Hive, eagle, higher

Today was my second day in Kenya and my first day working in Waskam school. (wow this keyboard at the internet cafe could not be worse)

My day began at 5 when I woke up to dogs viciously fighting about something outside as well as a cow mooing. I was planning on getting up at 6 anyways so I just stayed up. Went out of the room and had some tea with my host Steven and his son Samuel. After that I had a very nice bucket bath where I even managed to shave. It was very nice.

For breakfast we had some pancakeish things with jam that were really really good. Kenyans have this way of cooking that is really simple yet really really good.

At 7 o'clock Steven, his wife, daughter Faith, son of whose name I forget and I got into his car to head to school. Faith goes to the school i work at and Steven brings the schools daily supply of water every morning. His wife works in Kiambu and his son helped out a bit around Waskam.

I was worried coming here that I would not be able to do much to help, but today definitely erased those fears. I watched one of the teachers do an algebra lesson for about 10 minutes and then I completely took over. I taught four 12 year old kids algebra for literally 4 hours. They really needed help with some basic things (for instance -4-3 being negative 7 and not just positive 7) We spent a good 30 minutes on this. We had a short tea break in there which I thought was really cool. Then at around 12:50 after teaching math all morning we had lunch. I had rice and cabbage.

After eating, the students ran around and had a recess of sorts. It was really cool to watch them run around and play jumprope and suff. I actually should have some photos of the kids posted soon.

This keyboard is really driving me nuts but I guess beggers can't be choosers.

After recess I kept teaching the same kids but this time I moved on to English. It was really crazy because within being at this school for 10 minutes I literally had my own classroom. They simply do not have enough teachers. The one teacher, Kimani, said I did really well and was able to jump right in. The kids know decent English so communicating with them is not too hard but it was still challenging at times.

My English lesson was pretty baller I must say. I had them read a couple stories and I kept track of the words they were all struggling with, hence my title "hive, eagle, higher." Those were just three of the words. I wrote all of the words on the board and we went through and said them out loud together. At this point after being with them for about 6 hours I had them cracking up as we all said words and when one of them would totally butcher a word. It was all in good fun though and after me drilling them for about 15 min on these words they pretty much had them mastered.

After English they went outside again and ran around and played soccer. A local public school nearby had their recess at the same time so there were kids running around everywhere.

I finally left the school at 4 (My day is 7-4) and hopped on a matatu with Faith. We took the matatu to Kiambu where Faith's mom got her and from there on got on another matatu by myself to come here to Kahawa west to go to this internet cafe where I met Tommy.

I am already getting really comfortable around here. There are many misconceptions, one being that it is dangerous. Yes, it can be dangerous but really only after dark. During the day 40% of the people look at you (When I am in Kiambu I lliterally am the only white person amoung prob 2 or 3 thousand Kenyans... no joke, 40% dont mind you at all and 20% smile at you and love talking to you... almost seeing you as kings or something weird.

The family we are staying with is really nice. The two girls, Faith and Grace, are really funny. They are prob 11 and 13ish and Tommy and I just make them laugh every second we are by them. We can do anything and they will crack up. It is really fun.

That is all I have off the top of my head. I am going to post this now to make sure I dont lose it and then I will load some photos I took and maybe write more.

Adios!

-Kevin