Friday

Hey everyone.

Today was, as always, a wonderful day. I woke up at 5:45 and felt awesome. I do not know what it is but when I wake up here at 5 in the morning I feel great. I do not look or feel tired. Obviously we are going to bed at 9 which is good, but when I wake up at home I always feel like it takes an hour or two to wake up and not look like a zombie.

Today I made breakfast with Carolyn and did most of the cooking myself. I talked to her about her life in Kenya. She is 22 and in my opinion is a near slave to our household. She does not like the mom we live with and she says she is mean to her when Tommy and I are not around. They pay her 2000 shillings a month... that is 26 dollars a month, less than a dollar a day. So sad. I know our host family does not have much either so they probably cannot pay her much more but it is still sad because she says she is trying to save to go to college. That must be so difficult when you are making so little.

Today at school I taught Esther, Moreen, and Carolyn. They showed me the homework I assigned and we continued to work. Another boy joined the class today and he was very intelligent. It is very difficult because, today for instance, when I started my English lesson we had 2 4th grade textbooks, one 7th grade book, and one 8th grade book. My students were 6th, 7th and 8th graders... therefore, we ended up reading 4th grade for a while, which was still challenging enough for them, but we had to crowd around a couple of desks.

On every Friday the school starts with an assembly. All the kids stand in rows upstairs and sing and pray. These kids have amazing voices. One thing I was going to mention in prior blogs that I forgot about was Faith's voice. As I have said, Faith is 8 or so, I may have said older before but I think I was wrong. Regardless, she has one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard. She is extremely intelligent and very street smart. During recess she starts songs with all the kids. Every song starts with her singing and it is just unbelievable. Today when they were singing there was another girl, Esther, one of my students, who had an even more amazing voice than Faith, understandably as she is an 8th grader. I seriously was in awe when I heard her. I will be bringing my camera next Friday to get a video.

During the assembly they all have to stand in front, one grade at a time, and sing a song to everyone else. The older kids go and then the little kids go. It was actually incredibly sad at one point because the little 8 year olds sang a song about "being careful what you do because mother and father are up there watching you." Seeing all those little orphaned kids stand there and sing about that was very powerful. I was just taken away by this.

Each teacher sang as well and it was very cool. No, I do not know enough Swahili to sing their songs but I will try to learn.

Later in the day during the tea break when I stood up I began to stretch my leg. All the kids saw me and did the same. This led to me leading a stretch session for about half the school. It was hilarious because although these little kids are very strong and fit, they are not very flexible!

I left school at lunch time today to head to Tommy's hospital. When I got there I saw no sign of workers. This is because apparently the whole hospital goes on break from 12-2. ha. Finally I found him in the maternity ward. He told me to "come look at this." I walked in to see the end of a delivery. The baby was out but the lady was still lying there. Thanks Tommy.

After that, Tommy and I hung out at the hospital waiting for one of the workers to get back. Tommy showed me the work he did and his boss or whatever named Janet gave me the most tedious job of cutting slips of paper to make them fit in the file cabinet. The guy we were waiting for was called Chris (He also had a Kenyan name which was more interesting but I forget it). Chris took us for a walk through a slum right by Tommy's hospital. It was an incredible experience. We would have been safe to go alone, which as Tommy and I talked about, is not the case in America. Here people are very nice no matter where you are. I think if we walked through the worst neighborhood of, Detroit for instance, we would be in trouble.

The slums had houses made of dirt and pieces of metal found wherever. It is right next to the sewage dump where there is a big lake of sewage. Goats, pigs, roosters, chickens and dogs could be found all over. It is something I surely will never forget.

My first week at Waskam school has been amazing. I knew that coming here would be different, but I hadn't realized how much I would learn and thankfully how much I would be able to teach; to my students, other teachers, and my host family. I have taught them about what it is like here in America and they have taught me about Kenya and more. The International perception of Kenya is skewed and this is just another problem here in Kenya. People think it is a horrible place when in reality it full of the most beautiful landscapes and people I have encountered in my life.

I say this and it has only been less than one week.

Thanks as always and keep the comments coming I will try to answer all your questions.

-Kevin(Students standing in the field by my school during recess. They are probably saying "Mizungu!" It took me forever to get this very very low quality image on to this blog, days in fact! So enjoy! I have many more and hopefully will be able to share them soon.)