November 18th

Like I said yesterday, today is my last blog for a few days till Tom
gets back on Monday. Karen is staying in Makeni for a conference
but she has said she will send the internet modem back to
Kamakwie with Tom. I went to the market today to get onions,
cucumbers and bread. I only managed to find onions, there were
no cucumbers and the only bread available was pretty stale so I
decided it would be better to wait and get it later. Back at the
house I helped Karen scan some more glasses. The official count is
493 pairs of scanned glasses in the inventory. After we finished up
the glasses we had lunch and after that I had to go off to school.
On the way I saw this lady who in the United States whould be in a
wheel chair. The poor woman was literally walking on the top of
her foot. Her foot was bent backwards at the ankle. We exchanged
the common pleasantries including asking “how’s the body”. I had
expected a fine or something like that. But instead she said “tell
God thanks” (in Krio of course) which is the best response to
asking how someone is. Don’t get me wrong, I do thank God for
everything I’ve gone through (both good and bad) that has shaped
me into who I am, but I don’t think that if my ankle was bent like
that so I had to stoop over and walk on the top of my foot that I
would be saying thank God for. I have asked Karen in the past if
this is a society where no one really says anything but fine or says
thank God even if they really aren’t ok. But she made a good point,
every day they wake up again is a good day. Class went pretty
good with my SS 1 kids today. I had them for both chemistry and
biology. I had two really hard concepts to try and explain to them
today. The taxonomy classification system in biology, how do you
explain phylum and the other levels to people who don’t even
necessarily understand the words that regularly come out of my
mouth? Then in chemistry I was trying to explain atomic structure,
shells and orbitals. That was a task and a half considering it’s such
an abstract concept. Anyway, then two of my SS3s came down and
told me that they were the only two there and didn’t want to have
class because they were tired and were leaving. Since I could really
stop them I went ahead and went home. We had cherry
cheesecake soup for dessert tonight. Karen tried to make
cheesecake but didn’t set up despite over an hour in the freezer.
After that I got my first haircut in Africa, Karen did it. It’s not quite
as short as I would like but it’s a lot better than it was. On a great
note, I heard today that there is this village where the elders are
muslim and most of the people are as well. They planted a church
there and last week they held a clinic there and this past Sunday
they had 30 people attend the service. Some of the people went
up to Albert, who is kind of in charge, and told him they were going
to be coming in the future. So praise the Lord for that. Anyway, I
think that’s about all I have for this evening. I’ll be compiling one
big blog post to put up Monday evening, or Wednesday if Karen
doesn’t remember to send me the internet stick on Monday. So if
you don’t hear from me till then don’t be worried. This is going to
be a test because it will be the longest time where I can’t send or
receive messages. Thankfully I’m supposed to receive a call from
my mom at some point and I’ve arranged to call one of my friends
on Sunday. I might get some more units to make more calls if I find
myself desperate for some communication. I’m doing a lot better
about being homesick, but some days are not as good as others,
and without Karen or Tom around for such a length of time might
be hard. Anyway, thanks for your patronage.

Greetings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks