October 1
Wow, time flies. It just occurred to me that we have already been here
for a month. I haven't written cause well nothing else has happened
really and I've actually been a little busy.

A little hard to summarize what has been accomplished in concrete
terms. Let's see: we have a house, with water and electricity and fans
and lights; we have a stove and a fridge, table, chairs, beds. I had
Christmas yesterday as Loren's mom showed up with a care package from
my mother, with fresh pillows (Loren's were ones that his grandparents
brought over in the 70s I think), clothes for Harmattan when it gets
cold (seemed strange opening jeans and cords and long sleeve shirts
when it was 42 deg today however will not seem silly come January).
Carol came over today, Clark brought her as he was on his way out of
town with Loren and Derek to go survey a dam. So we talked all
morning, never made it to market, picked up Ben then went to see
Myriam (Derek's wife) and their daughters, Danika and Darel as they
haven't seen Carol in 6 months either. It's good to see her and we had
a fantastic chat.

Yesterday I fired my "bonne" (house girl). She was very tearful asking
if her work wasn't good enough. All I said was "sorry but I want to
try someone else, it's complicated", gave her her pay and she left.
She walked from there to where Loren was and asked him why I fired
her. He said, I'll ask (even though it was his suggestion!!). It was
complicated and had only a little to do with her work. Her cleaning
was okay but not great, her attitude kinda crappy, and her reliability
poor. But the biggest fault? Entitlement. In the first week of work,
she was late twice (even though normally they have to start at 6 or 7
and I told her to come at 9), she didn't show up once, and took off
during working hours once. I explained what I wanted in terms of
reliability and the lateness continued. I was not happy with any of
that but since there isn't a huge amount to do here, the only thing
that really bothered me was when I was trying to go out but she took
off, which meant having to leave Ben alone again. Then she moved in.
She moved a bunch of her stuff into my spare room and used it as her
room. And she tried inviting her friends over to meet me. She then
informed me that she should live here so she can get Ben up in the
morning for school and she would go home on Fridays, and not work
weekends. Now Loren was not happy (I didn't like the idea much
myself). This is not the way it works here. He said, next she'll be
telling me that she'll sleep with him, or would try to be tempting him
all the time. Does that sound strange? Happens all the time here. So I
fired her.

And I found a new girl (well girl, she's at least 30). She does a much
better job and I feel like I can leave her in the house without
locking everything up tight. She is the "little sister" of my
neighbour (little sister can mean anything!) so we're all good there.
My neighbour also took us to look at cars at her cousin's lot and of
course Loren knew half the people who worked there and after a little
conversation realized that he and my neighbour knew each other's
families (can't go anywhere with that guy!)

Now I just need to "encourage" Loren to move a little faster in
securing a new guard. The guard is supposed to be here from 6pm til
6am and he shouldn't be sleeping. He should be sitting in front of the
house. He shows up late all the time, he even left a couple times.
Loren has set him straight a few times and he still doesn't do what
he's told. He does everything else – like tonight he helped Ben fix
and clean his bicycle, he helped with the broken taps, and earlier he
cleaned out a parking spot for Loren. I just wish he would do what I'm
paying him to do!

And last but not least the only other thing going on is Ben's school.
Again, not really up to standard so we're looking for a new one. Every
day (mind you there have only been 4 so far but not a good track
record) when I ask Ben how school was, he says, Bad. The first day, I
met the teacher and told him that sometimes Ben doesn't understand
French and may not tell the teacher he didn't so to check once in
awhile. The teacher ( a man) looked at Ben and said "ca va?" (how are
you?). Ben replied, ca va (I'm fine) and the teacher said, he
understands just fine. Not sure what one can discern from 2 words but
whatever. Ben later told me that they sat around at their desks for 4
hours in the morning doing NOTHING, while the teacher got organized
then did a bit of reading out loud and math.

Apparently, there are only 3 children in Ben's class out of 10 who can
read out loud at all and at least 3 children who cannot even recite
the alphabet. Not sure what they are doing in that level. So Ben was a
little bored. The teacher told me that Ben tries to do addition in his
head instead of in columns on the paper. I figure it's the first week
and they are supposed to be bringing people up to speed. Fine, can
deal with that, I figure they will just take a bit of time to sort
stuff out.

Second day, Ben tells me that if you make a mistake, the teacher tells
you to kneel on the floor. That is a common African practice, which is
embarrassing to the children since they wear uniforms that they are
really proud of. So if your knees are dirty, in all likelihood, your
parents will beat you when you get home. I've heard of this before,
very common. But Ben said if someone makes a mistake, EVERYONE has to
kneel. And from the sound of the level of ability in the class, I
figure they might spend the better part of the day like that.

Wednesday it got worse. Ben came home at lunch telling me that the
teacher whapped him on the head when he got an answer wrong (I guess
he was already on his knees so there was nowhere to go). I knew that
switching used to be a common practice but I was pretty sure that
didn't occur anymore. Ben said he hit a lot of kids that day. So in
the afternoon, I went to the principal and asked what the policy was
on discipline, asking if they had a policy regarding hitting. She said
the written policy was no contact, that a teacher must never hit. I
told her that Ben was afraid to come back to school because the
teacher was hitting (he wasn't afraid actually, he was mad but I
didn't think that would go over so well – if you ever wanted to see a
muley look, that was the look on Ben's face, like screw you if you
think I'm going to do anything you say anymore). Loren's comment was
along the lines of, he hits at the beginning so they are more likely
to listen later (it was sort of in gest – the Africans thought it was
funny, but they did all agree that it wasn't appropriate at least). I
guess the principal said something because the teacher made a comment
in the afternoon that he hadn't hit anyone hard. I was mad!

So this morning to top all this off, I drop Ben off at 7:30, and when
I picked him up, he tells me that the teacher didn't show up until
11AM, that there were 5 classes in the school but only 4 teachers,
that a bunch of the older kids were coming in asking him where the
teachers were (like he's going to know where they are?) and then they
all ran around screaming. No one came in to check or to do anything
about it.

So tomorrow is Friday, I figure they aren't batting too high at this
point. I can't imagine what else could be wrong but I'm already
starting to look into other schools. I know Luik goes to a school that
his parents like a lot so I'm going to ask them about it. We'll see.
I've been trying to do karate but everything feels like I'm wearing
lead shoes since it's been a few months and with the heat I'm sure I'm
losing a lot of muscle mass (although I do walk at least 30 min every
day and do resistance exercises twice a week). I did a jumping front
kick and thought I must have looked like one of the dancing hippos
from Fantasia. My neighbours think I'm insane as I walk about the yard
twirling my bo (a 6' long wood stick), poking imaginary people,
whacking trees and ultimately hitting myself in the back of the head.
Nunchuks aren't much better because they see Ben running around with
them so they think I'm playing with his toys, even if I do almost look
like I know what I'm doing (at least they are the foam ones so hitting
myself in the head hurts much less than the bo). And well there's no
point in explaining katas to them.

I feel very weak. I can't believe that I could do 100 full men's
pushups and 10 chin ups only a year ago. Yesterday I couldn't do 5
nose-to-the-ground push ups and I don't even want to try chin ups. I
was injured this year so nose-to-the-ground was already hard but I
could at least do 30 or so. So I basically felt like a white belt and
figure that's as good a starting point as any. Glad I don't need to
relearn all those katas though!

Hope I have more to report soon.