The Horror! The Horror! + The Rhythm Section Was The Purple Gang

Last Saturday morning, we lost our internet at the Volunteer House and it wasn't restored until Monday afternoon.  Which meant an entire weekend without the Web.  And even now, the download speed of the WiFi is as slow as DSL.  My suffering is beyond all imagining.  As Coldplay said, "Nobody said it was easy, No one ever said it would be this hard."  Of course, the lead singer of Coldplay also named his daughter Mango or Kumquat or East Asian Breadfruit, so maybe I shouldn't rely too much on his opinions. 

So what does one do for a weekend when one cannot check baseball betting lines or play internet poker?  I mean, besides not losing money.  Well, one can take a 2 hour walk on the road that leads to Mount Kilimanjaro and then run back--since it is all uphill in the direction of Kili.  And during the walk one can enjoy the following view of the tallest mountain in Africa:

Yes, in general, although Kilimanjaro is only 20 miles from Moshi, almost invariably, what you see when you look in its direction is lots and lots of clouds.  However, I actually have seen Kili twice in the 7 days I've been here, so it would be completely unfair to question its existence.  Though you could persuade me that it is a cousin of Brigadoon.

The second high point of the weekend was having a creaky old person wash my clothes by hand with a hose and a bucket.  Or it would have been a high point.  If that creaky old person had been someone other than me.  As it was, I discovered that washing clothes by hand in the back yard is almost identical to washing clothes in a washing machine in my basement.  In that, in both instances, I go to the store and get laundry soap.  Then I put the soap, the clothes and the water together.  (It's actually easier up to this point because I don't have to choose between water temperatures--it's whatever temperature comes out of the hose.)  Up until this point, I am seeing only upside from this experience:  clean clothes and a dynamite tan!  And then I get introduced to the "machine" aspect of using a washing machine, namely, scrubbing, twisting, squeezing, draining, adding clean water, and repeating the process.

The only good thing to come out of the experience is that now I understand why, in the olden days, washing clothes was considered women's work.  Because it's too damn hard for men to do.

On Monday, I started my volunteer work at the Juvenile Jail, or "Mahabusu ya Watoto."  (While writing this blog, I simply throw letters together randomly and pretend that it's Swahili.  I mean, really!  Who's going to catch me?)  I think what surprised me most was this one guy with his hair worn long and swept back, who suddenly burst into a song and started shaking his hips.  I just didn't realize that's how prisoners behave in jails.  Ignorant me!

Actually, the fellah pictured above was not at the Juvenile Jail.  But there were a number of boys there that looked just like him.  Well, without the pompadour.  Without the fancy clothes.  And without the shoes.  And smaller.  But other than that, they could all have been clones of Elvis.  Because they all liked math (which is what I've been teaching them).  And we all remember that Elvis was a math fanatic himself.  ("One for the money; Two for the show;   .   .   ."  A big fan of infinite sequences, obviously.)

I haven't presented ideas at quite the Elvis level of math proficiency yet; I have restricted myself to much more advanced stuff.  Multiplication, division, word problems.  All the stuff that made you hate math.  It's okay; you can admit it.  When you were first taught long division, you were convinced that it was as punishment for something very bad that you had done.  Now, as a math teacher I can let you in on a secret.  Of course it was!  We use long division purely as a mechanism of torture.   Yet, my students here have been working long division problems for me.  They are simple problems, but not so simple that you can solve them without doing long division.

I am teaching in Swahili, which was a novelty on the first day, but now, on the third day, they expect me to be speaking Swahili.  (It is no doubt hard for you to remember--now that you are older than Joan Rivers' first face lift and just as petrified--that when you were young, you were very adaptable.)  Well, so are these kids.  So they thought it was very funny today, at the end of the second lesson (I give them 2 math lessons every day--hey, it's jail; it's supposed to be unpleasant) I intended to ask them if they had had enough math.  Only the phrase I used is only used with food: "Have you had enough?" in the sense of "Are you full of food?"  So they all had quite a good laugh. 

Between lessons, they get a break when they can play.  The play area is pictured below:

There are 19 children in the facility right now, so it looks like there is plenty of play area.  However, the favorite game is soccer (you can see the painted net) and this area is about 30 feet by 35 feet.  Not much room at all for a soccer game.  The games tend to be limited to 5 on 5 or 6 on 6.  More than that and there's no room to move.  Plus, they play it like indoor soccer, so the ball is always in play.  Off the wall?  Play on.  Off the roof?  Play on.  Off someone's face?  Play on.  I guess the game it is most like would be ice hockey except (1) no fighting; (2) no missing teeth; and (3) the "ice" is actually concrete.  Oh, yes, and the boys play barefoot.

Two of our volunteers joined in a game last week, taking off their shoes.  Care to guess what happened when they began to stop and start and change directions on rough concrete?  You are so smart!  You are exactly right.  They both ended up at the local hospital having cuts on the soles of their feet cleaned and bandaged.

Here is a picture from today's soccer game.  The same two volunteers (both from Finland, by the way) are not playing.  See if you can pick them out.

Wow!  You are right again!  I think you are the top genius of all time!  Well, you and Elvis.