Monday morning and time for school. We were told there was an assembly at 8am so we aimed to get there then; packed our lunch, took whatever we thought we’d need and we were off about 7:50am. I know we went there on Friday but I really don’t think I paid enough attention to how long it took to get there or back – I certainly noticed this morning. At orientation we were told it was 5 minutes walk to the school from where we were staying. 5 minutes my chubby white ass! We finally got there just before 20 past 8. Now I know I walk slow but still, 25 minutes is a far cry from 5! We were greeted by the stickiest mud ever! It was basically black gluey clay. We really needed gumboots which we didn’t have so it was it was an effort, and apparently quite funny for everyone else, to make it through the sludge. This is clearly quite a common occurrence as no one else seemed to be struggling and all just wandered around with rubber-soled shoes that didn’t seem to stick as badly. We managed to get to the office and met the Principal who they call Head Teacher and had a bit of a chat. When we said we were from New Zealand he said “ah yes, the rugby, the Blacks”. Woo hoo, the All Blacks are even famous here!
We went to Josephine’s ‘office’ (AKA tin shed with a table, chair, wooden bench and broken book shelf) and she suggested a couple of classes we could go to. As usual we were swamped by kiddies when they came out after break, all wanting to high five and touch us. The standard greeting is “hi” and “how are you?” to which you have to reply “fine” or they will ask you again.
We were taken to meet the babies’ class (they must have been about 5 years old) and their teacher. Oh my God they are the cutest things IN THE WORLD! They all had smiles ear to ear and waved like crazy. We were given seats – I only just fit in one of their little chairs – and helped mark their work. Books came at us left right and centre, all of them wanted us to look at their work. Drawing a smiley face on their pages was a source of great amusement for them all, such simply pleasures J It was funny seeing their reactions actually. Many of them just wanted to touch our hair or our clothes. Those who were slightly more game would come stand right up to us and kind of lean in so they were touching us. One little girl, Maureen, is such a gorgeous, cheeky little thing. She wanted to snuggle up and stay there and would push any other kid trying to get in away. Heh. Their classroom was fairly well resourced with wall hangings (flour sacks) of letters, numbers, different types of clothes, animals and various other things, all in English. They would copy the pictures and words for English practice. There was also number work, adding, subtracting and writing numbers in full words. Some of the kids tried to get me to mark their Swahili work too, yeah, um, no, I don’t understand, sorry. We stood at the front of the class afterwards as were asked to sing a song. We serenaded them with Baa Baa Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, both of which they knew as they sang them both back to us. We then did ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ which no one had heard of so we taught them the first few lines. We wrote it on the board, went through the words and taught them the moves too. It took them a bit to get it but they tried really hard and were all still doing it after we waved goodbye and left. The babies are at school from 8:20 to lunch time each day then they head home to their families.
We went to the staffroom and had the noodles we had brought for lunch but we felt like we needed something else so we went to Connections (the place we went last time with the boys) to have a drink and use the flushing toilet. Ah, nice.
Now the year 4 – 8 classes (9-13 years old) at Mlolongo Primary School are only 35 minutes long and they have 8 of them during the day. Two then a 20 minute break, another two then 20 minutes, two more then lunch, two more then games until 4pm. They structure their classes by year and a colour so there is 4/5/6/7/8 Blue, Red, Green and Yellow and each class has about 65-70 kids in it!! All of the classrooms are small tin/iron-walled rooms with dirt floors and wooden benches for tables and chairs. There are usually 3-4 kids at each bench so they are pretty squished in there. There is a blackboard in each classroom but many of them are looking quite worse for wear. All the children have exercise books which is great but no texts books. Most have a pencil or pen. One thing just about all of them have in common is they are happy.
We were asked to take a couple of creative arts classes in the afternoon. Turns out that creative arts is on the curriculum but is not something any of the teachers have been trained in so any teacher who has one of those classes basically teaches what they like, the same with Life Skills. So, we had to think quickly (there was no other teacher in the classroom) to come up with something to do. We had 7 Red (11-12 year olds) draw a picture that represents what their life is like now; family, friends, their home, pets, hobbies, etc then had a few of them come up and present to the class. Some were so funny! We then went to 7 Blue and taught the same thing only we had them draw an additional picture that showed them in 10 years time. This class was particularly good at it. One of the boys, Victor, came up and began by saying “as you can see, this is where I am now.” He had drawn his family, house etc. The next picture showed him in his permanent house with his “beautiful beautiful wife and children”. Whitney came up and showed the picture of her future children but she added “but I have no husband as I want to be a single parent”! Much laughing ensued.
After a few more presentations it was time to go. We waved goodbye and started the long walk home. By God I was tired but have no idea why. Perhaps the new ‘job’, the walk, being mobbed by beautiful kiddies, who knows. We wandered home past ‘our’ supermarket and stopped in to buy some essentials including some chalk for the school then trekked home. I was seriously dragging my feet and just fell on the bed when we got back. Absolutely stuffed!
Finally, after hauling my butt off the bed, Caitlyn and I played Catan, a card version of a board game that I have. It’s pretty complicated but super fun so we played for a while and ate popcorn.
Geraldine’s cousin had come to stay the night but we didn’t meet her that evening. She was apparently really tired and slept most of the evening.
As usual, Ann made us a lovely dinner and we waited up to see Geraldine and Joseph. 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock, finally they got home about 10 o’clock after being out to see some friends. It was a short conversation as bed was calling. Before going to sleep we checked on Google maps how long the walk actually is as 5 minutes just wasn’t right. 2.7kms, 35 minute walk. Right. Well there you go. Lights out.
Lala Salama
Tuesday
We met Lillian this morning at breakfast. Today’s breakfast was bread, bananas (as usual) and kumara! Kumara for breakfast. Interesting. It was cold too. Ah well, it’s yummy. Ann packed us some lunch (including the cold sweet potato) and we were gearing ourselves up for the long walk when Joseph said they would take us in Lillian’s car. Thank God! We went to the staffroom when we got there (the mud had dried well since yesterday so we were unhampered) and finished marking some comprehension we had started the day before. Oh my goodness some of their similes were just too funny:
- “We were very confused like a pregnant mosquito.” Well of course, why wouldn’t a pregnant mosquito be confused?
- “A handsome tall man walked in with green eyes like chewed bubblegum”.
- She took her cold chilling shower which left her as a trembling chameleon watching a football match”.
The teacher, teacher Hellen, whose English class we were marking comprehension for, invited us to come to her class period 4, we had PE period 5, then creative art again for periods 7 and 8. Excellent. We were set. First though, we had to go and see our babies class again and see how they were going with ‘Incy Wincy’. They had practiced it! The words had been left on the board and the whole class recited them to us. Success! More marking, cuddles and laughter and then we were off to 7 Red for English.
Teacher Hellen told the class we were to take them (we were?!) and that they were to behave well. Another quick lesson was invented and we gave them their instructions - on a piece of paper, start a story with “When the two New Zealanders came to teach us…”, write for 2 minutes then fold the paper so only the last line can be seen. Pass it to your neighbour who will use your last words to continue writing the story. Don’t look at what they wrote. When finished, pass it back to the original owner and see what sort of story has been written. As the class was only 35 minutes long, only a few of them had time to come up and read their stories but they were great. We heard that we were dressed well and funny and that they want us to go back again. Woo Hoo!
PE time with 7 Green. We had come up with a kind of relay for them to do in teams so took them out to the field. 7 teams of…10!! Ok, this will take a while. We had them hopping, running backwards, doing wheelbarrows with each other and various other relay thingies. The instructions didn’t quite get through but it was fun and they were knackered. We thought the class finished at 12:05 but the bell (a hand bell rung by a student) hadn’t gone so we took them back to class. They wanted to know about us so we told them about living in Australia and New Zealand, explained that we only have a Prime Minister because we have a queen and answered all their questions. Of course when I said my hobbies were dancing and singing I was asked to demonstrate. I begged off the dancing but didn’t get away completely and ended up singing to the whole class! I was a hit! We asked them to sing a song to us and they sang us a welcome song as well as another couple. It was fantastic! We also had a couple of kiddies come up and dance. What groovers they were! Somehow we ended up having the class till 12:40pm. Who knows what they missed because of us but no other teacher came so we assumed it was ok.
After that it was lunch time and off to Connections again (this is going to become a habit). We sat out by the pool and ordered drinks and food. Ooo, they have French Toast, yes please. Ah, not so much. It came out looking like eggy bread but with slices of capsicum cooked into it. Right. Ok, well I’ll give it a go. It wasn’t exactly what I’m used to but it filled a gap. Is this Kenyan French Toast or was the chef not sure what it was and cooked what he thought was close enough? Ah well, never mind. Back to school.
We had planned a game of Pictionary for the two classes but ended going to the second one first and spent two periods with them, oops. 7 Red again. This time they were a little less well behaved but considering there were about 65 all playing a game they were pretty awesome. A lot of shouting ensued near the end of the game when points were being disputed. Most amusing. Finally team Caitlyn won and the room exploded! Most fun :-)
After that it was home time for us so we wandered home. It didn’t seem as long today, perhaps because we had a ride in the morning. We got home (via the supermarket where we had to pick up some popcorn), played Catan and made our way through the huge bag. Yum!
It was a reasonably quiet evening. I planned a language lesson for English the next day (7 Red again) and stumbled off to bed. Fell asleep before Caitlyn had turned out the light.
Lala Salama
