4- Cleaning day at the school

Thursday, October 5, 2017

     We didn't have to get up so early, but Deb and I woke up before we needed to. We had a leisurely breakfast - included with our room.  Omelets, fruit, yogurt and tea for me.  Then we packed into the Rovers again (2 full sized ones now).  We went to a "mall" area in Iringa to buy some cleaning supplies.  Bought mops, brooms, squeegees, floor cleaner, window cleaner, scrapers and rags.  Then back to the hotel to pick up Russ and Mary who had gone to get water and a graduation cake.  Then off to the school  We had to stop at one point and fix something under the hood. It didn't take too long. Michael, our driver, had been a mechanic with the company before becoming a driver.  With all our shopping and stopping we didn't get to the school until 1:45.  (We were hoping to get there by 1.  Africa time again.)  We had also picked up Steve and the 2 cargo bags of quilts much to Deb2's relief.

All set for cleaning day!

     We were each given a group of girls and a location to clean.  I was in charge of the Form 1 classroom.  (The school is divided into classes Form 1 through Form 4, sort of like our freshmen through seniors.)  Lucky me, this classroom didn't have any window panes in its windows to clean.  The Form 1 girls don't know much English yet, but I managed to communicate that we should move everything to one side of the room, so we could sweep and wash one side at a time.  They were sweeping with their little bundle of sticks and I showed them how to use the broom and the mop. One used the mop (and eventually it broke) and another used old sweaters to wash the floor.  Then we did the other side and then put all the desks and chairs back neatly.  We washed the chalkboard off, too.  I test washed part of the wall, but it didn't seem to do much good, so we didn't bother.  I noticed while we were cleaning, that if there was some trash or a broken piece of chair, the girls would just toss it out the back windows.  We were done before all the other classrooms, so went outside and starting picking up trash.  Then I went and helped move desks back in the other classrooms.  Finished that and went to the science lab, that was pretty much done except for scraping paint off windows.  The teachers and security guards were helping with that because they were tall enough to reach.  We went outside and picked up more trash.  There was lots of it.

Washing the floor of the Form 1 classroom.

Clean and neat classroom!

     In the middle of all that, Eric got a phone call the the District Commissioner and the Regional Commissioner were coming for a quick visit.  The girls all ran and got dressed in their full uniforms with red sweaters, shoes and socks.  We all lined up along the road to welcome the visitors.  We Americans interspersed between the girls so we wouldn't be so obvious. (We had no good clothes to change into either.)  While we were waiting, we practiced a couple of easy songs that we could sing along with. To kill time, we started taking pictures and selfies and then the girls wanted to see all the pictures.  They wanted to take the selfies themselves.  Lots of fingers and hands and selfies taken.  But more wonderful bonding with the girls.  Meanwhile the dignitaries never came.

Taking selfies

     Back to work and we had all the girls pick up trash.  They got quite a bit, but there was still so much more.  They were really starting to take pride in their school (we thought).  We had to leave early today and left at 4:30.  Someone said it was because the drivers didn't want to drive in the dark and some said it was because Deb1 had to get or make an important phone call.  Whatever the reason, we drove the 1 1/2 hours back to the hotel in the daylight this time.  We had Michael as a driver this time and he was much better than Danny had been.  We had supper back at the hotel.  We started sharing our highs and lows for the day.  We'd go around the table and share what each of us felt our high point and low point of the day was.  After supper, we met in our room because it was the biggest and helped Mary roll up her graduation gift poem and got them put in the girls' gift bags.  We also got all the special sponsor gifts put in the correct bags.  We had each packed a box of wine in our suitcase so we had a little minibar with all our boxes of wine and a grand old time!

Gift bags

Minibar