Easter Weekend

Last Thursday I went out to the ecole primaire where my neighbor and friend Mambih works. There’s only about 6 teachers there and several hundred students. But the kids were all so sweet … at least compared to my 4eme class at the lycee. Anyways I did some English classes with the older kids, sang some songs with the younger ones. Then me and the one female teacher there talked to all the girls about the dangers of early marriage. The numbers are absolutely crazy, when the girls start primary school, they are even more numerous than boys. Then so many drop out, in the final year there there were just 11. Two 14 year old girls had left literally the day before I arrived for marriage. However, while I was there one of the girl’s father came by and explained to the teachers that he hadn’t arranged this marriage, his daughter had run away. I get the feeling that both situations happen but I had incorrectly assumed that it was always the parents’ fault. Anyways the ecole primaire was a ton of fun, the kids were super sweet and hopefully I can work more with them next year too.

On the morning of Good Friday everyone climbed up Baba Simon, the small mountain in the center of town. They stopped along the way to do the stations of the cross.

My friend Martine got baptized at the Easter mass. She had been really excited for this and had a big party at her house afterwards.

It rained for the first time since October last night! First the electricity went out (which was pretty annoying since the teachers at the lycee were attempting to watch a training video from UNESCO,) and then it downpoured for about 7 minutes during which I was soooo delighted. But then the next morning it was humid and horrible. Usually it is extremely hot, but because its dry heat, its not so bad. But today I was just dripping sweat in my classes which were all before 10am … totally ridiculous. Eventually enough rain will come that the temperature will drop a bit, but right now the ground is just too dry and hot for it to make much of a difference.