The Magic of a Story

I love reading books to children.  It doesn’t matter how old they are, when I open a book and begin telling a story, something magical starts to happen.  Things start to get quiet.  Conversations stop.  Fidgeting slows.  Eyes drift in my general direction and, by the second, maybe third page, I am holding captive, with my magical story book, every child within earshot.  It’s great.  For those 5-10 minutes while I’m reading, we are together, just sharing the experience. 

Today I got to spend the morning reading books to the younger grades as part of our creative arts day at school.  We had a blast, dancing, wiggling, chanting.  It was great.  Even with their extremely limited English skills, they could still appreciate and enjoy the storytelling experience. This is one of the things I miss about teaching lower elementary school.  The older the kids get, the less opportunities you have to read things aloud.  Luckily for me and my kids, though, fewer does not mean zero and I still take any chance I can to enjoy a good story with them.  From what I can tell, no matter how old they get, most still appreciate an excuse to revert back to their youth.  And who am I to deny them?

That wasn't in the plan.

You may have noticed that I've been on a bit of a hiatus from blogging.  This hasn't been on purpose and I apologize for it.  Rather, it's been more a function of circumstance.  I've had a busy month.

I spent a week at the beginning of March camping in rural Kenya, helping a community of former poachers develop income-generating projects.  This was an amazing experience and I have lots to say about it, but I'm going to save that for another post (coming soon, promise!) because my trip isn't the real reason that I've been such a bad blogger.  It's much more exciting than that.

I've been asked to stay.  I met with the staff here a couple weeks ago and they basically told me that they think I'm doing awesome work and would like me to stay for as much of the school year as possible.  I'm currently the English teacher for Standards 6, 7 and 8.  It is the first year that our school has had a class 8, which is the highest grade in primary school, and it is a huge opportunity for the kids.  They will be able to sit their primary school exams at the end of the year and have a chance at getting into high school.  The goal is for me to stay with Standard 8 for as much of the year as possible in order to help them prepare.  All of their exams are in English, so having a native English speaker and a trained teacher is a huge advantage.  Plus, they are wonderful and I really enjoy teaching them.  I've also been working on developing the curriculum that the volunteers use.  We don't get very many trained teachers on the project, so I'm trying to leave as much teacher knowledge as I possibly can.  Unfortunately, with 3 classes, I've barely made a dent in getting together all of the resources I'd like to leave.

Before they talked to me, I wasn't planning on staying.  I spent most of February sending in employment applications and making plans for a summer and fall in Nebraska.  I was actually looking forward to something approaching normalcy for a bit.  On the other hand, I really love my kids and my work here.  So, I've spent the past couple weeks doing a lot of thinking, intuition-listening, financial planning, option weighing and logistical assessment. This is the real reason I've been a bad blogger.  I've been a bit distracted trying to keep up with my schoolwork and make (what have felt like) monumental life decisions.  

In the end (in case you hadn't guessed by now) the children won.  I love the work I'm doing here.  I feel like I am actually using all of my skills to make real change and I am absolutely in love with my kids.  So, when I leave them in a couple weeks, it's not goodbye so much as see you later, which is lovely.  I'll be back for them at the end of June.

Until then, I'll be taking a bit of a vacation to keep up some plans I had already made for visiting friends on this side of the Atlantic before heading home to resupply, hold my nephew and maybe see everyone else.  (Just kidding, I miss you all and can't wait to see you!)  I'll be home for most of June and then come back to Mombasa as the Standard 7 and 8 English teacher and Volunteer Coordinator for my school.  (That's right, I'm coming back as staff.  Unpaid staff, but still, I'm moving up in the world...)  The current plan is to stay through the exams at the end of October and be home in time for Thanksgiving and the little nephew's birthday.  (mmm, turkey...)

A Week Near Tsavo

The Chairman leading a meeting about the hides and skins business.

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to work on another of GVI's projects here in Kenya.  In addition to the teaching projects and conservation work, GVI also works with several communities near Tsavo National Park that have historically been known for poaching in order to make a living.  We work with them to develop income-generating projects that can bring in a stable income instead of poaching.  Actually, many of the former poachers we work with are now working as scouts to stop others from poaching.  It's great to see the pride they take in their environment.

Me leading a handicraft workshop.

Anyway, there are 4 different communities and each one has different projects that suit their needs and skills.  One has an eco-tourism center, one raises chickens, one has bees and most do some sort of handicrafts.  The community that I worked with is the newest one to join forces with GVI and it's definitely got a bit of growth ahead of it.  They are working on developing a hides and skins storage facility (for domestic animal skins) as well as some handcrafted leather- and beadwork.




I spent the week camping in the middle of nowhere, helping the community develop some of their handicrafts to suit a more Western market.  It was quite an experience.  The community was lovely and I really enjoyed working with them.

Women celebrating the birth of a new baby in the community.

Maasai men celebrating.

We Made Circuits!

 Yesterday, I put my kids in groups, gave them some wires, light bulbs and batteries and asked them if they could make the light bulb light up.  And they did it!  All of the groups were happily engaged and successful in every task I gave them.  I was so proud.  It was super fun watching them watch their bulb light up.  I loved how the lighting of the bulb was mirrored in the brightening expressions on their faces.

I also loved the innovation - these guys helped their batteries stay together with some paper and broken rubber band.

Hooray for science!

Standard 8 Wins

Standard 8 is totally winning right now.  I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but I can't help it right now.  They were just so wonderful last week - I'm so proud of them!

I came in two weeks ago and they were preparing for some practice state exams.  I attempted to help them answer the questions they had about their social studies exam and quickly realized that I was pretty much useless.  So I did the only thing I could think of.  I went to the library, got out the random assortment of encyclopedias from approximately 1971 and brought them in to class.  The kids loved them.  The only problem was, after they looked up the answers to their questions, they didn't want to put them down.  I literally had to pry the books out of their hands so that they would keep reviewing for their exam.  Feeling a bit bad about denying children knowledge, I promised them that we would get the encyclopedias out again after their exams were finished the following week.

The day after exams, I brought them out again and let the kids loose.  I don't think they had ever seen anything like that before.  It seemed like they just kept finding things they didn't even know existed.  They spent the entire hour-long period engrossed in the books and, by the end, everyone was able to tell me at least one new fact that they had learned.  It made me really proud to see how interested they were in learning.  I have never seen a class so eager to read the encyclopedia.

As if that weren't enough, we also took them on a field trip last week to an outdoor museum with several mock-ups of homes of different tribes in Kenya.  The kids were wonderful.  I was really impressed with how well-behaved they were and how genuinely interested they seemed to be in their culture.  They asked lots of good questions, took loads of notes, helped each other get all the information, and danced with the Maasai.  It was great and it made me super happy to see them enjoying it.  I'm pretty sure that 14-year-olds back home would be way too cool for the run-down playground at the end of the trip, but these guys had an absolute blast.


Standard 8 is probably the end of the road for most of my students.  This is the year that they either pass their state exams and get sponsorship for high school or end their education, a fact which they are all too aware of.  They know that this is the time to buckle down and apply themselves, which means that I am essentially teaching an entire class of students that actually want to learn.  It's wonderful.  More than that, it's great to watch them learning and enjoying themselves.  They definitely deserve it after all of their hard work.