Phagwa

Exciting, our very first official teaching day. And how very tiring as well!
The “river” we had in our street has vanished, luckily, and we were off to school. Teachers looked at us in a very weird way when they saw us putting everything ready before the actual start of the lessons. I’m teaching first graders this week. When my mentor-of-the-week disappeared to have a “quick” chat with the principal she never returned. Seemed that the sixth grade teacher was absent and she had to take over. So it was just me and the kids. Meaning: a whole lot of testing me and getting me pissed! But we’ll deal with those trouble makers on Thursday… No fun stuff for them!
I was exhausted after school, could barely even stand and walk anymore. So I crawled into bed and took a two hour nap.
Woke up when it was time for dinner and could hardly keep my eyes open. So went to bed almost straight after the delicious improvised spaghetti (very limited shopping because of the weather). A national holiday tomorrow, Holi Phagwa, so no school and loads of fun, I hope.

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How wonderful, sleeping in late in the middle of the week! No need for a shower, cause celebrating Phagwa = getting covered with coloured powder and water and everything people can find to throw on you.
Marij and I first had to make a trip to the bike rental, cause we needed to renew our contract. When we met the others after that, we started our search for Phagwa celebrators. Didn’t need to search for long, cause we quickly found a bunch of people covered in pink from top to bottom!
You know, Catholic holidays can really learn something from these ones: free drinks, free food, free music and free dirt! What more can you want?
After only a few seconds, we could find Phagwa powder just about everywhere. Our clothes were completely covered, our faces were covered with Phagwa paste and even our ears were filled with powder!
At around 2pm most people left to go to the big Phagwa place: a soccer field with a stage, a small bar and loads of space for all celebrators.
Because of the rain these past few days, it was more a mud field than a soccer field, but we were already dirty, so who cares?
Around seven, some got pretty hungry and left to find something to eat. The rest of us stayed to enjoy the wonderfully coloured festivities. After the show of the drum band (which was pretty cool) we as well had a bit of an appetite and went in search of some food. We found a small Chinese restaurant just around the corner of where the other students lived, which had very good bami and nasi.
After dinner, Marij, Ellen and I jumped back on our bikes to head home again. Crossed some huge “rivers” (some streets were still flooded from the rain), but the water was very refreshing.
We hit the showers asfast as we could to finally get all the smudge off our faces, arms, legs, hair, … We all kinda looked like the Hulk.
I don’t think I have ever scrubbed this hard, and still there was no result. After 40 minutes of washing and cleaning and scrubbing, we finally gave up. Most of the green stuff had come off, but our eyebrows and hair are still green…
But hey, it was one hell of a party, so why not enjoy and let everyone else in Paramaribo know we Bakra’s celebrate Phagwa as well?

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Oh I hate getting up at 6am! It’s good to have a holiday in the middle of the week, but it sucks getting up early the next day…
Our second day of teaching today, and it went a lot better than Tuesday. The kids were under control (with of course a few exceptions) and they worked very hard.
Today was also the first day I tried out our project in the first grade. I read a story and they had to do all sorts of tasks about it: painting, colouring, drawing, writing, … which they found very fun to do. The trouble makers of course, were excluded from this fun assignment. I hope they have learned their lesson and will be a lot better next week (though I’m teaching second grade and Marij will be in the first then…)
We’ll spend the rest of the day preparing for next week and preparing for tomorrow. We have our first real trip then: Brownsberg, Berg en Dal and Stone Island, an adventurous weekend trip. Very exciting, so lets hope everything works out ok… At least my hammock is already packed!