Blackout

The blackout has finally ended. I know I shouldn't complain about power since a lot of PCVs don't have electricity at site, but my quartier here in Thies didn't have power for the last 37 hours and it was driving me mad. Mainly because it was driving my family mad, who then started arguing with each other and no electricity definitely means no water and that's just depressing. The second the power came back everyone scurried to plug in phones and watch Wolof soap operas on television.

Today is a good day not only because the power came back (at least for a little bit hopefully!), but also because it's day three of the bad amoeba meds. I hope that when I start the second drug tomorrow the nausea and exhaustion that's I've had with this first pill go away. This odd state did not make my Junior Achievement meeting fun this morning.

Kerry and I met at his house this morning to go over what we wanted to accomplish at today's meeting. The goal was to set dates for the classes since getting ten weeks in before the new SED stage arrives in June is going to be a challenge with Spring/ East Break and other various holidays that are crammed into the schedule. We also wanted a estimate for the number of students who would be attending as well as teachers and feed back on the lesson plan that Kerry made. I think we were both surprised when a ton of students, not just teachers, attended the meeting. Obviously the meeting was all kinds of chaos since maintenance workers refused to leave the room while we were meeting and kept dropping things. It was hard to hear, hot as hell, and I was becoming delusional with hunger.

I think we got most of the information we needed. The teachers seemed much more interested after they got to see a lesson plan and we further outlined their roles as overseers of student teams. I'm not so sure what the students thought about JA since they were having problems hearing and understanding Kerry and I over the din of the maintenance workers. We were having problems understanding them as well. The first class is set for next Wednesday so we'll see how many people actually show up and how it goes. Regardless, I'm learning a lot from Kerry about teaching and lesson planning neither of which I'm particularly good at!

The rest of the afternoon I spent at Les Delices filling my stomach with food that was not ceebu jenn and trying to get some computer work done at a place with a generator. I know that my quartier is abnormally bad with power and water, but it does seem to be a Thies wide problem since Massa Massa didn't have water when I was there yesterday with Leslie and all of the restaurants were running generators today.