Day 4

It has been raining so much here today and all of last night!

The power here is pretty sketchy on a good day, so a day like today the power is out more than it's on.  Throughout the night last night the power would come on and off, since I'm a light sleeper I pretty much woke up every time the fan turned off! We woke up super late this morning and had to get ready in 15 minutes...so no showers. Although, it was nice to finally get some sleep, every day I've woken up around 3:30-4 in the morning and couldn't fall back to sleep.

Driving to the schools today was very difficult because most of the roads are dirt and with all the rain last nigh, there were streams running along the sides. The driver, Papa John, was able to get every one fairly close to their schools but parts of the roads couldn't be navigated or else we would have gotten stuck. Luckily Emily and I have a good location so we didn't have to walk and farther than usual! We still slipped a ton walking from the van to the classroom...but we didn't fall yay!

We were told from the beginning that when it rains here a lot of the children don't go to school, but I'm not sure either one of us expected so few kids there today. When we got to the school at 8:30, start time, there were only 7 kids there. The school has a tin a roof, so a lot of rain water fell into the classroom over night and the teacher had to spend at least 30 minutes cleaning off all the desks and mopping up the floor. Emily and I hung out outside with all the kids and played around as much as we could. As we were waiting outside a few more students came, but we only go up to about 20-25 students for the day.

Today was a pretty rough for me at the school. The students that were in class were so distracted and tired all day. They have to wake up at 5 or 6 every morning to walk to school, but when it rains they have to wake up even earlier to come to school. They started out with math today, they did more addition, but they still don't really understand the way it works. The teacher will write out a problem on the board like 2+1 and then tells them to draw how many circles equal each number and then count the circles. The problem is that thy don't even understand that 4 would need 4 circles, they draw one or two. While they were working on their math homework, which is really just class work, the teacher went to help the other class...at which point all of the kids in my class went nuts and wouldn't listen. This one little boy turned around and tore up another kid's work and then two of the boys started somewhat fighting. I kept saying "acha" stop in Swahili and "kaa" sit down...but they really only listen to their teacher and just ignore me. Then, in what was probably the best part of the day, one of the students asked for help on a problem, I showed him how to count it out on his hands as well as with the circles that teacher wants them to draw. We went through several problems and a lot of his issue is that he skips numbers, which I think is because the only time the do numbers is when they count from 1-100 in the morning and the 20 minutes they spend on math every week.

When it came time for me to teach them more English I tried to go over some of what I taught them yesterday, but none of them would respond to what I was asking. The couple of students that would respond would whisper their responses, which I'm not sure if it was because they were shy or if it's because they aren't sure. At first I tried to do the planets song because that was what one of the teachers had requested, but the teacher doesn't even know the planets and it was incredibly difficult for them to understand. For me to teach them something I have to say it and then the teacher will say for them to repeat, so when the teacher doesn't even know the planets it makes it that much harder to teach the students. I eventually moved on to flash cards that had pictures of different things that they say with each letter. That entertained them for a little bit, but they lose interest really easily. I pretty much completely lost them once the porridge was brought in, after that point all they did was stare at the bucket until it was time to eat.

Back at the home base we had two guest speakers, one to talk to us about the health problems that the people here face and the other to teach us some Swahili. The lady that came to speak about the health issues is a doctor at the hospital near us as well as a nun. She has worked in hospitals all over Africa helping with various break outs and epidemics.

One of the biggest medical problems in this area is malaria, people here catch malaria like the flu. She told us that while they cannot escape malaria, they can become immune to certain strains after they have had it a couple of times. They have a lot of programs to try and help combat malaria in children and pregnant women, but once a child is over the age of 5 there isn't much they do for them. What they do for pregnant women is to give them a bug net to sleep under while they are pregnant, then when they have the baby they get a net for it as well. The other thing that they try to do to lower the rate is to tell people to close their doors and windows between 4pm and 10am because the mosquitoes that give malaria bite at night.

The other big illness here is HIV/AIDS, about 5% of the population is infected, which is lower than 5-10 years ago. 1/3 of the people infected with the disease are 15-24 years old, but many people that are infected don't know. In most cases it takes 5-10 years for someone to become diagnosed with HIV because the testing is just not there. What usually happens is that the person keeps having to go to the hospital to be treat for different things and the doctor eventually picks up on it and asks the person if they are okay with being tested. The country has made it mandatory for all pregnant women to be tested, so that if they are positive they can be put on the anti-viral drugs and lower the chance of the baby having HIV. They have also changed blood donation so that only bigger hospitals are allowed to take donations becaus they have the technology to be able to test the blood for HIV. They have implemented a ton of programs to help combat HIV; programs in schools to educate teenagers, various places for free testing, putting condoms in places like bar bathrooms and hotels, as well as programs similar to hospice to help take care of the families of people affected. They are able to help the people who have full blown AIDS find orphanages for their children and pay for their education and uniforms, so that the sick person can worry less about what is going to happen to their child when they die.

After the health talk we had Swahili lessons. We had the same Swahili teacher as last time, so he had us go through introductions again and practice a little bit of conversation. Then he went into classroom terms...which we all really need! He taught us words like sit down, be quiet, jump, look at the board...all kinds of things that we will need. A lot of we're wondering why he didn't teach us that first! So many of the volunteers have unruly classesnd can't do much with the kids because they don't listen. Emily and I are really lucky because our students are actually learning and they do listen most of the time. Now that we know some Swahili words we will be able to get their attention better, there are so many times where I'm telling the kids to look at me and pay attention. I'm so excited to test out these new words with the kids...hopefully I don't butcher them too much to where they won't understand me! We have had them laugh at us because we say stuff so completely wrong!

The food today was really good! This morning we had eggs, fruit, bread, and this hush puppy type thing. I'm not much of a breakfast person though so I never really like breakfast here except for the crepes. For lunch we had chicken, rice, and some funky green mush, as well as fruit. The cook made me some special chicken that didn't have tomato all over it, it was so good! The rice was really awesome though...I actually went back for seconds! The funky green mush easy really gross, but I figure I have to try at least a bite of everything. For dinner we had pasta with ground beef and fruit...soooo good! Only 6 of us ate dinner at the the house tonight so we had enough food for all of us to be able to get seconds! Tomorrow night we are eating dinner in town as a group, one of the ladies that works here, Sarah, is going with us.

If anyone has any tips or idea of songs we can teach the kids let me know! We need as many suggestions as we can get!