Mambo!
First of all, I just wanted to say that all of the comments on Chris’ posting “I BLOG TOO” made us both laugh!
Today was a good day at school! We are having a test tomorrow so it was review day. The kids struggle with pronouns - Swahili is a much simpler language than English. There are fewer tenses and “he/her” doesn’t exist. We’ll see how it goes. There are parent/teacher meetings on Thursday as well as a community meeting all taking place at the school. Volunteers will be discussing the idea of making the informal school into a community school (I mentioned this in an earlier post) - it is decision time now. They will also be discussing the possiblility of the community providing vocational training, acknowledging that some of these kids will be better with their hands than academic pursuits. Cerebral malaria and menengitis have impacted a few kids in the class from early ages, and while they are good attenders at the school and try their hardest, their parents want to prepare them for jobs in the community. Everything seems to be a community decision versus the decision of individual families.
The volunteers who have been at Kilimehewa for the last eight weeks (Mariska and Laurel) are leaving on Saturday, so the new group will be on their own. They have done so much with the community and know so much that it is a little intimidating to think of them being gone. I’m sure all will work out, but the lack of continuity in volunteer placements has its impacts. The school will also have a good bye for them on Thursday — Thursday will obviously be busy!
We are going to talk to the community about bringing in a speaker to discuss sex health and HIV. Because these kids don’t attend a formal school, this hasn’t been on the curriculum. We are planning to also offer the class to the adults in the community. The adults are big supporters of the school. They are encouraged to come to two English classes a week in the afternoons and many make it out.
I visited a local orphanage yesterday afternoon. A few of us were there to play with the kids (about 20 of them between the ages of 3 and 10) for a few hours. I had a lot of fun! They are resourceful little kids! The toys that I saw were bottle caps, plastic bins that were used as drums (awesome drummers), and a skipping rope. They had a blast with these simple toys. There is a little boy there named Oskar, but his nickname is “Baba Kuku” or “Father Chicken” — he is the one in charge of looking after the chicken coop! Such a cutie. They have just had a water tap installed - to this point they have never had running water and the kids had to walk over 2 km to fetch water in all sorts of weather, every day. The volunteer who was just with them for 6 weeks fundraised and raised the money needed to install it. When I was there yesterday, several of the kids brought me out back to show me the water and they were all splashing each other out of a bucket that they had filled. It was really cute. They still don’t have electricity but I guess water is more important to them.
All in all the experience continues to be an emotional rollercoaster. A lot of good is happening in this community and I’m really happy to be here. We have decided to extend our stay to 6 weeks instead of 4 and we are both really excited about that.
Tomorrow after placement the whole group is going to Arusha to sit in on the Criminal Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide. Should be really interesting.
The dinner bell just rang so I have to run!
Thanks for reading!
Paula
xoxo
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