December news

Sorry about that. i haven't been to freetown in a long time, and there's a bit to catch up on! school has been going well; i had some difficulties with my SS2 students being rude, but I straightened them out (with the help of some of my SS3 students who told them basically, "stop being rude. listen to mr. meeker." there was more to it than that, but that's the gist. My students did very well on their first term final exam although i worry that their knowledge is only memorization and not comprehension (although that seems to be an international problem in my opinion). work has started and finished at 1 of the 4 schools receiving the small grants, the other three are dragging their feet and will require some gentle pushing from me. the chairs and desks project (funded by USAID and the U.S. Embassy) is nearing completion which will entail a large ceremony at the school and possibly Embassy personnell (personell? personnel? ugh.) coming all the way to Gbendembu to attend! The Ambassador has said that he would love to visit, but it's.. it's real far from Freetown. We'll see. In either case, I'm really excited that the project is nearing completion. Finally, the staff quarters project has started! As of this writing, the foundation has been laid and the hole for the latrine has been dug. We are now waiting on supplies and for more dedicated manpower (since people want money as they go and not at the end of the work, which is hard to convince people to work for a week with nothing and then getting it at the end..) Socially, we had Thanksgiving in Lunsary (a separate post for that), and besides that, I've been especially hermit-like, teaching, reading, writing, drinking my palm wine, and mingling as much as I can. I've found that at school I have much more authority this year, as in, a teacher was letting his students be quite loud. I came in, told him it was unacceptable and that if I had to come back, there would be trouble. The class was silent afterward. (Treated.) Rambling. Okay. I'll write the Thanksgiving post now. I love and miss you all! :)