All my life, I have always wanted to be the star of a musical. A lot of people say that musicals are stupid because they are nothing like real life. "In real life, people don't just start singing and dancing for no reason." "How do they all know the same dance moves?" Well, let me tell you. Musicals are magical. And everyone is beautiful when they are dancing. In Lesotho, they all know the same dance moves. In Lesotho, they start singing and dancing for any reason. If they have some time to kill while waiting for the bus, they sing and dance. If it is AIDS day and they are celebrating AIDS awareness, they sing and dance. When they are walking to school, they sing and dance. If Sister Armelina wants the students to reenact Jesus going to the last super, the students sing and dance. If their teacher doesn't bother to show up for class, they entertain themselves by singing and dancing. If I come into the classroom, they stand up and start singing and dancing down the aisle towards me. And then, I can think to myself, "I'm the star of my own musical. Everyone knows the steps. The choreography is excellent. The cast is superb. I just wish that I knew all of the songs."
My students have been singing to me everyday for the past week. They are practicing a song to sing at the farewell. A song about me. A goodbye song. I'm leaving Lesotho soon.
In a little over two months, I won't be spending every day with Liz and Molly. No one will think I'm funny when I make comments about how often I need to run to the toilet because of parasites having a party in my intestines. I will only be able to cook half of my meals because Liz and Molly always cook the other half (isn't pizza only cheese and sauce and vegetables? Who needs a crust?). I won't see a million smiling faces dressed in blue. I won't hear, "Good morning, 'M'e Ray-shelley!" all day long. I won't be bathing out of a little red bucket. I won't be able to look up form the faces of the form DÐ students (who are all paying attention now) and see the beautiful mountains out the windows behind them. It won't be acceptable for me to jump off the couch and stare out the window at every vehicle that passes the house. In just over two months, when I take a walk, my feet and legs won't be covered in heavy brown dust. I won't hear the sound of cowbells as the cows are heading out to the hills in the morning. I won't want to run from every dog I see. No one will call me 'M'e Ray-shelley, or refer to me as "he" because they can't keep their pronouns straight. In December, I will be able to walk to a 24-hour grocery store and buy fresh vegetables whenever I like. I won't spend hours marking classwork and writing things like "Don't use the equal sign unless you mean EQUALS!"
But I sure will be missing Lesotho.
It seems unreal that I will leave the place that I have called home for an entire year and that I might never see it again. However, I don't want to write about the future (mostly because I'm not quite ready to accept how uncertain it is), I want to write about the past quarter.
The best thing about third quarter was the arrival of Molly. Before Molly came, it hadn't occurred to us to try to make homemade yogurt. We had brilliant ideas for reorganizing the school library, but no one did anything about it until Molly came. Actually, the arrival of Molly was really refreshing for me in lots of ways. When Molly came, she was full of the excitement and worries of being in a completely new place and doing a completely new thing. Talking with her, made me exited about being in Lesotho and teaching here all over again. I remembered how awesome this chance that Grinnell had given us really is. I'm living in rural Africa. And I'm being paid for it! Everyday I wake up and see mountains out my window. Everyday I get to laugh and talk with students who have wormed their way into my heart. Molly's arrival helped me remember, a little bit more clearly, why exactly I had decided to come here.
However, I'm not going to lie. For me, third quarter was long. Long and difficult. There were times when I felt like I was going crazy and the only thing that I could do to save my sanity was to eat copious amounts of chocolate. There were moments when the amount of time before I return home loomed in front of me forever. And then there were times when I thought that I would never be able to finish everything that I had come to Lesotho to do.
I added the form E physics class to my schedule at the beginning of August. Their previous teacher was admitted to the hospital with Tuberculosis and has since passed away. He also did not cover as much of the syllabus first semester as he should have. So I took on the Form Es, at a time when they should have already finished the syllabus and have started reviewing, with only two months before they began taking their Cambridge exams. In these two months, I attempted to cover all of electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic induction, general wave properties, light, lenses, sound, echoes, heat, and the electromagnetic spectrum. I taught extra classes after school during study time and I asked the students to come in on Sundays, but my regular class periods were continuously cancelled for things like AIDS day, a trip to the National University, and the national volleyball tournament. I felt like I was failing every time I thought about how much material I had left to cover. I still haven't finished the syllabus. But I'm not giving up yet. I have told the students that we will have extra classes on days when they do not have other exams, and we will review previous topics and finish the syllabus. I'm so nervous for them. However, when marking their third quarter exams, which were old Cambridge exams, I found that many of them were able to obtain at least a 50%. So they still have a fair chance at getting a credit on the Cambridge exam.
Other exciting events of this past quarter included the school volleyball team becoming the national champions for the second year in a row. Also, another science teacher and I took a handful of students to another school to compete in a science and math quiz bowl of sorts, and our students took second place, beating teams of all boys. I was proud of them and quite happy because the students are always telling me that boys are better at math and science than they are. This falsehood is slowly beginning to unravel in their minds.
I think that the biggest challenge that I have left here will be convincing myself that I really have made the most of my year here. I know that this next quarter will not run completely smoothly, but I like to think that as an experienced teacher, I will handle things easily. And I know that there are still so many things that I want to do with my students, in and out of curriculum. But I'm going to reflect on my growth here in my next report. So for now, I will just say that I am going to try to make the very most of the two months that I do have left here. I'm glad that I'm not saying goodbye yet.
