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.
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