I’m pretty sure this marks the beginning of a routine. I’ve been coming to the internet cafe on Tuesdays right after I go to the Nakumatt because I get to marvel at western items. It’s probably a bad idea for me to include the Nakumatt in my routines because it just means I’ll be spending 1,000KSH every week on just Nakumatt items. Bad. Very bad. I got birthday stuff for two of my students’ birthdays tomorrow, along with some other stuff, and the total came up to 1,300 which is 1/18 of my monthly salary. Multiply that by 4 and I’ll be spending nearly 1/4 my monthly salary. No.

Could it be that the teachers at the Kaaga Scool for the Deaf are beginning to see the light that is KSL? I sure hope so. Lately, there has been more linguistic and semantic discussion pertaining to KSL in the staffroom, and that can only lead to more questions. It’s always good to question the way things are. I start teaching my first KSL class to the teachers today. Apparently, there will be more than 6 teachers which is a big increase from the original 3 that I was supposed to teach. I’m opening the lesson with 7 different ways to write “My car has broken down.” in English. The aim is to loosen their beliefs on KSL having a strict grammar structure that must follow English word order. I will then go on to define what a natural human language is, what a dialect is, and what code languages are. Hopefully, this will plant a small seed that may bloom into a rose in place of the weeds that are growing there now.

On Saturday, the last day of my duty, two men went cross-dressing and jumped the bush-fence into the girls’ dormatories. No one knows what the thieves’ real intentions were but some speculate that they were wanting to rape some of the girls. One staff speculated that they wanted to kidnap the girls for ransom money. Speculation aside, one of the house mamas heard the thieves and turned on the lights, sending off shrill screams into the midnight. The schoolgirls rose up and started beating the thieves, including the haughty woman of a housemother that reminds me of a hen protecting her chicks in the face of danger. The thieves ran off into the night, but not before one of the school’s guards took aim with his bow and arrow. There was a pursuit, apparently, and it was definitely made easier by the blood trail shining in the moonlight. Among all this, I was fast asleep under my canopy of a mosquito net.

Durr, I just got an email from the Peace Corps office saying that a package has been detained because one of the dogs smelled something. Apparently, it was something that smelled foul but wasn’t anything illicit. I wonder who sent it – either the grandparents or some loving friends from the Lone Star state. Enos, my boss, will be coming up to Meru tomorrow (or Friday) to observe me teaching. I’ll get the package then, yay!

I’m thinking about getting an Android phone because the phone I have at the moment is not a full QWERTY keyboard and it’s annoying. Also, I cannot upload any of the photos that I take onto the Internet. With the Android phone, I can. Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t uploaded any photos in a while. It’s because I don’t have a laptop of my own and I don’t want to insert any technology I have into the virus infested holes of the cyber cafes. Come April, I’ll have a laptop.

One last thing, I’m really curious to see who’s been reading my blog. Drop a comment if you’re reading – would love to know who all of you are out there.

Adieu.