Well, it’s been 3 months since I came to Kenya and 1 month of teaching and I am still alive. I actually feel more alive and more myself here than I did back home. The kids seem to love watching me joke around with them and the other teachers. They laugh when I get into a dancing mood and act like an idiot. They are very accepting and patient with me. This week has probably been my favorite with them. They seem to be opening up to me and love hounding me with questions. They also seem to know where I am at all times. When I sit down outside, a message goes through the compound and 3...2...1... WOOSH, I have almost the entire school circling me. I told my deputy headmaster, if we ever need a quick gathering, just put me in the middle of the field and in 5 seconds flat, I will have the whole school together Then the questions start. “Do you have elephants in America?” “Do Americans eat snakes?” They love trying to rub off my tattoo and always ask why do I have a water bottle. When I told them I didn’t know how to cook, they laughed and couldn’t believe a 23 yr old didn’t know how to cook. The younger ones want to help wash my clothes. They come to my house asking if I need help. My classes are going continuing to go well, or at least they seem to be. I’m still stumped at times on how to teach them, especially English where I have to use Signed Exact English and KSL with no work book. But I am slowly getting better. They use totally different signs here than I am used to so they enjoy teaching me new signs. It’s like we are learning Sign Language together. My KSL class cracks me up. I go in with a lesson plan and end up not even covering the lesson. The minute I walk in, the students start finger spelling vocab they don’t know. Most times they don’t know the meaning, so I explain the word and we look up the sign together and if there is no sign I try to give them an alternative. I have them for art as well and today decided to use water color for a change. They loved it and even started to have a paint fight in the end, painting each other.
Then in the evening, the upper primary students have a sort of study hall. I went up there once and noticed there were no teachers. So I have decided to go up at night and be there in case they need help. Tonight was my first night and thinking I would just read while they did their work, I brought one of the Janet Evanovich books. It was like KSL all over again. Kids, who I didn’t even know, joined us and started asking for the signs for vocab words. One of the boys took my book and started writing words from the book. Trenton, Morelli, Virgin… I asked them if they knew what virgin was. They didn’t , so I had the pleasure of explaining it to them. They don’t know much about sex and what they do know, they don’t like talking about it. I hope to change it where they are comfortable talking about it, at least to me. The know how to have sex but none of the vital information, like condom use, STD’s etc. When study hall was over, I thought I would head home. The kids had other plans. They invited me to go to the dinning hall and watch wrestling. They love wrestling but again had a lot of questions. I had to explain to them it’s all pretend. Their favorite was obviously watching the “ hot, sexy” women wrestle. I’m impressed they know who the people are since the T.V has no subtitles. I wish in the news especially would provide subtitles. Allowing the kids to feel connected to their country. I am also thinking of organizing a movie night, where they can watch movies and actually understand them. After wrestling, we said our good nights and headed to bed. I can’t wait for the next study hall.
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