryan set to work on his lesson plan for the class and had just finished when it was announced that the school was going to close for the day because there was no water and the students were thirsty. Looks like the lesson plan would have to wait till Thursday.

With no more school to worry about we went shopping for the weeks groceries. We managed to get a whole grocery bag full of veggies for 1,850 KWA (around 2 dollars). The next stop was new clothes. We purchased 4 yards of fabric ($8) and found a seamstress hut. We gave her the cloth and will post pictures of our new shirt for Ryan and skirt for Sasha this weekend ($4).

The rest of the day was devoted to lesson planning and the unending stream of visiting children. Confidence and Comfort came by, saying binoculars and Precious. After having our neighbor come by to confirm, it turns out Precious had left with the binoculars that morning and was showing them off at school saying we had given them to him. We listened to music on the refreshingly windy porch with the two boys, who successfully proved they could count to 100 and sing the ABCs. Their version is far better, the tune after “p” is different and after Z they yell “ZEBRA!”. They are getting quite good at thumb wars so we tried moving on to Rock Paper Scissors, but in reality that is a very confusing game.
Once they left Sasha was working on Chromatography, and so had a small collection of pens out. The older sister of Precious came by with a very little one, who was content watching Ryan type for a long time. The sister was looking at the different pens, and asked to have one. After being told no, we looked at some photos she had taken of herself earlier and when they left, we were missing a pen. It was the most basic pen, though we still have a very small number and it will be missed.