Letter No. 8, January 15, 2003

Dear Fam,

I was just looking at my calendar and realized that I haven't written all of you collectively since Christmas. It's not that I've really been so much busier, but I think I've just been writing people individually, that I've become rather embarrassed as to how poor my english grammer has become. I'm at that awkward stage where I have a difficult time with both English and Kiswahili. I'm finding that I enjoy speaking with other teachers best as they are the only one who really understand my garbled mess of Kisw-english.

The language problem has become even slightly more difficult in the past few days since classes have opened. We are supposed to be teaching only in English, but for the most teachers, this happens only about 30% of the time. This makes it very difficult for me, as when I enter the classroom, the students really have a hard time understanding me. Not only am I suddenly speaking English 100% of the time, but I speak more quickly than the other teachers and have a strange accent. On top of this, I am finding myself/hearing myself use poor grammer as a result of being "between languages" in my brain. Yes, language may be the biggest challenge I have to face here, both understanding others and being understood.

As of today the English teacher and I are the only two teachers to have entered the classroom. Just think school had been in session for three days, and only two teachers have even come to class. Most of the other teachers don't want to enter yet, as not even 1/2 the students are here yet. That may be true, and also extremely frustrating, but they could at least do some review, or some English Vocabulary games. That's all I've been doing and I'd like to think it has at least had some positive effects. I guess the situation with the teachers doesn't surprise me, I knew it would be like that beforehand. I guess I had just hoped every teacher would be as excited to get into the classroom right now as I am. There's one teacher who left for vacation before Christmas and hasn't even reported back yet. He's a new teacher that apparently wasn't too happy that he was placed down here in the south.

Meanwhile, since only half the students are here, I've only had half of my classes to teach. This has given me some free time in the afternoon, which, I have put to use working in my garden I'm trying to start next to my house. I've spent the last couple of weeks turning over the soil, and yesterday , I planted corn, watermelon, melon, various cucumber, various squash, carrot, spring onion and bell peppers seeds! Funny how something so trival as that can really get one excited when not a lot else is happening in her daily routine. A local boy has been building a fence made out of bamboo around the plot. Hopefully, that will help to keep out the other teachers' chickens, goats and children from upsetting the plants once they start to grow. What's ironic about that is that I might start to keep chickens myself here very soon, as that seems to the only way to obtain eggs; they don't usuallly survive the trip back from Masasi if I buy them in town. Right now, beans are really my only source of protein, and although I like them, and actually, love chilli, they do get boring after awhile. So, the reason why it's ironic if that if I do keep chickens, really the only place I have to put them is in the newly fenced in yard, together with the vegatable garden, precisely where I was trying to keep the chickens out!! Oh well, we'll just have to wait and seen what happens. There are bigger problems in life..........!

Love to you all,

Jessica