Amoos ami po koor!
Sorry for the unflattering image of my puss.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Further odysseys of Shebora Kabba
Things are going pretty well. Doing lots of science. I think the best way to enjoy yourself in situations like this is to have something to focus on.
Yesterday I had a distillation apparatus set up in order to make distilled water for the chemistry WASSCE exam. We can probably manage with regular well water (it's fairly visibly clean, but I imagine it has lots of salts in it) but yeah it sounded fun to make a distillery. I have lots of fun with all the fancy glassware I have. Every 'experiment' I do has the students pretty interested, and I am usually happy to explain things and satisfy their curiosity. It's a shame this lab has gone to waste. Like I've said before I think those Germans must have thought they were going to do publishable research here or something. The only thing I don't really have is butane for the bunsen burners, but I plan to buy a tank the next time I get a chance.
The students were so interested in the distillation apparatus (it looks pretty cool) that they wanted to present on it for the L&DS (Literary? and debate society). So we took it outside to where the L&DS was going to be and got it set up. I had one of the students go buy a couple packet double punch (http://babygotsauce.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/pouch-e1332905621395-224x300.jpg). Everything went pretty smoothly, but it was a little bit windy and my tiny alcohol burner was struggling. Fortunately, the apparatus was dripping the alcohol during the presentation. The student is really good and knows a lot but sucks at presenting. That is kind of frustrating for me. So we made super concentrated (~160 proof I think) double punch rum in front of the whole school. It was so concentrated with alcohol it evaporated in your mouth and was really terrible. Double punch is bad enough as it is. The flavor was more soluble in alcohol apparently, so it was just stronger (worse) than usual packet liquor. I had the students take the equipment back to the lab and the solution was gone by the time I saw it again.
I am trying to pick up again with the Themne. I really want to be speaking it. I can understand what people are saying half the time and sometimes can make decent responses, so conversationalism is slowly coming, but I haven't been working very hard with it lately. I have just been really busy. I plan to hit it hard this coming break. My initial goal was relative fluency by the end of May, but that is probably unrealistic, but not entirely. I just need to study more even though it seems like it doesn't help (but it obviously does).
It's stupid how 'clean' chemistry needs to be.
The Bangura family is building a new house with mud bricks. Mud bricks are kind of cool. I find it amazing you can build a house that lasts like 30 years with dirt. They seem to turn back into dirt eventually, unfortunately, but it doesn't cost anything besides labor. I spent a little bit of time shoveling some dirt yesterday. Every time I do any sort of work it's like, theatrical or something, which is kind of annoying. I enjoy doing work, since I have the energy to do it. It is another component of being a celebrity, I guess. I'm not expected to be doing the work the common man does, so when I do it's some sort of deal that needs to be recorded. It goes a lot to boosting my PR. People are like, oh, he understands how to work (oh tara mupanth)! and tell me to have somebody take pictures. Soon after starting people always ask if I'm tired, or offer to take the shovel or whatever. I say no, I gbilly!
While shoveling some man named Abu Kamara came up. He wears these huge super magnifying glasses that sit off kilter on his nose. He says he is a pharmacist and plans to come teach at my school next year. He seems to know science and he's sort of really cool. He's probably 40 or so. He wants to live alone near the school and open a pharmacy and do research or something. He says he wants to have a peaceful place to work on his projects. He wants me to be his research partner. I am really hoping this guy is legit because it would be awesome to work on a real project. I am hoping I can learn things from him. He went back to Freetown and said he'll bring back a paper he wrote. I don't know if he is actually published or not. I'm looking forward to working with this potential chemist.
I feel like the title of my last post has become more and more true: I just want to do science. I enjoy teaching, most of the time, but I love just spending time in my lab. There is so much work to do with it. Right now I am just trying to make a decent enough volume of distilled water to make clean solutions with. I feel somewhat blessed to be the person I am and to have this lab. I can't afford to not take advantage of this (very short) time. I am hoping when I leave the lab is well organized and again operational.
Today they were again working to build the mud brick house. MA (that little girl who is my titi, like Shebora, my bobo) has been wanting to make some butterscotch. It's really easy. I bought everything we needed: Condensed milk and 'butter' (margarine). After taking my time waking up, I went over to their house and one of the auntie's made it in a pot over a three stone fire with all the kids around. After it was cooked down I got to roll it into balls. It was incredibly hot and painful. I took a small portion and gave the rest to MA to sell. When people here make things to sell it seems like they don't do any calculations to find out how much they ought to sell things for. I'm afraid most of the time people probably lose money by making things to sell.
Not all of the condensed milk was used and there was a small bit at the bottom. I guess her father, I-Tal, dude I've talked about before (his nickname means he's tall), had told her to give the remainder of the condensed milk to him. People doing things like this piss me off. It feels like people are trying to get everything they possibly can out of me. He didn't ask me. He just assumed he could take it. The habit of people here is to take and ask later instead of the other way around. Before I went to make the butterscotch I had to buy some soap for Isatu, his woman (wife), to brook my clothes for me. He told me to come over and proceeded to explain that he was hungry, in Themne (oputo, I yema di!!). I understood what he was saying because I hear people all the time telling me they are hungry. I didn't really say anything because it's hard for me to actually express upset/resentment in a difficult foreign language. I need to learn to tell people I'm upset in Themne. So he assumed I didn't understand and said it in Krio. I think I just walked away. I do too much for that family, and their father is the reason they struggle to have money to eat every day, IMO. He smokes and drinks his family's money away. So I don't like him too much. He's just trying to exploit me.
Shebora and I fixed my bicycle yesterday. I don't know if I mentioned, but my rear shifter broke and so I've only had three gears for awhile now. It's been manageable but I stopped loving my bicycle so much. Fortunately for me, I have Issa Kabba's bicycle in my storage room. So we took the shifter off of his bike and put it on mine. It works well and I'm really happy to have gears again!
So, things are going fine. It feels like I could be doing more of course, but I feel like the community liking me and me feeling comfortable is probably already more than I could have asked for. I never have enough time to do everything I want to, but the things I am doing are just fine. It is a day to day process. Now I am going to go run.
Yesterday I had a distillation apparatus set up in order to make distilled water for the chemistry WASSCE exam. We can probably manage with regular well water (it's fairly visibly clean, but I imagine it has lots of salts in it) but yeah it sounded fun to make a distillery. I have lots of fun with all the fancy glassware I have. Every 'experiment' I do has the students pretty interested, and I am usually happy to explain things and satisfy their curiosity. It's a shame this lab has gone to waste. Like I've said before I think those Germans must have thought they were going to do publishable research here or something. The only thing I don't really have is butane for the bunsen burners, but I plan to buy a tank the next time I get a chance.
The students were so interested in the distillation apparatus (it looks pretty cool) that they wanted to present on it for the L&DS (Literary? and debate society). So we took it outside to where the L&DS was going to be and got it set up. I had one of the students go buy a couple packet double punch (http://babygotsauce.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/pouch-e1332905621395-224x300.jpg). Everything went pretty smoothly, but it was a little bit windy and my tiny alcohol burner was struggling. Fortunately, the apparatus was dripping the alcohol during the presentation. The student is really good and knows a lot but sucks at presenting. That is kind of frustrating for me. So we made super concentrated (~160 proof I think) double punch rum in front of the whole school. It was so concentrated with alcohol it evaporated in your mouth and was really terrible. Double punch is bad enough as it is. The flavor was more soluble in alcohol apparently, so it was just stronger (worse) than usual packet liquor. I had the students take the equipment back to the lab and the solution was gone by the time I saw it again.
I am trying to pick up again with the Themne. I really want to be speaking it. I can understand what people are saying half the time and sometimes can make decent responses, so conversationalism is slowly coming, but I haven't been working very hard with it lately. I have just been really busy. I plan to hit it hard this coming break. My initial goal was relative fluency by the end of May, but that is probably unrealistic, but not entirely. I just need to study more even though it seems like it doesn't help (but it obviously does).
It's stupid how 'clean' chemistry needs to be.
The Bangura family is building a new house with mud bricks. Mud bricks are kind of cool. I find it amazing you can build a house that lasts like 30 years with dirt. They seem to turn back into dirt eventually, unfortunately, but it doesn't cost anything besides labor. I spent a little bit of time shoveling some dirt yesterday. Every time I do any sort of work it's like, theatrical or something, which is kind of annoying. I enjoy doing work, since I have the energy to do it. It is another component of being a celebrity, I guess. I'm not expected to be doing the work the common man does, so when I do it's some sort of deal that needs to be recorded. It goes a lot to boosting my PR. People are like, oh, he understands how to work (oh tara mupanth)! and tell me to have somebody take pictures. Soon after starting people always ask if I'm tired, or offer to take the shovel or whatever. I say no, I gbilly!
While shoveling some man named Abu Kamara came up. He wears these huge super magnifying glasses that sit off kilter on his nose. He says he is a pharmacist and plans to come teach at my school next year. He seems to know science and he's sort of really cool. He's probably 40 or so. He wants to live alone near the school and open a pharmacy and do research or something. He says he wants to have a peaceful place to work on his projects. He wants me to be his research partner. I am really hoping this guy is legit because it would be awesome to work on a real project. I am hoping I can learn things from him. He went back to Freetown and said he'll bring back a paper he wrote. I don't know if he is actually published or not. I'm looking forward to working with this potential chemist.
I feel like the title of my last post has become more and more true: I just want to do science. I enjoy teaching, most of the time, but I love just spending time in my lab. There is so much work to do with it. Right now I am just trying to make a decent enough volume of distilled water to make clean solutions with. I feel somewhat blessed to be the person I am and to have this lab. I can't afford to not take advantage of this (very short) time. I am hoping when I leave the lab is well organized and again operational.
Today they were again working to build the mud brick house. MA (that little girl who is my titi, like Shebora, my bobo) has been wanting to make some butterscotch. It's really easy. I bought everything we needed: Condensed milk and 'butter' (margarine). After taking my time waking up, I went over to their house and one of the auntie's made it in a pot over a three stone fire with all the kids around. After it was cooked down I got to roll it into balls. It was incredibly hot and painful. I took a small portion and gave the rest to MA to sell. When people here make things to sell it seems like they don't do any calculations to find out how much they ought to sell things for. I'm afraid most of the time people probably lose money by making things to sell.
Not all of the condensed milk was used and there was a small bit at the bottom. I guess her father, I-Tal, dude I've talked about before (his nickname means he's tall), had told her to give the remainder of the condensed milk to him. People doing things like this piss me off. It feels like people are trying to get everything they possibly can out of me. He didn't ask me. He just assumed he could take it. The habit of people here is to take and ask later instead of the other way around. Before I went to make the butterscotch I had to buy some soap for Isatu, his woman (wife), to brook my clothes for me. He told me to come over and proceeded to explain that he was hungry, in Themne (oputo, I yema di!!). I understood what he was saying because I hear people all the time telling me they are hungry. I didn't really say anything because it's hard for me to actually express upset/resentment in a difficult foreign language. I need to learn to tell people I'm upset in Themne. So he assumed I didn't understand and said it in Krio. I think I just walked away. I do too much for that family, and their father is the reason they struggle to have money to eat every day, IMO. He smokes and drinks his family's money away. So I don't like him too much. He's just trying to exploit me.
Shebora and I fixed my bicycle yesterday. I don't know if I mentioned, but my rear shifter broke and so I've only had three gears for awhile now. It's been manageable but I stopped loving my bicycle so much. Fortunately for me, I have Issa Kabba's bicycle in my storage room. So we took the shifter off of his bike and put it on mine. It works well and I'm really happy to have gears again!
So, things are going fine. It feels like I could be doing more of course, but I feel like the community liking me and me feeling comfortable is probably already more than I could have asked for. I never have enough time to do everything I want to, but the things I am doing are just fine. It is a day to day process. Now I am going to go run.
Monday, March 17, 2014
I just want to do science..
I know. It's been awhile, again. Time flies here, and sometimes I don't feel much like writing. That's pretty much it. I'll try to catch you up.
Themne is hard. I think any foreign language is hard to learn. Especially when you don't know what to learn to advance and have no guide to tell you. My friend Muhammed Kargbo is still trying to help me out with it. Most of the time these days I can get people I meet to say 'oh tara kathemne!' (he understands themne), and so that is pretty good I figure. It doesn't take much usually though, beyond being able to greet correctly. I'm striving on. People love it when you take the effort to learn their language. It's a sign that you respect and value them and their culture. It's fun, too.
We had 'sports' a couple weeks ago. The school divided into four houses - red, blue, yellow, and green. I was one of the house masters for yellow house. It was pretty fun, but I had developing tonsilitis the whole time and basically exhausted myself, resulting in a pretty bad throat and ear infection that took a week of sitting in my house to go away with antibiotics. Five of my friends came to see me run the 100m race against house masters from the other three houses. I lost really badly, but it was okay. I think the hundreds (a thousand maybe?) of people watching appreciated that I was not a sore loser, and I at least tried. In Africa, when you try, you are a winner!
After sports my friends and I were invited to the former minister's mansion for drinks. This guy, A. P. Koroma, used to be minister of works in Sierra Leone and was responsible for all of the road system. He was sacked by the president even though he was democratically elected. It's pretty sketchy. I guess him and the president used to be pretty close and were the founders of the political party that is currently in power. The guy is totally loaded. Now, he is just spending lots of money. I don't think I have ever been treated more 'big'. This guy in a suit came up to us when we got to the place, I think his butler of sorts, and guided us in. We were let into this air conditioned side room with fancy couches and an expensive television. All of the chiefs and paramount chiefs were there and some guy introduced us to them. Then we just sort of hung out with A.P. I felt terrible the whole time. I figured if I didn't get antibiotics then I would probably die from the infection in a couple weeks or something. My friend Jeff was able to get some from his house, I thontho kuru (praise be to god).
Uhh.. Just now, I came back from a small patrol to Kono district for a get together. It was nice to get out of my village for a couple days, but now I am pretty stressed out. It took 8 hours both ways. I felt like I was more in the middle of nowhere than I usually do, and that is saying a bit. The area is mountainous and pretty much jungle. You see a few villages along the way, but other than that, you just see lots of jungle and horrible road. The germans did a terrible job.
I have been working in my chemistry lab more and more. I'm trying to get everything working, making apparatuses, doing cool stuff. I made an apparatus to produce light gases, like hydrogen. It's fun to blow it up! I made an electrochemical cell a little while ago. I've also put together an electrolysis apparatus to produce oxygen and a battery pack so we are able to do circuitry now. I am planning to build a radio and maybe eventually a transmitter. I don't have any pressurized butane (I don't think I can make it and pressurize it myself; I'm going to have to buy a tank somewhere), but I made an alcohol burner. It's just hot enough to be able to bend glass rods with it. I just bought a glass file in the city, so I basically now can make nice chemistry apparatus to my design. For any future Salone group that might be reading this, I would say to not expect to have most of these facilities. My school is unusually well equipped. But, there are a lot of ways to manage. You can do electrolysis just with some batteries and mayonnaise jars, basically. If you want to talk about managing with limited resources, you can send me an email. I've also found The Golden Book of Chemistry, free online, to be super fun and helpful!
I am starting to feel like making my students realize science is cool, useful, and making them enthusiastic is the best means to getting them a good result on the WASSCE (standardized test that decides their future). Most of my students have been doing well on my exams and I think this is because they actually are enthusiastic about studying and learning the material. To learn something you need to be motivated, first and foremost. They see all of the cool stuff you can do knowing how things work, and how important chemistry and physics have been in creating the modern world they all admire. I've heard them say man, I want to be a scientist! but it's hard. I want them to know it's hard but that they can learn it if they want to bad enough. Others say they want to be engineers. I think it's all great; I really like that class.
I am desperately looking forward to the two week break after this term. Something that has been pretty characteristic of a lot of my time here has been a level of constant exhaustion. I don't really know what it is. I'm just busy all of the time and it's difficult. It's hot, my lungs suck, I rarely get enough sleep (ideally need like 10 hours), I'm yelling over noise a lot (getting better at that), living in a foreign culture seems to be fundamentally stressful, etc etc. It is nice to go for a get together with the other pcvs but it does not really relieve my exhaustion, especially when travel time is 5+ hours one way in terrible conditions. Traveling here, it no easy. Going to Kono, I managed to get into this car that had a dead battery and a broken radiator. Not only could we not start unless we were on some hill and pushed, but we had to stop a few times at villages along the way so the driver could go get somebody to get water and cool everything down. I thought the engine might blow up. The time I traveled before that, one of the back tires popped and went flat and we had no spare, so the driver decided to just drive slowly on it for the 5 miles or so to a place we could park and he could go get a tire. It took the guy over an hour to come back with a new tire. The old one was all tied up with the rear axle. We had been riding on the rim basically, mangling the rubber the whole time.
I'm writing this instead of doing the work of typing up this mock exam for the WASSCE for the senior students to take next week. There's like 50 questions and then two other parts I need to type. I think I am having to type the exams for the other teachers too. I'll basically be typing this whole week it sounds like. I forgot my headphones today and I am pretty upset about that.
Since I haven't written in so long you've missed out on lots of things that have happened. So, sorry about that! I'll try to be better.
Themne is hard. I think any foreign language is hard to learn. Especially when you don't know what to learn to advance and have no guide to tell you. My friend Muhammed Kargbo is still trying to help me out with it. Most of the time these days I can get people I meet to say 'oh tara kathemne!' (he understands themne), and so that is pretty good I figure. It doesn't take much usually though, beyond being able to greet correctly. I'm striving on. People love it when you take the effort to learn their language. It's a sign that you respect and value them and their culture. It's fun, too.
We had 'sports' a couple weeks ago. The school divided into four houses - red, blue, yellow, and green. I was one of the house masters for yellow house. It was pretty fun, but I had developing tonsilitis the whole time and basically exhausted myself, resulting in a pretty bad throat and ear infection that took a week of sitting in my house to go away with antibiotics. Five of my friends came to see me run the 100m race against house masters from the other three houses. I lost really badly, but it was okay. I think the hundreds (a thousand maybe?) of people watching appreciated that I was not a sore loser, and I at least tried. In Africa, when you try, you are a winner!
After sports my friends and I were invited to the former minister's mansion for drinks. This guy, A. P. Koroma, used to be minister of works in Sierra Leone and was responsible for all of the road system. He was sacked by the president even though he was democratically elected. It's pretty sketchy. I guess him and the president used to be pretty close and were the founders of the political party that is currently in power. The guy is totally loaded. Now, he is just spending lots of money. I don't think I have ever been treated more 'big'. This guy in a suit came up to us when we got to the place, I think his butler of sorts, and guided us in. We were let into this air conditioned side room with fancy couches and an expensive television. All of the chiefs and paramount chiefs were there and some guy introduced us to them. Then we just sort of hung out with A.P. I felt terrible the whole time. I figured if I didn't get antibiotics then I would probably die from the infection in a couple weeks or something. My friend Jeff was able to get some from his house, I thontho kuru (praise be to god).
Uhh.. Just now, I came back from a small patrol to Kono district for a get together. It was nice to get out of my village for a couple days, but now I am pretty stressed out. It took 8 hours both ways. I felt like I was more in the middle of nowhere than I usually do, and that is saying a bit. The area is mountainous and pretty much jungle. You see a few villages along the way, but other than that, you just see lots of jungle and horrible road. The germans did a terrible job.
I have been working in my chemistry lab more and more. I'm trying to get everything working, making apparatuses, doing cool stuff. I made an apparatus to produce light gases, like hydrogen. It's fun to blow it up! I made an electrochemical cell a little while ago. I've also put together an electrolysis apparatus to produce oxygen and a battery pack so we are able to do circuitry now. I am planning to build a radio and maybe eventually a transmitter. I don't have any pressurized butane (I don't think I can make it and pressurize it myself; I'm going to have to buy a tank somewhere), but I made an alcohol burner. It's just hot enough to be able to bend glass rods with it. I just bought a glass file in the city, so I basically now can make nice chemistry apparatus to my design. For any future Salone group that might be reading this, I would say to not expect to have most of these facilities. My school is unusually well equipped. But, there are a lot of ways to manage. You can do electrolysis just with some batteries and mayonnaise jars, basically. If you want to talk about managing with limited resources, you can send me an email. I've also found The Golden Book of Chemistry, free online, to be super fun and helpful!
I am starting to feel like making my students realize science is cool, useful, and making them enthusiastic is the best means to getting them a good result on the WASSCE (standardized test that decides their future). Most of my students have been doing well on my exams and I think this is because they actually are enthusiastic about studying and learning the material. To learn something you need to be motivated, first and foremost. They see all of the cool stuff you can do knowing how things work, and how important chemistry and physics have been in creating the modern world they all admire. I've heard them say man, I want to be a scientist! but it's hard. I want them to know it's hard but that they can learn it if they want to bad enough. Others say they want to be engineers. I think it's all great; I really like that class.
I am desperately looking forward to the two week break after this term. Something that has been pretty characteristic of a lot of my time here has been a level of constant exhaustion. I don't really know what it is. I'm just busy all of the time and it's difficult. It's hot, my lungs suck, I rarely get enough sleep (ideally need like 10 hours), I'm yelling over noise a lot (getting better at that), living in a foreign culture seems to be fundamentally stressful, etc etc. It is nice to go for a get together with the other pcvs but it does not really relieve my exhaustion, especially when travel time is 5+ hours one way in terrible conditions. Traveling here, it no easy. Going to Kono, I managed to get into this car that had a dead battery and a broken radiator. Not only could we not start unless we were on some hill and pushed, but we had to stop a few times at villages along the way so the driver could go get somebody to get water and cool everything down. I thought the engine might blow up. The time I traveled before that, one of the back tires popped and went flat and we had no spare, so the driver decided to just drive slowly on it for the 5 miles or so to a place we could park and he could go get a tire. It took the guy over an hour to come back with a new tire. The old one was all tied up with the rear axle. We had been riding on the rim basically, mangling the rubber the whole time.
I'm writing this instead of doing the work of typing up this mock exam for the WASSCE for the senior students to take next week. There's like 50 questions and then two other parts I need to type. I think I am having to type the exams for the other teachers too. I'll basically be typing this whole week it sounds like. I forgot my headphones today and I am pretty upset about that.
Since I haven't written in so long you've missed out on lots of things that have happened. So, sorry about that! I'll try to be better.
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