The Market, Safari, and Teaching Prep

06/22/09

Sorry for the lack of posts lately … I’ve spent the last week not feeling too great and we haven’t had the most consistent electricity.

Here are a few highlights; I’ll try to post a little more later:

6-15-09

Today was one of those days that I had to stand back and say, “Wow. I’m totally in Africa.” Our big adventure was going to the market to buy groceries. Now, yes, typically, grocery runs in the US requires you to traverse the aisles and can be relatively short. Well, Termino, is a whole other story.

We started off by circling the market several times merely looking for a parking space. Once we found it, we ventured into the market. Now, the market is outside, crowded, and it had just rained. Being in flip flops, not only were my feet all the way up to my ankles covered in mud (at least, I hope it was just mud), but the back of my skirt and shirt were covered as well.

After being yelled at in various languages for going the wrong way and blocking traffic flow, we found a spot to divide up into teams to go look for the items on our list. I ended up with Joe, Corrie, and Tina while Angela took Sara, Mark, and Stephanie to go look for vegetables. Amazingly enough, we found most of the stuff we needed at the first “store” we stopped at. Now, these stores are literal holes in the wall. The shops are made out of tin and wood and appear as though they will collapse at any second. After bargaining for the things we wanted, we settled on a price and told the man we would be back later to pick it up.

As we walked further down the “street” we realized we probably wouldn’t be able to find the rest of the stuff we needed there. Well, someone (no names will be mentioned) said that if we took a certain alley, it would take us one street over. Well, little did we know that the “alley” was really a dead end. As soon as the four of us walked in and realized this, we heard the door slam behind us, followed closely by uproarious laughter. Finally, someone took pity on us and opened the door. We walked out, of course, ignoring the fact that we had just been laughed at and were the only white people within eye shot. I think we played it off well …. Ha ha

At this point, we decided we were done, hired a boy with a wheelbarrow to haul our stuff to the car, and played chicken with traffic on the way back. It was quite the exhausting and adventurous African experience.

6-17-09

Today, we were up before the sun. At 5:30am, we set out to make sandwiches and pack our bags for the day. Then it was off for a 3 hour bus ride to Yankari for our much awaited SAFARI!!!!

We didn’t see anything too exciting – just some baboons, warthogs, lizards, antelope, deer-ish animals, etc. No elephants or lions or hippos , but it was still fun nonetheless.

After that, we threw on our swimsuits and headed to the hot springs on their property – oh that was so refreshing! We found this amazing tree to climb up and jump off of!! Sooo much fun. The water was absolutely gorgeous, clear as can be with palm trees all around – You’d think we were in paradise.

So zip back to the present, since then, we’ve spent most of our time preparing for “animal week” at CLAPAI. We’re giving the teachers a week off by teaching all the kids. I’m one of 2 interns in charge of math, so I will be teaching math to grades pre-K through 3^rd all week – who would have seen that coming!? Lol We’re also planning games and Bible stories for them: should be exciting!!

I also can’t believe I’m down to my last 2 weeks here. I can’t help but look back at all that we’ve done, and just wish I could stay longer to take part in more of it. It all just makes me feel so ALIVE.