Firsts

The past couple of weeks have been the mark of many firsts.

For one, today was my first official day of teaching at Mwatisi!

It was a fantastic feeling to finally start teaching again.  I had forgotten how much I loved teaching when I was at Kihonda, and I was happy to find out that didn’t change here either.  Last week was the first week of school since the long hiatus from the Sensa [Census], but I was not able to figure out what I was going to be teaching until last Wednesday.  Instead, I just went and introduced myself to all the streams in each form and did not start lesson planning until this past weekend.  That being said, I am in a bit of a moral dilemma…

Currently, there is no physics teacher at my school and Eric, the PCV I’m replacing, is the only one teaching biology and chemistry.  Although the majority of my teaching was supposed to be math, I am going to be teaching mainly physics and a little math.  My time table until the end of this term will consist of me teaching Forms II (streams A through C) and IV (stream A) of physics and Form III (streams A and B) of math.  That does not seem much at first, but with about 40 students in each class, lesson plans, and tests and homework to grade, it can add up.  So here’s my dilemma:  I know I will not have the time or energy to do so, but I wish I could teach every form of physics.  Right now, the Form I’s and Form III’s are sitting idly in their classrooms with no teacher present during the time they would be learning physics.

I know I cannot be in multiple places at once unless I had Hermione’s Time Turner, which I have always coveted since I read about it in book three, so there is not much I can do.  Though there are four streams of Form I, I felt that taking on Forms II and IV would be the best option for their success because they have their NECTA exams coming up in October and I want to help them prepare for that as much as possible, seeing as they have no major resource for physics help.  Although I have made peace with my decision, I couldn’t help but feel bad for not being able to do more, so I told the other forms that I would be available to help answer any questions both academic and otherwise whenever I am not teaching.  So far, that has worked quite well!  It was the first time that I just felt like I wanted to do more but couldn’t…

In other news, this past week marked the first time that I have not showered more than twice in one week and have helped in the slaughtering of a chicken!  (To eat, of course!)  I apologize if both of those accounts have disgusted you in any way, but I must qualify that the first is due to lack of water and convenience to do so, since I do not have running water nor is the water less than incredibly cold without using an excess amount of kerosene to heat up coals.  The second is because how else would I be able to make chicken tortilla soup without a chicken?

Now you ask, how do you slaughter a chicken?  Well first, you need to buy a live chicken, tie it to something like a pole or tree while you are preparing necessary items, and hope it doesn’t run away.  Then, with a very sharp knife and while holding down its wings under your foot and its head in your non-cutting hand, you do your best to decapitate it in one motion with a lot more pressure than you think you need to cut off a chicken head.  You really don’t want a chicken named Nick, as in Nearly Headless Nick…

In our case, the chicken [“kuku”] was executed by my site mate, Steph, who valiantly took a stab at the slaughtering (sorry for the pun) and was mostly successful, but then Eric stepped in to help finish the deed so it would suffer as little as possible.  It is actually a lot harder than it looks to sever a small chicken neck, but we were successful after a couple attempts.  At least we used a very sharp knife.  Steph and I both wanted to learn how to kill a chicken at some point during our service so as to know where our food actually came from, so we agreed that she would do it this time and I would be the one to do it next time, since I am sure I will want to eat chicken again at site before my two years are up.

After letting the blood drain out on the grass in front of my porch, we got the water boiling and immersed the chicken in the pot.  [Funny tangent, but I was actually able to explain Archimedes Principle to my Form II physics classes today by using the example of upthrust and water displacement in putting a chicken in boiling water!  Never thought I would have to use that, but it worked and they knew exactly what I was talking about!]  Once the body has been in the water for about 30 seconds to open up the pores, the three of us plucked the chicken, singed loose hairs, and proceeded to dissect the chicken innards and cut the chicken up to boil a little before adding it to our delicious soup.  Earlier that day, Eric and I made flour, sage, and Golden Chick Lotta Zing tortillas from scratch, and were frying them up while the soup was going.

All of our hard work paid off and the chicken tortilla soup with our individual servings of hot tortillas and an entire avocado were truly delectable!  :D