ATragedy, and Market Day

It is 1:08p.m. of an otherwise uneventful day. Otherwise uneventful, because the three male teachers and Matron just walked by supporting one of the girls. She was crying, so loudly that at first I thought she’d been hurt, but as they drew closer I saw that it wasn’t because of that. Nupur and I were outside under the shade of the tree. As the procession went by our building and behind the teachers’ block, we asked Lucy, who was following behind, what had happened.

It turned out that Diana had just found out that her father had passed away. That is also why there is the sound of wailing coming from the direction of the main road, a horrible, chilling sound that has lasted for a good half an hour or more. I’d thought it for the piki driver who had been buried yesterday, but I was wrong.

Diana has just walked back down, still crying but quietly now, holding hands with Lucy. Matron and Anne go to comfort her, and she seems somewhat calmer. Joy has come to sit beside me, and Sadhna has returned with Kennedy, and gone to talk with Anne. Diana’s in no position to do her exams. I hope they will let her go home.

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In the afternoon several of us went to Customs. Sadhna and Reese ran, and Frank and I followed in Kennedy’s car, giving the District Education Officer a ride, about half an hour later. We caught up with them a little way into Customs, and curiously found Leonard in the soda store opposite Memorial as well. We must have been quite a spectacle—a whole group of musungu kids in the middle of Customs, on market day, at the busiest hour!

Because Tuesday is market day, the market was far more crowded—and well-stocked—than usual. Sadhna and Reese started walking back after we bought some mahindi chouma (roasted maize) to munch on. Frank and I continued to shop, but we kept stopping because we ran into a lot of familiar faces. I saw Mourine from Senye (one of the few Senye students whom I can recognise!), James from Lisori, and another Senye boy who was at his father’s stall. Frank stopped to talk with several of his students from Nyangwayo as well. We spent a good forty minutes in that little square going around all the stalls, checking out the goods, and bargaining with stall-keepers. Frank was absolutely hilarious. He wanted to buy everything there was on sale, and ended up with 20 tomatoes, 11 large bananas, a bottle of honey, a mango, a pineapple, and six avocadoes, as well as debating over fish and bo, a leafy vegetable that resembles la jiao ye back home. He also tried to turn the negotiations into maths problems for the kids. For my own part, I bought a stack of sweet potatoes, three mangoes, four tomatoes, some cabbage and four pineapples (three of which were for Reese). So we brought the market a lot of business today.

It was getting rather late and so we drove back, picking up Leonard three-quarters of the way back to the WISER campus and Sadhna and Reese near the bend. We drove to Tagache with Reese sitting on Frank (of course), me on Sadhna, and Leonard behind the wheel. Not the most comfortable ride I’ve ever had, even by Kenyan standards; thankfully it was only a five-minute journey.

Bill

I was expecting a visit from the three Lisori kids today, so I didn’t make any other plans. Unfortunately, they never called, and the number they'd used yesterday was out of service. I’m a little disappointed but not upset at them—I don’t really know anything about the dynamics of that family, and for all I know they could be mistreated. I really hope they were studying for their exams tomorrow though.

Instead, I worked on my blog entries all day, ate a lot, and went to look at Joy’s phoenix mural in the computer lab. It is absolutely stunning. I’m actually jealous. I have not painted for so long, I don’t think I could do it anymore!

At a little after 3p.m., two of the WISER girls, Faith and Florence, came into the dining room where I was working. I spent the rest of the afternoon talking with them, showing them my photos, and teaching them to use e-mail and Facebook. Faith is from Lwanda. She asked me to greet them when I go to see them at the WISERBridge exams. I’m looking forward to going in the next three days—I want to see the kids again, and cheer them on. It’s the least I can do to let them know I’m still thinking of them. Also, it feels quite awesome to go to an exam when I’m not the one who needs to sit the papers. :D

I went down to the market at Tagache at five to get some vegetables and fruits. When I got back to WISER, Joy was just leaving with Bill and Caston, the two Shining Star kids she is close to, to “go see the German musungu girls” who were teaching at Shining Star. They'd just arrived a week ago and were staying with the director of the school. Of course, once I heard that I felt compelled to go as well—gotta check out the new blood and all that, you know. We walked down and turned off the main road by Shining Star to go to the compound where the girls were living. The director was building a new house for himself right by the school building, and as we walked past Bill excused himself and said he needed to speak quickly with his uncle. It turned out that his uncle is the director himself. I don’t know Bill very well, and I’ve become so accustomed to hearing about these extended family relationships that I wasn’t really surprised at the news, but Joy seemed shocked. The director came out to greet us and invited us to tour his unfinished house, quite a grand one too. He is currently still living at his mother’s compound, which is why Bill is with them too.

The walk to Bill’s compound was very scenic and cool, because the path was bordered on both sides by some of the tallest trees I’d seen here in Muhuru Bay. The compound itself was very comfortable too, with a large, open space surrounded by trees and several mud huts—I don’t know if they were well-off, but it was clearly a large family. Bill introduced us to his aunts but there were just too many children running around. The German girls were somewhat of a disappointment—they didn’t seem very eager to become acquainted, and only one of them came to talk to us. They are only here for one more week, and then they leave for safari in Nairobi and fly back from Mombasa. I was surprised that she had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her how they felt about being called musungu; it makes me think that they haven't been out in the community much by themselves.

It was only when we were back at WISER that Joy told me about Bill’s family. His mother left when he was younger, and his father has too many other wives and children to look after him. He lives with his uncle, who is also polygamous, and is treated like the Cinderella of the family—made to do the dishes, clean up, finish manual jobs. Joy said that he had so much work to do that often by the time he is done in the morning, school is half over, and it is a wonder that Bill manages to stay at the top of the class with the amount of school that he misses. I realised that this was why Joy had seemed so surprised to hear that Bill’s uncle is the director; it means that he knows how often Bill is absent from class.

Bill wants to be an accountant. His favourite subject is Mathematics, which is also his best friend Caston’s favourite subject, and the two of them help each other in classes. He is also very, very humble. He wouldn’t admit himself that he was the top student in Shining Star and told us to ask Castor instead. When Joy asked him how he managed to do so well in the exams, he said, “God helps me, I think.” But Bill won’t be able to go to secondary school if he has to pay anything for it. His uncle won’t give him the money, and he would have to find some measly-paying manual work around Muhuru Bay, and probably be chained here for the rest of his life. And those wonderful qualities of his—they would all go to waste.

There are only three WISERBridge boys’ scholarships, and it’s pretty certain that Derek from Winjo is going to get one of them. As much as she hopes that Bill can get one, we know that there are many more than three needy, intelligent boys in Muhuru Bay, all of whom could do so much with a full-ride scholarship. I completely agree that as a whole the girls here are far more in need of financial incentive than the boys are, but kids are kids—they deserve an education, regardless of what their genders are, regardless of how wealthy their family is. Why must so many conditions be met, so many things be considered, before a child is allowed to go to school?

A Long and Relatively Productive Day!

It is always like this: I leave for school nervous and apprehensive in the morning, and come out of class buzzing and high. It’s because of the kids; they do this to me. When they respond to my antics, it makes me so, so happy, and that gives me the energy to continue. Ironic, but the more I teach, the more I want to teach; yet as soon as I stop, I feel absolutely knackered, and I fear that I wouldn’t be able to go for another day. Just those moments when I’m in the classroom, talking to each student, when I feel like I can answer their questions—cheesy as it is—that is when I feel most alive.

And I think Lwanda is finally warming up to me. The kids will actually laugh at my jokes sometimes now, and they will ask me questions and talk to me informally. They really are great kids. All twelve of them showed up today, probably because of the promise of food I made yesterday. I brought them biscuits, and that seemed to cheer them up considerably. We did some more constructions, continued with “Adventure in Mombasa”, and talked about Health Education (STIs, especially HIV/AIDS) after lunch. A good day, I think.

I also met the director of Lwanda today during second period, when Class Eight was being taken for Social Studies. His name is Renard Okoko. He works in Nairobi, and is not often here in Muhuru Bay, so his cousin Lule takes care of the school. Mr. Okoko told me he paid for the construction of the buildings, including the ones which are currently being erected, from whatever money he gets. It was an intriguing conversation. Lwanda was apparently first started back in 1999, but went through many ups and downs because of finances. It is a private school, which means that it does not receive any funding whatsoever from the government. “The government thinks that their citizens are private,” Mr. Okoko said, with a smile of frustration, waving his hands. “But how can people become private citizens?” The students pay sh200 per term, but this all goes towards the books and teachers’ salaries. He wants to expand the school, build another structure for more classrooms, and start a library—he told me he knows the publishers in Nairobi who will donate books if they send an official letter. Once Lwanda is registered as a proper school, that is. But the publishers will only sponsor private schools, because the public ones get help from the government.

I don’t understand why the government completely refuses to fund private schools. I guess privatising education is still a debatable topic, but a little subsidising can go so far here. It would give the teachers much more incentive to teach properly, since now at the public schools they are paid the same amount no matter how badly their students do. That just seems like a downright stupid system. But as Mr. Owiti had said, making policies in the governmental offices and implementing them in Muhuru Bay are two entirely different matters.

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I’d promised to tutor Michael’s daughter after school in maths, so I waited for her at WISER after we got back (the trip back in the car took forever: first we agreed to give Mr. Romanus a ride, then we went to George’s house to pick up his wife and meet his children, then we went to Obolo to pick up Leonard and Sadhna and the soda bottles, and then there was a lot of greeting and talking and shuffling and whatnot and Leonard ended up driving with George randomly taking a piki and Diana walking. They got there before our car did). Tracey Kate showed up a little after 4:30, and I tried to show her how to solve for x for an hour or so. She is clearly an intelligent girl, and very hardworking. To walk all the way from her house to WISER and back! Thank goodness I felt awake enough today to help her as well after teaching all day, or I would have felt terrible for letting her down.

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George and Kennedy were the guests for tonight's dinner. Abigail, Frank and Elizabeth were in charge, although to be honest everyone ends up helping out anyways, so the original three are elected mainly to pick the menu and buy the ingredients.  The theme was “Breakfast for Dinner.” Matron made mendazi and Abigail made French toast, and there were also scrambled eggs and yogurt with fresh fruit and honey. Eneka and Elizabeth ingeniously made their own granola “cookies” in the frying pan, using some leftover packets of Amy’s instant oatmeal, Blue Band, honey and brown sugar. And of course there was guacamole, because none of our Thursday Night Dinners can be complete without guacamole.

We’d arranged with the drivers for them to come at seven, and Kennedy showed up only a few minutes past. George, though, did not come, and we waited for twenty minutes before Kennedy told us that George had said he would not be coming. Even though he’d confirmed with Sadhna at lunch that he would be here. So we dug in, because everyone was hungry; then at 7:40 Abigail received a text from George saying that he was on his way.

He arrived fifteen or so minutes later, in a very jovial mood. He wouldn’t answer when asked where he had been, kept on suggesting that we hold a farewell “bash” under the tree in Tagache, and said he wanted to dance together. It was only after he and Kennedy had gone that Sadhna burst out laughing and I realised that he’d been totally drunk all the while. And then everything made much more sense. George had been calling out to the teachers seated around the tree at Lwanda as we pulled out this afternoon, and he’d explained to me that he had been joking about Mr. Okoko owing him a drink now that he was back in Muhuru Bay. The director had apparently replied that he was a member of the Church, which meant that he wasn't allowed to drink or to buy other people drinks. Which confuses me. How can the people here be so pious, and yet comfortably ignore fundamental Christian tenets, like abstinence and monogamy?

I’m rather glad I hadn’t known when George was still here. Now that I think back on it, it could have turned out so much worse than it did—at least he was sane enough not to start dancing!

Strangely Returning Home

I went back to see my Lisori kids today. I took a piki, because George went to Migori and Kennedy was out waiting for the other WISERBridge people, and I wanted to leave at 9:30a.m. Samson was the driver who took me, and we went by the back way through the fields. When I arrived, the gates were pulled close and there was nobody in sight except a small girl, not in school uniform. But I spotted a figure near the building, thanked Samson and weaved my way into the campus.

It all seemed so familiar, so strangely habitual for me to walk in the yard. A few steps in, I heard a voice call: “Lisa!” It was Eunice Akoth. I called back, and gave her her photograph. Cheryl Faith came out as well, and we walked together to the Class 5 classroom where the others were.

They were almost all there—seventeen of them, out of twenty. I was so happy, and they seemed very excited to see me as well. I gave them my phone numbers and email address, and gave them another pep talk about their KCPE. I told them to study hard, visit me in WISER, and go to Margaret for more books to read. And I warned them again that if they didn’t do well in the exams, I would hear from Margaret.

They were there for the WISERBridge Kiswahili lesson, so I left them to Teacher Joan whilst I waited for Teacher Owiti to come. I needed to get a signature for Sadhna, to obtain permission for the research she’d already conducted. We talked for a while about education and culture. I called Samson again at about 10:45, and he drove me back to WISER.

I went to Lwanda in the afternoon, after preparing extensively (and rather nervously) for a second lesson on The Reproductive System. For an hour I attempted to talk about fetal development and they looked asleep until it came to the time for questions. I reiterate my thought from last week: teaching Sex Ed to a bunch of adolescents is an experience every person should try. To put it in perspective, I came back and read an article entitled “Everything you need to know about sex during pregnancy”—I kid you not. Then I taught Impromptu English, attempting to make them come up with “Not only…but also…” sentences till Kennedy showed up at 4p.m. I was quite amazed that he had managed to drive his vehicle, a hefty SUV-type, all the way to Lwanda through that gulley. He told me that he used to go this route when he was a matatu driver. I was so, so glad that we were still able to carry on a conversation without awkwardness; I don’t know how the others talk to the drivers now, having gone through what they did. Maybe they’re just used to it, maybe they have no problem reconciling the Friday-night face with the daylight one, but I can’t do it. I need to keep my relationships pure.