Bumps in the Road, Changamoto katika Barabara

 Hello friends and family,

How are you all doing back home? I've been hearing lots of news about babies and new beginnings! That is exciting to hear about and feel a part of even at this distance. Thank you to everyone who has sent me pictures of family, pets, or their children to brighten my day. I have been dealing with some homesickness lately, but it honestly has made me appreciate how good we have it in America, a humbling experience for being on the other side of the world.

(This photo was from Nairobi, when we were in training last week. I thought it was good to show a city view.)

I'm sure most of you have been wondering about my work with students, since that is what I came here to do in Kenya. The unsatisfactory answer at this point is this: I'm still figuring it out. Let me explain a bit more.

It seems like all involved parties here in Kenya were told a different story about our arrival and service. We are teaching assistants, working up to twenty hours a week for our duration of the grant. This information was new to our schools and NGO partners, not to mention our landlady. So given these parameters, we are trying to find an appropriate mixture of after school programming, weekend skill building sessions, and classroom time in our respective partner schools.

Another related problem was figuring out how to get to and from our schools affordably. We live at least 30-45 minutes away from our workplaces... And we do not have our own vehicle. The area we are placed in is very rural, and so we have to live farther away because the housing must pass certain security requirements. Our supervisors would prefer we hire a private driver, for $20.00 USD a day! That amount of money is painful to spend for my roommate and myself, so we are taking public transit. Slower, less safe, but much more authentic than being chauffeured like a bunch of hoity toadies' all over the place. The wonderful thing is we arranged a regular tuk-tuk driver for our school trips, which helps with the safety aspect of our journey.

Lastly, we also arrived at a bad time. Since COVID-19 (uviko kumi na tisa) swept through our communities, students fell behind from not being in school for huge swaths of time. We are walking in during their exam period, and they are trying to finish up their term--that was supposed to end in December. So school programming and development has taken a back seat so students and teachers can move ahead in the curriculum.

That being said, this week will lay the groundwork for the upcoming months we will be here. I have recently gotten permission to begin to run a Taekwondo club after school, and we hope to be moving into classroom settings this week. It has been a slow start, but things are looking up and I will be keeping us all posted.

Thank you yet again for tuning in, I miss you all.

Cheers,

Andi

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