Seth Lamble

I know a lot of my posts are about my complaints. But don’t be mistaken I am enjoying my time with Peace Corps. Dispite some of the idiosynchosies(?) of my fellow teachers, I generally enjoy the conversations I have with them. My students are always fun to talk to also. It is just whining and moaning is a lot easier then complementing and gushing, plus it generally is more interesting.

Lets see if this works.

CST
Alright so last week was Cross Sector Training, where as I expected there were many attacks upon PCV Teachers, about how we are taking jobs from Kenyans, blah blah, blah, I just told the truth, sometimes when I see an unemployed Kenyan teacher I kick them, and then laugh at their misfortune. Come on, there are like 20 PCV teachers in Kenya, (at least the ones that are despised by other PCVs) that is less than 1 percent of 1 percent of the needed teachers, and less the 1 percent of the needed science teachers.

Molasses Truck
So Mumias and Sony Sugar are the two big sugar manufacturers in Kenya. Mumias is up here in Western Province, and Sony is in Nyanza Province. After the sugar has been removed from the sugar cane in the form of Cane Molassesit is loaded into big old tanker trucks and sent elsewhere to be processed into candry, alcohol, so on and so forth. Except all of the molasses does not make it to it’s intended destination. The truckers stop at various points along the way and sell a few hundred gallons to the villagers, which is then used to make the local moonshine [either chung'a (which is clearish) or Busa (which looks like cream of wheat)]. Unfortunately this creates the problem of a deficiency in the amount of molasses that should be delivered. Well these business minded truckers simply drive to the nearest river and top up with not just water, but mud, so as to keep the consistency right. I feel like I am back in the early 20th century, or perhaps The Jungle, except applied to sugar instead of meat (which by the way I believe the Jungle was more an attack on the entire system of industrialization and not just the meat industry, the meat industry is only like a 1/4 or 1/3 of the full book.) Knowing that the mud (and Animal/human waste) is all going to end up in my Cadbury Chocolate Bar or Coke. Oh Joy.

Primary School
So recently the Primary School next to my Secondary School (shockingly enough known as Shidodo Primary School) recently chopped down a tree, that if you count the rings predates the start of the 20th century. Which means that tree survived the colonial period, independence, and 2 presidents. Along with the construction of the dirt road. And why was this nice old tree cut down, well to make up the difference from the money that the principal has been stealing from the school funds. Primary school was made universal here in Kenya a few years back, which means the school fees of students are being paid for by the government (probably foreign aid.) Which means the fees are being paid in full (relatively) and on time (relatively), not only are they being paid in full, but more than before is being paid, the government pays like 4 times per student what the school use to charge. And yet even after 5 years of this, nothing has changed on the school grounds, matter of fact they lossed 3 teacher, who were being paid for by the school and not the government, because they were not being paid. Mostly I am just angry about the tree.

On to topics that are related to sex.

Leaving my mark
On another subject one of my fellow teachers told me one day on the walk home from school that I needed to leave my mark. I was more then a little wary, I figured he was going to just ask for money or some such. Instead it turns out by mark he means I need to father some children, not necessarily get married, just leave some kids behind. Which, you know, this country (hell this continent) really needs more of, fatherless children. I mean if the AIDs orphans were not enough, there are the refugee orphans, or and the kids that were just abandoned. So if you all can’t tell I am really ready to leave my mark.

Family Planning
Which leads to another topic. All over there are billboards and the like saying things like “Men who care, plan their families”, awhile back I was talking to my teachers about something, and I learned something about how many of the people who live around me view family planning. But first some background info. 5 out of the 8 teachers either have had children outside of their marriages, or are not married and they have children. Which always strikes me as ironic as when they are railing at the students about sex, they are taking a do as I say and not as I do. Which leads me to a tangent that the Christian Religious Education teacher told me that young people do not have sex in Kenya, in response to me saying that the amount of underage sex between Kenya and the States might not be that different, it is just contraceptives are more excepted. This coming from the man that had a daughter before he was a Freshmen in High School, but I digress. So it turns out that my villagers fully embrace family planning, all of the children that they have prior to marriage are just practice, that way they will be better suited to plan their families. Pretty smart if you ask me.

Peace

So today I was traveling via Matatu to Kakamega from my House near Khayega. It is only 10 km, (6 miles) and I usually walk or bike it, but today is the beginning of a training session with Peace Corps in Kakamega, so I was not all that interested in being covered in sweat and tired.

But back to the original topic, Hell and it’s apetite. I saw what in the US would be called a bumper sticker, but here it is a anywhere you feel like sticker. And it said:

“Hell’s Apetite is larger, Jesus is the only path”

Now anyone who knows me, knows that I am living embodiement of all that is evil and sinful in this world, I guess I am a combination of all 7 of the deadly sins, well except greed, or maybe only a dash of greed. So I am no expert on the whole religion, path to salvation thing, but I kinda started thinking about this message. Does that mean that before Hell’s apetite expanded there were multiple other paths to take, or perhaps that before hell’s apetite grew things that are sins these days were not sins in the past?

Any comments?

I decided to write a post about my typical school day, so here it is:

4:45 am: Wake up randomly for no apparent reason, close my eyes try to get another 30 minutes of sleep.

5:20 am: officially wake up, start kettle boiling on gas stove to heat bath water, scratch myself, drop the kids off at the pool (or bottomless pit in the case of my facilities)

5:30 am: Eat breakfeast (Mangoes, Bananas, Bread and Water)

5:40 am: Scratch myself some more

5:45 am: Brush teeth

5:50 am: Take bath in bucket, scratch myself

6:00 am: Get dressed, put my glasses on before my shirt, almost poke out my eye.

6:10 am: walk to school, shouting at students I see on the way, telling them they are “slow like tortoise” and they need to run to school so none of the other teachers will cane them.

6:40 am: Reach school, relieve myself of the liter of water I drank with breakfeast.

7:00 am: Go to class, before classes start, to either a)solve extra problems, b) show indepth homework solutions, c) give notes, or d) dance a jig for the students

7:40 am: Students go for Assembly (mon), Devotional (Wed), Class Meeting (Thur) or Assembly (Fri), I think all are irritating wastes of time, so I work on notes, or read newspaper.

8:00 am-8:40 am: Classes officially start, might have this class, usually math, shout at the kindegarteners “I AM FINE” so they stop screaming “how are you?” at me through the classroom window.

8:40 – 9:20 am: 2nd class, also usually math, learn most of my students didn’t do the homework, tell me it was to hard, sounding a lot like me when I was in Kindegarten-Senior year of college, except my excuse was I didn’t do it right because it was to hard.

9:20 – 9:30 am: Short break, chance to scratch myself, scribble more notes, chase the primary school students because they make a swamp out of our water spigot, rarely catch them, mostly entertain them a lot.

9:30-10:10 am: 3rd class, Geography at times, while talking slip into a thick country accent which I never knew I could do.

10:10-10:50 am: 4th class, Usually no class, put head down on desk try and recapture those missing 30 minutes of sleep. Another chance to chase the Primary School students, yelling I just want to eat them, and dragging them to the cooks shed when I happen to catch one.

10:50-11:10 am: Long Break, where I drink my Strong Tea (read tea without milk, I scandalized my school when I told them I don’t like tea, and apparently the cook has decided, that she knows my taste better then I do), which is really just tea flavored sugar water (which reminds me that the Chai here is just Tea Flavored Sugar Milk), also yet another chance for me to chase Primary school students around the compound.

11:10-11:50 am: 5th Class, usually Physics or Math, ask the students who would win in a fight Chuck Norris or the Undertaker, behave like a rapper to keep their attention on Math.

11:50-12:30 pm: 6th Class, usually physics or math, do a Kenyan dance someone has taught me, I currently have 4 styles.

12:30-1:20 pm: Lunch, usually late, which makes me late for my Junior Physics, or HIV/AIDs lectures. Mon, Wed, Fri is Ugali, Kale and Meat, Tues and Thurs is Githeri (Corn and Beans)

1:20-2:00 pm: Junior Physics class, I have only 5 students, I think they will do well on the biog exam, because they all actually want to take Physics

2:00-2:40 pm: 7th class, usually physics, hate the way this is set up, because when lunch is late, I either miss part of my class, or I am gone from the office for so long that my food is cold and all the fat has become hard.

2:40-3:20 pm: 8th class of the day, usually math, stand stairing at a few students in class because they feel that their conversation is more important then my lesson.

3:20-4:00 pm: last class of the day, physics or math, tell my students what I ate the day before, always a crowd pleaser.

4:00-5:00 pm:Games=Mon, Christian Union=Tues, Counseling=Wed, Clubs=Thurs, and Cleaning=Friday, at least for the students, I am usually marking the few books of the few students who bothered to do my assignments, chase primary school students around, scratch myself, relieve some fluidic pressure that has built up in the lower portion of my body, write notes, listen to teachers argue about something.

5:00 pm: Theoretically end of the day and closing assembly, reality does not match theory.

5:30 pm: Closing assembly, students yelled at for awhile by teachers to lazy to actually be good roll models.

5:30-6:30 pm: Assist Senior students with Math problems they have, or try to explain things better, or do examples so Math is a little easier on the big exam.

6:50 pm: reach home, as the sun is setting, talk to the shopkeeper in my yard.

7:00-8:00 pm: prepare dinner of potatoes, rice, and kale, eventually eat dinner

8:00-9:00 pm: Prepare notes, read books, listen to radio till I doze off

10:15 pm: wake up, scratch myself, get dressed for bed, go to sleep.

Rinse and repeat 5 to 6 times a week

Realize that I don’t teach all 9 class periods everyday, I only have 34 class periods a week and there are 180 possible time slots.