It has been too long since I last wrote to you all. Please forgive me—I hate to keep you in the dark on all the goings-on here in Kenya! I tell you what. I know myself well enough to anticipate already that I’m going to be writing quite a bit here, so I’ll break down my life into little bite-sized nuggets of information and anecdotes so that you readers can easily skim through and find the bits that are interesting and weed out anything that’s…not. Here goes:
Life in Kenya
Have I mentioned yet that Kenya is Obama country? I don’t know how the elections in America will go down tomorrow, but I know for certain that this country is buzzing about it and should Mr. Obama win or lose, Kenyans are going to react. Kenyans are convinced that Obama, a Kenyan and member of the Luo tribe, will “do great things for Kenya” if elected. Everywhere we go, we mzungus are asked, “You will vote for Obama?” I’ve even heard from one teacher that announcing “I’m voting for Obama” got her out of trouble in a matatu (transport vehicle…scary) skirmish. In fact, this morning I remember passing two different matatus, one decorated and named, “Baraq” and the other “Obama” (all of the matatus around here are named, painted up in flashy colors, some sporting blown-up photos of celebrities and rappers on the back windows, and some fancier ones have black lights, spoilers, and drop-down video screens on which play sleazy music videos). Jim, one of our administrators, came into the office all flustered this morning, waving around a newspaper as Nancy and Peter, two of our Kenyan office staff, were stuffing notices into pigeonholes. Jim pointed out today’s headline in the Kenyan national paper—something about how Kenya is behind Barack. Jim started raving about the politics and personal beliefs that Obama holds and declares something about how he is amazed that Kenya, as a Christian nation, would support such a candidate (WNS, mind you, is McCain land…for better or worse). Peter and Nancy smile and say, “Oh! We didn’t know about all of that!”
I went grocery shopping yesterday afternoon at the Nakumatt at Prestige Plaza, a few blocks from our house. My roommate, Becca, drove me over there and then she hung around the food court upstairs to get online (a frequent activity of ours, by the way). I can’t believe I haven’t written about this yet: grocery shopping in Kenya is an extremely bizarre activity. First, as you walk up to the entrance, you’ll pass the Nakumatt guards, clad in royal blue uniforms and topped off with shiny black baseball helmets. Kenyans are fonder of “football” than baseball for certain—but they do put the helmets to good use. Then, you’ll find that you have three options for grocery carts, or “trolleys.” There are the large, completely awkward and unmanageable ones, which no Kenyan really has use for unless they are purchasing the 10-gallon sized barrels of cooking oil you can find in aisle 10. Then there are the more average and acceptable-sized trolleys, which I tend to sort to myself, unless I only have a few items to purchase and can manage with a basket. But the real marvel of the trolley park is the section devoted to what, in America, we would classify as “kiddie carts.” In Kenya, however, these trolleys are not devoted to the smallest of shoppers—no, these tiny little trolleys are for Kenyan adults, too. I can’t tell you what a smile it brings to my face to see a grown man, daintily pushing along his kiddie cart down the aisles, bending over to place in the few items he needs. Other oddities include an aisle devoted entirely to cooking fat and oil; a refrigerator full of dog meat; a produce section where attendants weigh your individual fruit and vegetable purchases before you head to the check-out counter; a greeting card aisle whose selection is devoted solely to Christmas cards, Valentines, obscure relatives’ birthday cards, and sympathy greetings; impolite workers (a rarity in the States, where customer service is held to an incredible standard…although if I were paid what the Nakumatt workers settle for and worked the hours they do, I’d be grumpy, too); an entire floor of mattresses and over-stuffed polyester furniture in hues I imagine only the Floridian elderly would select; a meager selection of over-priced cereal (I’ve heard that a few years ago, only two different choices were offered. Apparently, Kenyans don’t typically enjoy breakfast); and in place of candy bars and gossip magazines at the registers, there stands an embarrassingly awkward display of products which I’m sure are meant to promote safe “after-hours” recreation, along with the always enjoyable Nivea non-shiny lip gloss “For Men.”
It was a surprise last Friday when it dawned on me that it was Halloween. None of the students dressed up and the only reminder of the holiday was the couple of Cadbury caramels left in my mailbox by our darling interim director, Joan. We had decided to throw a little Halloween bash at our house that night, inviting some of the other teachers to enjoy a fire in our newly purchased fire pit we bought from the “strip mall” (really a bunch of ramshackle huts and stands with huge outdoor displays of handmade wood and iron furniture, as well as some gigantic, life-sized metal sculptures of safari creatures that I am certain only tourists and foolish mzungu residents would ever dare to purchase) along Ngong Road on the way to and from school. For the rest of our night, we’d planned to have a pumpkin-carving contest (the only ones you can find around here are green), and a few episodes of The Twilight Zone that we’d borrowed from a school family. When our juice man, Samson, arrived that evening to drop off our weekly liters of mango and passion-pine juices, he was surprised to see Raggedy Ann (Jen), a Buckeye football player (me, of course), and a “missionary wife” (Becca…hilarious, by the way), greet him at the door. We explained the unfamiliar concept of trick-or-treating and had him practice with us to get a mini Twix bar (“You say ‘trick or treat,’ and we give you candy”… “But I don’t want a trick. I want a treat.”… “No, you always get a treat…that’s just how it works…”). He seemed perplexed that nice Christian girls would be into witchcraft, so we had to explain our American traditions again. I’m sure we completely confused the poor man. A little while later, our neighbor, Siri, came to borrow water (his apartment doesn’t have any). Upon seeing the same trio mentioned before, he mused, “You all look very silly.” We told him he was welcome to come and join our little gathering once he was finished with the water, and he said he might come back. Maybe twenty minutes later, in walks Siri with a white paint-line substance smeared around his face. “See, I look silly now, too!”
School
A couple of weeks ago, we wrapped up our first quarter here at WNS and I officially no longer feel like a complete novice. I didn’t have a single kid fail, although I’m seriously concerned that I’m subconsciously inflating my kiddos’ grades because ain’t no way my freshmen should all have A’s and B’s like they do. I’m too nice. So much for not smiling ‘til Christmas. My English 9 class is in the middle of Act V of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which has been an absolute trip. I secured copies of the Franco Zeffirelli 1968 version of the film, the racy Leo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version, and had brought West Side Story (a dorky favorite) from home, so I’ve been showing little snippets of scenes each day in class, following along with our reading. Everyday, the kids come in hollering about which version we’re going to watch. The girls are big fans of Leo, and some of the more brown-nosing types never fail to remind me that Zeffirelli’s take is “more accurate.” Good for them. They all giggled through the “rumble” scene in West Side Story (I’d warned them it was a little hokey), but I think they secretly enjoyed the singing and dancing and snapping.
Tenth grade might be my favorite class to teach—and I think I’ve said that before, but it’s still as true now as it was then. The class is made up of mostly girls, but the boys seem to hold their own pretty well. They’re a really bright bunch and I really enjoy getting them into discussion and wrestling with the literature and concepts we’re dealing with in class. We’re getting close to the end of our “Crisis of Conscience” unit on To Kill a Mockingbird, and we’ve come a long way from that “Taboo Topics” activity and discussion. I had the class write “Righteous Anger” creative writing pieces in which they addressed their anger head-on, either using the injustices from the novel that they’re all really worked up about as inspiration, personal conflicts and tension, or social, political, national, or global issues that get them riled up. The end results were awesome. I had the kids “table” their pieces in small groups, offering feedback and criticism for their peers, and a few of the kids even offered to stand in front of the whole class and read their pieces. Now granted, this group can tend to get a little off-task and chatty, but on the whole, I’m impressed with their maturity and insight. Next order of business: persuasive speeches in which they consider an issue about which they’re really passionate and build to a call to action at the end of their 3-5 minutes. Should be exciting. Really bummed out that I’ll be losing that class to a returning teacher next semester. They’ve been a ton of fun to teach.
Eleventh grade is still a struggle to teach. Smart, smart kids…just can’t seem to get them interested in anything. We’re doing Arthur Miller’s The Crucible right now and so I’ve had them reading the drama in class and last week they worked on a “character webbing” group activity that actually turned out pretty cool, but no matter what fancy song-and-dance little show I try to put on each day, they still seem to be disinterested and detached. The sole exception and interruption of this general rule of quiet disinterest is a student in my four-person section of English 11 who gets incredibly into the dramatic reading we do in class. This is the Kenyan student who writes famous quotes on all of his teacher’s blackboards every day, fills notebooks with interesting words and phrases, and is just one of the stinkin’ smartest kids I’ve run into maybe ever. The kid does voices for each of the characters he reads and makes gestures under his desk and raises his voice for dramatic effect…I’m telling you—great stuff. But honestly, that’s about as exciting as it gets. I’ve heard from a bunch of the teachers that this class just needs time to get used to you—so that’s slightly reassuring. I genuinely like the students…they’re just a little tough to get excited about anything. I learned last week that it’s a distinct possibility—even probability—that I’ll be teaching the AP English course next year, so that’s really upping my perceived need to get myself in gear with this class. AP. Yikes.
Drama and Yearbook have both been challenging over the past few weeks. Both of my elective courses started off really well, but some unforeseeable issues have cropped up as of late. My drama kids are wrapping up theatre history group projects in which they were assigned a play from a specific theatre history era and were asked to perform a scene or two from the play in addition to giving a 10 or so minute presentation on the playwright, cultural influences during the time, theatre’s contribution to culture during the era, etc. It was a good idea in theory, but it’s turned into a nightmare. Elective courses are offered during 7th period at the very end of the day here. Unfortunately, it’s at the end of the day that kids get pulled out of class to head to away games and practices for sports. With a teeny tiny school like this with very few extracurriculars offered, many of the kids are on the soccer, basketball and tennis teams. Good for them. I’m all for participation in outside of school activities. However, I am not a fan of kids getting pulled out of my classes left and right. Nothing gets done. What I intended to be a three and a half week project has turned into a six week saga of unending misery and strife. Gross. Similarly, on the Yearbook front, we realized when the container came in with all of our school supplies, textbooks and resources for the year, that the Adobe CS4 programs needed for yearbook weren’t on the container. Instead, thinking that he’d gotten a steal of a deal, our administrator in charge of finances had ordered training software for CS4. Nice, but not what we needed. So now I’m finding myself pulling my hair out trying to keep kids busy with work while we wait for a program that still hasn’t even been ordered. Needless to say, I’ve become the queen of busywork in that class. Busywork and BS’ed almost-purposeful activities. Almost.
Other challenges include our continued work towards accreditation and the recent news that I will be teaching Comparative Religions—a course I feel in no way qualified to even begin teaching—next semester. The accreditation process is nearly over, as the team from ACSI is coming the third week of November. Prayers would be AWESOME. We really need this. It’s been so much work and so much effort on everyone’s part and I know everyone would be devastated if we missed the mark and didn’t end up getting the go-ahead. Comparative Religions is a whole different ball of wax. Apparently, the class was supposed to be taught by a teacher who left unexpectedly at the end of last year, and for some reason, they were unable to fill the slot with a qualified teacher. So now, on top of putting out a yearbook and a full-scale theatrical production, I’m going to have to figure out how to make it look like I know what I’m talking about in this Bible course. I’m sure that it’s a blessing in disguise and that I’ll learn a ton from teaching the course, but right now it’s incredibly daunting. Any wisdom, knowledge or potential resources would be GREATLY appreciated.
Mombasa
A couple of weeks ago, we enjoyed a day off from school and consequential three-day weekend—a welcome break from the intense school year we’ve had so far, filled with half-days for accreditation work and having to come in to school even on Muslim national holidays to get work done, even when the kids had the day off. So eight of us—seven teachers from WNS and Brenton, a teacher from Roslynn Academy (another international Christian school in the area)—decided to take advantage of the day off and head to the coast. It was an ambitious trip, including an eight-hour bus ride each way along pretty bumpy roads through the middle of nowhere, but incredibly worth it. Amy P, Jen, Becca and I made up the female component of our group, and Joel, Jonathan, Steven and Brenton were the fellas.
We’d all packed our things in backpacks, brought along water, sunscreen and ipods for the bus ride, and finally arrived Saturday morning in Mombasa. Taking a couple of taxis to the “resort” where Becca had made our reservation, we saw a naked man walking through an intersection (our cabbie pointed and laughed at this—a strange reaction to us, as most of the time it seems that Kenyans aren’t caught at all off-guard by odd behavior or dress) and the other cab got lost. By the time we made it to the Bambury Beach Resort, we found out that our reservation never got written down and the hotel was booked solid. We took it quite well, actually, not having a place to stay. Things like that are pretty standard events around here, I’m finding. After a few hours and some tough negotiation from Becca, we ended up a few doors down in a neighboring resort right on the beach. Perfect, really.
What a relaxing weekend. Despite the struggle upon our arrival, the constant harassment by “beach boys” and curio sellers during what we always hoped would be peaceful walks on the beach, and the grim presence of mosquito nets in our bedrooms (I get bitten by those suckers all the time over here!), I couldn’t have imagined a better getaway. We spent a great deal of time in the pool, watching Technicolor geckos scurry around and monkeys scamper along the high fences, goofing around and undoubtedly giving the large group of Indians on holiday who shared our resort plenty to chuckle about. We enjoyed splashing around in the Indian Ocean, buying fresh coconut and mango as an afternoon snack from Abdul the fruit man, always stationed directly outside our hotel entrance, and best of all, that Sunday, six of us went snorkeling off the nearby reef. Now, I am that person who, like the rest of my Weiant family, can sit in front of the tropical fish aquarium window for hours and hours, just watching the fish swim back and forth, back and forth. Totally therapeutic. So taking a dilapidated little wooden catamaran, captained by Mario and Sinbad (not kidding), on a beautiful, cloudless day out into the ocean to a little reef, and then spending hours floating around, swimming with Nemo and his buddies, was just bliss. When we’d first jumped ship and started to swim around where Mario dropped anchor, I remember being a little disappointed in the schools of blue and grey striped average-Joe fish cruising around. But a little ways further and I found myself surrounded by gorgeous fish in all their beautiful, florescent glory, zipping around coral and peeking out from anemones. I remember thinking, “Thank you, Jesus—how incredible is this?” What a blessing of a day. I got one heck of a sunburn on the tip of my nose from the scuba mask rubbing off my SPF 45, but that day was well worth the embarrassment of a flaking nose during parent-teacher conferences that week.
Prayer Requests
- I wasn’t joking about how the American elections are a big deal to folks here in Kenya. It’s incredibly possible that either way, Kenyan/American relations could get uncomfortable or strained here in Nairobi. I know we’re all praying over here that the Lord’s hand would be on the elections and the man who will be taking over the reigns of our nation for the next four years. It’s different living as an expat, but I do pray that things will all line up according to God’s will, no matter where I am in the world.
- The accreditation team will come to WNS in a few weeks to observe the school for about a week and will be making the ultra-important decision about whether they will give us full accreditation or no. It’s an important week for us as a faculty here, and I would certainly covet your prayers as this will be either a significant milestone or setback in the life of this little international Christian school in Karen, Kenya.
- Our ESL teacher here, Nicole, has made the decision to head back to Texas at the end of this week. Her mother is being treated right now for Lou Gehrig’s disease and Nicole is anxious to be back with her family. We’re all praying for an easy transition for Nicole back to the States, a recovery for her mother, and a quick hiring process to fill the vacancy in our staff. Nicole is beloved by her students, and we are all anxious to see an equally enthusiastic and encouraging teacher to take her position.
- We have so many spiritually sensitive students here at WNS. But as of now, their learning of the Gospel and ample opportunities for personal encounters with Christ haven’t led them to a personal, saving relationship with Him. Please keep these students in your prayers and also pray that we as their teachers would take advantage of windows to speak truth into these kids’ lives and encourage them by our example. I absolutely believe that I find myself in the position and with the responsibility of teaching some of this world’s future leaders at this school. These students are bright, have understanding of and a heart for the world beyond any that I can imagine, and I know that Christ could move mountains with these kids if they surrender their lives to him. Please pray that I might be God’s vessel in teaching these students.
Thanks for reading, and God bless each of you. Thank you so much for your continued support and prayer. The Lord is moving here in Nairobi, and I am so blessed by your partnership with me in this ministry. Happy fall—enjoy the change of seasons for me…I’m already mourning that loss. Who would have thought that anyone could ever be dissatisfied with eternal summer?
Kate
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