Fringe, Food and F&*^%$% Kids

Today was the most tiring day at work that I've had so far. One of the teachers from class two had called to say she would not be in school today and would need Quirine to cover for her. She, in turn, asked me to assist her in teaching the class. Class two is much larger than class three and with a lot of boys too so when one is messing around, they all are. The children were talking and fighting throughout the morning period, causing us to send two of them out and shout at the rest a few times each. Quirine taught the lessons while I sharpened pencils. The children have a habit of using their pencils to hit things, desks, words on the chalkboard they don't understand, each other. This equates to a lot of broken graphite. At least we had sharpeners this week instead of using a Stanley knife. Later, at break, we went to buy cassava and some bananas and when we returned Debora, who has taken to asking to be carried every day, was waiting for me to pick her up. Now, I'm happy to do this once or twice but, when I have to keep shrugging her off, it starts to get annoying. Anyway, today she ended up jumping and throwing her knees straight into my crotch. I doubled over, Quirine and Rose, the child I mentioned in an earlier blog post, burst out laughing. Rose then proceeded to mock me by copying my pained posture and expression, for the rest of the day.

Once break was over we returned to teach the class and they were even more restless than the morning. With both our tethers shortening by the minute as well as getting ever more tired as the day wore on, we both began shouting at the class and sending more and more children to sit in the corner or to stand outside. It was, by far, the hardest day in terms of discipline and we decided to allow them an hour outside to run off all the energy they seemed to have saved for today. Or that was the plan, had it not taken them two hours to write down their homework. We gave them a stern telling off as the day ended before heading to the lodge next door, L'Oasis, for lunch. Remembering reading about it in my Tanzanian guide book, I had the Kilimanjaro Nachos at 14500TSH, just under £6. Kilimanjaro was the right word for the nachos, not the Western style stuff but ... different ... I don't really know how to describe it, as they were piled high with a splatter of sour cream as the 'snows of Kilimanjaro'. The guacamole-cum-salsa was nice though and I managed to devour the entire thing, pretty much only because the waiter had said I couldn't. I get petty like that.

For the evening, we settled down to begin watching Fringe, a show that I had heard was good but never got down to watching. I think the première was a one and a half or two hour episode but I'm not quite sure as there was a power cut half way through. It was one of the more impressive premières I've watched recently, although judging by this year's new series, that's not particularly special. It follows an FBI agent, a semi-insane scientist and his genius son as they try and solve cases involving “fringe science”, which the show tells us is “mind control, teleportation [and] reanimation” among other things. The premise fits for me as I quite like this sort of stuff, the acting is okay and J.J. Abrams directs, so for me its worth watching if you like the sci-fi crime thriller stuff.