I've finished with me grade3 kids. Some are around school at different stages through the day but overall they're not really around anymore and I'm no longer their teacher. It's pretty sad. I'll surely miss 'em. I did get to have a bit of a laugh with a few of them today but I dunno if I'll get those chances everyday. We've split class 6 into 4 groups, and each group into 3 parts so I have 9 kids now instead of a class of 53.
We just do 3 classes a day adn tehn at the end of the day we do clubs then sports. So Stephen, Colm and I do the literature club (the other clubs are drama, music and art so don't think I'm too bent for doing lit). Today we did debating and it was actually hilarious. The motion was Boys are better than girls, so we let them choose the team they wanted, the 3 boys were for boys being better surprisingly joined by a girl and then 6 girls were on the girls are better side. The kids are about 12 years old, some maybe 13 some maybe 11. One of the funniest moments was after one of the girls said her point about boys not being faithful since they cheat on girls one of the boys stood up and said, "If a boy cheats on a girl, then who is the fool?". The same boy who stood up gave his point about boys being able to defend territorys of land and keep places safe, he went on to say how in Masai tradition the men kill lions for whatever reasons so Stephen (since he was helping the girls) pointed out that he wasn't a Masai and asked had he ever killed a lion and the wee kid wittily replied "I'll give you 30 seconds, go bring me a lion and I'll kill it".
Oisin always goes on about wanting to walk into the school from the main road since he feels like a white princess driving in. We drive down the path into the slum every schoolday, every morning we're driving through hundreds of people who are walking in the opposite direction out of the slum while on their way to work and they have to get out of the way for us which is quite bent. Well anyways since last week the rain had washed away some of the path and there had been a load of gravel dumped on the side of the path so it was very narrow to drive down. I've been shitting myself while we drive past that bit everyday for the last week but today my nightmare nearly became a reality. The front left wheel slid down a bit and the whole matatu(a van/bus) started leaning over. We all jumped over to the other side of the matatu and the driver tried twice to drive out of the predicament which was quite scary since he'd go forward, not make it and then slide back. After that we all had to carefully get out while the people who got out were putting their weight on that side of the matatu so it wouldn't end up toppling, just for safety, it probs wouldn't have. So with us all out and some help from locals who had been walking by (they quite dodgily went on the side that it would have fallen down on top of and pushed from there. I don't know whether they were being brave or stupid) our vehicle made it back onto the track and shaken but completely unhurt we all hopped back in and drove home.
Our confidence in our driver has left us a bit; yesterday on our way to school in the morning he pulled onto a roundabout and got hit in the side. Some people saw it coming quite early on and gave a scream what seemed like 4 seconds in advance, maybe it was but I doubt it could have been. Nobody was hurt but it was quite worrying for the people sitting on the righthand side of the car. The side of the car was dented a bit but overall fine. For the first while over here we thought drivers here were mad but then we got used to how close they come to hitting each other all the time and how often they pull out in front of each other. I think now we're a bit paranoid again.
I hadn't planned on putting up any pictures of my kids but here's a pic of Rosemary, me and about half of my class. Some of them don't really like getting their pictures taken. I hope if they ever see this they don't mind.
I have 2 pics crudely drawn so I'll throw them up in 2 or 3 days.
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