July 5, 2012

Another beautiful morning in this idyllic village. Having drank my coffee, checked my emails and replied to Facebook postings, I made my way to the school canteen where Mavluda had another bowl of porridge waiting for me. We had the students start by writing a portrait using the laminated photos I had with me and the respective handouts. This was an entirely new activity for them and, even though their writing skills were quite poor, they managed to put together a decent written portrait of the person in the photo and then presented their posters to the rest of the class. As a follow-up, the students chose three adjectives to write in a piece of paper that described their personalities and the rest was to guess the name of the student when the piece was read. The game caused lots of confusion as they kept identifying themselves as soon as the description was read instead of waiting for guesses from their classmates.

We had no power all morning and thus when the IT person came to hook up the school printer to my laptop, nothing could be done. I looked at the old printer and doubted it’d be compatible with my Windows 7 system, but hoped that additional drivers could be located online. I went over the other games available yet and made a tentative list of the ones that seemed most promising for that age group. Mavluda has been very attentive to the games taking the time to write all instructions in her notebook as I promised to leave most of my materials with her now that I won’t needing them anymore.

Lunch was buckwheat, this time cooked with carrots and beef, just like plov, and even though I normally hate it, I decided to try it in this new incarnation as I didn’t feel like walking to the restaurant in the mid-day heat. I ate the soup and a bit of the buckwheat and was full enough. I took my customary nap and returned at 4:00pm for an outing  to a nearby waterfall that the local volunteer had organized for us. It was an uphill climb to reach a poor village hidden among the trees and then a scary walk on a ledge between the precipice and a canal where we had about a foot of space to make our way there. I was terrified and hung on to a strong male student, as sure-footed as a goat, who pulled me along until I could hear the rushing waters of the waterfall and where I took a couple of snapshots before deciding it was too scary for me. We walked back to the village and the students set out to eat mulberries and sour cherries as if the trees belonged to them. Mavluda talked to some of the female residents and answered questions about the program.

We returned to our village exactly at 7:00pm, but dinner was still being cooked, vegetables in one pot and rice in another, and I decided I didn’t want that for dinner. I walked to the truck stop only to find out they had been without power all afternoon as well and had little to offer. I was brought a bowl of greasy shorbot soup and the Russian bread I don’t particularly care for. A plate of sliced tomatoes was brought out at the end. I went back to the camp to find the students just lining up to eat and promised them to show them the “Hokey Pokey” dance before heading back to my room.

Students must have rushed through their dinner in anticipation of the dance for soon I was surrounded by male students asking me to play a variety of songs from my laptop from Shakira’s “Waka Waka” to Michael Telo “Nosa”. I didn’t have any speakers, but took the laptop out into the courtyard to lead the students into the first round of rehearsals for the dance so they can present it during the closing ceremony. Mavluda didn’t have any ideas on the steps to follow for such ceremony, and I offered her the agenda we had designed at the camp in Istaravshan so she could pick and choose activities from it. These students are certainly at a lower level than the former and thus unable to sing songs in English or recite poems either. I suggested some role plays, but she wanted for me to provide the materials and that I can’t do as it should be representations of situations familiar to the students in this area.

Mavluda and a group of students accompanied me to my room and I started to read “Sister of my Heart”, an engrossing novel by Chitra Divakaruni now that I had finished the novel “Embers”, a most satisfying read, and given it to Schanoz to keep.