Math Camp Pt II- The Why

Things get hard and people quit. Its just a fact. It's why New Year's resolutions sound great in January but come February you've forgotten all about it. It's why for the smoker every other cigarette is his last and the drinker always promises himself just one more. It's why people abandon Jesus as soon as he starts to tearing away the idols in their lives. Others give up before they get started because they're afraid of encountering difficulty (or failure). It's why that test will get studied for tomorrow. It's why a workaholic dad says he'll start spending time with his kids once they're older and can appreciate it more.

There's millions of examples of why people quit or don't even get started to ever have a chance to quit. Let's not even consider prospects of failure. I'm not talking about failure. A lot of times failure would be preferred over doing nothing.

I'm done pontificating for now. Lets get back to math camp. As you'll recall, we finished our multiplication table competition with exactly 8 kids completely memorizing all their numbers. Keep in mind that there's over 40 kids here that were capable of performing this task. I figured if the kid can count to one-hundred its totally doable to take an average of two or three days to memorize a set.

And now, as promised, I'll explain why so few kids achieved this herculean feat. (A good writer should never explain when he's being sarcastic, but I'm not a good writer and that last sentence is pretty dang sarcastic.)

Yaaaaaay Math Camp!

Math camp is that magical time of year when, out of school, you go with all your friends for a week of fun and games and bonding and more mathematical formulae than you can shake a stick at. It is as much as an essential part of growing up as losing your baby teeth or taking family road trips.

What? You never went to math camp growing up? That's OK, neither did I. But our kids here have. Let me tell you about Math Camp '11.

Several months back during their school break I did math camp with the kids. It was primarily out of a desire to create a positive incentive for the kids to do something academic. The idea wasn't even to do a full-fledged summer-camp math oriented program. I wasn't going to whip out math skits or math games or math movie nights or math-themed food or anything. The weeks revolved around one very simple, simple prop. A chart.

Prayer Requests Oct 2011 - Pt II

[For some reason the blogger program is not liking when I do scheduled posts anymore. This one was automatically set to go out Wednesday with another set for today, Friday. When I plopped on my site today I noticed it did not automatically post itself, a recurring problem lately. Instead you'll get this today and the next one either Saturday or next week, depending on when I remember to post it.]


I play solitaire on the computer every now and then. Its really just to pass the time as I load web pages. With our slow internet in Africa, in the 30 seconds it takes to load the stats from last nights baseball games I'd rather be doing even the tiniest thing than just staring at a blank screen. I have the solitaire on the computer set so that it turns over three cards at a time from the deck and I can't undo moves. I figure if I was playing with physical cards I couldn't undo to the start of the game, so why should I on the computer. The game is also wired to tell me when there is no more moves and I have no chance of winning the game. This saves me from turning through the deck five or six times till I realize I've lost.

The other day I turned to play a new hand as I was reading about that extremely hilarious Iranian-Saudi assassination plot. As I started a new game, the little animation of shuffling the cards happened, it dealt out the cards, and then popped up a message. The message said there were no more available moves and the game was over. I had lost the game. I had lost the game before I even started it! It actually took me back a bit. The solitaire didn't even give me the chance of clicking through the deck to see if there was a card to play or not. And since I was not in control of the game and playing with physical cards I couldn't just turn down one card or shuffle the un-dealt cards. I was shocked, and a little mad that I didn't even get a fair chance. From the very start there was nothing to do.

School can be like that sometimes. Here, at least. I know that many of you are thinking, “Yeah, school is/was totally unfair sometimes.” But whatever ever teacher you swear had it in for you is just scratching the surface of what things can be like here. Kids that can't read or write pass at the end of the year simply because a teacher doesn't want to teach them again while kids at the top of the class are failed because their success and ability to get a job threatens the privileged status of the teachers themselves. Sending a parent to talk with the administration doesn't result in the parent becoming an advocate. It results in the child having a target put on it's back for the parent's haughtiness. If you don't have enough money for a bribe at the end of the year you risk failing because the higher grades have a certain quota of kids that are allowed to pass. Kids often will go weeks without seeing their teacher because the teacher has come down with malaria, is visiting another province, is taking a quarter off, or is too drunk to remember they have a job---during all of which you will not even have a substitute. And when classes are over 60 people there is no space for you to sit in another class.

Prayer Request October 2011 - Pt I

Here's some prayer requests that we have over the next couple of weeks. There also kind of what has been kind of the main theme of what has been happening here on a day-to-day basis.

Truck Repairs: They are actually really going great. We found the windshield for the truck and it was the correct one (and expensive). The body work is mostly all done and we were painting it today. What remains is to assemble the cab and dash. We stripped all that out, so right now the cab is just a big glossy empty shell. Hopefully within a week we'll be up and running, but realistically with the way delays just naturally occur here I'm thinking it'll be 2-3 weeks before we're back on the road.

Rain: It hasn't come yet, and water has been shut off to our neighborhood for about a week. That being said, we were doing better than other bairros that haven't had water for about two months. Statistically speaking, in about a month we should be out of the rainy season. The drought hasn't effected us thanks to our well, but it has resulted in long lines of neighbors waiting to use it.

Typically, water gets shut off (for individual areas of about 10,000 people each) for three primary reasons. They are that people don't pay their bills, people break open the water mains to get free water, or drought. Right now we are in the last two reasons. Unfortunately now when the water gets turned off for drought, people break open all the mains to access any water they can, which results in nobody getting water that is “downstream”. It also results in flooded streets and unusable water after it gets turned back on.

Out in the districts where there is no water utility, it just means there's no water right now.

My foot: This prayer request is not for healing necessarily, its for TJ to use common sense and stay off his injured foot. I bruised my foot a couple of weeks ago playing soccer and haven't had the good sense to stay off of it for a couple of days. I thought I finally beat the system this last time when my foot was almost all better so I decided to wear shoes while playing soccer so nothing would happen to it. It was the first time I've played soccer in shoes in over a year. Consequently, it was also the first time I've been running in shoes in over a year. I'm convince the muscles used are completely different because I never am tired the day after playing soccer normally, and here I am still sore down to my bones 3 days later. And my foot got worse. I need to just not play for a couple weeks to fully heal my bruised foot.

New kid: We may or may not have gotten or been getting a new addition to the orphanage. Sound confusing? It is frustratingly so for us here, too.

In Which Kids Fight Inanimate Objects

The second had-to-be-there story this weeks comes from just a few days ago. But first, it involves knowing two of my favorite kids here: Jose (whom you've all met before In Which TJ discusses behavior) and his brother Jordao (The one about what Jordao wants to be when he grows up).

For those of you that forgot, Jose is mentally handicapped and we think physically too. We only think physically because legally he's 13 and currently the size of a 7 year old. He lost a tooth last week. A baby tooth. That he still had. He has problems talking due to his gigantic tongue and will probably remain in second grade the rest of his life (which if he remains the same size nobody will notice).

Jordao is in second grade with Jose, except he is a normal size, for a 14 year-old. (Jordao entered school last year for the first time as a 12 year-old in first grade and has a long way to go as far as catching up is concerned.) We last heard from him when he said when he grows up he want to be a pilot. Jordao has the problem of not being able to perceive communication. We're not sure if his difficulty is in the hearing or the thinking (thus wanting to be an airplane when he grows up).

In Which We Practice Preparedness

Every so often I worry about writing a story that is just too much of a “had to be there” kind of tale. The fear is mainly because I've been told I'm the king of had-to-be-there stories. However since this website is 95%* me telling you things because you can't be here I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying**. So since we're at it we might as well swing for the fences and go for broke. This week you're not going to get just one story, you're going to get two. Tune in tomorrow for the second one.

*The rest is 4% random pop-culture references and 1% passionate pleas for donations. Oh, who am I kidding. Its like 45% pop-culture references, 38% ramblings, and 17% head-scratching nonsense.

**Writing here is not my “job”, if I had a “job”, or if I considered it “writing”, or “trying”, hypothetically.

The first story I've been kicking around for a month or two waiting find some way to pair it as I don't feel its strong enough as a stand-alone story. By itself it's OK, but it really needs to be surrounded by other things or it has no real importance. Like an actor in an ensemble piece. Or salad.

This particular story takes place the night before we hosted a wedding reception at the orphanage. Victor had called all the kids into a meeting so we could talk about being on good behavior and dole out some jobs that would need to be taken care of the next day.

In Which TJ has blue eyes

As I'm getting the papers together to renew my residency here in Mozambique, I was remembering back to a conversation last year with the case worker (if that's what you call them) that was processing my paperwork. It was a long process of me filling out forms and him reading back all my answers asking if they were correct or not. We did a few other trivial things like get pictures taken and do fingerprints, but mostly it was making sure that I knew how to write and he knew how to read, as most of the time was spent with him reading what I wrote.

We got through all the normal questions like where you home country is, where you residence is in Mozambique, what you do. Then this little conversation took place. My thoughts are presented in italics.

Case Worker: And your height is 190cm.
TJ: Yes, 190cm.
CW: Wow, that's very tall. And your hair is indeed brown?
TJ: You're looking right at me, how hard can this be.
TJ: Yes, my hair is brown.
CW: And your eyes are blue?
TJ: Yes, my eyes are blue.
CW: And your weight is--- wait. Your eyes are really blue?
TJ: Yes they are.
CW: That can't be right. Eyes aren't blue. Let me see.
TJ: He really wants to see my eyes I suppose---WOW that is some uncomfortable eye contact right there.
CW: No, your eyes are white, not blue.
TJ: What? Everyone's eyes are white. Look again.
TJ: And...there we go with super uncomfortable eye contact.
CW: You're right. They aren't white. They're black.
TJ: You're really gonna make this into a thing, aren't you?
TJ: Everone's eye's are black in the middle, they're blue outside of that.
CW: But I can't put blue, that's not an eye color. Choose white or black.
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Really? You can't put blue?
CW: Blue is not an eye color.
TJ: I pick blue.
CW:
TJ:
CW:
TJ: Stop staring into my eyes.
CW: Fine. Blue eyes.