Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Today, I returned to my placement at the local elementary school. I work with Madam Flora teaching English. She teaches up to 100 students in the class. It is a bit overwhelming to say the least! She wanted me to teach the difference between Who and Whose, when used to combine sentences.  I did the best I could; I think really the students are doing a lot of copying without really understanding what they are writing. I enjoy working with her, though. We sit in the teacher’s lounge and chat with the other teachers and grade the 100 notebooks. At break time they drink tea and eat chapatis.

After school and lunch, a visitor spoke to us about the situation of women in the country. Basically, women have to do what their husbands tell them to do. A man may have up to four wives and can marry a very young girl. Women with education are at a disadvantage to marry because the men do not want educated women as wives. The speaker herself does not want to remain with her husband, but because of parental pressure and children, she remains.

Later, we walked down to play soccer in the schoolyard and all the children came to watch.

Then it was to the ocean! It was refreshing and wonderful. Later, we played tug of war, had an egg race and sang and danced.