School Numero Moja

Hello from a cyber in downtown Nakuru Town,

I can't believe that our first week of teaching has already come and gone. It was an exciting week to say the least. Everyone was really excited to get into the classroom on Monday and also probably a little bit nervous about how everything was going to work. As it turns out everything went smoothly, at least for Monday. I really felt that the students were able to comprehend what we were teaching and the language barrier was much smaller than I had anticipated. Monday is the day we teach our Life Skills skit and after we left the school I was excited and couldn't wait to go back. The school we were teaching at was called Lake Solai Secondary School, it is about a 2 hour drive from our house (rain dependent), and is quite rural. I was teaching in a form one classroom (the equivalent to grade 9) with Deirdre (Dre as she now goes by) and Ng'Ok. Both were excellent teaching partners.

Driving to school on Tuesday everyone was excited and anticipated having a similar day to the one we had on Monday. Unfortunately when were about 20 minutes away from the school the road got incredibly muddy due to the rain which had fallen the night before. It was so bad that the road became impassable and we ended up walking to the school on foot. We invariably showed up a little late and had to cut the lesson short. Everyone was quite dissapointed with this turn of events, but everyone also handled the situation very well and demonstrated how flexible a group we have.

Wednesday is our day for teaching the HIV kit, which is our most important kit. We left the house an hour earlier than we needed to so that we could combat any adverse road conditions. Thankfully we arrived on time and had no travel issues. Wednesday was the first day that I could really feel that the students were understanding what we were teaching. They answered questions correctly and were much more active in the classroom than they had been in the previous two days. This just served to build our confidence with teaching the material that we were teaching. Unfortunately at 5:00 pm the thunder started to boom and we were forced to make an early exit, lest we spend the night a Lake Solai. This was another minor set-back and I felt bad that we had to leave because I still had so much more to teach. Once again our group of trainers showed our resilience and everyone reacted well to the change of plans.

Thursday we were unable to teach because the rain had fallen so hard the night before that the roads were most certainly impassable. So, with the permission of the school we were able to come earlier on Friday to make up for lost time. This was a very successful day, we were able to finish up the HIV kit and get through all of our Responsible Sexuality kit. I think that many of the students learned things that they had never been taught before and a lot of misconceptions were dispelled. This was echoed by the responses that we recieved in the form of anonymous questions. We received positive comments and many thanks for what we taught. The questions also illustrated a genuine knowledge of the material we had taught, which was very comforting because it meant that all of our efforts had paid off and the students had been able to grasp our main points.

Because of lost time we also came back to Lake Solai early on Saturday morning. Unfortunately the student turnout was lower than we expected because many students had responsibilities outside of the classroom on Saturday mornings. However, it was still successful and we were able to teach all the students who were present. We will once again be going back to Lake Solai this afternoon to do a final wrap-up with all the students. I'm very excited for this as I think are all the trainers and all the students. Then after visiting Lake Solai we will drive 40 minutes back up the road to Seet Kobor, which is our second school.

Overall the experience at Lake Solai was very positive. While we experienced some difficulties both students and trainers responded well. I was really impressed with this and I couldn't think of a better group of people that I would rather be training with. I think that everyone was also able to learn alot from the students at Lake Solai and we will be able to apply this when we teach at Seet Kobor beginning this afternoon. Until next week... Kwaheri.

-David