Wow, haven’t written all week. This week has flown and also, I’ve been
just too busy to even think.
It’s 5:30pm now, Buyana didn’t pitch up this
afternoon, it’s been raining a little.
There has been a few thunder and lightning sessions lately, but not too
scary. This weather just makes me
crave all sorts of things I don’t have with me, so I’ve been eating too many
tennis biscuits…
I’m trying to remember what happened this week. On Monday I took a little drive to the
Anchorage Hotel in Umdumbi. There
was someone who left me a note saying that they have a job offering for me
there, so being in my situation and without a phone, I thought, let me just
check it out. So, I got there and
the job was for bar lady, R3 ooo/month and free accommodation. I was a little tempted, but just
couldn’t see myself there. I was
hoping for more pay to make it actually worth it. In this way I would just become a slave and all my time
would be taken, doing nothing useful really.
It’s about 25 minutes drive on a relatively bad road
away from Coffee Bay. I would
definitely not want to drive there when it got dark. Which means that I would totally be isolated there and never
see anyone. The Hotel is also not
busy at all, except maybe for December.
There wasn’t even one guest when I was there. So I would only have the manager to talk to and have to sit
around and wait for a customer to arrive.
I won’t be able to do anything that I came here for.
I’d be too far away from my students and my friends
here. What would be the
point? I told the manager if he
could make it a temporary job, for perhaps a month or two, it could work. I could do some computer work during
that time. But that’s not going to
work either. I’m needed more at
the teaching department, although the pay is a problem. So I’m letting that idea go for now and
pray for another solution.
Oh, on Monday also, I gave a Xhosa lady a lift, her
name is Angel. I told her that
that is quite appropriate, because I was praying to God to send me angels to
protect me. She happened to work
at the Hotel here in Coffee Bay and invited me for a free dinner that
evening. I was so happy to accept
that! Butternut soup, lamb
tjops!!! And tiramisu for dessert!!
I haven’t had a survivor’s prize for a while, so that was most welcome!
Otherwise, teaching has been going well. Really enjoying my classes at the
Christian School. Even though the
Macbeth rehearsals drive me a little crazy now and then with my lack of
crowd-control skills. Today went a
little better, I think the kids are finally starting to understand that they must
keep a bit quiet when I’m speaking. I am constantly tempted to hit someone over
the head or kick them in the shins.
Hasn’t happened yet, got to pray for self-control.
And I’ve found some real fun Drama warming-up
exercises, that we always start with.
Like today, I put them in groups of four and they each had to do one
sound (from a certain theme like jungle/city/beach…) and repeat their sounds to
form a rhythmic pattern. And then
they got a ‘conductor’ to guide them in who is making their sound when. We laughed so much. In the end we didn’t really get to all
the Macbeth we had to, but hey, it’s all good.
I did have a bit of an incident the other day though,
where two students, a boy and a girl started an argument that ended up in a
little fist-fight. I tried to pull
them apart and got a bit of a blow on the lip myself. Dragged them into the headmaster’s office quickly to try and
resolve the issue. Not sure that
we had completely. I think there
are some students who have some problems that they find hard to share. I hope we can break through some of
these!
There are 2 children with serious eye problems who
don’t have the right glasses and can’t see a thing! It must be bloody hard to cope like that. The one should be going to the
specialist this weekend and the other has been waiting for his glasses for a
few weeks now. There are many
people here in this rural area, who don’t have the money for glasses, let alone
the money to travel somewhere they can get their eyes tested. They end up walking around half blind
for most of their lives!
Then, my caravan classes have been going well since
I’ve put a ban on anyone entering the caravan. I got a couple of those boards that you can put on your lap
to write – if you don’t have a desk, thanks to another teacher here. Pretty useful things I must say!
And Buyana and his brother have been making progress
this week. The progress is super
small, they are so far behind, but we are taking baby steps! Yesterday I took 2 hours to get Buyana
to understand that he must just fill in am/is/are in the sentence gaps… In the
end I do believe he got it! And
even got most correct.
It was a grueling session for the boy and we had to
play some bats and balls after that for some stress release. Oh, he came around just now to tell me
that he didn’t come today because of the rain, he’ll be back tomorrow. That’s my dedicated student!
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