Lights out? Use a stick!

Our power went out last night, something that recently hasn't been happening. However upon inspection, only our compound and a few houses to the West had lost power, with all of the classrooms still retaining power. Kind of a bummer seeing other people with power and us without. So the great minds of our fellow teachers got together to devise a plan. What is this plan you ask? Well, lets get a desk, then put a stool on top of it so that we can fiddle with the wires supplying the power to the compound. Luckily the man selected to stand on this wonderfully safe contraption had wonderful balance. There are four power supply lines that connect to the compound from the power pole outside the building. This man went about checking to see if there was electricity in any of those lines and started undoing then crossing the wires attempting to get power, I believe he was trying to take the power from a neighboring building. When 20 mins of this didn't result in power, a new plan was put into action. The power pole outside the compound has connector pieces for the wires, I have no idea what they're actually called, probably something like transistors or capacitors, who knows, they're the cone like things you see connecting wires to poles. Well this guy took a huge long stick and start to hit these connectors, causing sparks and all sorts of "probably bad news" things to happen. And what do you know, we got power. HA! Who'd have thought that hitting a cable with a stick would restore power.

In other news, I've started teaching Chemistry to the Form 4 (seniors) at our high school. What's nice is that I'm only teaching 2 classes, with a total of 45 students, so it's not too much extra work for me. However, I never realized how much time is spent doing lesson plans...I give props to all those actual teachers out there...that's some hard work! Oh course, I'm sure that you're text book is actually factually correct, so you don't have to double check everything and that'd save me a ton of time. What's interesting to note is that JB is teaching 500 students spread out over 8 classes in Form 2. Not only is his student load way higher than mine, but he also has students that just don't want to be in school. The 45 students I have are the ones that made it out of those 500, they're the very devoted ones. So JB deals with a lot more students who don't care or pay attention. My students are active in asking questions, they want extra classes, and are very willing to learn. It's been great. The problems that I'm running into are dealing with this horrid textbook and limited supplies, but I'm making due. Luckily I have the internet to help supplement my lessons.

New photos should be up this weekend, so keep an eye out for them. The majority of them are from a baby weighing that I go to every Friday. Instead of going to clinics or having check-up appointments for babies, here we just have baby weighing days. Every friday women will come to the old, old hospital (mainly it's just two rooms with a court yard) to have their babies weighed and receive vaccines if they're due. This helps to catch babies who are failing to gain weight and need extra nutrition. Today we have 5 babies requiring Plumpy Nut and some mothers in need a bit more education. These Fridays the women also receive a general health talk, today was on Malaria and Breast Cancer. One of the big highlights I believe for these mothers is just being able to relax with some friends for a few hours. Women here wake up at 4am in order to start cooking breakfast and getting the kids ready for school which usually starts around 6:30-7am. Then they're busy all day cooking, cleaning, going to farm, some work in the market, and other various work. Baby weighing is when they only have to deal with one child and they don't have to deal with any extra stress of the day. It's nice to see these women laugh and joke with each other. I think it's a great way to end the week!