Almost to Wednesday

(This was written yesterday, but no internet)

Another Tuesday come and gone. Tomorrow, “hump day,” and already the middle of the week. What makes Wednesdays even better is that class is only until 12 noon. What a nice break in the week!

This morning I rolled myself out of bed at 5:45 AM and went through my carefully strategized morning routine, leaving myself just enough time to steep my coffee and prepare the egg sandwiches for Papa David, Daryl, and myself. Leaving the house at 6:30 (really it’s more like 6:40) we avoid the morning traffic and whiz down the road to arrive at school ten minutes later. To get to Noula School we have a direct straightaway from our house [usually] making the commute speedy.

By 7 AM I was settled into the office with laptop, coffee, and egg sandwich in hand. Today I planned to start writing sponsorship letters to organizations asking for donations for our annual holiday party. Ten minutes in and the usual troupe of nursery kids tromped in to say hi and check out what I was doing. While adorable, it was quite distracting having them jostling around for the place closest to me and simultaneously peppering me with questions: “What does that do? Open that. What are you doing now?” With Papa Jean’s help I finally got them shoo-ed out of the office. Ahh, now I could get back to work.

7:30 AM Denis, the school’s go-to man (he teaches the computer classes for me, fixes the electronics, types documents, and basically is learning to be my right arm), came in to try and fix our “new” printer. The most exciting thing to happen to the office, last week we got a printer/scanner that David had thought was broken to work. Two days later it actually did break down. An hour later we were still stuck on what was wrong so Denis took it to the computer room to work on some more. During this time we were interrupted at least three different times by parents and teachers needing some sort of assistance.

Getting back to my project for the day I did some research on the organizations we are targeting and started to “get organized.”

Interrupted again, our Pedagogic Advisor showed up. Trying to relay the things that needed to be done today and Thursday (the other day he works for us), I got frustrated with his inability/unwillingness to comply with my requests. As a true guru of the field, his years working for the Cameroonian educational system combined with his actual weathered age has given him the “I know best” attitude in all situations. Difficult to deal with when my expectations clash with what he wants to do.

Returning to my project I continue working. Receiving a steady flow of problems and needs from teachers and parents is the norm. I estimate that at least every 30 minutes someone stops in. I have a continual list of things that teachers ask me for: chalk, bathroom cleaning supplies, copies of the first sequence schedule, an advance on their paycheck for the younger brothers’ father-in-law’s funeral, etc. Hard to keep it all straight when we don’t have the means to buy things in bulk.

Next came the sick student. Rifling through the student registration sheets for his grade I couldn’t find his information. Thankfully I recognized his name as being the son of the manager of the Yaounde post office, the man who now makes sure that I receive my packages safe and sound. I had his number on hand and was able to call him up and ask him to send someone to pick up his son. With the number of students who are still not registered 2 months into the school year (around 175), we have had to use fairly creative measures to get parents’ phone numbers for sick/bad children.

Continuing with the letter I start the actual writing. Despite the ever-present visitors, I finished the letter near the end of the day.  Almost directly after, David returned to the school and reminded me that we needed to finish updating the financial records of each student/family in order to start sending out [way overdue] tuition payment reminders. I had spent my entire Monday on this task so I only had a few more additions to the spreadsheet. Talk about complicated: try reconciling the teachers’ class list with the registration sheets, guessing on the names that are spelled based on what the teacher hears; then cross listing this with the list of students whose parents have paid something towards their tuition/registration; then calculating who has paid the full registration cost, and the first payment. To further confuse things we had to make sure parents who made more than two payments were accurately recorded. As my Grandpa Walker would have said, “minor details, minor details.”

My head about to explode by the last hour of class, David and I realized that the teachers meeting we had scheduled last week for today and canceled yesterday had not been announced to the teachers! Feeling terrible for not giving any notice, I notified the head teacher for the week and he informed the others. With so many other things to think about and remember, I am still juggling how to be efficient and stay organized.

Finally I jetted out of the school by 3:45 PM, early for a typical day, and went home.

Life after work is a whole story in itself, so its telling will have to wait for another day.

Thus went a “typical” day-in-the-life-of Sara.