Kuuliza si ujinga

[note: this was written two weeks ago, but the Internet connection wasn't good enough to post it at the time]

School opened on Tuesday (Jan 13) to very few students. This is normal. Everyone knows teachers don't
teach the first week, so why come the first week? And of course, all the teachers know that students don't
come the first week. So why teach the first week? If only half the students are in class,
you'll just have to teach that lesson again.

It's an endless cycle: students come late because teachers wait to start teaching. Teachers wait
to start teaching because students come late. At my school, it's not too bad: most of the students
are usually there by the middle of the second week. Universities may wait over three weeks until
enough students show up to start.

So there was no teaching on the first day of school. The students spent most of the morning doing maintenance:
cleaning the classrooms, pruning bushes, watering plants. In mid-morning, the academic master posted a notice
to all teachers: let us start teaching even if the students are few. Okay, I thought. I'll
return the biology final exams to my students and go over the answers. I started to gather my
papers together. Then the school bell, an old metal car piece hanging from a tree, rang. Or rather,
was banged on by a student. Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing! If the bell rings many times, it means there's
an assembly.

We all gathered under the trees behind the school. The students sat on the ground, while the teachers sat in
chairs facing them. The headmaster addressed the students about various aspects of the new school term.
After a while, I started drifting off. Then suddenly the headmaster was saying,'Maybe Kristen doesn't know about
this--do people do this in America?"

Me (a bit peevishly): Watu ni watu tu. Wanafanya hivi Marekani pia. People are people, they
do this in America too.

Everyone started laughing. I don't know what I said Americans do, but apparently it was funny.
Maybe witchcraft? (Part of the headmaster's speech had to do with the students' bad behavior and the fact that students
had been paying local witch doctors to make charms that would cause the teachers to ignore their
bad behavior).

We had lunch after the assembly. Usually, students bring bags of corn and beans to school as
part of their school fees. So usually, lunch is a combination of corn and beans: either ugali and beans
or makande (corn kernels boiled and mixed with beans).

This year, no one has beans. Beans are usually planted in December during the short rains. Well, this year
they were planted at the beginning December, when it started raining. And they all died by the end of December, when the
rains had already stopped. The students were told that instead of beans, they could bring mbaazi (pigeon peas),
which had been harvested back in August.

So we had a lunch of ugali and mbaazi. There were two periods after lunch, but few and scattered students. I decided to wait
another day to start teaching.

(A summary of the rest of the week: taught unusually small classes on Wednesday--20 students instead of 40 per class. On Thursday,
all the students who hadn't paid their school fees were sent home, and my classes only had 10 students. I decided not to teach. On
Friday, I had about 12 students per class, and divided them into small groups to draw posters. Maybe next week I'll have enough students
to start teaching new topics?)