Not Autumn

Friday week 2, term 1. I nearly wrote Autumn term there but of course there's no such thing as Autumn here. We're curently in the wet season and in a few weeks it'll get less wet and cool off a bit for what we would call the Winter months. I've just come from the dorm where I had to put David to bed; there's only one boy in our dorm at the weekends (at least for now). The power went out at the exact moment I tried to turn his ceiling fan on (I thought I'd done something for a second), I had to make my way allong the corridor walls back to the lounge where I managed to knock my tourch of the table and ended up scrabbling around on the floor in the pitch black trying to find it. Quite fun really. I'm still enjoying the teaching although sometimes a little more prep wouldn't go amiss and I feel a little bad at making the older kids write so much; the IGCSE Computer Studies course is really theoretical, they never get to use the computers, it's all talking and writing. I'm really enjoying the younger years ICT classes, we're just getting into some fairly interesting projects which is more fun for the kids and less lesson prep for me which is great all round! It's been a tough week in some ways. There are a lot of staff ill and many of the kids in our dorm have been having trouble sleeping and some pretty nasty nightmares. As a staff we feel there may be a spiritual element to all this (which has been going on since the leadership change over last month) and we've been spending a lot of time praying with and comforting the kids. We can be confident that when we call on God he will help us as Christ defeated evil once and for all by his death and ressurrection therefore evil powers must flee when we call on His name. That is a great comfort to the kids and we've been looking together at encouraging passages from the bible which the kids can use when they're afraid. I had a great day off on Monday. I went to Thies with Franziska and Jacqui, two other general helpers, and we went shopping and generally wandered around town before eating lunch at Les Delices, a local restaurant with nice food that's dirt cheap compared to eating out at home. We travelled back in an old Peugot 7 seater which was falling apart, inside and out, the three of us squished on the back seat (made for two) with three africans in front of us and the driver and another passenger in front of them. It was great to get off the school compound and relax and to experience some more authentic transportation too.