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.