Ripped Pants and Bruised Egos

Today, I was able to sub for grade four. I was looking forward to this because last year I subbed for this class when they were grade three and I like them a lot. We spent a lot of time working on telling time in long form using the terms "past" and "to." So, if it's 2:15 it's fifteen minutes past two. And if it's 7:38, it's twenty-two minutes to eight. Even though this was review, they struggled with it. We worked on this for a total of close to two hours.They were done by lunch time.

Ng*eya - grade 1, ecd, songs, soda and mendazi w/ teachers, pants, face

(I use an asterisk in the school's name to prevent this blog from appearing in any Google searches of the school.)

After lunch, we went to Ng*eya Primary School with the CPA teachers. We visited Ng*eya last year to see what an average public school looked like, but it was still a great opportunity to see another level of education in Kenya. So we saw a school that's poorer than poor in Wells of Joy School in the slums, an average school in Ng*eya, and a stellar school in Cornerstone. Although, Wells of Joy might have been poorer than Ng*eya, I feel that the teachers, staff, and even to an extent the facilities were better at Wells of Joy.

Ng*eya is huge. It's a K - 8 school with a student population of well over 1,000. In each of the ECD (Kindergarten) classes we visited, there were 80 - EIGHTY - students per class. That's the story at the school - terrible student to teacher ratios. I was paired with another teacher from our team to visit a first grade classroom, but the first class we visited had no teacher. Prefects were leading the class in lessons. We asked to see a class with a teacher and the second one we visited, the teacher was taking care of a child that looked to be her own. He was too small to be in the first grade. So she was preoccupied and we were awkwardly standing at the side of the room. I asked to be shown an ECD class and we joined up with another small group of our team that were being sung to by the kids. This was a blast. Those kids were so excited to see a bunch of visitors. Just making eye contact with these kids sent them into a fit of giggles. After hearing the songs and speaking with the teachers, we met in a classroom after dismissal to share sodas and mendazi (sp?) with some of the Ng*eya teachers. 

We were sitting at desks that were barely being held together with nails that weren't hammered all the way in. So when I sat down on one of these nails, I promptly ripped a hole in the back of my pants. It wasn't as bad as I initially thought, but man, those are my favorite pants. As we were opening sodas I thought, I know, I'll pop this soda open on this loose nail on the side of the desk. I'll be resourceful. No. As I worked the head of the nail under the cap, it exploded off the bottle and hit me square in the face. Great, I've ripped my pants and now I have a bottle cap shaped welt under my right eye. This is going great. The cap was moving quickly enough that it still had enough momentum to hit the ceiling after hitting me in the face. I was humiliating myself in front of these teachers. After talking with the Ng*eya staff for a few minutes, we said our goodbyes and loaded up to head to Cornerstone's newly purchased land. Oh, and as an aside, later on that night, the button on those ripped pants - my favorite pants - popped off. I have some serious pant surgery to do when I get home. :(

CPA land - Bob and Julie story

We drove to the land that CPA purchased a couple weeks ago and on which they plan to build their new school. This was awesome because this was something that a lot of people had been praying for for a long time. I won't spend time on the details of how they acquired this land, but here are some bullet points:

1. They were expecting to pay at least 400,000 shillings per acre. They paid 375,000 per acre.

2. They were looking at five to ten acre plots. Their plot is twenty acres.

3. They wanted something easily accessible from the highway. The plot runs along the highway for 260 meters.

4. The land they purchased was frozen from being sold by the goverment since 1988. Just this year, the government lifted that freeze.

5. There are giraffes across the street.

God is faithful. Not only did He provide what he promised he would, He provided it in a way that no one can take credit for except Him. The goal is to break ground by October and be in the new building by January 2016.

Listening to the story of the acquisition of the land

Bob and Julie are still raising capital for this project. Please contact me if you are interested in donating.

Finally, we ended the night with chapati (thick tortillas) and samosas (Kenyan Hot Pockets) from Fave Grill. I love that stuff. We listened to Boniface, the spiritual father to the kids at NV, tell us the story of how he met his wife. We heard this last year, but he's very funny and it's a pretty incredible story, so it was worth hearing again. 

Boniface's son, Kevin, and I being tough

(Thursday, I sat in on math training which was great. But, not much else happened, so I won't be writing a separate blog for today.)

Personal pizzas with handmade dough, pineapple, and tomato

Current CPA school building - this was a cow barn a year ago

Ryan vs. Jetlag

Sunday, July 27

On Sunday, we met in the dining hall for church with the kids and staff at NV. The staff led a few songs and the kids performed a couple of skits and songs. We led four songs and then split into small groups by age to lead the days devotion. This week we're focusing on the parables of Jesus. We introduced parables by performing a retelling of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Since the children weren't familiar with this story, we reworked it to be "The Boy Who Cried Lion." The kids have a better contextual understanding of lions, so we dropped the wolf. We also taught our first parable, the parable of the hidden treasure. We talked about how God is what is most valuable, and as people who naturally desire what is most valuable, God should be most desirable to His children. We then broke into groups of two and three to guide discussion further. It was fun sitting with John, John, and Brian and talking about things that have value to them like food, gold, silver (or 'sivlia' as John pronounces it), and uncles and aunties. Then making the connection that God is more valuable than all of these and should be most desired.

The remainder of the day was really relaxing. We didn't have any responsibilities other than making dinner for the kids and cleaning up, so I got a good nap in.

Monday, July 28
We began the day by visiting a local cafe with the Cornerstone teachers. This was an opportunity for us to get to know each other before we dove into our training sessions. The cafe was called Cafe Ubuntu and is a project associated with Comfort the Children, an Austin-based ministry. We played a few get to know you games in a garden behind the cafe. With 21 members of our team and eight teachers, our name game took quite a while.

We returned around lunch to begin training. The training on Monday focused on classroom managment. I was subbing in the grade three class. They have eight students in the grade three class which doesn't sound like many, but the classroom is maybe 10' x 15'.

The third graders here are great. They have interesting class dynamics because the classes aren't divided by age, but ability level. As Naomi's Village gets new children, many haven't ever been in a classroom. So in the ECD class (Kindergarten), there are children who just turned four and children who are almost eight.
We played soccer with the kids until 4:00 and then I crashed until about 9:00. Jetlag mixed with a stomach bug wiped me out. All was good after a solid night's sleep, though.

Tuesday, July 30
Training continued with ESL and Special Ed sessions. I was in grade three again. At the beginning of the day the Cornerstone teachers allowed us to observe them teach their classes for an hour. I learned a lot about the class and Teacher David's instruction style. I was really impressed with how he handled his class with such a small classroom and limited teaching resources. The students used white boards to review addition with regrouping in the thousands place and adding weeks and days.

During soccer today, I took a minute to stop and just look at the mountains. It's truly beautiful here. It's easy to forget that I'm on a different continent on the other side of the equator. Guys, Kenya is like 1000x more beautiful than Texas. Oh, and it hasn't gotten above 75 degrees yet. So, there's that.

Tomorrow we're visiting Ngeya Primary School, a local public school. We had the opportunity to visit last year, and it was an eye-opening experience.

A Visit to the Slums - July 26

On Saturday, we left to visit the slums at Lunga Lunga in Nairobi around 8:00. It took forevvvvvvvvvver to get there. Nairobi traffic is worse than 35W and 35E traffic combined. It's bad. Also there aren't really traffic lights, and the few that there are seem to be generally ignored. I love the driving though. It's better than a rollercoaster. I'll try to take a video to show what I mean. There's a lot of passing on two lane highways with opposing traffic coming right at you. Exhilarating. 

The slums were eye-opening. We didn't get many pictures of walking to the Wells of Joy school that we were going to visit. The "streets" were about fifteen feet wide and mud. Lining the street we were walking on were small shops and food vendors. There were people selling fruits, vegetables, and roasting skewered goat heads. As we were walking, people stopped whatever they were doing to stare. We were a parade of mzungus walking single-file trying to choose our step carefully to avoid stepping in mud or other undesireable places. Eventually we had a sizeable group of children following us asking "howareyou? howareyou?" 

When we arrived at the school, the students (close to 100 of them) were singing and dancing. This was a stark contrast to the atmosphere that we experienced on the walk in. It was really exciting to see how excited these kids were to be at school to see a bunch of Americans. Oh, by the way, this is SATURDAY. The kids and teachers aren't in school normally, but they came to see us and present us with songs and skits. 

After learning more about the school, we took the teachers to lunch with us at Java House in Nairobi. This was a special treat. Most of these teachers had never eaten at a restaurant before. Talking with these teachers and visiting the school makes me appreciate the abundance of resources that we have as teachers in America. Even when I complain that I lack the resources to teach effectively, really I have more than enough. These teachers hand draw maps, diagrams, hundreds charts, and any other visual resource they need. 

We returned to NV around 6:00 and prepared for the Saturday night bonfire. This is a special treat that they get each Saturday night. We gather round the fire to sing songs and hang out. We brought s'mores stuff with us, so all of the kids got a special dessert. 

We ended the night with team meetings to debrief from the day and a couple more games of Bananagrams.

Arriving in Kenya - July 24 and 25

We arrived at the airport in Nairobi late on Thursday night. After getting our visas, we had to pull 63 pieces of luggage, most of which weighed close to fifty pounds. Despite the sheer number of bags, we were able to collect them all in a pretty short period of time. We made our way through customs without being stopped (success) and loaded up two buses to head to Gracehouse - our hotel. 

The next morning, we ate a delicious breakfast at Gracehouse, loaded into the Naomi's Village bus and made our way to a small shopping center to exchange money, buy groceries, and eat at Java House which has the best burgers and quesadillas this side of the prime meridian. 

The drive down into Maai Mahiu from Nairobi has one of the coolest views. As you come off the escarpment into the valley, you can see for miles and miles. I'll try to post some pictures later. Naomi's Village is on the edge of the valley floor and is surrounded by mountains on three sides. It is beautiful here. The tops of the mountains are frequently obscured by low clouds and fog which makes them feel bigger than they probably are. I'm hoping for a day that's completely clear so we can have a better view. 

We settled in quickly to the guesthouse at NV and walked down to NV proper, where the dorms, play room, and multipurpose room are. We had a quick introduction with the kids during which I was surprised to see how many kids remember me from last year. There are many teams with lots of mzungus (white people) who come in and out every year, and I just figured that they probably wouldn't remember me.

Finished the night with Bananagrams and fellowship. I love hanging out with these people at the end of a long day.

(This was Jacob's board, not mine.)

Fourteen Days in Kenya

Welcome!

It's nearly time to head back to Kenya. I will (try my hardest to) post regularly while our team is on the ground in Maai Mahiu. This is where you can keep up with my personal experiences. In addition, several others in our group will be keeping blogs. Everything can be accessed from our CPA Teacher Team Facebook Page.

For those who are unfamiliar with our group, here's the skinny:

We are a group of teachers heading to Cornerstone Preparatory Academy in Maai Mahiu, Kenya to work with the teachers and students. Our primary goal is to provide professional development for the teachers in classroom management, math and reading instruction, effective use of technology, and ESL. We will also get lots of time in the classroom to teach and build relationships with the students of CPA.

Our group is excited and our preparations are nearly complete. There are still ways to help though! Please see the Facebook page for a list of supplies we need donated.

You can also be praying for our team in several ways. 

First, pray that the Lord would get us physically, emotionally, and spiritually ready for this trip. We want to go in expecting that God is going to do awesome things and make Himself look great. We've already experienced spiritual pushback in our team. The Lord will accomplish His purposes through us, we just need the strength to do it.

Next, pray for the details of our trip. International travel can be tricky. Ask the Lord to iron out the little details like getting places on time, having correct documents, favor with security and customs, and everything else involved with going to another country.

Finally, pray for the staff and students at CPA. Pray that they would be open to our team. There is a significant culture gap between Kenya and the United States. Ask the Lord to help our team be mindful of cultural differences and to close that gap where we're to callous to see. We don't want to be a bunch of loud, offensive Americans :). 

Thank you to everyone who has financially contributed to our trip! We have raised enough money to get there and back. If you want to know how to contribute to our trip and Naomi's Village, get in contact with me or anyone else on our trip. 

Ryan