Yellow House

June 10, 2007
Who steals my days and tucks them into the crevices of my brain as mere memories? I’m constantly in shock, physical shock at the date.

I am in Kassarani tonight. I am staying at the Sports View Hotel and as I had John drop me off before taking my friends home across the field I wondered why I had decided to stay here and not at Sarah and Tanya’s! CDEP (Children with Disabilities Empowerment Project) is going into its 4th year so there is a week long planning meeting with all the primary and secondary districts. I was invited to join in proceedings and did so today though I will leave tomorrow for Mwingi.
Mike Terry the other VSO speechie in Kenya is coming with me and we are getting a ride from a VSO driver in a car. Relative luxury! We’ll be back Wednesday afternoon though.

This is a complete aside- There is a woman .. Wambui.. that works for VSO and she is my hero. She has been working with VSO and the ministries of this and that for years and years and years. I have seen her name on old school meeting reports.. anyway she is here, and I love her. She can explain everything. Why thing are done the way they are, which things are cultural, which are because of the government, which are inexcusable.. it’s fantastic. I now know that the Ministry of Education condones sitting stipends for conferences because they know they pay teachers so poorly and its one way to infuse their salary and get them to additional trainings! Anyway today after a presentation Wambui called this women out about all sorts of issues she had in a way I have previously not seen before. Usually I find at workshops people say lots of nice meaningless things but Wambui cut the crap and was all business. She wants to run the best project possible, and I think she is amazing. I am so glad to be a part of this work when I meet her. All the districts are here actually so it is nice to see the people you are working with come together in one room.

Anyway. This weekend. In a weird moment I decided to come to Nairobi a day early, and because I am so sick of Easy Coach taking 9 hours I thought I would come on a shuttle (just a newer mildly fancier version of a matatu). It was fine. The waiting 75 minutes for it to fill was making me anxious because I didn’t want to arrive in Nairobi in the dark, but other than that I think it is much more convenient than the stupid bus which moves at the pace of a one legged grandmother. One of the other participants at this workshop was complaining about the journey. He said “I am so exhausted after I have spent all those hours dancing around in the back of the bus.” It’s a bit like that. But I got here.

Sunday I went to Village Market the mzungu enclave for United Nations and American Embassy families. It was all that you would expect.

So here I am. Tonight. Crossed legged on bed in pyjamas. Was looking for the Nairobi news of the bombing today but all I can get on my TV in the room is the Al Jazeer network and they don’t have news for another hour. I was actually downtown today for dinner. Fede is leaving Kenya tonight which is sad as he was always enjoyable company. Tanya, Sarah, Fede, Mike and I met for Chinese and Tanya made the farewell appropriately teary and dramatic. I am such a hard hearted Harriet. It makes me think I need to excavate my emotional core.

So… this is my update. About as exciting as a plate of ugali. Sorry. Right now I work, sleep and when I am staying with Sarah and Tanya I giggle to myself in the kitchen (per them!). That’s all. B xx

June 4, 2007 - How on earth can it be June already?

Whenever I read anything by Mem Fox I want to change my life. I quite literally find my mind churning about everything I have ever read, or written. I ponder my teaching strategies and the way I am training adults and I want to overhaul the whole lot. Do the people I am working with know that I think what I do is important? They need to know and should know by the way I act says Mem Fox (more or less!).

I am in the midst of Ishmael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone” and while I like his writing and I think the book pretty much reads itself, it’s depressing. It is really, really depressing. I fell asleep mid chapter in Mumias and had a yakky dream about it and I was none too pleased. In case you haven’t caught the Starbucks hype about this book it is written by an ex-boy soldier in Sierra Leone.

Last night I was exhausted. I wanted to go to bed, I wanted to read, but the thought of that book actually made report writing seem like a pleasure. So I left Beah in the spare room and snuggled down with Mem’s “Radical Reflections. Passionate opinions on teaching, learning and living.” It’s been a long time since I read Mem’s adult stuff, but it’s a treat. She just gets so excited about what she does and loves teaching children to read so much that I can’t but help think I should be doing more. I am bored with the district trainings, and no doubt this is affecting my delivery to teachers, which in turn affects their learning and the way they might approach their class the following week. I think it might be time to shake things up a bit. Ha!

The participatory approach we use isn’t always well received, and I think part of the reason is because we aren’t having fun with it. It’s an approach designed to engage learners and get discussion going. Unfortunately the formality that it is being presented with is stifling. I am just so sick of presenting the same information in the same way, I am hardly inspiring the other facilitators to consider their methods or these teachers to provide language rich environments in fun and novel ways. So, I am going to change some of the sessions up because variety is the spice of life. Also the last session is consistently cut short because of the closing remarks and certificate presentations. I’m going to revise the way we do day 3. I’m going to make it fun and energetic even if I have to fake it. I’m in Kakamega and Vihiga this week. I’ll let you know how it goes.