Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Kenya High School

Ryan and Kat!
Thanks for checking up on us and thanks for the comment. Kenyan schools are pretty crazy in most ways. The kids wake up around 5am. no... Let me rephrase. They are required be in class studying "preps" by 5am, so they must get up earlier. They have chai/tea at 6am to 6:40. After that are more preps until 8. Classes run from 8 to 4 every day with a few breaks thrown in. Then, from 4 to 5 they have exams. From 5 to 6 is games. 6 to 7 is dinner (ish) and then they return for more preps until 9 pm at night. Add on to all that, in kenya each class is assigned a permanent room. Meaning, they stay in the samerican chair/desk all day!

We are talking about 12 hours a day in your seat! On the weekends it is less - about 8 hours a day. Just chew on that a bit. In a boarding school these kids live in their seats. it's amazing how well behaved they are considering all that.

I try to make my lessons as interesting as possible and get them out of their seats. Even so, some kids are just zombified. Right now I'm teaching phyics for sophmores and math for Freshmen. So far i like it a lot.

Okay, i could say a million things about the system, but I'll wait.

In other random news, i am now the new basketball coach! Being... well... White, it was generally assumed by the students that i could play and coach basketball. At first i was hesitant about the whole thing, but then i went to observe a practice and i was amazed. These kids are great with their feet in soccer, but when it comes to hand-eye, all bets are off. They had talent and desire, but they needed help. Anyways, so i have been really busy with that. In my spare time I have been looking up how to coach, drills, and practice ideas. At this point it's exciting. The kids are so excited to learn and give me a lot of respect for what little knowledge i have.

In yet other news, Mandy is thinking of starting an Art club. We keep running into kids with artistic ability coming out their ears, but no outlet. The details are yet to form, but she wants to basically give them some organized place to practice their art and get feedback.

jees... I really could write so much more. Life is moving quickely.

Hope you are all doing well. Just shoot me and email if you wanna chat via phone and we'll call you.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Our Kids

I am teaching math and physics, Mandy is teaching chemistry and physics. Right now we have about 17 lessons and between the two of us, we teach every single one of the 600 students. Crazy...

Our biggest "difference" is with a class called "life skills". It is basically a health class, career guidance, and communications course rolled into one. The school has never had anything like it before so we're setting the standard. Originally Life Skills was only tought by PCV's, but just in the past couple years the Kenyan ministry of education has recognized the need for it and is asking schools to teach it. This worked great for us, because the school was really happy to have us meet this new requirement for them.

Teaching has been so educational for me so far. The learning curve is steep for new teachers, but it is rewarding. The bad days are depressing, but the good days are great. I think having Mandy here has also been priceless. Being shy, she is growing a lot and we are also able to bounce ideas off eachother and "de-compress" after classes. It makes me really respect those PCVs who do it alone.

anyways... Let me know what you want to hear about! we're getting in a routine here, so things don't seem as "blog-worthy".

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Sunday Morning

This morning was Sunday so we went with our neighbor to the nearby pentecostal church. It was very interesting.

Somethings are the same. The church has pews, a choir, even a keyboard player.

A few things different... After offering a few people auction off household goods in the aisle such as potatoes, onions, milk, and calabash gourds. The procedes go to the church. Also, as a mazungu guest we were brought to the front and expected to introduce ourselves to the congregation. Then, afterwards we formed a greeting line and we shook everyones hand. In someways it's not that different from some American churches. Definetly the wierdest thing was the children who smelled their hands after shaking ours to see what wazungu smells like!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Setting In

Okay! Time for a little more details on our site placement. First, we quite happy with the way things have been going so far.

Location...
We live near the city of Bomet, which is only 3 hours West by car from Nairobi and the roads are good! Our school/house is another 30 minutes away by car, but it's relatively easy to get to. Bomet is a great size market town with almost everything you'd want (food, electronics, banking), but not so big that it has urban crime issues.

Housing...
We are living on the school compound and it's working very well. Our house is a sturdy stone/cement building with 2 bedrooms, a bath, kitchen, and living room. We get electricity in the morning and evening and even have indoor plumbing (no toilet inside though). The school has provided us with a good bed and a sofa set to use along with a propane stove. It's very comfortable. we're excited that we'll be able to house guests who come to visit.

Climate...
This region is located in the highlands "Tea Growing" country. In loitokitok the crops were almost exclusively corn, whereas here it's almost all tea leaves. The area gets a lot of rain throughout the year and the soil is very fertile. The temperature is warm during day, but at night it's been dropping pretty cool. The locals say it can even get down around 10 celcius in july!

okay... i'll write lots about our work and the students later, but for now let me describe the pictures.

1. Our living room set. In the background is our water filter and work table.

2. Kitchen, complete with a sink and propane stove.

3. Our bathroom. We have a shower head, but it's always cold. Most mornings we just heat water on the stove and use our 5 gallong portable solar shower. Works well.

4. I smell a rat... Or rather i saw rat droppings and hear scurrying in the ceiling. I bought this beefy trap in Bomet and now the rat is decorating the trash hole behind our house. One win for me!

5. i've been cooking like mad now that i have more freedom. This picture is of Brownies. I took one large dish and put in dirt in the bottom to insulate. Then i put the brownies in the inner dish. It worked great! A bit slow, because the water in the dirt kept the "oven" at around 212 F.

One last note to Charlie's mom! he's doing well. He passed his language and is in great spirits. I've really enjoyed getting to know him. He will be living in a town near Mirogi in Nyanza pronvince.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Safe and Sound

Just wanted to give you all a brief note that we made it safe and sound to our new site! We arrived last Thursday, but unfortunately the school generator died that same day. Today we finally got the generator working so i was able to charge my phone.
We're hoping we'll have power now, so i'll try and give a good update soon. Lots to talk about ;)

Monday, January 4, 2010

Change of Plans

We arrived in Nairobi on Sunday and got to sleep in a hotel in the western part of Nairobi. It was the same place we stayed when we arrived from the airport, so it was a little strange to come back. When we arrived we had jet lag and were nervous to fit in. Returning, we had become a very well adjusted training group with good friendships.

So... On Monday were supposed to meet our "counterpart" from our school except that no one ever showed up for us. uhoh... The peace corps staff scrambled about making phone calls and in the end found that our principal had very recently been moved to a new school and that in the transfer we got lost in the shuffle. Due to the poor comunication and changes in school administration Peace Corps decided to change us to a different school.

Our new school is near a large town called Bomet. It's very different. We'll now be teaching in a huge all boys school near a city thats only a 3 hour drive from Nairobi on all paved road. In contrast, our previous site would've taken 2 days to reach with a fair portion on poor roads.

So... How do we feel about this change? Definetly mixed. In some ways it'll be more comfortable. Our house is pretty big with electricity and we'll be able to buy most anything we want nearby. The school is an old school so we'll have lots of resources and experienced teachers to work with. On the downside, larger towns are harder to integrate into and larger schools can be difficult to make changes to. As for teaching boys, it's exciting for me but a bit daunting for Mandy. They want us to teach a lot of life skills and PE yea... Overall i think everything will work out fine.

In other news, our group is the first group EVER where everyone was sworn is as a volunteer. Go us!

I put a few pictures of us before we swore in today at the top. The person with Mandy in the 2nd picture is Zahara (Arielle Miles). The last picture is from the trip to nairobi and shows what happens to dirt roads when they get flooded in Kenya.