Jackson's 8th Birthday

It's Jackson's birthday! We had hoped to go to Chemka Hot Springs to go swimming for his birthday, but he had a soccer tournament that weekend and the weather wasn't great, so we'll try to do that another time.  However, an 8th birthday cannot pass uncelebrated, so we met at AIM mall after he'd finished his soccer games that day for a late lunch and cake.  

Above: lighting the candles! An 8 candle and a big sparkler candle, so he's sitting well back!

Below: opening my gift.  I didn't have any nice wrapping paper, unfortunately. 

In Tanzania, the birthday person cuts the cake and serves it to their guests, and he's finally old enough to be able to mostly manage to cut the cake himself. 

Enjoying lunch...David and Fibi (Jackson's aunt and uncle, and my coworkers at Alpha Omega) and their son Kendrick, and Emmy sharing some fish (her favourite!) with Uncle David. 

Jackson's choice for lunch was a star pizza from Bravo.  It's a stuffed crusts with pepperoni and cheese inside, with french fries served in the middle.  It's one of his favourite things to order for special occasions! 

The Sun Comes Out

This is a beautiful time of year, when the rains end and the sun comes out, but it's not yet dry and dusty.  The above is on the road just outside the school gate.  Below are close to my house.

 

Student Life

A day in the life of students... in the first picture, some form two students are writing the answers to some questions I wrote on the board.

At lunchtime, I had to go up to the dining hall to find someone, and I got a couple of pictures of the normal chaos of the dining hall during lunchtime.  Ugali and beans today!

 

Peer Pressure Lesson Part 2

Today in Life Skills, the students acted out the skits I assigned last week.  We had some interesting stories about handling peer pressure! 

 

Peer Pressure Skits

In my form 1 Life Skills class, we talked about peer pressure last week. This week, I assigned each group a prompt for a skit showing different examples of peer pressure and how to handle it.  Here are the prompts:

 

 

School Days

We're reading Mabala the Farmer in Form 1 right now.  It's one of the kids' favourites of the stories we're required to read; it's about a very silly man that leaves the big city and thinks life on the farm will be easy.  His long-suffering wife tries to tell him things, but he has to make his own mistakes. 

I often take pictures of the pages on my phone to read from, as there aren't quite enough copies for everyone and that way it frees up one more. Below, Melau poses with the stack of books. 

The form one students love taking silly pictures, of course.  I've met very few students that don't...I can only imagine how many we'd have taken back when I was in high school if we had phone like today; we took enough as it was, but we were limited by the cost of developing film. :) 

In the late afternoon, I was watching out the library door and I saw several students gathered around the bell tower.  Mr. Mngoma, the headmaster, had some maintenance to do on a bicycle, so he brought it up there to do it so that some interested students could see the process and learn how to do some basic repairs. Nice to see students learning even outside of class! 

Friday Night Lights

We don't have class after lunch (which is from 1:00-2:00 pm) on Fridays.  The afternoon time is for clubs, family groups (small groups led by teachers/staff that are in charge of cleaning certain areas of the grounds as well as meeting for various discussions of life skills sorts of topics not covered in class), or other school events like debates with other schools.  The science club meets in the library, led by form four students Baton and Shuaka.  Sometimes, they ask to borrow my laptop to play educational videos.  

On Friday evenings (about 5:00 pm to 6:30) we have football (what you call soccer), which is the BIG sport here.  Sometimes, like tonight, it's teachers against students; sometime's it's one class against another, or sometimes against another school.  

Mr. Mngoma, the headmaster, was doing something or other up by the dining hall with his pickup truck.  He let some of the students have fun by piling in the back when he moved it back around to his house.  

Above, some after-football stretching. Below, here's me with form four student Elisha. 

 

Quiz Time in Form 2

We had a vocabulary quiz today in Form 2! Everyone is working hard...

...but after class, there is time for some being silly with selfies. :) Below: Doreen, Victoria, and Benson.