Into the hot season

The temperature was 101 in my place.

 The temperature inside my house was 101O F yesterday and maybe 104 in the shade outside.  I have a fan that has been repaired once and tends to overheat – so I don’t use it much – but I used it a little yesterday when the electricity was on – it was off more than on.

I started drinking oral rehydration salts to help maintain fluids and salts.  The heat is part of the West African experience; part of the Peace Corps experience.  Not particularly pleasant but all part of the deal.  If I had wanted a comfortable life I would have stayed in Missouri.  OK, maybe moved to a nicer place …..  (Sorry friends / family in Missouri.)

School interruptions


We had a school mass this week on Tuesday.  The primary is a Catholic School, but the JHS is a government school (the government pays for both schools).  The mass was nice – but setting up, waiting for the Priest to come, the mass, and taking down – pretty much shot most of the teaching time for the day. 

Mass at the school

Blessing with holy water

  I did start my computer programming class after school on Tuesday – but we lost electricity about half way through – so did not get much done then either.

The district required that teachers take two trainings during a short period – we had two this week with the primary teachers – one on Wednesday and one on Thursday.  The one Wednesday was in the morning and ended up taking a couple of hours.  The one Thursday started about an hour before class was over for the JHS.  I taught how to use PowerPoint for teaching and gave time to practice.  I thought this would interrupt my after school class (held Tuesday and Thursday) – because the teachers were interested in practicing and seeing how I’m using the computers – but we did get the class in after a late start – school typically ends around 2:15 – 2:30.

Friday is typically a day to start funerals – they last two days – in the area.  When the funeral is for someone in the community the teachers go to represent to school.  We had one such funeral on Friday and this kept the teachers away for about an hour.

These activities are important – but it does cut into teaching time.

Spending my time with computers.

Between disk scans and loads this was my view for most of the week - watching 2 to 4 computers.

I’m not teaching during the school day.  But I’ve wanted to load Rachel on the computers.  Rachel is about 22 Gb of consolidated internet content for students and developing countries.  Once loaded it can be used “offline” and navigated like the internet.  So the students can see how hyperlinks work as well as see education videos and a lot of other stuff.

All this is great but requires between 2 and 4 hours+ to load from a USB drive.  I bought a drive for the school for this purpose and I have a personal one so I can do two computes at a time – and I have 21 to do – so it has taken all week.  

I would like to do a few more things with the computers – and I also need to start thinking about the world map mural for the school.  I’m not pressed for time yet – but it is just the remainder of the term and the next for me to get things done.

Rabbits


This hot season is the time for the rabbits to suffer as well – they don’t like it hot.

Health


I will be traveling to Accra next weekend for an appointment with the ENT on Monday.  I hope to “turn and burn” to leave Monday evening to be able to teach on Tuesday afternoon.  That will be a lot of time on the bus in a short period.

Overall – I remain healthy – with not much change.

Love always,

John

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