Day 3 and 4

19.01.2022 / 20.01.2022

These two days are emotionally not clearly separable. On Wednesday, the textbooks were supposed to be there so that we could prepare our lessons, but there was no communication from Regina. In the evening, we finally reach her and she says that we will definitely get the books tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we are all getting a little impatient and take several small walks around the BSSK school grounds. The students intercept us and show us the classrooms and the partially completed huge building on the premises, which is being built thanks to a donation after the death of a Swiss woman. Something that is more difficult for me than I thought is the omnipresent smell of sweat. The students gather around us to take photos and show us things, and it makes me feel uncomfortable in my stomach. There is also a boy on the premises who has a mental disability and is responsible for generating and processing biogas. In other words, he collects animal dung from the premises and throws it into a mill for processing. He is very happy to see us and always wants to be close to us. But on the one hand, I don't understand him and on the other hand, his smell is so omnipresent that I have a hard time with it. Even in this example, I feel so privileged and almost guilty that it bothers me, but actually all my senses are in a constant overload of information.

The next day starts at 7:30, which is already early for our previous conditions. We should have breakfast after we have "quickly" picked up the school books in Kiboga. "Quickly" allows room for interpretation, so after two hours we finally sit down at the breakfast table :). We try to prepare our lessons, which is overall difficult without any indication of what they can do. Where they stand, how many there are. We are actually preparing blindly, but it is also an exciting experience. For lunch, Regina invites us to her home. On a huge piece of land on the other side of the street from where BSSK is located, she is building her dream house, as she calls it. The lower floor is already in the rough construction and she and her housekeeper are already living in it. She hopes to be finished in ten years, because whenever there is some money left over, she puts it into the construction. Her son would actually live with her, but since he is still going to school, he needs light to work and the house doesn't have it yet. So he also lives in a small room on the school grounds. She briefly tells us that she got him when she finished university. But then she wanted or was allowed to go to Switzerland to get another degree. The father was not nice and he is no longer there. Her daughter is seven years old and goes to a private school near the capital, but we don't learn more. We drink local wine that tastes sweet and like port wine, and banana schnapps, of which a thimbleful is enough for me to realize that it is very strong... Regina regularly pours herself some more and we talk about school fees. I don't remember the exact numbers, but we are staying here for four weeks for $540, and with that money, a child could go to school for more than a year.