"What's up butt-heads!!" No offense and all, but this is literally how one of the volunteers around me has greeted his class. Taking full advantage of the fact that none of our students down South speak English, I guess. Anyway, I made it back from training. The roads were pretty bad, but we made it to Newala unscathed. We made it back and I went back to school on Wednesday. Not a whole lot going on because they were about to start testing. Friday, I proctored, or as they say here "invigilated," a test on Friday. Let me tell you, trying to keep students from cheating for 3 hours is not a good time.
That weekend, a PCV was traveling through Mtwara and passed Newala, so I gave him the "grand tour." That weekend, I woke up not feeling great. Then Monday, half-way through the day, it really hit me. I went home and here is a list of the symptoms: puss on my tonsils, swollen lymph nodes (one so big you could see the lump and it hurt to turn my head), nauseous, and light headed/head pounding. I called the PC Medical Officer and eventually got my meds. They made be feel considerably better. Friday though, I woke up to a scary shock. Duck seemed to have lost motor control in her back legs and really couldn't walk. It was not a fun thing to watch and as a result, I think I cried about 6 times that day. I talked to a vet, and he said that it looked like she had some sort of brain virus. Awesome. So I was pretty much expecting to wake up the next day and her be dead. Weirdly enough, the next morning she was perfectly fine. It was like nothing was ever wrong with her and she has shown no sign of any brain virus since that Friday.
This last week, we plunged full force back in to lessons. We really only have like 4 weeks of class left so I starting to worry about getting through the syllabus. I also handed back all of my tests, about 300, which were pretty much just as dreadful as I was expecting. Yeah for language barriers! I really do believe that language is 70% of the problem. My busy week was interrupted though as I witnessed my first demonic possession. After assembly, a girl collapsed and started flailing around screaming bloody murder. About 10 girls jumped on her and held her down and a bajaj was called to take her to the hospital. It was extremely weird to say the least.
On Friday morning, we didn't have school so I hopped the bus to Mtwara town to meet up with some other volunteers. I got on the bus as 6:30 a.m. and 80 miles and 91/2 hours later I reached my destination. Most of that time was actually spent moving even. Because the roads were so bad, I think we maybe averaged 10 miles an hour, max. When I got to our beach house though, it was worth it. We are staying at a beach house run my Catholic priests and our front door is literally 40 yards from the Indian Ocean. So after I got here, we swam a bit, and then walked down the beach and ate at a really nice resort. Another really exciting thing about our house is, it has HOT SHOWERS!! It hasn't worked thus far, but I can still hope that before we leave, I'll get my first hot shower in 7 months!
That's really all that has happened that I can think of. Peace out peeps!!
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