Second Trip Update

Hamjambo,

I apologize that this post is so late.  The internet has gone out the last two nights.

Everything here is fantastic.  Stephen and Teresa, as well as their nine children, have been such great hosts and have gone out of their way to make us feel at home.  I love the children at Wema.  They’re always high-fiving or hugging us.  During the classes I teach, the children who have a free climb up to the windows overlooking the classrooms and watch the lesson.  The people living in the village could not be more welcoming.  When I go running, my hands hurt because I’m constantly waving back to people waving to me and saying “Jambo.”  You feel like you’re the President.

I greatly enjoy teaching.  The children are focused and attentive.  I teach math to the two lowest grades in the morning.  When I ask questions to a class, some of the students are so eager to answer that they jump out of the seats with their hands outstretched.  The children are extremely bright.  I was able to teach the six-year-olds multiplication up to the 7’s two days ago, and they had never previously been exposed to multiplication.  In the afternoon, I teach math to the older students.  They too are just as dedicated to learn, and their teachers are so good that they are ahead of where I was when I was a student in middle school.  Unfortunately, there are only a few textbooks for each class, and when students have to look at a problem in the book, it wastes time and it’s frustrating for the students to have to get up to look at their closest neighbor’s.  Because textbooks are much less expensive in Kenya (approximately $5 to $10 a book), we hope to be able to raise funds to buy them more books.  The chalkboards are also in terrible quality, and it is very hard to write on them.  We hope to raise enough funds to replace or redo them.

At night we read Curious George books to the orphans.  They love the books, as they have never been read to before (besides in class), and the books are the perfect reading level for the younger students.  Usually, after I have finished reading a book to them, they enjoy going through it again and trying to read it without my help.  This is my favorite activity of the day because the children are extremely grateful, and they are very excited when we enter their room to read each night.

We have established a computer club for the older students.  Because the school’s computers no longer work, none of the students in my group of sixteen to nineteen-year-olds knows how to use a computer.  They are mesmerized by my computer.  I started my first lesson by having each student type his or her name in Word.  After explaining Word, we went on the internet.  They didn’t even know what the internet was.   I showed them how much useful information they can find online, as well as how they can communicate with anyone in the world also online through it.  I’ve made the club a daily activity for these students because I’m worried that if they do not know how to use the computer well, they will not be able to attend university and obtain a well paying job.

We’re also teaching computer skills to Teresa and Stephen because they have never used one before.  They cannot believe how much a computer can process and accomplish.  They know that it is imperative that they learn how to send emails so that they can email organizations asking for aid, and they can respond to people who have donated to the school and orphanage.

I love playing sports with the kids.  They enjoy playing American football and baseball with me.  Many are great at throwing the football, and we had a scrimmage yesterday.  The older students like taking batting practice, and the younger students relish the chance to retrieve the ball in the field.  Many of the kids are talented at hitting a baseball.  I tried to form a baseball game, but it did not exactly succeed, though I will try another game soon.  Of course, I also play soccer with the students, and most are far more talented at it than I.

We’re making good progress on the sponsor-a-child program.  We have typed the basic information on the orphans on our computers, and we each have a group of twenty students that we meet daily to get to know better.  Most of these kids are shy, and it is hard for them to understand me as they, in general, are less educated than their peers in the classroom.

Last night, we interviewed Stephen and Teresa asking them about Highway Academy and Wema.  They described in detail their current needs, and I feel that their passion came through when they explained why they started the school and orphanage.  We’ll post these videos on their website we’ll create so people and organizations can see whom they are donating to.

I witnessed my first cow birth the other day.  The poor mother was in agony for hours mooing loudly outside of my room.  The calf was huge!

Today we head to Masai Mara for a three-day trip to go on game drives and recharge our batteries.  Hope everything is going well in the States, and looking forward to sharing more updates with you.

Wako mwaminifu,

Alex