Under the hot sun

This morning was my last English class and, though the girls acted like I was pulling their teeth, I have to believe they were a little sad it was over. Even though they never once showed it was anything more than a huge chore for them to come all 3 of my girls would be annoyed and kind of sad when I had to cancel classes. At the end of the class I told them I wanted to help them, if they wanted it, during the school year with their English homework because I'm like an English dictionary (at least compared to anyone else in this town) and made them translate one last sentence: when you're not fasting, I will give you candy for completing this class.

After the English class I went to meet the family of a camper (who was actually on vacation). I had called her dad the day before and he told me he lived in the high school which I thought was a misunderstanding because someone else had told me he was a high school teacher... nope. His house is in the high school and he's actually a middle school principal. The meeting went really well and he was all for the camp. Then he invited me to work at his middle school (which is about 10km away from Bambey) next school year. His son even asked me for help with English (when work rains it pours). As I was leaving the awesome meeting I decided to call Tamar.

The walk from the high school to my house is about 20 minutes and, at 12:30pm, the sun was beating down relentlessly. A few minutes into the walk I noticed a group of boys under some trees in front of me.
"There are 7 8-12 year old boys just waiting for me under some trees... two of them are on donkeys," I explained to Tamar. We both agreed I should just keep walking and ignore their "watsyourname?" and "iluuvyou"'s. When I passed the first kid on a donkey the second kid, whose donkey was facing away from me, started to turn his donkey around and as I walked past him he started chasing me.

An 8 year old on a donkey chased me. Lucky for me donkey's walk slower than I do in heat and sun so I didn't have to pick up my pace. So confused by what was going on Tamar and I brainstormed for solutions (while the donkey/kid continued to "chase" me). Finally I turned around and pretended like I was going to smack the donkey and the kid stopped. Then, like clockwork, the oldest kid called me a racial slur which normally would have pissed me off but I was still digesting the whole donkey-chasing.

I feel like once you've been chased by a donkey there really isn't much more you can do that day and I just hung around with my fasting host fam.

Ba suba,
KO