Update Letter #4

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!
Hope yours was great. We had a good time, and apart from missing family a bit, we are doing well.

Our latest newsletter can be found here.
As usual, please leave a comment or send us a message. We'd love to hear from you!

Good news and questions for my teacher friends

(photo: a kindergartener showing how he can add)

Today I am “happy as a king” as my kids would say, because I found out officially that I will be teaching Class 8 English next term. This means I will get to continue with my current English students as they move up from Class 7 to Class 8. Although I have not yet looked over the curriculum, I know it is a pretty similar style to what I have been teaching this term, and I think being with the same students will really be an advantage to them and to me. I have just finally been getting to know them, and I have developed a number of exercises and activities based around their trouble areas.

I won’t be teaching maths (and I won’t miss it!) since I will be busy with helping set up the library and teaching basic computer skills to the teachers! The computer class wasn’t planned before we came here, but upon arriving we learned that there is a significant desire for adults in the community to learn computers. The teachers are a great group to start with, since they have good English language skills (i.e., can understand our teaching) and they have legitimate reasons to need to use computers (we are hopefully getting some for the new building and will put the library tracking system on them). Of course, if the teachers are computer literate they are the perfect people to in turn teach the rest of the community. We have really seen God’s hand in the development of this project and leading me (Lesley) to take it on as a significant activity while we are here.

Since I now know which class I will be teaching next term, I have some questions for all my teacher friends out there. As much as I have learned in the last few months, I feel like I have many questions and need advice! So, please respond if you have any ideas or suggestions:

-How do you handle large classes with a huge range of abilities? Classroom control isn’t as much the issue as the fact that students aren’t used to breaking out in groups. Any ideas how to successfully introduce group work? I know that the current wisdom says to use heterogeneous groups that help each other – how do you set those up? And does anyone actually use homogeneous ability groups so that you can give them separate assignments and assistance?

-Do you have any ideas for warm-up activities to start the class? I seem to get significantly better participation if I start with something fun and non-threatening that I can transition into a lesson. For instance, I ask them what they did over the weekend (they need to practice oral skills more), then I write what they did on the board and transition into a lesson on past-tense verbs. Any other ideas?

-In a similar vein, do you have any ideas for songs, poems, and games that help encourage English learning? Not things ABOUT English, but things IN English that are easy to learn. I’ve tried a few songs; so far the most popular was “make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold.” I created a lesson on conjunctions (“but,” “and”) and we held a debate on new friends vs. old friends. Anything that encourages oral skills and writing is good.

-Do you know any good resources on teaching writing (especially for English as a second language)? The curriculum here teaches grammar and gives the student writing prompts, but doesn’t actually do anything to TEACH writing. So, do you know of any books, websites, etc. that I could explore for some advice? The kids are expected mostly to do creative writing/story telling at this stage, not really analysis or anything.

-I like the idea of doing some things on a daily and weekly basis, such as word of the day or a daily journal entry, and perhaps a word puzzle/riddle of the week, that type of thing. Have any of you done things like this? Have any suggestions/advice?

Ok, those are my specific questions, but if you have any other suggestions or advice I’m all ears! Thanks so much!

(photo: Chris with this year's graduating class)

A Day in Mombasa

Sorry for lack of posting ... here is one with some more to follow shortly.

From Nov 15th:

Last week was the KCPE exam (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) – the exam that all the Class Eights take to determine if they pass out of primary school and qualify for secondary school. We had just a little involvement with this class, so we wished them luck but otherwise didn’t have anything to do with the exam. Because the exam is a major event and our school was used as a testing center, Lesley didn’t teach M-Th, so we took the opportunity to go into Mombasa for some errands. On our to-do list was going to the immigration office, public library, grocery store, and maybe visit a friend.

A wise man once said you should only try to accomplish one thing a day in Mombasa, and we probably should have heeded this advice, although we did manage to have fun. After sitting through ridiculous traffic in the matatu, we arrived downtown. We were thrilled that our map of Mombasa (conventiently purchased in the US, since they NEVER use maps here) actually had the location of the immigration office shown. So, we walked about 6 blocks and arrived at … a bank. We asked the bank watchmen where the immigration office was … after asking around, they pointed down a long road and said, when you reach a big turnabout, go to the right. Ok, so we headed down the road … after more than a mile, we finally reached a turnabout – a turnabout with two roads to the right! One of them looked like government offices, so we walked through there, and asked for directions again – they said to take the other road, of course. We headed through a beautiful park and up the other road, and after a few blocks found a big building with the office. When we arrived, they told us it was lunch time and to come back in an hour!

Picture: park near government offices - these trees look like they have roots growing from the branches (don't know if they really do or not)

As we had walked the last few blocks we noticed signs for Fort Jesus, a major historical site in Mombasa. So I asked a man standing near the office about how to get there – he said he would walk us there on his way to lunch. As we walked, we discovered he worked for the immigration department, and he was very friendly and helpful. We got to Fort Jesus and took about two hours to be tourists, which was really fun. We got a guided tour, bought some presents at local shops, and just generally relaxed (and thankfully, due to having our volunteer paperwork with us because of our immigration errand, got a drastically reduced price at the entrance!).

Picture: inside the fort

Fort Jesus was a fort founded by the Portugese in the 1500’s, and has since been controlled by them, the Arabs in Oman, the sultan of Zanzibar, the British, and Kenyans. The history was pretty interesting – whoever controlled Fort Jesus basically controlled Mombasa and the coastal region. The views were beautiful, too.

Picture: One of the famous carved doors of Mombasa

Picture: Chris, on the lookout for pirates, or maybe cute girls ;-)

After being tourists we went back to immigration and managed to take care of our visas without trouble (or bribery), thanks to our new friend. Then, realizing it was getting late, we skipped going to Nyali (north of the city), and took a matatu to a Nakumatt we hadn’t been to before but was theoretically closer. We stocked up on groceries and finally bought a FAN! Since that day I think we have slept better than ever before (it is about 85-90* F, 80% humidity). We grabbed dinner and eventually we got a ride back to the bus and headed home, long after dark. It was a pretty typical excursion to Mombasa – random, long, exhausting, and fun!

Successful Projects!

I forgot to share that when a few trees had to be “felled” for the new road, the wood was quickly claimed for firewood… a few “mamas” (in the Swahili sense of mothers, not the slang from MTV or anything) came wielding their machetes much better than I hacked away with one when the men gave me a turn. However, I believe most of the firewood was collected by the men for Ribe Youth Development Association (RYDA), because by “youth” they mean up to 30, or 35 even… good for them, right? But the great thing is many Mribe (Ribe people) look younger than they actually are too!

When I asked where they were taking the wood, they told me they would sell it and the money would go back into RYDA to continue to benefit the community.

The main reason I wanted to share this is that they used the handcart we made! The loose dirt on the freshly grated road still made it a struggle, so once I snapped this photo, I joined in pushing it up the incline.

Update Letter #3

Hello, here is our latest update letter.

Also, we have had some people ask questions, but we're always curious what you want to know about Kenya or what we are doing here - so ask away!

The new road in Ribe

There has been quite a lot of work done in Ribe to turn a footpath from the current Methodist Church to the site of the first Methodist Church in all of Kenya into a dirt road wide enough for two cars to pass. The site of the first church is now mostly just the foundation, but also has the graves of the original missionaries. Then, the road continues on a little bit down to the river, and may connect up to another road for a more direct route to Mombasa.

Tito has a European friend who has lived here for about 20 years and has a construction company near Mombasa. He has helped the project by providing a bulldozer and a huge grader at various points to clear the road and even create some degree of embankments and ditches so the road does not get washed out so quickly.

I was not expecting to see the type of machine that this grader is... it was a lot bigger than I expected, with tires that are about 5 feet in diameter. In addition to dragging the earth around and leveling the road, they used it to push over a couple trees rather than having the men I was helping cut them down with their machetes (see the photos). If you recall Lucky, the chameleon we had for a couple days, that machine is what I saved him from! Once, after the grader passed by me, I hopped out into the forming road to move some stones as we were doing and then looked up to see if the grader was coming back yet, and I saw something small moving across the dirt about 10 meters away. When I went to look, I saw Lucky and the grader driving back towards us. The driver saw me looking at something (from a safe distance to the side of the approaching grader) and he slowed down just enough that the chameleon barely got out of the tire’s path – it would have definitely been crushed under there! I am not sure how it survived being tumbled through the brush and dirt in the first place, but I thought he was lucky I saw him.

Here are a couple pictures of the transformation of the new road:
Here is the site of the first church and the cemetery:
Beyond there, the road weaves through a small forest that I think could be turned into a nature preserve. Here are a couple of the sights: