calabash art

this term i did calabash art with my jhs classes.

they loved it. here are pictures of our final products.

jhs2

dongwiir
dorothy
jhs1
abdul-rauf, demonstrating how to "use" a calabash
hissan
jhs3
moses
nafisah
pagae
adatie
nice work, huh?

campus tour

here is a photo tour of my school's campus. it's fairly random, so bear with me.

this is the girls dorm room. all the younger girls sleep in this room, probably 30 or so 5-9 year-olds.

this is the other corner of the same room. piled against the wall are the mats that the girls sleep on.
this is the p5 classroom. there is no p5 teacher this term, so this has become a student lounge, where they all go to hide and sleep when they don't want to go to their own class.

this is daballah teaching social studies to jhs1. in my opinion, he's the best teacher at the school. he knows sign language and actually cares about his students...
this is how teachers get to school. on the left is a wheelchair. on the right is a bike. some teachers ride motobikes. some walk. one teacher has a car.
i don't know why this picture suddenly flipped, but this is a picture of a typical lesson by the technical skills teacher. the kids don't have a lot of textbooks, so teachers draw a lot of pictures on the board.

this will be the new classroom block. they're finally making progress on it, which is so exciting.

football field.
carpentry class.
the urinals/another reason classrooms smell so bad...
a student teaching the other students. sometimes teachers just give the kids lessons to write on the board and teach themselves...
general view of campus.
jhs3 class, hard at work.
jhs2.
hope you enjoyed the tour!

bats

i think i have mentioned in the past the problem with bat infestation in the classroom block of my school.  i would estimate the building to be 20 or 30 years old, and i think there is approximately 20 or 30 years' worth of bat excrement in the ceiling of the building.  between the corrugated metal roof and the thin plywood ceiling must be piles and piles.  and, as you can imagine, when it's hot, that metal roof...well, anyway.  it's gross.  

so the other day, in one of my jhs classes there was a large dead something on the floor in the middle of the classroom.  at first i thought it was a huge cockroach, then as i got closer, it looked like a mouse.  with wings?  EWW A BAT.  i, of course, was disgusted, but my students had just been ignoring it for several hours already.  

when i couldn't handle it anymore, i asked one of the boys to sweep it away.  

instead, he reached down, picked it up WITH HIS BARE HANDS and tossed it onto the grass outside.  

he walked in, brushed his hands off on his shorts, and continued with his work.

EWW.