Eid ul-Adha

Thursday October 26^th

Excitement all round as I arrived at school this morning.  Asha (pronounced Aisha), who has very limited English and knows my equally limited Swahili, bounced up to me and announced, “Mr Stuart – Leo ninakwenda Tanga”.  When I asked why she was going to Tanga on a school day the rest of the class informed me that tomorrow was a holiday and quite a few of them were using the three day weekend to take a short visit to their homes.  It appears that tomorrow is the Muslim festival Eid ul-Adha and as such is a day for celebrations, new clothes, sunshine or generally what we would call, a bank holiday.  In fact the banks and many of the shops would be shut as well so we Christians could enjoy the fun as well.  At least if the electricity etc etc…I might find time to catch up with my blog and other things that have fallen behind. 

I taught both my classes today, with many references to Crazy Bananas, and then settled back to compose two tests.  The first two hours of every week are taken up with tests for all forms.  There is a rolling timetable of subjects covered, two at a time, and next Monday is the turn of basic mathematics from 8:00 - 9:00.  There is a rota for invigilation, which I don’t appear on, so I had to write the test with the knowledge that another member of the staff would then copy my work onto the blackboard.  That will give me something to do on Monday, marking that lot!!

Arrived home and the gardening squad were still at work, this time it is Lucy who is going round collecting dead heads from yesterdays ‘strimming’.

I think I've mentioned the on-going problem I have with sim cards.  I purchased two Vodacom sims the first weekend, one for my phone and one for the dongle modem, and went through a process of compulsory registration where they ring  ID through to the firm, in my case using my driving licence.  The sims later became blocked and Denis managed to re-register the one for my phone, but the other one is still not usable.  I finally managed to get through to customer helpline tonight only to be told that there was a problem in the registration and I must visit a Vodacom office.  You've guessed – Tanga!!   At least the music in between, “Your call is important to us”, had a good beat and was something different to ‘ Fur Elise’.

Baadaye