Is it November yet?

Hey all!

This week was relatively uneventful- I had some form 2 girls over for tea on Tuesday, which was nice, they had a lot of questions, and are excited to do some dramas for the Form 1 Life Skills class. I'm hoping that their little group will help give them confidence that will influence the Form 1 girls.

The Form 1s had their first week, it was really sweet how shy they were, I wonder how long it will last. My plan for my first two weeks with them was to orient them on the library and get them reading in their spare time, it caught a snag when I walked into the library to find that once again it was being used to store broken and useless lab equipment. I had to explain to the deputy head teacher (vice principal, basically) that our school is too small to use any space for storage, and if anything is in storage, it isn't being used, so we either have to get rid of it or fix it up and organize ourselves and that the library is not a closet. In the end we shifted some of the lab equipment into the middle of the room, but the rest is still blocking our fiction section.

I also went to the police station to try to get a copy of my police report, which was useless, because they never filed one, and said I didn't want one to be filed. I couldn't help it, I ended up yelling at the police officer in charge of my case- I forgot what his title is, but it must be synonymous for 'lazy guy who does nothing', because that's exactly what he is. Ugh. He said that I needed to specifically ask to file a report, and that I hadn't done so, to which I replied that: yes, I had asked, and that even if I hadn't spoken the exact magic words to get him to do his job, he should have explained the procedures to me. He laughed at this idea, as if everyone in Malawi knows how to file a police report (they don't, I asked), and said that I should have just known or 'asked my friends'. Around here is when I lost it and yelled at him.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but after my break in, everything seems to bug me. Kids chasing me, drunks hounding me telling me that I am a 'foreign shit', disobedient students who hack up my bushes in my yard even though I told them not to. Other volunteers agree that they feel the same way right about now too though, so maybe its that I'm at my one year slump, or that it is the beginning of hot season. I don't really know why.

Anyway, I'm going to my friend Meg's for the weekend to cool off. Hopefully I'll feel better after the weekend is over.