Tag: teaching

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Diani Malindi Mombasa Watamu

ErinRose Back in Kenya, Part 2

Well, my girlfriend left on Sunday, so it’s back to the usual routine for the rest of the term.  It was a fun two weeks while she was here.  In my previous blog post I uploaded some pictures from her first weekend here, so now here are some pictures from the second and third weekends, with a few weekday pictures thrown in for good measure.

Second Weekend (Watamu and Malindi):

After some good snorkeling in Watamu, we took the glass-bottomed boat back to our hotel, Hemingway’s.

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In Malindi, we dropped by Vasco de Gama’s Pillar (made from Lisbon limestone… none of that unacceptable Porto granite, even if if does hold together better in earthquakes):

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In Watamu, one of the few butterflies in the Butterfly House:

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Next door, the mysterious Gede Ruins (and me sitting upon them, ruining them further):

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View of the ruins from a nearby staircased Baobab tree, which was an enjoyable climb:

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Second week:

Upon our return to my home in Mombasa, we went to the Eid (end of Ramadan) festival/carnival.  To get in we needed tickets, and there were two lines to buy them: one for men and one for women.  The men actually made up more of a mob than a line, so it was handy that ErinRose could get tickets for us pretty quickly.

The carnival itself was like an African version of Something Wicked This Way Comes-meets-Dr. Lao.  The whole thing was old-fashioned in a charming but unsettling way: many of the rides were manual, with men spinning children around or pushing giant swings, and we had the opportunity to see the world’s shortest women, twice (there were two of them), as well as the Nigerian rat monster.  There was also supposed to be a severed head but it hadn’t shown up yet.

Here’s a clip of the carnival, with a man pushing one of the most popular rides, of which there were at least a dozen.

Here’s a professional photo taken in one of a half-dozen similar carnival booths.  Because Eid is a Muslim celebration, and other people were taking rather conservative photos, we settled on this pose:

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Here I am debating the merits of paying to see the severed head (which is depicted on the sign on the left).

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The head wasn’t ready, so we went into another tent.  Ahead of us, children climb over each other to see the world’s shortest woman:

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Here she is, in a tiny little corner of the tent, just standing there with some extra clothes and some snacks at her feet.  Because each shortest woman had competition from the other, we were encouraged to ask how old she was, to which each would reply “65” or “75” or something similarly impressive.

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After much anticipation (there was a dramatic countdown), we were allowed to go into another tent to see the Rat Monster from Nigeria.  The flash photo makes it a little less scary, but even with minimal lighting, it wasn’t much more terrifying:

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Later that week, ErinRose’s birthday dinner at the Tamarind restaurant, which you may remember as being the swanky place with a fish tank as part of its flushing system:

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In her last class with the younger kids, ErinRose taught them how to make paper puppets (I don’t actually know what these things are called—it was more of a girl thing in school).  Here’s a clip:


Third weekend (Diani Beach):

For our last weekend we went to the Shaanti Holistic Health Retreat, which was a cool little new-agey yoga resort.  We only did the yoga once (my first time ever), but we enjoyed the overall peaceful vibe regardless.  Here’s a view from the restaurant:

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This place was a full board experience, so we only ate out once, at Ali Barbour’s Cave restaurant, which was pretty cool, just like it sounds… a restaurant in a cave.

On our last evening at Shaanti, we took advantage of the outdoor bathtubs with a view of the stars and the ocean.  They are next to communal area where people do yoga, so they are keep-the-swimsuits-on kinds of baths, but especially with the sparkling grape juice, it made for a romantic final evening.

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So as of Monday, I’m back to teaching my classes without a helper, which means the blog posts will look much less like I’m on a luxurious vacation and much more like I’m busy teaching.  I hope you enjoyed all the pictures!

Categories
Mombasa

Apple-Cat Part 2

A short while back I did some experiments with making my own workbooks for my students.  They were absolutely a success.  I had conversations with my students like (and I am of course translating), “If a cat is eating a cat, then there are two cats involved, so why wouldn’t I use the plural ‘cats’ in the sentence?”  A completely logical question, and one that I failed to anticipate when I designed the workbook.

My fastest vocational students needed about three hours to get through the workbook and the corresponding review sheet, and it was time well spent.  I could tell from the questions I got that the first workbook was ten thousand times more effective than any previous approach I had tried.

Here are links for the revised workbook and the review sheet:

The downside is that it’s difficult to whip up the energy necessary to draw all the pictures, photograph them, and then clean them up on the computer.  Part of me regrets bringing a normal laptop instead of a tablet.

Because of the time and energy  problem, I’ve been applying the workbook’s methods to more conventional blackboard teaching.  The method is basically to use very few words, but just shuffle them around and observe how the meaning changes.  I typically write sentences on the board and have the students come up and draw a pictures that they think correspond.  It can be kind of fun, and it’s easy.  In the last couple classes, we’ve been dealing with “to” and “from,” like:

  • The boy runs to the girl.
  • The boy runs from the girl to the house.

Etc.  And so far so good.

In other news, I’m in phase two of my arm infection, which means that it’s getting smaller on its own.  Also, as I type this, the school is being painted in preparation for another big competition that will take place here when the term ends.  Someone donated new mosquito nets, too, which will make the dorms a lot nicer.

The school is also going to clear out a room to make the new computer lab.  I met with Camara a while back, and it seems pretty easy to get computers from them.  This is very exciting for me, so I’ve been doing a little work to make sure the kids can use the game software that they’re used to, even if the new machines don’t have floppy drives.

Categories
Kilifi Mombasa

Slump and Bump

I’d be lying if I said I’ve been too busy to update my blog recently.  To be honest, I’ve been in a bit of a slump.

It might be health-related.  I managed to beat the giardia without the help of any medicine, but that was quickly replaced by a scary looking bump on my arm: a bug bite-turned-folliculitus-turned-staph infection that I’ve been taking antibiotics for ever since I went to the hospital last week, but nonetheless it stubbornly remains.  I think about how many infected wounds I see at the school here, and it’s no wonder that I managed to get one myself.  At least mine is being treated, but  I worry that this is a side effect of my tiny bucket baths, in which I use about three liters of water each day due to the shortage.  Perhaps my technique is not refined, so I’m not keeping clean enough?  Anyhow, I bought a more aggressive antiseptic to mix with my bath water.  (The popular brand here is for this is Dettol.)

The other problem may be isolation.  I talk to ErinRose every day, bless her heart, but otherwise I just have the Internet, and spending a lot of time on the Internet isn’t good for anybody.  With the exception of that daily phone call, I often pass entire days without speaking at all.  This doesn’t mean I’m not communicating—of course I’m signing with my students, but I’m still far from mastering sign language, so it doesn’t leave me feeling as connected as English does.

It also may be my frustration with the progress at work.  I have days when I do feel good about my time in the classrooms, but I also have days when I feel like no amount of confidence can turn me into a good teacher.  I have no idea how I ever could have had so many good teachers in my life.  It’s such an incredibly difficult job that I’m lucky I even had one.

The newest woodshop students are the source of much of my anxiety.  One is the brightest in the class, but he’s cocky and just further widens the range of abilities that I need to cater to.  The other student is the furthest behind, and he has one amazing ability: he’s really good at making me believe that he understands what I’m teaching.  Whatever I explain to him, he will sign back to me, quite accurately, indicating that he understands, then he will look down very intently at his paper, lifting his pencil as if about to write something, hovering it above the paper as if deep in thought, then he will wait for me to turn away, at which point he relaxes.  If I look back again, he’ll be sharpening his pencil with a razor blade, telling me that the pencil tip broke, and that after he sharpens it again, he’ll get back to work.  He can stall like this for hours, and it’s a tragedy, because he’s great at it, and it clearly is the product of years of practice, in which he’s tricked all his teachers into not teaching him.

Truth be told, on days when I’m feeling tired and defeated, I want to believe him.  But I can’t fall for that trap, because it’s a mirror of the larger problem here, which is the self-delusion of the entire network of aid organizations, in which solving real problems becomes so daunting that it becomes good enough to get the right statistics to show success, get a good photo op, and call it a day.  But I’ll leave this distressing topic for another time.

Enough of all this introspective business.  Here’s a video of some students practicing a poem for a local competition.  It’s signed word-for-word from the written poem, meaning that many of the kids don’t even know what they’re signing, but it’s an interesting peek into Deaf poetry if you’ve never seen it before.  That’s my yellow house in the background, and the girl in the foreground is the one that I tutor after school to show her how to use her laptop.


More recently, on July 3, I finished reading my book about all the US presidents, which gives all their mini-biographies in chronological order.  It was a dry read, full of bulleted lists, but fascinating.  Inspirational and depressing at the same time… if I’m going to be president, it looks like I either need to join the military or become a lawyer.

To celebrate my independence from this dense work of nonfiction, on July 4 I was coaxed out of town for the day (a rare event), and I left home in the morning to go to Kilifi, which is an hour north via matatu.  As I walked from my home to the matatu stage, I stumbled upon a July 4 parade.  I love surprise parades, and they appear to love me, seeking me out no matter where I go.

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Here we are in Kilifi.  That’s me on the left, holding the camera.  We’re in a tuk tuk (3-wheeled motorcycle), and because it’s raining outside, there is extra plastic on the sides to protect us, as you can see.  Kenyans take the rain very seriously.  I would make a joke about wicked witches melting, but witchcraft is taken very serious here so I won’t.

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When I got home I was welcomed by my rusty gate, which immediately fell off its hinge and refused to close.  Children could therefore enter my courtyard freely to peek in my windows or watch me bathe.  I did not like this idea, so I notified the school who promptly fetched the local welding duo.  They were here a few hours later, having pushed the welding equipment across town in a giant wooden cart, as is customary.  What was exciting to me was that I saw my first extension cord in Kenya, although as you can see, it’s just raw wire jammed into the outlet.

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I am baffled that the welder didn’t wear glasses.  Sparks literally danced along his arm as he worked.

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I was warned that if I looked into the light I would die, so, despite my disbelief, I squinted at the light, indirectly, through my camera.  I was fascinated later by the distortion the bursts of light caused in the photos.  That’s a really bright light.  Probably good that they warned me, even if I would have survived.