At 8:30 AM this morning, I found myself in the rural hospital here in town. And once again, I was in charge of someone who had gotten suddenly sick, with someone who had to be carried in. This time it was my student who had passed out in the classroom and stopped breathing for a minute or so while we ran her to the hospital.
Ironically, Nanosh was trying to call me from Maputo at exactly that moment for the first time since he became ill.
I talked with him later on and we are eagerly anticipating our reunion.
And speaking of meetings, I had a 3 1/2 hour meeting at school today, all about yelling at teachers for not doing this or not doing that. Lately, I've been getting up and speaking, but today I chose to skip that.
Because I wanted to get back to correcting tests that I gave yesterday, at night. I've given so many tests and corrected so many tests done by the students, that I am tired of it. I'm good at it now, but I am ready to be done with it for at least a few days.
I weighed myself at the hospital today - 65 kg (143 lbs). It's the least I've weighed since freshman year of college. I'm working very hard - I'm regularly pulling full days of classes and work at home without rest other than for eating. I can't continue like this, not even for one trimester.
So I planned out my work for next trimester, and it seems that I can spread out the difficult parts (correcting) over the course of the 13 weeks and I'm working on getting ahead in my lesson plans.
I'm concerned about this because I see people getting sick around me for strange reasons, not all explained, and I don't want to be one of them because of working myself to the bone. Moreover, I can work this hard anywhere in the world; shouldn't I be more preoccupied with doing here what I can't do elsewhere? Am I really helping all these kids that much?
I don't know the answers. What I do know is that it's going to feel real good to get back home, relax, and figure out the next step over a delivered pizza and drinkable tap water. Of course, the next step may end up looking a lot like this step. Just bigger - but definitely not as rigorous!
Peace
John
