Tutoring and Swazi culture lessons

Well, a lot has transpired since the last time I blogged. Sorry for the delay! I will try to fill you in on much that has happened in the last week or so. I have been meeting with two female high school students (ages 18 and 20) to work on English. Though I had little curriculum to use and little idea of how to proceed effectively, I tried to be creative. We had several conversations about Swazi and American culture including things such as weddings, daily life, and hair. I really enjoyed learning about them and their way of life in such a fun way…I hoped that just having conversation couldn’t hurt their English. We also read Swazi guidebooks (I have little appropriately leveled literature here!) and looked up words in the dictionary to learn new vocabulary.
One of my favorite interactions was when I was pronouncing “circle.” For some reason the girls could just not figure out what I meant. (I thought, “Oh, no, they don’t even know the word ‘circle’!” However, after several attempts and laughs, the girls said, “Oh, seer-clee!” (Apparently, the Swazis struggle with the silent ‘e’.) Anyway, we had another interesting conversation about hair. One day I wore my hair curly. This was new as I had had it straight the days before. The girls were very interested in how my hair was like that, so I talked about air-drying and blow dryers (at that point, I think I lost them) and white people’s hair. They both figured that because my hair was so long I had never cut it since I was a baby. Most of the women and girls here have shaven heads or very short hair. These interactions were all innocent, fun, and interesting and helped me learn a lot.
The girls also needed assistance in Algebra and, thanks to Brad, all three of us received some lessons in factorization and the quadratic formula. It definitely hearkened back to yester-year for me and, thankfully, Brad was able to explain it so that I understood at least that one concept so I could help the girls with it later.
Also on Tuesday, I had my first bout of stomach sickness. I don’t know exactly what did it, but I think I ate some bad fish!! I had made tuna salad and it was a day old and, apparently, it did not receive adequate refrigeration in the cooler. I vomited all afternoon. By the next day, though still somewhat squeamish and weak, I had recovered. I just may avoid the tuna salad for a little while!

-Grace