My birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so it was mostly spent at the school. After the morning worship with the students and my Sunday school class after, I usually stay in the library until the students have lunch around 1 pm. Today, I was getting ready to leave as they were going to lunch, when some of the form 3 boys came and coaxed me out of the library and pulled me up to the dining hall.
I hung out with the students in the dining hall for a few minutes; today's lunch was ugali and greens, a very typical meal here, with watermelon for dessert. Nelson-John kept offering to share his with me; I managed to get away with only one big bite. Here are a few photos of the students at lunch, so you can see a bit what our dining hall is like. They all are assigned to a lunch table. The table leader gets the big serving bowls of food from the kitchen through the windows you can see in the background of the photo above, and then scoops it out into everyone's plates.
As you can see below, ugali and be eaten with spoon or fork, but usually it's scooped up in a ball with the fingers and dipped in whatever sauce/vegetable/meat it's served with. Hamadi, Juma and Isack are hamming it up for the camera, of course.
Speaking of hams, of course Gabriel and Salum (below) had to be in a photo. I swear those two can hear a camera coming out from a mile away. I have no shortage of photos of those two!
And finally, here's the video! The water was cold!!
Above, some of the boys try to look cool for the camera. They seemed pleased with the result, but I just rolled my eyes at them. They are, from left to right: Leon, Charles, Isack, Baton and Kelvin, all in form 3 this year.
As lunch ended, they pulled me outside; I knew what was coming! It's a tradition here on someone's birthday to pour water on them. Last year, I managed to escape because there was a water shortage at the time, but this year I was not so lucky! Actually, I didn't mind too much; it was a warm (which is not always the case here in mid-July; it's our winter), sunny day, I was going home right after, and I didn't have any other plans for my birthday so it was nice to have at least a little recognition.
Mostly on my blog I tend to tell about the good things happening, but life is not always perfect. It turned out that while I was up by the dining hall celebrating, someone went into the library and stole some money from my purse. I didn't realize it until I got home and needed to count out some money that I had received for student scholarships, and I knew it had to be during that time because all the money was still there during the collection at church, and that was the only time I wasn't in the room with my purse. Normally I wouldn't leave it unattended, but I didn't carry it because I knew they were going to dump water on me, and it was sitting out in plain view instead of in the cabinet because I had been packing my bags to leave for the day when they called me out. The next day, the headmaster and the other teachers questioned many students and the day turned into a whole inquisition (the teachers had been looking for a reason to come down hard on the students about something; they felt they were still way too rowdy after being off school for three months), but we never found out who took it.
So, the day did not end well, but at least there were some fun moments for my birthday. Above, you can see I'm soaking wet! These guys, Nelson-John, Kelvin, Baton and Elisha, were the main instigators. :) Below, a cheesy photo with Charles.
Above, the boys are STILL trying to look cool. Below, Baton is trying to feed me more ugali.
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