August 21, 1999

School here started a few weeks ago. I've got over half of the kids names already, but it will take time. Names are not my specialty, so it's nice that the classes are small. The size depends on how many kids are out at the village at any one time. We started off the year with almost everyone and they're starting to go out now. The classes range in size from 14-26 or so. There are one or two classes of each grade. I know the second graders really well since I have them for music, computers, science, and social. They are so excited about learning to play, but they haven't gotten many of the foundational musical concepts, so we're having to move slowly. In three classes they've learned two notes.

Since I'm living in a "large" (a few hundred) community full of expatriates, we get a lot of imported things and there are a lot of western services like a clinic and post office and auto shop and computer store.

Last weekend I got to go to a "mumu", which is a traditional feast. It was put on specifically for some of us who had just arrived and hadn't been to one yet. The woman who coordinated it is a national who is the mother of one of my second graders. She does it as a service to us because she is a Christian. It is a lot of work. I went over in the morning and helped them with cutting up the vegetables while some of them were peeling and cutting sweet potatoes. Earlier they had killed some chickens for the meat. I enjoyed trying out some of my pidgin, which is the trade language I've been trying to learn, while we worked. She understood English, but enjoyed my attempts at pidgin. After we prepared the food, we poured coconut milk onto it and wrapped it up in banana leaves and aluminum foil (a modern addition) and surrounded it with hot rocks from the fire that the men had been working on all morning. It cooked for an hour and a half, then it was ready. And it was delicious!