Week 2: Maina Wanjigi Secondary School

It’s been a great week. Long, but great. We taught in our first school called Maina Wanjigi Secondary school just outside of Mathari slum in Nairobi. We’ve rented a Matatu (minibus) with a driver named Anton. Pretty much he’s the best driver I’ve seen. Yesterday it rained and since the road of Nairobi are full of potholes to begin with and there is no drainage system, Anton had to avoid hitting the holes for fear of the car flipping, or at least the tire getting stuck in one of the holes. He had to do this driving standard. I was sitting at the very front of the bus and at one point because the holes were so big, it seemed that the bus was driving into the ground. Hopefully this makes sense…in any case it was quite fun. This was on the way to the school.

On the way home, it’s Jam. Jam being the obvious equivalent to Rush Hour. Jam literally is a jam. At one point the other day, somehow our Matatu was perpendicular to the flow of traffic. We were all stopped and looking on either side of our Mat, all you could see was cars, trucks, etc. We were surrounded by cars, so close that I could reach out through my window and into the window of the car next to me. I’ll try to show a picture. (Above there is a picture of the truck getting past traffic by driving on the sidewalk and the road. There is a lso a picture of the jam and of nat and I in the bus on the wy ho me froma school)

Also in this Jam, Anton, decided that the sidewalk was a good spot to drive to get past the line up of cars ahead of us. I have no idea how he even got back into the line of cars that were bumper to bumper, but apparently this was not his first time.

To give you an example of what Nairobi is like, I’ll try to explain a few things about our drive over to the school. We start off in a nice part of town: big palm trees, fairly good roads, beautiful houses enclosed in big fences (…some using the Nicaragua style of broken glass along the top of the fence to keep out intruders), at one point we pass the president’s compound, a stretch of big white fence that stretches on for a kilometre or so. We can’t even see his house, because it must be far back from the fence and surrounded by trees. Police patrol the perimeter of the compound. As we get closer to the school the scenery changes: the house get smaller and become more frequent and the potholes increase. The number of people around and walking on the road is greater as well. As the roads become unpaved we see tall apartment buildings grey and pale brown in colour, seemingly half finished as some of the rebar sticks out. On these buildings though, beautifully vibrant laundry is hung to dry. (Kenyans are mad about looking good—shirts are always ironed and sparklingly. I feel like a grub compared to my friends here considering ironing is not my forte…) Along the streets as we drive by there are people selling tomatoes, shoes (yesterday I saw a man polishing white LaCoste shoes.. I wonder if these are as expensive as the ridiculous amounts asked in North America), grand wooden bed frams, little plastic trinkets, corn heated on the BBQ, etc. On one corner we pass someone selling chickens….we haven’t decided yet if they are alive or dead. There are about 20 or so lying on the sidewalk in a heap. They seem to be able to move their heads a little, but the rest of their body seems to be paralyzed.... the people that we pass are usually already looking at the bus full of mazungoos (white people) and as soon as you smile at them, they smile back without question. This is especially true for the little kids. They stare at you first with curiousity and then break out into a big smile.

Surronding the school there are small homes, dirt roads, vendors and garbage in the ditches. Just inside the school compound, the scenery changes as there is probably a number of acres of green grass, a garden and school buildings. Just behind the school there seems to be a nice subdivision of houses. I was told that they are government subsidized homes. To be honest I didn’t think that there were subsidized houses especially looking that nice. My own ignorance I suppose.

In our class, there are 21 students: mostly boys. There are so receptive to what we are teaching and they have the most interesting questions. We split up the group into girls and guys to discuss issues pertaining to each gender. We then came together yesterday and had them each have a spokesperson talk to the opposite sex. It was great. Olo, a tall, form 3 (grade 11) guy spoke on behalf of the guys. This guy has the deepest, rich voice I have ever heard. He talked of the need for girls to realize that guys are not made of money and a relationship should not be based on it. Mary, spoke of how there needs to be equality between the genders—a topic hard and intimidating to bring up in a class perdominanted by males. It was received well. It’s also been amazing to tell the students, that we have now given them the tools to teach others and that they now have the power to change their communities and countries becaseu they have education..especially about topics such as HIV/AIDS, responsible sexuality,etc. Making them feel that they are power is incredible. As we tell them this, their faces light up. There is great hope here.

I think that I’ll end this here as I have to go. We’re teaching our last lesson to these students today about Abuse. It’s a tough subject and often I feel inadequate to teach it. There are situations that I will never understand and due to this, I sometimes question how I can even teach about it. We’ll see.

Tomorrow we’re going on safari…….I shall have to fetch my tilly hat.

em