A Collection of Short Happenings

I am running down the small red dirt road by Wema through the perfect warmth of late afternoon. The blue of the sky contrasts starkly with the dark rainclouds on the horizon, and the sun illuminates the clouds so that everything seems to glow. We run past goats and fields upon fields of corn. We pass a small girl carrying a huge bundle of wood on her head. Children chew on sugar cane stalks and scream at us, "How are you? How are you?" After we pass them, they giggle, whispering "Wazungu, Wazungu (white people)!" The rain is palpable in the air. Finally it begins to fall, slowly at first and then in torrents. We run harder, hearing the "splash splash" of our feet. "Alex, Laura!" we hear children screaming from behind us. News travels fast, and it seems sometimes like the whole village knows our names. We run on, and I greet everyone in Swahili. A group of women break into a smile, surprised and very pleased that I am speaking to them in Swahili. Some children ask me if I will take their picture, but I tell them I have forgotten my camera. We run on, surrounded by whispers and giggles, shouts of greeting, and surrounded by the excitement of having such strange people in such a small village. We pass a small herd of cattle, and at last we are home, wet but happy.

I sit in the back of a 7th grade Swahili class. We have just read a story about a very poor girl, who despite all odds gets an education and succeeds in life. I understood part of it, but I had trouble with the details. The teacher comes over to me carrying a large stick. All the students are looking at me expectantly.  He hovers over me and begins to ask me a question, in Swahili of course. I suddenly feel about thirteen and I want more than anything to get the answer right. I listen hard.  "If you came to school, and the teacher hit you twice with a stick like this, would you come back?" I pause, making sure I have understood and then answer "La," meaning no. The teacher breaks into a wide grin and the students smile too. The teacher goes on to explain the importance of perseverance. The students love when I come to Swahili class. They confront me when I miss a class. I go to their study period and borrow a girl's book so that I can do the homework, and everyone is eager to help me out. Some of the teachers have started giving me grades, and I think I am doing quite well, actually. If I were to stay here for a longer time, I think I would go to class every day, and I think I would become quite fluent at Swahili.

Alex and I go to the lower school. "Today you will teach Swahili," says the principal. I laugh, thinking it is joke, but I soon realize she is serious. I laugh again  and tell her "I can be a student, but I cannot teach Swahili! The students speak much better Swahili than I do." However, there is no arguing with her. The next thing I know I am holding a third grade Swahili textbook and standing in front of a class. I shrug and begin. "Good morning students," I begin in Swahili. They stand up and greet me back in Swahili. "Leo, mimi nitakuwa mwalimu wako (Today, I will be your teacher)" I say, and  giggles and whispers flll the room. I turn to the lesson for the day. It looks like some kind of poem, so I ask one girl to read it, but she starts singing instead. I realize that this must be a well-known song. Apparently all the students know this song except me. The class sings the song and then I ask them what the song teaches us. It is going quite well, all things considered. However, when I turn the page, things take a turn for the worse. This page is filled with Swahili tongue twisters and Swahili words I have never seen before. The real teacher enters. I ask the student to read the first sentence and then I ask her what it means. I don't understand her answer. I look around the room and suddenly realize the ludicrous nature of the situation, having a foreigner teach natives their own language. I give the teacher the text book and thank him, but tell him he will have to teach the lesson. He smiles, tells me that I was trying very hard, and we both laugh.

The big piece of news we just received is that the children are finally all going to be tested for HIV! This is something that we have been trying to accomplish from the beginning, but now that it is actually going to happen I have butterflies in my stomach. There is so much surrounding a positive diagnosis. I don't want to think that these children, who we have grown to know so well could have their lives so completely transformed by one test. However,  in a community where the HIV/AIDs rates are as high as 30% in the adult population, the concern of a positive diagnosis is real. Nevertheless, the government will help provide antiretrovirals  if there are any positive diagnosis, and in the long-run the student will be better off.

11 Days left.

:)

-Laura

Laughing At Pictures and Ketchup

Tuesday June 19th

Internet is super super slow right now,  but hopefully this will post. We spent all morning at the primary school. Alex taught, and I took a lot of video of the teachers teaching. I went with the nurse that comes part time now that we have set up a clinic, who treated all the kids with the fungus growths on their heads. Apparently it is really common here, spreading kind of like the head lice. When we go to the lower school we are attacked by a mob of children who are very very excited to see us. They jump and scream and wave and beg for pictures, but they get really shy when we try to talk to them individually, looking away and giggling.

I also love how the kids react when we take pictures. When we show them the picture, they look at it, recognize themselves, scream and laugh, and turn away. This is true of the students, whether they are 7 or 17. Very few of them have had pictures taken of them, so it very exciting, and I'm sure a bit strange. We are going to print out some of the pictures of the kids and bring them back next time because it would mean a lot to them to have pictures of themselves. It seems unfair to take so many great pictures of the kids and not share the pictures with them. When you are walking down the road here with a camera, I get two reactions. One is people requesting that I take their photo and give them a copy (some are content just having me show them on the camera screen). However, when I ask if I can take a photo or video of someone doing something cool or in a way we don't in America, a lot of people make it very clear that unless I pay them, they don't want their picture taken. A lot of places in East Africa where I have been, people think that Americans sell the pictures and make money. I suppose this is true for National Geographic and such, but I wonder how this rumor got started and got to be so widespread.  However, I can understand them feeling strange that I get their photo and they don't get anything. I think I'd feel a little weird if a stranger wanted to take my photo too. 

The rain here is really annoying. It rains at 5:30 sharp almost everyday, cutting the day short, and when I say rain, I mean RAIN. The sky turns dark, there is thunder and lightning, and the rain pounds down so hard on the roof you would think that it was a rock storm.

We also got the printer to work today!  We brought a printer that a graduating senior donated, but it wouldn't work. Teresa refilled the color cartridge at the market, and after cleaning it, they now have a working printer! Teresa was very happy. They have one printer, but the whole school shares it to print all the exams, so having one more will make a huge difference. It is also really cool how they refill the cartridges here. It is way less expensive. I wonder why we don't do that in America.

Teresa bought us tomato sauce today, which is their name for ketchup, although it doesn't taste anything like ketchup in America. Alex and I thought this was pretty funny because we aren't sure what we are supposed to put it on. We have rice and vegetables and beans almost every night, and I'm not sure about you, but I don't usually put ketchup on beans. However, they knew that Americans like ketchup, so they bought it for us. They also bought us chili sauce. Perhaps we will experiment with putting ketchup on all sorts of things tonight  :)

Wapendwa familia na marafiki, (Dear family and friends)

I am writing to you on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Church is three hours here, and the belief and passion with which the kids sing is truly awe inspiring. They bite their lips, squinch their eyebrows together, throw their arms in the air, and sing as loudly as they can, swaying back and forth. The teachers insisted I give a speech today in church, so I told them about how God believes in them and that they have to believe in themselves too. I told them how inspiring their faith is to us, and I told them if they work hard, God will help them to succeed. The kids start start laughing and screaming whenever I speak Swahili, so I gave part of my sermon in Swahili and everyone clapped crazily.  A little passion and energy goes a long way to traverse language barriers. The children had amazing prayers. During individual prayer time the boy sitting next to me kept whispering over and over, "I thank you God for I have to be doing well in school. Help the other children who are poor like me and greet for me my mom in the heaven with you." The children stood up one by one and testified how God had helped in their lives, from overcoming sicknesses to helping them to do the right thing.

The clinic Erica and Amanda set up is proving to be very helpful. A girl cut her toe really badly playing soccer today and she was bleeding all over the place. However, in the clinic we have posted directions on wound care, and one of the women who works in the kitchen cleaned and bandaged up her toe. It was great! The clinic is going to be of real use! 

We did art with the kids in the morning, and some of them are amazing artists. Many drew pictures of Alex and I, and everyone was very happy to have colored pencils and crayons. They usually just have pencils, so even the older high school students came to draw. 

However, the adventure of the day was bubbles. We brought them out and the kids had no idea what they were. When I showed them, they were absolutely ecstatic. The expressions in the photo capture the general scene pretty well. The kids ran around, jumping into the air, popping the bubbles, and grinning ear to ear. In the end, they were so excited that they shook up the bubble stuff too much, and it stopped working, so we had to put it in the closet for the foam to settle. 

The kids have so many questions for me, most of which start with "In America..." Some of the questions were, "Do you have cows?" "Do you have sugar cane?" "Are there really black people?" "Do the teachers beat the students?" "Are there robbers?" (They were shocked to hear that there were). "White robbers? Really?" They kept asking. "Are there beggars?" (Shocked again).  They were also REALLY shocked to hear that we don't eat ugali, their staple food. It is a corn based food with the consistency of dough that is eaten with vegetables and meat.  They asked what our staple food is, and many of them insisted it was french fries :)

Hope all is well! I'll write more tomorrow.

-Laura

P.S. The last picture shows how the children make their own soccer balls here by tying bags together with string.

A Hello From Wema

Hello!

We arrived at Wema with suitcases full of soccer balls, 2 laptop computers, clothing, tennis balls, crayons, and colored pencils (see picture).  The children were very excited to see us, and many of them remembered my name! They were also especially excited about the soccer balls. They usually make their own soccer balls out of plastic bags and netting, so having real soccer balls brought ecstatic screams of joy! Within two days of constant play, one of our soccer balls was popped and had to be taken into the village to be fixed. Because budgets barely have enough money for notebooks and pencils, the kids don't get much of a chance for arts and crafts, so we are excited to do some art projects with them later in the week.

I have been constantly impressed by the drive, determination, and passion for learning here. The students in Form 4, the equivalent of high school here in America, get to school at 5 am and stay often until 10 pm. We watched the students passionately debate Kenyan politics and the whether the two ICC candidates, who are suspect of being involved in the 2007 election violence should be allowed to participate in the presidential election. I was incredibly impressed how much the students got into the debate, cheering for their side, hands waving and feet stomping. It is rainy season here, and I was even more impressed when the rain began pouring down on the roof so hard I could hardly hear anything, and still the students sat in their seats, yelled over the rain, and continued to stay focused on the debate at hand. I know that kind of attention certainly wouldn't have happened in my high school.

Speaking of the weather, I have been quite impressed by the ferocity of the storms here. It is usually sunny during the day, and then it pours in the evening, with booming thunder and flashes of lighting that illuminate the whole campus. With these storms come random power outages that come often at quite comical times, from trying to pour water into my small glass from a giant water jug, to during showers, to finding ourselves eating in complete darkness and feeling around the table to find the rice.

One income generating project the Wema has been working on has had impressive success. Last year, the directors planted a tree farm, and when we were there most of the trees were only a few inches high. The 2nd photo shows Teresa showing us the tree farm last year. The trees are eucalyptus, and are incredibly fast growing and drought resistant. They are used for telephone polls, firewood, and timber for building. In just a bit over a year, the trees have grown to over 15 feet tall! The third photo shows us standing in the forest of one year old trees, the tops towering above us, and this amazing progress was made in one of the worst drought years in recent history.   I was incredibly impressed to say the least, and I am very excited to continue to invest in this project. In 2 years the whole forest will be old enough to turn a profit and be used to help construct more dormitories.

We are also really excited about helping Wema establish a computer lab. They already have a computer room set up with two computers. The idea is to use the computer lab to teach computer literacy and to generate income by using the computer lab as a cyber cafe, but the computers are very old and hardly function, making it very hard to use them for anything. However, the prospects for the project are compelling. The computer lab has already been functioning as a cyber cafe on a small scale, and there is someone in the community who is willing to run the cafe if we can make improve it to the point where it will be a real business opportunity.  We brought 2 laptops with us, but we will need to bring many more for this project to be successful. Thus, if you have any old laptops you would be willing to donate, hundreds of kids and their community would be incredibly thankful.

The other big news is that Wema now has a basic medical clinic, stocked with medicines for basic care, from deworming to pain relievers and fever reduces, to bandages and fungal cream. Two volunteers from University of Southern California, Erica Patel and Amanda Spoto, got a grant to work here and brought suitcases of medicine to start the clinic. They, then went into town to find out where to get these medicines locally, so that when supplies run out they will be able to be restocked from local pharmacies.  The medicines are all incredibly inexpensive here, and thus the costs to maintain the clinic once now that it is started are well within Wema's means.  In addition, a women who worked for a chemist will come to Wema one day a week to staff the health clinic and attend to the children's health needs. 

Spending time in the girls' dormitories in the evening was also a very special experience. Over 50 girls crowded around us, begging to touch my hair and giggling at its different texture. I touched their hair too, and then we sang songs. Everyone grew completely quiet as I sang the Hokey Pokey (dance moves and all) and then cheered wildly. Then, other girls came forward and sang. All the girls wanted hugs, and I have begun to hear some of their incredible life stories. This area has one of the highest HIV/AIDs rates in East Africa, and nearby areas were heavily affected by the 2007/2008 election violence, and these issues have left many children orphaned or without financial means. One girl told us about how she hid in her house for a month to avoid the 2007 election violence, and in the morning she would find that neighbors had been killed. I want to get to know as many of the children as possible and listen to their incredible stories. 

It is beautiful here, and it is wonderful to see all the progress Wema is making. When I first met Teresa and Steven in 2010, they had just recently started Wema and were worried that the project would not succeed, but seeing the progress now is one of the most inspirational things I have ever seen. For my senior thesis I am making a documentary about Wema and the work we are doing here, and I have already taken almost 2 hours of footage.

Here are some photos :)

Talk to you all soon!

-Laura