School, market, orphanage

                So, first things first, I added some new photos last week, in no particular order, just a few of my favorites so far. If you’ve already looked at that entry, I updated it and added a few more today, so check it out again if you want!

                In an exciting turn of events I got a new friend living in my choo (bathroom). I’ve named her Bessy:

Bessie, the black widow spider (called button-spiders here) living in my bathroom.

                So I think I mentioned in previous blogs that I was trying to get a position teaching at a local primary school. I succeeded and I finished my first week of teaching this past week. I’m teaching science to about 45 grade 7 kids on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. So far I think it’s going well. I know it’s going to take some time for them to get used to my English (the teachers informed me last week I had a very strong accent and were shocked to hear that they had a strong accent to me too…) and the different style of instruction. One major criticism of the Kenyan educational model is that it doesn’t give kids enough freedom to think creatively, to synthesize information and make leaps in logic, all things which are particularly important in the sciences. One newspaper article I read in the Kenyan national news last week was that teachers at a university level were noting that kids coming from primary and secondary education had no idea how to think critically; they were so used to the rigid “A+B always equals C and we never ask why” framework that they had a very difficult time when asked to think outside the box.

                So, I’ve made it a particular goal of mine, even before reading that article and especially now after, to try to get the kids thinking about the world around them in terms of the question ‘why’. I told them the first day of class that I love good questions and that every Monday we were going to come up with a ‘question of the week’ as a class. It had to be something no one in class knew (except me & me not knowing either was an exceptionally good question) and it had to have something to do with science. Our question from this week was ‘why do some eggs turn into chickens and others don’t?’ believe it or not, none of the kids knew the answer on Monday. Every Thursday we’ll answer our question and if anyone comes to class with the correct answer, they get rewarded with candy. I also reward intelligent questions with candy. Trust me, after the kids figure out that questions equal candy, a lot more hands go up.

                The idea of trying to get the kids to ask questions is to a) have them participate in the learning process, they get to guide the class a little bit once we finish with the required material b) get them to look at the world around them with a critical eye, asking why things are the way they are.

                I’ve also introduced the vocabulary words ‘hypothesis’ and ‘prediction’ to them. Believe it or not these kids had no idea what it was to make a guess as to what will happen. Even after explaining the concept, there were kids that were very confused. Their student book (you can’t really call it a text book per say, for the entire year it’s got 135 pages) doesn’t have any prompting to consider what will happen in an experiment before you actually carry it out. So, I’ve started to try and get the kids thinking about what might happen and then explaining why they think that. I’m excited for class to keep evolving, for me to keep learning Swahili and about the education system here and to, hopefully, get some kids interested in science.

                I visited the local market with my supervisor (Nancy) and her supervisor (Caroline) last Wednesday and took some pictures. We were looking at the garbage disposal ‘system’ used in town. Basically, people throw their trash into designated areas and then once a day a city tractor comes by, loads up the garbage and takes it a few miles from town to dump it in a place designated as a landfill. There are no trash bins here (they would just get stolen), no dumpsters, no recycling centers or community clean-up days. Kenya is a beautiful, beautiful country… the garbage everywhere is a huge distraction from that. 

                Besides the garbage the market has a lot of interesting things to offer. Everything here is fresh and grown locally for the most part (some things like water melons are imported from Uganda… but even that’s only 75 or so miles away).  They eat a billion different kinds of greens here, basically anything that grows and isn’t poisonous gets used as food, pumpkin leaves, cow-pea leaves, weeds, all get mixed together and cooked into a spinach like mix.

                There’s also a bunch of different kinds of beans here, some I’ve seen at home, like black beans and others I’ve never even heard of like green-gramms and monkey-nuts…

                And, my personal favorites, dried termites… you fry them and eat them as a snack or in a meal. I would love to explain to you what they taste like but I haven’t gotten the guts to try them. Maybe some day… maybe…

Bag o' dried termites... apparently you fry and eat them. The Kenyans swear they're really good...

      There are also tiny little dried fish called 'omena' that stink like you can't imagine. God help you if the person next to you on the bus gets on with a plastic bag full of these guys, it'll be a long ride, especially if there's a chicken in the lap of the woman on the other side of you. This is not a random example, it actually happened to me on the way home from Port Victoria a couple weekends ago.The Kenyans keep asking if I eat fish (since I don't eat, chicken, beef, goat, any other kind of meat) and I tell them yes, but that I don't like the fish here. They always have a hard time understanding how I could not love the smelly little guys... I think I'll save my money and get sushi on the rare occasion I get into Mombasa or Nairobi!

Omena, tiny, smelly, dried fish.

                So besides the market and the school I also visited some orphanages last week. I was surprised by how good the kids looked and the conditions in which they were living. I guess I went in with the notion that an orphanage in Kenya was going to be this awful sight; kids in tattered clothes, hungry, depressed, playing with garbage on a swing set that’s just as likely to fall apart as entertain them. Our first stop on Tuesday morning was a Catholic orphanage in the center of Kakamega town. We walked past the prison, down a long dirt road to the compound which was surrounded by high concrete walls painted with a world map and a big smiling image of Jesus, back lit with an ethereal glow, a kindly look of pity on his face. We swung open the big metal gates to reveal an immaculately groomed common area, bright green grass, neatly trimmed bushes and flowers, a garden in the distance to our right, a building under construction to our left. My supervisor Nancy started pointing things out to me. There was a school ahead of us across the lawn, pictures of the alphabet and numbers painted on the walls of the buildings. Inside kids of varying ages, 5 to 11 or 12 sat in green and yellow school uniforms listening intently as a teacher pointed at things on a chalk board at the front of the room.  

                The new building was to be an expansion of the school, they wanted more space to have kids boarded so they could have a larger student population. As it was they had 350 kids in classes 1-8 attending school there. As we crossed the lawn, past the single story school building I noticed the playground and couldn’t help but smile. For one thing, the equipment was actually in good repair, one of the first safe looking playground structures I’ve seen here. Secondly, all the equipment was painted in Kenya’s colors; green, black and red.

                Passing the playground we came to the housing unit for the orphans living there. A nun greeted us at the door and introduced herself as sister Carol and proceeded to show us around the compound. They have a total of 79 orphans but about 25 are away at secondary schools where they board, so right now there are about 45 kids actually living in the compound. The bedrooms are smaller than my room back home (14x13) and have 7 single bunk beds in each. Carol tells us that it’s not too crowded right now; only some of the kids have to share beds, but that when the older kids come back from school it gets a little bit full. Nonetheless, the rooms are neat and clean, the clothes neatly stored in one big wooden dresser. We visit the rooms of the older kids first, and the dining hall, the bathroom, wash room and then we went to see the orphanages smallest occupants in the infant ward. Up until this point I was doing pretty good emotionally, like I said, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness and general appearance of the space. All that emotional stability went right out the window when I saw the babies.

                The first room was full of empty cribs all neatly aligned in a row, their metal bars painted white, light pink sheets tugged snuggly around tiny mattresses, mosquito nets hanging like little gossamer forts over each bed. We turned right, and I noticed a sign that said “please don’t enter without permission” and another that warned you to wash your hands before handling the babies. I have to admit, I giggled a little; the first thing that came to mind was the animal shelter back in the states that had signs all over to wash your hands before playing with the different puppies. Mind you, I hadn’t actually seen the kids yet, as soon as I did it wiped the smile right off my face.

                It was bath time in the infant room. Three women stood in what looked like a make-shift kitchen, a concrete slab for a work space and a giant concrete sink sunk into the far corner of the slab. At least a half dozen babies were lined up on the slab, assembly line style, waiting for their turn to be dunked into the sink. When I saw babies, I mean babies, these kids were all under 6 months old, some much younger than that. Some were bundled in blankets with just their little faces, feet and hands poking out, others lay naked atop their blankets, their little round bellies puffing out with each breath. Some slept, others looked around, put their fists in their mouth or reached their hands toward the ceiling for something to hold on to. I hadn’t washed my hands and I didn’t want to interrupt the worker’s washing duties, so I just stood in the room for a few minutes looking down at the babies. One in particular locked eyes with me early on and kept staring at me, his doe-like brown eyes seemed to be intently searching for something reflected in my eyes.  He reached his hand up towards me, tiny little fingers aching for human contact, for someone to hold onto. Not picking that baby up and coddling him was one of t he harder things I’ve done. Being a crier by nature, I was fighting pretty hard at this point to keep the tears from spilling over my eye lashes. Once they start it’s pretty tough to get them to stop.

                I took one last look at the babies all lined up in a multicolored row of blankets and black skin and stepped out of the room. I stood there leaning against the wall as my supervisor had a conversation with sister Carol and the women cleaning the babies in Swahili. I probably could have understood some had I been listening but I was too busy wondering how someone could possibly give up one of those kids. The nuns told us that a lot of them are brought after being found in bushes, doorsteps or the side of the road. When I looked up from trying to get my emotions in check I was dumbfounded by the sight of a baby being unwrapped from her blanket to be washed. 

           This is, up until this point and I hope for ever, the sickest kids I've seen in Kenya. Her arms and legs were skin and bones, not a drop of fat to cushion her joints, her elbows and knees stuck out at harsh angles, knobby protrusions from emaciated flesh. She squirmed at the cool air, her legs curling to her chest where each one of her ribs could be counted. Her stomach was sunk in, the top of her hip bones visible, her eyes sunk into fatless cheek bones. The conversation that Nancy and Sister Carol had been having were about this baby. Apparently she’d been brought the day before after having been dumped in the bushes. She was deaf and mute and obviously hadn’t been fed in quite some time. Her body kicked and curled in an unnatural way as the worker’s bathed her, whatever the cause of her lack of hearing and speaking, it had clearly affected her physically as well. The nuns guessed she was a month or so old but I think it was fairly obvious that she was much older, maybe 2 or 3 months but was severely and chronically undernourished to the point of obvious growth retardation. I’m honestly surprised that she was still alive. The nuns said that she would be brought to the provincial hospital that day for advanced treatment and I really, truly hope that she was; without it I don’t think she has a chance at survival.

            I have more to say about the other orphanage I visited last week and the school kids at Divine Providence, but this blog is getting quite long so I’ll say goodbye for now. Tune in next time for more stories about abandoned kids… and hopefully something a little happier will happen in the next week that I can fill you in on too. Until next time, all my love from Kenya.