And Then There Were Five

Four Texans arrived in Rabondo a few days ago so there are now five mzungus here! They are here to deliver this huge crate that apparently has desks and playground equiptment and sewing machines and computers, but the church where the crate was being held is now holding it ransom for something like $1000! So the Texans are just haning around here waiting. They are all older, but it's pretty nice being able to speak to someone at a regular pace and to know that they understand me.
Starting Monday my schedule here will be completely changing. I told the secondary principle that it won't work unless I have regular classes so he organized them for me in the afternoon after school hours. Then Timon said he would prefer I spend more time in the primary school so I am going to be teaching there all morning and not going to the dispensary at all (at least not on a daily basis). I am a little sad because I liked helping at the clinic, and teaching is harder, but I know that with my lack of medical experience and the situation in the schools teaching is where I can have the most impact. Unfortunately the classes that don't have teachers are mainly science classes. Not only am I completely inadequate as a science teacher, but the primary principle doesn't know where they are in the curriculum and one of the classes is fifth grade so communication will be next to impossible. Lovely.
So a day in the life of African Ellie will go as follows: wake up at six, make some oatmeal and walk up to primary. Teach 6th grade math, seventh grade science, 5th grade science (ahhh!), 6th grade English. Eat lunch either in this tiny, dark, fly-infested room that they call a restaurant or with the teachers at secondary. Either way lunch probably consists of ugali, which is maze flour and water boiled into a very thick porridge and shaped into a cake, and sakuma wiki, which is a kale like vegetable that is shreaded and steamed/stir fried. Sometimes there are small fish, which are exactly what they sound like. They are the fish that little children try to catch in the shallow water at the lake and people here dry them, fry them and eat them whole whole. Eyes and all.
After lunch I will teach 9th and 11th grade computer classes and then either go home or help out at the dispensary for a little while. Back at home I usually help cook dinner (which is the same as lunch), and let me tell you everything here is harder than it looks. I probably would have lost a finger to shreading sakuma wiki if the knives weren't so dull and after mixing, stirring and shaping the ugali over a fire I was dripping sweat and heavilly panting. It was fairly humiliating. Kenyans just sit there and stir it and then pick up the burning hot pot with their bare hands, but I swear to God it's like stirring cement, and the smoke is blinding, and then you have to somehow flip the pot off the fire onto a plate, without any hot pads because those do not exist here. It really does not seem worth that much effort for ugali, but then again it doesn't require so much effort when they do it, and I guess they don't have much choice.
After dinner I fill a bucket of water and go out to this little hut and bathe. There is actually a shower in the guest house, but there is always something wrong with it and it's more fun to bathe outside anyway.
At this point I usually grade papers, and I will probably have a lot more to grade starting Monday. And when I finish I collapse onto my foam mattress in the little hut which I now sleep in with my African "sisters" Josephine and Loviance. Usually the room is still full of people being loud and the light is still on, but I am way to tired to care.
I wish there was someway that I could truly communicate to you all the craziness and excitement of everyday life here. There is so much more I want to tell you about and show you, but I can't fit it all here. I am trying to upload some pictures onto facebook so check there too. I miss you all!!!