The sun wakes you up at around 630-7, this happens especially if you forget to close the curtains. The whole village is up by the time you've decided which boxers to wear again, eaten what little there is for breakfast and decided against the cold shower. It gets dark here at around 6 and so it's a good idea to make the most of the light, there isn't electricity except for some generators at the local stores. At a guess (because I can't see them), people tend to go to bed at around 8-9, there's no late night TV or news to keep them up, you see.
Every morning there's at least a couple of kids outside playing on the climbing frame, it's good fun to watch them while eating breakfast. The very occasional 'hey!' is necessary to restore order, but everyone is very well behaved otherwise.
There's a kid with a big fat belly. Since I met him and from now on in this blog he is known as 'fatty'. I find him quite cute, probably just because of this though, but Sue doesn't so much, she says he's got "Idi Amin eyes"! But still, Fatty quite likes his belly being poked; he also seems to quite enjoy a football being bounced off his paunch. He's not great at football yet, so I think he's just glad to be included.
Oh and there's this one kid in an orange t-shirt and a big head who lives just opposite the house, he likes to pick on the smaller kids, he then runs off crying if he gets caught!! I witness this quite a lot, he usually does in by the climbing frame. He's not a discreet bully, possibly not a bright one. But I'm not impressed either way, so I'm working on a way to make him see the error of his ways. I've already got some dirt on him so I'm planning to use it against him somehow. Now before I say this, it's Francis' idea to use this information I have on him, so if this sounds weird, blame him.
So, the other morning I was eating my strange paste-like porridge substitute and dried fruit for breakfast, minding my own business. I look up and what do I see? The orange t-shirt bully with no pants on, running/jiggling over to (what I now know as his regular patch of land) squat down and do an early morning dump! He hadn't seen me because he had turned the other way; therefore he was showing me all the gory details. But if that wasn't funny enough or enough to put me off my breakfast, bullyboy then proceeds to do the dog-with-itchy-bum shuffle!!! If you can't imagine this - or if you want to try this one at home - you need to put all your hands and feet on the floor; as if attempting the get into that crab position. But instead of arching your back drag your bum along the floor for as long as necessary. Bullyboy performs his shuffle in a large circle, I don't know if that's best, so I suggest you find out for yourself.
Francis says that this is a regular thing; he's suggested filming the act and showing it to his friends!
I helped out in my first lessons today. They were smaller than usual today because there's a national holiday tomorrow. It seems that people like to have a bit of a rest day before the actual holiday day. Apparently, the whole week is affected by a Tuesday holiday, so I've been told that attendance won't be up to usual standards.
The morning lessons were with the younger kids, two classes of age 4 and 5. Today was a mix of the two because of the small numbers. Sue used to be some kind of schoolteacher and or an inspector of sorts, so she knows a lot about what to do with kids of those ages. I haven't got much of a clue.
The overall theme of the lesson was identifying things. A story based around a lion, the sun and the trees. We did a bit of rhythms based on those characters with me on guitar and everyone else doing a bit of clapping. Then we coloured in pictures that us teachers had made of the characters. It ended with a story and dance-along to 'Here Comes The Sun' from my music library and speakers. In case you're wondering, the story and dance around were related, but it's possibly only interesting if you're of the target age. I'll spare you the details.
I had another look around the village and managed to find some kids doing the main job in the village: breaking big rocks into small rocks. This isn't as futile as it sounds or as I'd first thought. Apparently they break the rocks down for construction and they're a particular kind of rock that's highly sought after.
The other profession in the village is working for a couple of Italian petrol companies - Secci and Api. As well as their normal petrol company duties, here they have something to do with researching and developing the Jetropha (probably not the correct spelling) plant. I think the plant has got some kind of oil they're interested in. Sue things it might be a tax dodge, because it's not very busy, but I like to believe they're genuinely trying to find renewable fuel sources.
I played some more football with the younger kids today; I ended up organising and refereeing a little kick around on the same pitch as before. They're not too bad either, maybe with just a bit less positional awareness!
In the evening it was party time! Everyone was getting drunk because it's a holiday tomorrow. They have a couple of pretty good beers here, one is called '2M' and the other tastes a bit like a fizzy Guinness, but is rather nice all the same.
There are people of every age milling around the market and shops. When you come out at night, you realise that there's actually quite a lot of people living in, what seems to be, a tiny village. It looks like there's about 3 very similar looking bars, all doubling up as shops during the day, all concrete box-like structures and all playing loud music powered by their own generators. I'm not sure why Francis and I chose the one we did to drink in, but it was well lit and that's a rarity!
There were about 3 people I spoke to that had an understandable amount of English; one was another Francis - a nurse at the village hospital. He seems like a nice guy. We went to his house for a bit, it was another concrete box, a large one though. It had cockroaches, no furniture except for a bed, a table and a few chairs and motorbike inside. Despite all of this, he seems happy and content with what he's got. Maybe it's just my Western standards. Anyway, the other twos names of the English speakers I can't remember but one was the captain of the village football team, he said that he liked the way I played and asked me to come along to their practices - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! - to do a bit of coaching. I'll be glad to help out, even if this does risk a lot of sunburn. The kids’ football starts at 2:30 and the adults come along at around 4. Lots of football and sun!
So, back to the evening. It really was quite enjoyable, no drunkenness or dancing, mostly a lot of Draughts playing, with bottle caps. They have some very strange rules here, I loose every time I play. I've tried to explain the rules I know but they manage to creep in a rule from their version somehow.
Please excuse the poor picture quality, it seems that the iPhone's flash doesn't seem very good and isn't very good at night pictures in general.
