In everything be thankful!

On Monday the mid-day meal wasn‘t ready until 4 p.m.

- thankful that there was eventually a good meal;

- that we had had a good breakfast that morning, so we weren’t too handicapped by the lack of food in doing our teaching;

- that there were no complaints and the students kept working with discipline even though some of them had been traveling since very early that morning without food;

- that this revealed a transportation problem the cook had in getting to and from the market, and that a solution was found.

Sunday night the electricity went off in the campground where we are lodging.

- thankful that we were able to get settled and check email before it went off;

- that we had brought flashlights and candles with us;

- that the cool temperature means we can sleep without air conditioning.

- that we still have running water and got a good meal;

- that it had come back on by the next morning and stayed on for the rest of the week.

Wednesday morning Yaya, our driver, couldn’t get his car started to drive us the half-hour to the teaching center.

- thankful that he sent someone to let us know what was going on;

- that he quickly found someone else to drive us to the center;

- that the problem was relatively minor and could be repaired that day.

From Thursday night to Saturday morning we had no running water at the campground.

- thankful that the manager could purchase jerry cans of well water in order to give us buckets of water for washing up;

- that we can easily procure safe bottled drinking water (the water coming through the faucet is not safe);

- that we still have electricity;

- that I grew up without running water so the situation is not that shocking for me.

Friday morning Yaya came to tell us that one of his tires was torn by going over the huge potholes in the road.

- thankful that it didn’t happen while we were somewhere out on the road (we learned there is no spare tire);

- that he could get it repaired right away, right here in the village;

- that it happened at the end of the week when most of the teaching is finished;

- that the repaired tire held up to eventually get us to the center;

- that there is good understanding with the director of the center so he knew what to assign the students to do until we arrived nearly an hour late.

Also Friday morning, after we did get on the road, the tailpipe fell off Yaya’s car.

- thankful that it was not something more crucial that broke;

- thankful that the local mechanics work quickly and have the know-how to keep vehicles running and on the road; it was fixed by the time he picked us up at the end of the day.

The road over which we have a 15-mile ride morning and afternoon is extremely rough and nearly impassible in some places.

- thankful that we have a local driver who knows the road very well so we don’t have to navigate it ourselves;

- that Yaya is a good driver and quite careful overall, balancing our need to get to our classes on time and to get there safely.