First Day at School

Habari Za Joini

I had to wake up early this morning in order to get to Mbutu primary for my first lesson at the school. I breakfasted by myself and left by 7:30. I cycled past all the kids and they shouted mixtures of 'Mzungu' - as usual as well as 'Habari'. I was unaware of what Habari meant and so smiled and just waved back, which seemed good enough for them.

I got to school and managed to find Thomas with no difficulty. All of the kids were in their school uniforms, which consisted of White shirts and blue shorts for the boys and blue skirts for the girls. They were all sweeping the ground outside the school with small brushes - Jeffrey told me later that this was on order of the president. Apparently every school child has to sweep in the morning before they go back to school.

Thomas introduced the 30 kids who I would be teaching to me and me to the kids. They all repeated my name and we sat down in a big circle. We ran through the lesson. They really enjoyed the bulldog style game, in which they pretended to be sea turtle hatchings.

I got back and quickly and realised that I was half way through my reading book so managed to find Bill Bryson's Notes on a Small Island. Which we have on tape and which we listened to on the way up the Scotland one time, but which I had never actually read. The book was a brilliant find and it was nice to read the book with greater knowledge of Britain.

Hudson