And He is still laughing

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Our plan for today was to show Karen the UMCOR compound and various projects in the Yei area. The month of November is supposed to be part of the two seasons here: dry and rainy (November being part of the dry). Those two seemingly unrelated statements are indeed connected. Last night proved that the rainy season was not quite finished--it rained at various levels for the entire night. The roads that had been difficult to drive on all week became impossible to drive on this morning without a Land Cruiser type vehicle,and since none was available, our plans were canceled.

As we were sitting in our nice, dry guest house contemplating how to spend the day, Mourice, Harvesters' administrator, came to our door and let us know that there were only three teachers at the school, instead of the usual thirteen. Almost all of the teachers live off the compound and either walk or ride a motorbike which is called a boda boda here. Even those modes of transportation were difficult, so there were 450 students and three teachers here at the opening bell. Karen, Ellen and I looked at each other, took some deep breaths, and volunteered to substitute. Karen took the first teacher less classroom we came to and started teaching geography to a P5 class (roughly equivalent in skill level to our fifth grade). After some time, that teacher arrived, and Karen moved on up to P8. She had joked earlier that she would try anything but algebra; fortunately, they were not that advanced, but she did teach writing and math. Mind you now, there were no lesson plans in any of the classrooms, so we could pretty much choose the subject.

Ellen had just spent over a month teaching two- and three-year-olds in Terekeka, so she asked for the youngest class available while I went in to the P3 class. There were about 55 students, and they kept straggling in (the village students walk) until there were 61. I was SO delighted when Mourice brought Ellen to "my" class to bring the pupil/teacher ratio down (more teachers had arrived, so Ellen did not get her own class). Together we tackled math, using cooperative learning structures such as line up and team problem solving, to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I introduced fact families, and some of them caught on very quickly. We moved to writing (I would have loved to do reading, but there were no books in the room. So this time we used word webs to brainstorm names of plants and animals native to South Sudan, then asked the students to write a story to describe life in their country. Some wrote very repetitive sentences (I see a dog in South Sudan. I see a tree....etc.), but after we gave some examples of using adjectives (I see a huge brown monkey in a banana tree), the quality improved and we read aloud good examples to encourage them further. One boy got the " most creative" award for his story about a rat in a latrine! After a 15 minute break outside, we moved on to CRE--Christian Religious Education. When we asked for names for Jesus, they had so many answers that it filled the chalkboard, and amazing answers such as "alpha and omega" and "lamb of God." I wonder how well US third graders would fare doing that, if they were allowed to. We then retold the story of Jesus' life, and once again it was astonishing how many words and details they could recall. We finished with Jesus' final miracle, rising from the dead, and I knew Ellen and I had been blessed with our experience!

After lunch all the teachers were present, so the three us ate lunch and told each other about the morning, slowly revving ourselves enough to go to our little house and take a nap! I have never taught a class so big, so widely varying in ability, and also English as a Second Language students. They were a wonderful group, and the best part was when one boy said we were good teachers and asked if we would be back. There is no better way to end this story!

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