Mud

I woke up early on Tuesday morning for our usual 6:30 AM women's prayer and it was already drizzling. It was the first day of computer classes for the staff of Mundri Secondary School, so I was a bit flustered by the rain since the school is a twenty minute bike ride from our compound. When the rain let up, I got on my bike and headed towards the school with a white board strapped to the back of my bike.


It was a smooth bike ride until I had to turn off the main road. The side road was a huge mud pit! I tried to bike through, but after slipping a few times, I decided to just get off my bike and walk the last mile. There were lots of students on the road walking to the nearby primary and secondary schools. One skill I still have not mastered is walking through the mud without getting muddy. Some of students helped me by pointing out the firm paths that I should take, but I was still doing a lot of slipping and sliding. Thankfully I never fell!

I showed up at Mundri Secondary School with my hem six inches deep in mud. I imagine I looked a bit like what Elizabeth Bennet must have looked like when she showed up at Netherfield. If you didn't already know, I'm an Austen fan. =)

Once I got to the school, John was already there teaching his Physics class. He managed to bike the whole way without getting muddy. John got the generator started after about 10 tries. It is a pretty massive generator and difficult to start.


I taught the first group of teachers starting with the basics. It was a fun class, and the teachers are very eager to learn. There is a wide range of previous computer experience ranging from teachers who have never used a computer before to those who have had training in Microsoft Word and Excel. Around lunch time, the generator ran out of fuel. John and I ended up teaching the remaining two groups of teachers computer basics by drawing a computer screen on the white board I brought. We will be teaching all the teachers every Tuesday, so hopefully they will all get more practice actually using the computers next week.

I really appreciate the relationships we have built at Mundri Secondary School. The teachers are great, and I enjoy all the time I get to spend there with the staff and students. To give you an idea of what the student body looks like here are a few statistics. There are 218 students and only 46 of those students are women. All of the full time staff are male. There are 75 students in John's first year Physics class.

Because of the rain that had continued on and off most of the day, Michael came in the Bishop's car to pick me up from the school. I was so thankful for the pickup and not having to walk through the mud which was much worse after the continuing rains. Well after loading by bike on top of the car, Michael realized the car was stuck in the mud. The teachers came running over to give us a push. Somehow in this process I managed to get even more mud all over my legs and skirt and the teachers still looked relatively clean.


We got going, and then after a few meters we were stuck again. The teachers came running over and gave us another push out of the mud and this time the teachers watched as we drove down the road in reverse to make sure we didn't get stuck again.


There is a list of African proverbs on the wall of the BNTC office. At the end of the day I thought of the proverb that says something like "when you pray for rain, you also pray for mud".