Home Again, Kasigau Schools, & How You Can Help

HOME AGAIN

Now we have been home in Bellingham for a week and are over jet lag and slowly re-entering our lives and work here. I'm still dreaming of Kenya every night and wake up thinking of the life and people there. There is certainly something about the simple life style of Kasigau that agrees with me. I was telling my mother last night that never once did I miss the TV or any of the usual food, pasttimes, or conveniences. It's hot there so cool showers and open air buildings are just fine. Eating pretty much the same food every day was also just fine. Maybe the visual and social aspects of life in Kasigau are so rich that it is easy to settle in and just coast from day to day. And there is a deep connection to the land and the place. The colorful flowers and unfamiliar variety of plants and trees, the ever present mountain making its own weather in the background, and just knowing that there are such wonderful animals so close out in the bush (of which a small herd of elephants charged Ken & the students, resulting in the demise of our little car - I'll let him tell that story).

KASIGAU PRIMARY SCHOOLS

I wanted to write a bit more about the schools where we worked, because that was the main purpose of the trip. Each of the five villages has a primary school that includes grades 1-8, and a preschool with two classes on each campus. There is one class and one teacher at each grade level, no matter how many students are enrolled. The largest class we saw was a class 1 with 61 students!

Students are required to wear uniforms, and each school has their own colors. There is a complex system of handing down uniforms within and between families, because they constitute an additional expense. As a result, uniforms are in various states of repair/disrepair depending on how many older siblings a student has, and sometimes girls can be seen wearing shorts instead of the usual skirts/jumpers. And sometimes students are attending schools in Kasigau without uniforms, although this is technically not allowed.

There is a critical shortage of teachers in Kenya in the government supported primary schools, and seldom was the day we were at a school when all teachers were present. Headmasters (principals) are also teachers full time, and there is no system of substitute teachers in Kasigau. When teachers are absent, other teachers cover the class for short periods, but mostly the students sit in the classroom and copy work off the board, read from texts that they share two or three to a book, and help one another. Attendance is good even when teachers are absent because schools always provide a corn porridge lunch.

There are a number of new school buildings in Kasigau of late, including libraries, but still a shortage of basic school supplies, text books, and teaching aids. Our interns made everything they used to teach, and the boys in the photo here are sharpening pencils with double-edged razor blades. There is electricity in three of the five towns, but schools are being wired classroom by classroom starting with upper primary grades. In the vast majority of classrooms, teaching and learning is accomplished without benefit of electricity, and dominated by teacher questions and choral response. The students who have the answers lead the response and it is often difficult to tell who is not getting the content being covered. All instruction except Swahili language is in English, so everyone is teaching and learning in their third language. There are no special education services, and little capacity for individualized attention or remediation if students are struggling. In a very few days, our 6 interns taught new skills to those students at each grade level who were performing lowest in math, reading & writing English, and showed impressive gains in end of term exam scores. Most students with more significant cognitive delays or hearing/vision loss stop going to school, although we did meet teachers who were studying special education topics, mainly emotional disturbance (which struck us as odd since we saw very few instances of even mild misbehavior).

In Kasigau there are many barriers to quality education, but attendance is valued by parents and teachers alike. Schools seem to be the central location for community initiatives related to health, sports, arts, and conservation, as well as academics. One current project sponored by donors in Kasigau schools is to provide porridge and shoes for all the preschoolers so they can begin school with full tummies and without contacting the many parasites that live in the ground.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Our host Abs (right in the photo below) has a goal that students from each village in Kasigau will go forward into secondary school, and on to university. He works tirelessly with coordinators in each school to manage a number of separate projects, including the shoes and porridge, incentives for high scores on term exams, sports events, and high school sponsorships. If you have read this far on the page you won't be surprised to find that I'm ending with an appeal for financial support. Anyone willing to contribute can tell me where you would like your donation to go, and I'll make sure it gets there. Even a one time donation of $5 will provide pencils and sharpeners for the early primary students, or pens for teachers, or incentives for IMPROVEMENT in exam scores (as opposed to highest scores). Larger amounts will be combined to support our three young men to continue at university to become doctors & engineers, or to support new secondary school students, or to provide additional training for teachers, or to wire classrooms for electricity, or sponsor a system of substitute teachers. The need is great and the opportunity equally great for small amounts of funds to go a very long way toward changing lives and building a more sustainable educational system in Kasigau.

Thanks from Kris & Ken, shown here en route to supervising interns in Kasigau.

LEAVING KASIGAU

We left Kasigau on 31 July with many people giving us gifts and "a push" (seeing us off), after a couple days of good-byes all around. It is difficult to leave knowing it will be a long time before we return to see the new babies now on the way, young children growing up and starting school, school children finishing primary school, secondary students graduating, and our adult friends moving forward with their lives. The interns we took to Kasigau have become well-know and well-loved throughout the villages, and known as the teachers who have improved performance for many children in primary schools. In the photo here are Amy, Madeline, Chanda, and Molly on our last evening in Bungule, at Stanley the community librarian's house for tea.

Our little Rav 4 had become well-known as the "Bungule ambulance" because there are still very few cars on the roads in Kasigau and we always had a full load of passengers who were mostly on their way to the health clinic in Rukanga, 8 km away. We met a lot of people and made some good friends in the car, from newborn babies to grandparents. This was very welcome for me because I was reluctant to leave off walking everywhere for fear of missing out on the social aspects of going around Kasigau on foot and greeting everyone. Kenyan driving is on the left side of the road, which meant I only drove on the Kasigau roads where there was no traffic beyond cattle & cattle carts & bicycles.

LAMU
After leaving Kasigau we spent a week in Lamu on the north coast of Kenya, along the Indian Ocean. It is a beautiful seafaring town of about 18,000 people and 4,000 donkeys. We only saw two motorized vehicles - one tractor and a three wheeled ambulance. The seafood is fantastic and the population is 90% Muslim, so we are used to hearing the call to prayer many times each day. We were connected in a roundabout way (a friend from Nairobi we met in Kasigau called a friend of his in Mombasa who called a connection in Nairobi who called a former employee in Lamu) with Omari, who has been our companion and guide for the days in Lamu.

He found us a wonderful place to stay in an old Swahili multi-storied house called Wildebeast. We have a two-level apartment with a rooftop sleeping room and terrace. The place is also an art gallery with many interesting displays throughout the apartments and in the gallery itself.

The big news while while we were in Lamu was the referendum on August 4th for the proposed new constitution. There was a hard fought campaign on both sides, and the YES vote took it more than two to one. We were glad because everyone we knew in Lamu and in Kasigau was in favor of the new constitution. Ken and I watched the results come in with other Lamu political types in a rooftop bar with a big screen TV and many celebratory Tusker beers.


Omari also arranged a dhow boat tour with his cousin and we visited the village on a neighboring island where coral bricks are cut from the earth, one by one with hand tools. Coral in one form or another is used in construction of all buildings in Lamu, along with wood from mangrove trees and mortar to hold it all together. All I could think was that in the Pacific Northwest, these buildings would melt from the rain.

Lamu was a wonderful place to close out our trip to East Africa. We were fortunate to have met so many good people, updated friendships, seen a variety of animals and geography, and had student interns who were enthusiastic, resilient, and good travellers. I'll post more specifics about the Kasigau schools when I get home and have a more reliable connection.