10.

So, Monday I was at the Chogoria Girl’s High School. I went to an English class in the morning under the pretext of observing, however, I have found that wherever I go to “observe” I will end up teaching something. Usually, I think that this is because the students just want to talk to me and the teacher sees me teaching them something as the most orderly way for me to interact with the kids in the context of the classroom. The class was a Form 3 which is equivalent to our grade 11. The lesson began with the teacher giving the students the instruction to “Indicate by cycling the word” where the underlined letters are pronounced differently. The first set consisted of “ooze, fool, too, and poor” with the double ‘oo’ underlined. The students and the teacher had a hard time with this. While the teacher looked for the answer in her book, I told the children to pay close attention to the shape and movement of their lips as they said the words. The problem was that they pronounced all of the sounds the same, so I read them very slowly with my American accent. The second set was “Then, through, think, and thin” with the ‘th’ underlined. They struggled with this one as well, so I told them to pay attention to how their tongues touched their front teeth as they pronounced the words. I was then asked to continue the lesson on simile and metaphor as seen in a short poem from their books. After that, the girls asked me questions about school in the US. I mentioned I was here to do some research on the changing roles of women in Kenyan society. The teacher then gave me one of the novels that the class was reading about a Luo woman (one of the many tribes of Kenya and noted for being the enemies of the Kikuyu and Meru who are found in this region) because she felt it was a fairly accurate portrayal of the life of a woman here. I read half the book in one night, it is fairly short. While I don’t think that there was much new information in it than what I have already heard and read, it was an interesting look at what content children are allowed to read in school. The girls reading this book were 16 and 17, and I was shocked at some of the explicit descriptions and details in the text. I would elaborate further, but I know that there is a mixed audience reading this blog.

Today I asked Irene Ndiga who has been a teacher, head teacher, headmistress, and now manager of various schools in Kenya about the standards for such content in school texts. It seems that there really aren’t any. The ministry of education just picks things from publishers, gives them a grade level, and schools choose what they want to adopt for there students from a packet which is produced every year. I imagine this is similar to the scholastic book form that elementary children receive from their schools so often; a picture of the book and 5 or so lines of description.

After the English class it was time for lunch. That day the teachers were treated to a chicken and soda lunch by one of the parents who was very pleased about their child’s results in the school. Chicken is a real treat here! (Although they aren’t very expensive, a cheap chicken costs about 250 ksh)

After lunch I was taken to “observe” a computer class. I will preface this by saying that my knowledge of computers I feel is rather limited. I know how to do a lot of things but my understanding of many of the technical aspects of the machines is not up to snuff. I thought it was really interesting to see what the children were learning about computers. To me the lesson seemed a bit scattered. They covered a lot of terminology but it didn’t seem to go together in such a way that the girls would be able to see the practical application of what they were learning. The teacher talked about input devices as “ peripherals that accept data and transfer it to the CPU” and output devices as “anything that feeds information from the CPU to the user… in the form of hard copy or soft copy.” This was all well and good, but then he went on to introduce the idea of pixels. His definition was a pixel “is the smallest part of the display that can be changed” The students did not understand and so he drew a square on the chalkboard and made a dot inside and called that a pixel. The girls continued to ask questions, they understood that pixels were very small, but he never told them how they could change as in his definition and this is what confused them. I was trying to think of something that the students would be better able to visualize than a dot on the board. I chimed in with the teacher’s permission. I told the girls to imagine a skyscraper, like in Nairobi, covered with windows. A pixel is like one of those windows and the light can be turned on or off the pattern of lights on and off in the windows is what makes up the image that we see on the computer screen. I’m not sure that this was the best way to describe it to them but I think they got the general idea. The lesson continued with hi giving more terms and descriptions and I am fairly certain that much of it was inaccurate, but like I said computers are not my specialty so I held me tongue, until he tried to explain the difference between an LCD screen and CRT monitor. He openly admitted to the girls that he had no idea how either worked. I know how a CRT monitor works so he let me explain that to the girls and I told them the little I know about LCD screens. One thing that I have a hard time with here is that they have new technology like laptops, but no one knows how to take care of them and how to treat them properly. This was my opportunity to tell people to keep their fingers off the LCD screens and I jumped at it. They all have calculators so we discussed how when you touch those screens the image distorts. The same principle applies to flat panel computer screens. If you poke them too hard you can damage them so don’t touch!

After this lesson I had the opportunity to sit in the library with two of the girls working at the school until they can get accepted into a university. They had finished secondary last year, but in Kenya there is a year wait to find out if you are accepted into a University you do not go directly like in the States. We sat and chatted for some time about marriage practices and the expectations of a wife/woman in Kenya today. One of the girls was a Muslim (although she did not have her hair covered) and the other was a Christian from a very rural area. It was interesting to get their different perspectives on the changing customs and traditions.

One of the events I was looking forward to the most was the Chogoria Music Festival. All of the primary schools have teams that practice poem recitation, songs, traditional dances, and even public speaking. Then they all meet at one of the area schools and invite representatives from the board of education to be the judges. It was outside in an open field adjacent to one of the schools (I can’t remember the name just now) that had a huge mango tree in the middle. The teachers roped of a square in front of the tree to be an arena for the kids to sing and dance in. People showed up with food carts and sodas to sell. The day would have been perfect, but it was sprinkling rain and cold. The kids all did a great job. It was really fun to watch the dances especially. Most of the schools had assembled costumes, made hats, and even painted the children. I have a lot of pictures and some video from the day. The cutest entry was preprimary and maybe up to Std. 1 children that dressed up like adults in little suits and hats and the girls all had little white dresses and hats. They sang a medley of English folk tunes like “here we go loop de loo” and they had little dances for each one. Cara and I wanted to scoop them all up and take them home! They were just precious! One of the more humorous groups to us was from Chogoria Girl’s Boarding where I am staying. The girls were wearing bright yellow shirts that said “no sex.” This had nothing to do with their song. I think they got the shirts because they were cheap and enough for all of the girls to be wearing the same thing.

On Wed. and Thursday I was able to go back to Milimani. I'm not sure what is so attractive to me about this school. Irene the manager is “no nonsense” woman, but a sage in the business and workings of a school. Her head teacher Stella is young, energetic, involved in all aspects of the school, and shows a real enthusiasm for motivating and encouraging the students through her example. I also have to say that I have had lunch and supper at many schools in the area and the cooks at Milimani are just better. I’m not sure what the difference is, maybe they use a bit more salt or cook the maize longer, but I would even pay for my lunch there and that is a compliment! The teachers are very friendly and I have really enjoyed their classes. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the entire staff of the school is excellent because Irene wouldn’t stand for anything else. She works very hard and expects the same from those around her. Wed. the students were busy all day taking an exam so it was fairly quiet. Stella took me for a walk through the countryside with the intent of showing me where the foresters live up on the mountain. We did a bit of off-roading and ended up jumping over elephant piles, slogging through swamp, chased by an angry cow, and scaling the hill through the middle of someone’s tea. It was eventful to say the least. We never got to the forester’s because of the cow, so she took me to visit a church and another neighboring primary school. When we got back, classes were over and it was time for the Christian Club meeting. They said some prayers and sang a few songs and then I was given the opportunity to teach the kids some songs. This was good because I haven’t had time to teach songs to all of the classes and there were some jealousy issues. Now all of the kids got a chance to learn them.

After the meeting was over, I sat with the kitchen ladies who were sorting through the rice taking out the little pebbles, and grains which were still in their husks. This was dusty work but it gave me a great chance to commune with Kenyan women. We sat in a circle and talked about marriage practices and expectations for a while. The women were obviously comfortable with me and there were no men around so I was able to ask a lot of questions that I usually don’t get answers to. We talked about abuse and how common it is first. In my book it says that in Kenya more often than not alcohol and abuse go hand-in-hand. I would venture to guess that this is the case around the world, but I asked about it nonetheless. It was clear that the women had never thought about it that way. They told me that it was more a case of culture than alcohol and it is not as accepted as it used to be. While they didn’t seem very concerned with physical abuse, they were actually eager to tell me about mental abuse. The book also talked about this and how mental or emotional abuse goes along with the physical. In many regions women were treated like children by their husbands. They were not allowed to control any of the money or even know if there was any. They were talked down to like they were unable to make any decisions and weren’t allowed to anyway. This was only mentioned by the women and then they went on about how it is just expected that your husband will have an affair, and if you confront him about it when he does, that is when he will beat you. My western brain was shouting, “It is expected that your husband will have an affair! That is ridiculous!” What I actually said was, “So, you all seem to agree that this behavior is common, but how common is it really?” One lady told me that 99% of husbands will cheat and the rest nodded in agreement. I have struggled with that figure for a while. Surely it must be a bit inflated, but they looked so convinced. My shocked expression and relative loss for words prompted one of the ladies to say, “Your husband will just tell you ‘a man cannot live on githeri alone.’” Githeri is the staple food of this region made of maize and beans (sometimes they throw in some cabbage and onions) which are boiled together for hours. I was too flabbergasted to think of anything else so I then asked about polygamy. It isn’t common anymore in this region. I believe they told me that in the Western province it still happens although it s becoming less common now. One comment that the book made that I initially shrugged off was that it was a commonly held belief that in Kenya there are more women than men and this justified polygamy for some time because people thought that it was actually for the benefit of women. More would be able to marry and have their own children in a polygamist community. The actual percentage of men and women in Kenya after the last census was almost exactly 50/50 give or take a little on both sides. The conversation continued with the ladies trying to decide which Kenyan man I should marry and me inquiring about how much would be paid to my family in the way of cattle, grains, and such. This was interspersed with tips on how to pick through the rice more efficiently and other skills I would need to develop to be a Kenyan wife, like how to make the millet porridge that is so popular here.

Milimani to be continued…