Volunteer Day

[Note: Ashley's internet connection, as you might imagine, is spotty at best and non-existent at worse. Posting pictures and blog posts can take considerable time with her internet connection, or it may just time-out and not upload at all. She is able to get a few emails off to me and she includes blog posts from her daily journal of the trip, so that is why the date posted and the actual date of the recording are different. I will post them as I get them. Enjoy! -Anthony]

Friday June 3 2011

Today we got to help teach, and it was a great experience. Joyce and Rose do their best and the kids seem to be learning a lot. Joyce teaches the middle and top class and she showed us the kids’ workbooks. They are mostly learning English and Math, I assume it’s the basics that they need to get into primary school. The school day is only from about 8-12, and the children get one break during that time. I haven’t been there that long, but the schedule seems to be; opening songs, math or English lesson, break, Ugi (flour and sugar porridge), story, home. It doesn’t seem like a long day, but I think the day ends around noon because it would get too hot in the afternoon. Also, I am sure it is hard to have in depth lessons with such limited resources. And, you have to remember, this is basically just up to kindergarten. After that they start year one at primary school. And the fact that it is multiple age groups doesn’t help either. Despite all of these difficulties the kids are eager to learn and most seem to be picking up on everything. The children are very eager to show you their work. They want to show the white teacher, and they will even write extra work to impress you. Elijah, a boy in the top class, is very smart and kept adding math problems to the bottom of his English work to show how smart he is. Very cute! Even though they can’t understand you they still look for sign of approval and can tell when they’ve impressed you. I started drawing smiley faces on their work after I correct it and the first couple kids I did it to eagerly showed off their “prize” to all the other kids. They talk to each other in Kikuyu (they don’t speak Swahili but rather their tribe’s mother tongue- which makes it even more difficult to talk to them) and point to it with big smiles on their faces. It’s amazing how appreciative they are of the littlest things; smiles, high fives, handshakes, etc… That’s another thing, they all want to shake your hand or give you a high five. All. The. Time. Also, during recess the children come up to you and just pet your arms or legs. They love my tattoo. One girl kept trying to scratch it off. Haha. They also put their hands around my arms as if to measure them. And they love to play with mzunga hair, which is unfortunate since mine is almost always dirty.

Even if you shower in the morning you feel so dirty by the end of the day because everything is so dusty. I wiped my face with a face wash wipe and it was all brown. Eww. When I put sunscreen on (which is like a million times a day) I feel like I am just rubbing dirt around. How pleasant. And, it’s impractical to shower daily because the shower isn’t really a shower but a bucket bath. And you take it in a tin shack that shares a tin wall with the pit toilet. Plus it’s dark and there are spider webs. Oh, and the water is only hot if Mary boils it for you first. Not exactly the best, but it will do. When I go on safari in a couple weeks we will be staying in an actual hotel with actual showers and actual toilets! I can’t wait. It’s amazing how appreciative I’ve become of the smallest things/conveniences that we take for granted and I’ve only been here for a few days. I can’t imagine how I’m going to feel at the end of this.