More Jambo Jipya
Trip Start
Jun 25, 2006
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25
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Trip End
Dec 15, 2006
Mtwapa, Mombasa, Kenya
Sunday, September 10, 2006
So much has happened in the last month, in particular from a Jambo Jipya point of view I guess. I've gone from being completely shell shocked on day one to seasoned pro already, taking the newbies under my wing as if I'd been there years
Ahmed
. Christine even jokingly introduced me to the new volunteers last Monday as 'The Headmistress'. Kate (who incidentally is Samantha Mumba's cousin!) finished up the Friday before last and Sophie and Richard, two 19 year olds from England took up the reigns. I was really looking forward to them starting as for some reason I thought they were real teachers but God love them, there were as terrified and shocked as I was when they were marched into the classroom and introduced as the new teachers. And even more so when after the kids had sang them a few welcome songs, the Kinergarten teacher Eithne told the children that the new teachers would now teach them a song. Straight in at the deep end eh!! They are doing well in fairness to them - probably better than I did in my first few days. I've come to realise over the weeks though that its the time spent interacting with the kids and not so much the lesson content so I'll hopefully have as much fun and frolics possible with them in this my last week of teaching. Friday is going to be a tough one though. Apart from that, Juma's Malaria has gone and Masika is on the mend too. The 3 boys, Chengo, Michael and James are back too - I thought they may have been mitching last week but in fact when I inquired was told that their familes were probably out of food again as the boys often have to take a few days off to go fishing for them... When the new teachers started, they took Standard 2 and 3 so I'm now left with Standard 1, still a class of 20+ of kids with little english and basic maths but there's another 2 teachers tomorrow so hopefully we can break it down into smaller groups. 5 teachers and only 2 classrooms - it's going to be interesting... Impossible to keep their attention outside of the classroom!! I was giving a lesson out in the yard last week and popped inside for a second to get some paper and when I came back Chengo had climbed onto the roof and robbed a baby bird from its nest
Bead Making
. In between my screaming at him to put it back and 20 kids clambouring over both of us to get a look/stoke of it the poor birdie croaked it. Traumatised I was! Just as well we had a short week! Just had a long weekend as Christine wanted to close the school to give the kids, and herself and Eithne, a break before school officially starts back tomorrow - though I know rightly she will have pulled a 72 hour shift at the hospital from Friday in order to fund another week of running the school.Fair play to Paddy O'Shea for undertaking to set up a website for Jambo Jipya. In fact thanks to all of you who offered help. I'm still working with Christine as to what should go up on it. She gave me copies of some of the letters she had sent off looking for funding that I could maybe use. Now I know that africans just say it like it is at the best of times but these letters were riddled with terms like 'b@stard children', 'sex-workers' and other terms that wouldn't be considered too PC in the western world. Needless to say the funding is still outstanding. I'm currently so in the process of rewriting it for the website and some of her templates too. Hopefully that'll help raise the profile and ultimately get some much needed funds in to Jambo Jipya too. Old habits die hard though ans its just typical that I would end up back behind a computer at some stage....
