Interns in Kasigau Weeks 6 & 7

I am trying a new format this week for combining photos and text, in the hopes that it will be more efficient for posting. The photos seem to take forever to post and the formatting has been making me frustrated and cranky. I did manage today to add a few photos to the Weeks 4 & 5 page. The font and size of type seem to change in random fashion and I'm lost on editing it!

It has been cool in Kasigau this past week, with clouds rolling in over the mountain in the evening and burning off the next morning. We have been waking to cloud cover and a nice breeze, making the walk to school in Bungule cooler, and delaying major sweating until later in the day.

The nights are cool and breezy, also, making it easier to sleep and sometimes even requiring heavier covers than sheets. The locals are complaining of the cold, and at night wearing jackets and caps to stay warm. There is now a tent set up at the banda, to protect the askaris from the night weather.

Two weeks ago we had the brilliant idea to stay in Voi overnight on Friday instead of making the market shopping trip in one long day on Saturday. We left Kasigau Friday after school with Liesl, Sara, and Tara and met Katy, Mark, and the girls, who took a matatu earlier in the day.

We stayed at a very relaxing hotel called Galaxy on the road between Voi and Tsavo East, enjoying the bar, restaurant, and swimming pool for many hours on Friday afternoon and evening. Here you see Ken and the Hicks family poolside; Katy is talking on the phone to our friend Keith.

We also met some very nice college guys from Jomo Kenyatta University in Voi who had come to swim for a birthday celebration. It was nice for all of us to get away for the evening, talk politics and share a meal/drinks with Kenyans, and be home earlier than usual from our weekly shopping trip.

Galaxy is out of town with a nice view over the surrounding area near Tsavo East National Park, and has some spectacular birds. There are very few other guests staying the night, which makes for a very calm and relaxing break from school schedules.

We returned the next week-end with Jenny, Macaela, Molly, & Jake earlier in the day with Sara and Tara joining us later. (Katy and family with Liesl were on a week-end jaunt to Taita Hills.)

There were men and women Kenyan university students swimming this weekend, and you can tell from the photos that it was a very fun afternoon for everyone. We love our homes in Kasigau, but it is nice to experience power, signal, french fries, and cold drinks now and again.

1. Sara, Tara, Ken and I visited the male students from Jomo Kenyatta University and had a tour of the campus, their room, and the student center. They have a fourth roommate whose real name seemed to escape them because they call him Obama...everyone here seems to love Obama and it makes us happy to be Americans.

I forgot to mention last week (or was too sick of writing to post) that Ken and Mark took a drive out into the bush to Galla Camp, the tent camp where I stayed when I first came to Kenya in 2002. They took some snacks to a young man who is assisting on a wildlife feature movie being shot at the site.

Ken and I visited the family compound of Gibson Mwanjala, one of our askaris, enjoyed tea and amazingly good conversation considering we don’t really speak each other’s languages. This is a family that smiles all the time, just a kick to be around.

The interns are in the second and final week of teaching at their third and final placement, the school in Bungule village. This group of interns has been up with the sun and on the trail to school shortly after 7 every morning. Tara worked in the preschool last week and is with the very large group of primary school students referred for remedial work this week.

Since we are now living in the same village (Bungule) where school placements are, we have been walking a lot more, which I like and has always been part of the Kasigau experience for me. It is about a 30 minute walk from the banda where we stay to the school at a leisurely pace, pleasant in the morning and bordering on brutal on the hottest afternoons. It seems every one of us has been sunburned, heat stroked, or both.

My most successful strategy for staying cool enough is to wrap a wet leso around myself for mobile air conditioning as I walk in the sun, stopping at every water source to renew the wetness.

The interns are all great teachers, as we can tell from nightly planning sessions here at the banda, reports of Keenan’s planning from Jora banda, feedback from students and teachers at the schools, and from the lessons we see in action when we go to observe. It is also nice for us to see them in the community having lunch, watching soccer practice, and tutoring.

Next week we will be offering inservice training sessions to each of the five schools, to share the sorts of teaching materials and methods that the Katy and the other interns have been using. Katy is going back to Rukanga a few times a week to work on a sight word project with one of the teachers there.

Here you see Keenan's classroom in the church adjacent to the school. Separation of church and state is a very foreign concept here in Kenya where one of the examinable subjects is Christian Religious Education (CRE). Keenan and his students was sharing his first space at the community library with bats, and bat guano, not conducive to teaching and learning. Keenan is still living in Jora, so walks earlier, farther, and later than the rest of us, and still manages to just nail his lessons.

Each school has its own character, evidenced from the children to the teachers to the village itself. The Bungule school is somewhat less formal than the other villages, with jokes and laughter at morning assembly. It is obvious from Sara's face the joy she takes in teaching, and the attentive students attest to her effectiveness in solving instructional problems.

The schedule for teaching also seems somewhat casual, and students can be quite rambunctious. Liesl's quiet command of content serves her well with upper level students, who may enter in a rowdy fashion, but soon quiet and turn their attention to learning.

The big local news in Bungule is the giant caterpillar back hoe shovel that is allegedly repairing and widening the road. So far it has dug massive ditches of dirt, rock, bushes, and trees from the sides of the road, from the top of the hill right into the center of the village and beyond. The whole mess, rocks and bushes included, is then “smoothed” over the road to cover the rocks the locals say have been growing up out of the soil. (We think maybe the rains and wind have eroded the dirt, but are keeping mum on the subject of rock growth.) The industrious locals are out in force claiming firewood in town and rocks for construction from the top of the hill. (I have no clue why the font for this picture is so large; maybe to match the tractor?)

Until recently we driven very slowly down the hill into Bungule village, steering around as many rocks and holes as possible and scraping over the remainder. For the last few days, the road through town has been blocked by the shovel, and we had have to drive through the school yard to get out of town.

The car would have been a distraction at school, except all the students and most of their teachers are out on the road watching the shovel. The road up the hill now consists of deep, soft sand and dirt with rocks and bushes scattered throughout, impossible to miss with the car.

“Welcome to Kasigau” where water and roads are the foundation of everything else from commerce to health care to communication and transportation. The photo to the right is a large water tank on the bed of an even larger truck, having come to Bungule for water from the most reliable source around the mountain.

This week Ken and I took a hike up to the Bungule Banda where I stayed with Becky in 2006, and beyond to the spring that provides water to Bungule village. We had a great day with a combination of hot and sweaty exertion and reminiscing about past times here in Kenya and at home.

The village banda is in disrepair, which is difficult to see and seems a waste because (as you can see from the photo) when Becky and I were here it was the most beautiful place in all of Kasigau, with an awe inspiring view.

We also took a drive out an unfamiliar road into the bush and got as thoroughly lost as is possible when there is a huge mountain to orient to. Whenever we were driving toward the mountain we felt optimistic, but whenever we could only see it in the rear view mirror we were discussing the relative risks of walking toward what we thought was Bungule or sleeping in the car. After much examination of tire tracks in the sand we finally retraced our steps.

I am including some photos of life at the banda so you can see where your loved ones are sleeping and eating. Sara, Tara, and Liesl share a bedroom, although Liesl was at network rock when I took the photo so Katy’s daughter Odessa is holding down Liesl’s bed near the door.

The Hicks family room is so full of fabric and other souvenirs, kids’ stuff, and Katy’s school work that there is hardly room for them. It has been great having children in our group this trip, and has added a lot to the domestic scene. Katy’s husband Mark is responsible for a new wall in the community library, and he and Ken have been exploring different versions of evaporative coolers this past week.

Ken and I share a smaller room in a separate structure with the kitchen, Grace (cook), and Abs (host).

There is a very large rock in front of the banda where people hang out, sun bathe, listen to music, read books, look at stars, and sometimes mix a few drinks.

Lately the bush has shown definite signs of drying out, with green turning grey and damp spots going hard and dry. But strangely, we have been waking to clouds and even quasi rain recent mornings. Maize that was not yet ripe when we arrived has been harvested, and is now being dried, cleaned from the cob and ground into flour for ugali, the staple food in the region.

We make weak efforts to eat ugali but none of us are huge fans. I've heard quite a few food fantasies lately, everything from ice cream to cereal. It has been a long trip and we are all starting to miss home, even as we become more comfortable in the community here. Keep us in your thoughts as you are in ours.

Kris