04/02/11

I finally got my visa this morning, though it seems like it might actually have killed the woman working at the Migration office to smile or be friendly about it.
At the beach yesterday I was telling Erin how frustrated and sad I was because one of my best students is pregnant. I was really looking forward to teaching her this year and getting to know how her English had gotten so good. In addition to being one of my most active participants during class, she also was the student using obscure words like “sailor” during Madlibs. I was telling Erin that it was too early in the school year to be able to work around the situation and I wondered how long it would take for people to notice. Today she wasn’t in class and the director of that class had written “pregnant” next to her name, so I guess she is gone. I hope she is able to continue night classes at the other school and perhaps she could even return here this year since she looks pretty far along. It’s so disappointing to see talent like that going to waste and it’s so frustrating not being able to do anything to help. And the unfairness of simple biology drives me nuts—she didn’t get pregnant on her own and I guarantee that the person who got her pregnant is still attending or teaching at my school.
Tonight I was in my room when I heard someone calling from outside. When I went outside it was an older woman and three young girls, she told me she was looking for her third-grade grandson—he never came home from school this evening. I took her up to the main house of the sisters where we found two of the girls-in-training who are teachers at the primary school. They knew who he was immediately and recounted how today he hadn’t been feeling well or something, and was acting strangely. Because of this, his teacher let him leave school an hour early. When everyone else finished for the day they encountered him still sitting outside the gates of the mission. When they told him to go home he didn’t respond so one of them gave him a piece of bread, but he didn’t want to eat it and only stuck it in his bag. Apparently he eventually left and nobody has seen him since, and the two girls don’t think it’s likely that he went to a friend’s house since he tends to be a solitary kid. The grandmother assured us that she would come back in the morning to let us know whether or not they were able to find him, so I hope she does, and with good news.