A Day In The Life

Sitting in an internet cafe downloading and uploading stuff, and have some time to kill. So, I’ll make the commonly-blogged-by-PCVS “Day In The Life Of A PCV” post. My teaching days here tend to go something like this:

6:30ish:
- alarm goes off
- hit the snooze button a couplea times
- get up
- feed the cats
- maybe take a bucket bath
- brush teeth, take malaria medicine, comb hair, shave, etc
- maybe wipe my dress shoes off
- make sure to put everything I’ll need at school in my backpack

7:15-7:45ish:
- walk a couple hundred feet from my house to the office
- say hi to the other teachers in various languages (English, Swahili, Iraqw, Maasai, Chaga)
- sign in in the sign-in book, using the actual time instead of making something up, as many of the others do
- check the schedule to see when I’m teaching
- if I have a class at 8:00 (if I do, it’s a math class), figure out my lesson for the day and mentally prepare
- if I don’t have a class at 8:00, figure out what I want to do outside of class that day, and start doing something

8:00ish, if I have an 8:00 math class:
- go to class
- engage in the following exchange:
Students: “Good morning sir!”
Me: “Good morning class! How are you?”
Students: “We are fine.”
Me: “That is good! You may sit!”
- write the basic lesson plan on the chalkboard
- teach a bit, doing some examples on the board
- split the students up into groups and have each group work on more examples
- run around checking students’ work and helping them to learn how to do it right every time
- at about 9:20, eventually write some optional homework on the board
- return to the staff room
- rinse the chalk off my hands
- wipe the chalk off my pants (I need to practice not getting chalk on my pants in the first place)

9:20ish, if I have a 9:20 class (also probably math):
- same as the 8:00 bit, but ending at 10:40

10:40ish:
- wait for chai (tea and snacks) to come
- rinse hands off
- take some tea, without adding sugar (unlike the Tanzanians, who each take 1-3 heaped spoonfuls)
- take some chapati (vaguely similar to pancakes or tortillas, eaten by itself, and pretty good)
- eat chapati, drink tea
- return dishes, rinse hands off
- if an upcoming computers class, figure out the lesson plan and mentally prepare

11:10, 11:50, 12:30, and/or 1:10, if I have a computers class:
- go to the kitchen and grab the cook/generator master
- go to the little generator building and turn the generator on
- go to the classroom
- engage in the following exchange:
Students: “Good morning/afternoon sir!”
Me: “Good morning/afternoon class! How are you?”
Students: “We are fine.”
Me: “That is good! You may sit!”
- give the students an overview of the day’s lesson
- go to the computer lab together
- unlock the door/let everyone in
- write any instructions and what-have-you on the chalkboard
- lead the students in going through the lesson
- generally speaking, the lesson involves excercises/tutorials in the form of Word docs that I wrote, in which case:
- students open the excercise file
- students read the instructions and follow the directions
- each group of students (not enough computers to have one student per computer) calls me over to show me when they finish
- when each group successfully shows me, I tell them they’re done and can do whatever
- when each group can do whatever, generally speaking they start playing games
- an hour and ten minutes after class started (so ten minutes until the end) lead the students in:
- turn off all computers (“the good way”, with the Start menu instead of switching off the electricity)
- close all windows
- cover the computers with cloths to protect them from dust
- when all computers are finished shutting down, turn off the electricity
- leave

2:30ish:
- wait for lunch to come
- rinse hands off
- grab some food, which can be one of the following:
- rice and beans
- mkande (boiled beans and corn with some flour to make it thick and saucy, and a bit of onion; tastes basically like cardboard)
- ugali (boiled corn millet (?) in a consistency kind of like sticky rice; tastes basically like cardboard; usually accompanied by spinach and/or beans)
- eat said food
- if an upcoming computers class, figure out the lesson plan and mentally prepare

3:00ish, if a computers class:
- same as the other computers class, except the period is only 1 hour long instead of an hour and 20 minutes

4:00ish:
- go home
- feed the cats
- maybe relax, or take a nap, or work on work
- cook some kind of dinner on my kerosene stove
- get water on the stove to heat to a boil while I eat
- eat
- eventually, when the water starts boiling, give it three minutes of boiling, and then take it off the stove
- do dishes maybe

7:00ish:
- sun goes away, generator comes on
- go to the computer lab
- do some combination of working, playing, etc until either I finish or 10:00/11:00 arrives, at which point they need to turn the generator off

whenever I finish at lab:
- go home
- feed the cats (they eat quite a lot these days)
- feel too lazy to brush teeth etc, decide to put it off until the morning
- make sure alarm clock is set
- go to sleep