Hamjambo friends and family-
Thank you so much for all of your responses and support. As I sit here in the internet cafe on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, I realize that there is no one in line behind me for the internet and I can actually sit down and update you all on my last 2 weeks.
Where do I begin? I will start by telling you that I will never take a washing machine for granted ever again. I spent an hour and 20 minutes this morning outside cleaning my laundry and putting it on the line. When Mama Florence showed me last week how to do it, she definitely tricked me into thinking it wasn't too bad. Needless to say, it was quite a project for me. In fact my sister Agnes came home from church briefly and asked "you are STILL doing your laundry?" Let's just say that I am learning... not quite sure I got all of the soap out of my clothes but I will just take that as some built in perfume. Yesterday I mopped my room early before heading to Peer Teaching technical training. I taught a 10 minute lesson on graphing, which will be my first lesson that I teach in the classroom.
I have been placed at Mulango Girls Secondary School for 3 weeks of School based training. I will be teaching Form 1 Mathematics and Biology. Originally I was supposed to teach JUST math, but I think they had it wrong, so they added biology on there as well. This first week I will just observe and then begin teaching next week. Mulango Girls is a boarding school and there are about 560 girls studying there. I am excited to meet the Form 1 Red class tomorrow morning. I will write more about how that goes later.
Up until this week, we have had language training every day, with some culture and Hub days thrown in there as well. A normal walk to Language consists of 40 minutes on a dusty road with little school children running behind us yelling "how are you" and "gota!". Gota (not really sure what that means) is like the Kenyan version of a High 5. We also pass cows, donkeys, goats, chickens, etc. on our way to Language. This is all while dodging the crazy matatus that drive down Mombasa Rd. There are not any kind of street signs or lines in the street, so cars drive wherever there are grooves in the dirt.
Speaking of matatus- Katie (my neighbor) and I have become quite the matatu pros. We are the only 2 who have taken them on somewhat of a regular basis because it is too far to walk to the Hub in town from our house. It would take 1 hour and 20 minutes to walk, so instead we walk 15 minutes to the "matatu station" (term used very loosely) catch the matatu to town and walk 15 minutes to the Hub (where we have all of the PC training as a group). Yesterday our matatu required a rolling start... it was a bumpy ride. There are also police check points on roads here. Police check points can be tricky. Yesterday the matatu assistant hopped out of the matatu, ran ahead of us, paid the police men, and then we drove by and picked him up. Usually you have to pay off the policemen at stops if your matatu is overstuffed. I am thinking that maybe our matatu was not registered, so the assistant basically paid the policemen to turn their heads the other way while we drove past. Shady? Possibly.
I have definitely experienced the fish bowl effect since being here - with me being the fish in the bowl. When I went to town with my brother Jonathan last week, he pointed out to me at one point that everyone was staring. I looked around and everyone had come to the door of their shops to look at the Mzungu (visitor.) I feel like that situation is getting better though. People are starting to recognize us and I am greeting people I see in Kiswahili, so that helps.
Last week I made my family peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give them a little taste of America. I also played some music on my iPod for my sister and her son - there was a small little dance party. They definitely enjoyed that I had Sean Paul on my iPod as they are big fans. There are lots of Sean Paul stickers on the backs of the matatus here. My family also found out that I really liked watermelon so they purchased one for me in the market. I bit into a nice juicy piece of watermelon to find that it was rotten, but I still had to eat up because I didn't want to tell my family. In fact I had to eat 2 more servings of it... needless to say that I don't miss watermelon anymore.
Okay- that is all for now. Hope this finds you all doing very well, wherever you are. I'd love to hear how things are going for you. You can e-mail or snail mail and I'll respond as best as I can. Have a great day!
-Diana
Thank you so much for all of your responses and support. As I sit here in the internet cafe on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, I realize that there is no one in line behind me for the internet and I can actually sit down and update you all on my last 2 weeks.
Where do I begin? I will start by telling you that I will never take a washing machine for granted ever again. I spent an hour and 20 minutes this morning outside cleaning my laundry and putting it on the line. When Mama Florence showed me last week how to do it, she definitely tricked me into thinking it wasn't too bad. Needless to say, it was quite a project for me. In fact my sister Agnes came home from church briefly and asked "you are STILL doing your laundry?" Let's just say that I am learning... not quite sure I got all of the soap out of my clothes but I will just take that as some built in perfume. Yesterday I mopped my room early before heading to Peer Teaching technical training. I taught a 10 minute lesson on graphing, which will be my first lesson that I teach in the classroom.
I have been placed at Mulango Girls Secondary School for 3 weeks of School based training. I will be teaching Form 1 Mathematics and Biology. Originally I was supposed to teach JUST math, but I think they had it wrong, so they added biology on there as well. This first week I will just observe and then begin teaching next week. Mulango Girls is a boarding school and there are about 560 girls studying there. I am excited to meet the Form 1 Red class tomorrow morning. I will write more about how that goes later.
Up until this week, we have had language training every day, with some culture and Hub days thrown in there as well. A normal walk to Language consists of 40 minutes on a dusty road with little school children running behind us yelling "how are you" and "gota!". Gota (not really sure what that means) is like the Kenyan version of a High 5. We also pass cows, donkeys, goats, chickens, etc. on our way to Language. This is all while dodging the crazy matatus that drive down Mombasa Rd. There are not any kind of street signs or lines in the street, so cars drive wherever there are grooves in the dirt.
Speaking of matatus- Katie (my neighbor) and I have become quite the matatu pros. We are the only 2 who have taken them on somewhat of a regular basis because it is too far to walk to the Hub in town from our house. It would take 1 hour and 20 minutes to walk, so instead we walk 15 minutes to the "matatu station" (term used very loosely) catch the matatu to town and walk 15 minutes to the Hub (where we have all of the PC training as a group). Yesterday our matatu required a rolling start... it was a bumpy ride. There are also police check points on roads here. Police check points can be tricky. Yesterday the matatu assistant hopped out of the matatu, ran ahead of us, paid the police men, and then we drove by and picked him up. Usually you have to pay off the policemen at stops if your matatu is overstuffed. I am thinking that maybe our matatu was not registered, so the assistant basically paid the policemen to turn their heads the other way while we drove past. Shady? Possibly.
I have definitely experienced the fish bowl effect since being here - with me being the fish in the bowl. When I went to town with my brother Jonathan last week, he pointed out to me at one point that everyone was staring. I looked around and everyone had come to the door of their shops to look at the Mzungu (visitor.) I feel like that situation is getting better though. People are starting to recognize us and I am greeting people I see in Kiswahili, so that helps.
Last week I made my family peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to give them a little taste of America. I also played some music on my iPod for my sister and her son - there was a small little dance party. They definitely enjoyed that I had Sean Paul on my iPod as they are big fans. There are lots of Sean Paul stickers on the backs of the matatus here. My family also found out that I really liked watermelon so they purchased one for me in the market. I bit into a nice juicy piece of watermelon to find that it was rotten, but I still had to eat up because I didn't want to tell my family. In fact I had to eat 2 more servings of it... needless to say that I don't miss watermelon anymore.
Okay- that is all for now. Hope this finds you all doing very well, wherever you are. I'd love to hear how things are going for you. You can e-mail or snail mail and I'll respond as best as I can. Have a great day!
-Diana
1 comment:
Hi Diana. I attended and graduated from Kitui High School and now I am in the U.S. I was wondering if you could be kind enough to take a few pictures of Kitui High School for me and post on your blog or email them. I used to be the Captain of the School for my Class and I have ambitions to become Kenya's next president.
If possible, kindly locate the Captain's Plaque on the admin block and snap a picture. If also you could get some testimonials for me from the staff about my leadership potentials or my demeanor and share them with me it would be a great blessing.
I am fully committed to achieving my dream. God bless you and take good care of yourself.
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