Pre-training at Seet Kobor

Mambo,

In an effort to reduce repitition between everyone posting on this blog, we have divided up the topics that everyone is talking about. I will be talking about my experience handing out pre-training questionnaires at one of the schools we will be teaching at in 2 weeks time, called Seet Kobor secondary school. The matatu ride (see Courtney's posts for more on matatus) was about an hour long on a bumpy dirt ride into very, very rural Kenya. Some of the YESS trainers even expressed surprised at the fact that people were living this far out. Six of us (Ibrah, Leah, Deirdre, Mumbi, Bryan and I) got dropped off at Seet Kobor and the matatu continued down the road with some of the trainers to visit another school (Lake Solai), which we will teach at on Monday.

We arrived at Seet Kobor and were greeted warmly by the principal and guidance counsellor. Students crowded at the windows of their classrooms to see who the new visitors were. The students were then called into the field and they stood an apprehensive distance away from us, waiting to hear what we were coming to do. Ibrah broke the ice with a good speech detailing what QHO and YESS do and the students began to warm up to us. The students were then asked to return to their classrooms and we divided into 3 groups of 2 to hand out questionnaires in each class.

The pre-training questionnaires are very important to our training because it gives us an indication, not only of how much the students already know, but also of how much they have learned when their answers on the pre-training survey are compared with those of the post training survey. These questionnaires are therefore a very important part of our monitoring and evaluation because they help us show that what we are teaching is being absorbed and is effective.

Deirdre and I went into a classroom together, it was a form 3 class (or equivalent to grade 11). At first the students were a little unsure of us, so we began with a game (balance the ball for those of you who know what that is). The students quickly began smiling and laughing and joining in on the game. We then gave out the surveys and the students filled them in. Typically, at this point we would psyche the students up a little bit more and then head home, but in our case we had to wait for the matatu to return from Lake Solai before we could go. So Deirdre and I had about an hour with the students. We told them a little bit about Canada and they asked some questions that they had, they all seemed very intrigued with what we had to say. We told them about ice hockey and poutine (poutine might have gone over their heads a little as gravy is a foreign concept). We played a few more psyche games with the class to end the day and all the students left with huge smiles on their faces and seemed very excited for us to return and train them.

Once we had left the classroom we spoke with the guidance counselor and he said something that confirmed for me why I had joined QHO in the first place. It has to do with the power of youth teaching youth. What he said was, "When I talk to them about sex, the students stare at the ground, but when you come in talk to them about sex they are all eager to hear what you have to say". This really motivated me for the coming 6 weeks and raised my level of excitement to begin teaching. I think I speak for all of the YESS and QHO trainers when I say that we are so excited to get into the classroom and begin putting what we have worked on for the last 6 months into action.

To add to the excitement surrounding Seet Kobor, the school itself is located on a hill at the base of a mountain range, overlooking the Great Rift Valley, you can see for miles and I don't think I can adequately explain just how amazing the view is, so you will have to come see it for yourself. That's all for this week, I look forward to posting again soon.