End of the school year

The school year will be over for me this coming Tuesday when I hand back the last of my finals and give students their overall grades.  Originally, we were supposed to be done at the end of May, but the Beninese government pushed back the end of the school year in response to the strikes…which wasn’t much fun for teachers like me who never went on strike in the first place.  Thanks to such a late ending, the next school year probably won’t start until October.

It’s just as well that school’s ending since the rain is really picking up again.  After the sudden, strong showers, I’ve found displaced snails in my outdoor shower area and once even a small green frog plopping across my living room floor.  During an afternoon shower a few weeks ago, the rain came through the ventilation holes in my classroom and streamed down the blackboard, erasing the lesson I’d been writing.  The roar of the water on the corrugated iron roof and the darkness from all the cloudcover would’ve kept me from teaching anyway, so I just paused the lesson until the storm was over. The students, huddled in the center of the room away from the holes in the walls that serve as windows, had a great time.

In case you’re wondering, the primary school building project is still on, but I’m bogged down in budget-writing right now.  I’ll let you all know when it gets moving again.  Other, smaller current projects were a World Map last month and Camp GLOW in a week and a half.  The World Map was a painting project on the side of one of my school’s buildings.  Peace Corps will reimburse me for the supplies with a GAD Small Projects grant, and a nearby volunteer and I supplied labor.  Almost none of the students at my school own maps, and the current Beninese geography/history curriculum doesn’t require the students to look at maps of the countries they’re studying, so my students’ geography is very shaky.  We drew the map using a gridded pattern and painted it, and it turned out beautifully; I’ll post a photo here when I can.  Camp GLOW is a girls’ leadership summer camp that’ll take place soon in Porto Novo.  I’ve invited four girls from my school.

Hope your summers are going well!