Spiritual Warfare, Storytelling, The Goat is Got (Literally), and My Dreams of a Short Order Cook
In the "We Should Have Thought of That" Department:
It will be taken care of today!
Spiritual Warfare
I have always somewhat scoffed at the term spiritual warfare. It seemed dramatic, a bit crazy even. But in this past week Tammi and I have been struggling through our daily lives and we have come to the conclusion that there is only one reason for our hardships, mostly mine though: spiritual warfare.
I have been spending to much time being homesick and finding reasons to complain about, for a time this was fine, natural even. But you reach a point where you look at yourself and wonder “Is it really always everyone else’s fault or could I, maybe, have something to do with this?” Of course I had something to do with it! Prior to our departure I felt confident in many things: I felt my marriage was strong, better than most, even, I felt I was finally becoming a spiritually mature Christian; I felt good about my life, I felt in control, and that is where the problem lies: we are never truly in control.
When you begin trusting yourself too much, you begin not trusting other beings, namely God. Confidence is spectacular when you are in your comfort zone, but when EVERYTHING around you changes you kinda have to throw that confidence you had become accustomed to out the window, and start fresh, trusting in God to provide for you the new tools you need to function in your new environment.
I did not do this.
I did not trust God to do this for me, and it showed. I could not be a truly good husband to Tammi, as a teacher, in both the classroom and the fellowship/church room, as depended on myself alone to speak for God, instead of allowing him to speak through me, I was not giving all of myself to any of these things because half of me was still in Texas.
This past weekend was rough. I was convicted of many things. Most importantly, I need to trust God for everything to be provided for me. It is not my show---it is His, and I keep forgetting that. I am not here for personal glory, but to be an instrument of his will. Whatever He convicts me of, I NEED to do, and not think about it so much.
Pray for this humility in me.
Storytelling
Once a week each class has a storytelling lesson. This sometimes means that children read a short story and then retell it to the class (which is completely bogus, in my honest opinion) but in my class, Standard One, made up of 6 and 7 year olds, Teacher Njagi (enter Patton Oswalt routine here) allows the children to get up in front of the class and freestyle, that’s right: OPEN MIC!!! Like most open mic stand up comics, the stories are ultimately unimaginative. Most of the stories follow one of two formulas: 1) There was a hare and a hyena and something happens to them, usually a race, or 2) There was a boy/girl (depending on who is telling the story) who goes into the forest to search for meat, and in the forest they encounter any number of wild animals who have the sought after meat and something else happens. Each story lasts about 3-4 minutes and is performed in either English (the older ones) or Swahili (the younger ones). But Tuesday Fedrick, one of the neighborhood children, got up to tell his story and it was, well, *expletive deleted* crazy!
It started: “There was once a mother and a pussy cat...”
Njagi: “A pussy cat?”
Fedrick: “Yes, a pussy cat.”
Njagi: “Go ahead then”
Fedrick: “There was a mother and a pussy cat and one day the mother told the pussy cat to go and dig in the shamba (the garden) but the pussy cat did not want to so the mother made him leave, so he left. The pussy cat found a, umm, dog eating meat (everytime Fedrick says ”meat“ he really emphasizes the word, for example: ”mEEat“) and the pussy cat wanted some meat so he started eating the meat and the dog got mad and started chasing the pussy cat for eating his meat and and the pussy cat ran away...”
Here he abandons the pussy cat and begins introducing character after character, including lions, giraffes, elephants, leopards, and even rabbits and hyenas all in search of “mEEat” (and yes it did not escape me that giraffes, elephants, and rabbits are, indeed, herbivores, this adds to the magic of the story). This goes on for about 6-7 minutes.
Njagi interrupts: “Could we wrap this up Fedrick?”
So Fedrick indeed wraps it up: “There were some leopards who found some goats eating meat (yes, goats too are herbivores) so they killed them and ate their meat (I am assuming the meat the goat’s had as well as the goats themselves). In the morning the farmer came out and could not find his goats but he found the leopards and he began chasing them and some lions began chasing the man and they caught him and ate him. And the pussy cat was at the farmers house because the pussy cat had two homes and my story ends there”.
About 10 minutes total. It was beautiful and completely loony all at the same time.
Good show, Fedrick!
I told a story involving a boy who was bad and had to work in the shamba and miss a trip to Mombasa with his school mates, a mole he finds in a hole in the shamba who shows him an underground world and eventually introduces the boy to an old giraffe who takes the boy to Mombasa, weaving through a hundred mile traffic jam and passing his school bus and getting to Mombasa first.
The kids seemed to really like it. Tammi and I are going to make a book out of it and have the children illustrate it. I’m pretty excited!
I still have nothing on Fedrick, though.
The Goat is Got, Literally.
Those who have known me for a while know that my internet handle is “the goat is got”, after a song from one of my favorite bands. Well this past weekend, Margaret, after much talk about it, had one of the goats slaughtered for everyone’s enjoyment. I was a little scared. I had been a vegetarian for about the past eight years until we began planning for our move to the House of Hope and now GOAT! Tammi will tell you a bit about the uncooked goat further down the post. But upon arriving home from town Saturday, first we noticed that it was unusually quiet which is strange for 44 children, but then I noticed a strangely familiar aroma: Long John Silvers. It was unmistakable and really, really surreal.
Barbecued goat, is pretty good. The kids go bonkers for it. They all appeared to be in a goat coma. Allow me to imitate Will Ferrell’s sleazy professor character from Saturday Night Live: Their faces and hands glistened with fat while there bellies pulsated with still warm goat meat.
Sorry, but I have never, never had the urge to say “goat meat” but after hearing 44 Kenyan say it repeatedly, I cannot, for the life of me stop saying it.
Say it with me once more, with feeling. Emphasize “meat” like Fedrick would:
Goat mEEat!
On a sad note, Tammi and I spoke to Peter, the herdsman, a few days later and he said the goat’s name was “Germany” and he was sad that he was gone. We’re not sure if he ate any or not. He really loves these animals, it’s inspiring.
Also, before the cooking we were told the goat was supposed to last the family a month. It didn’t even last the night, save for a few pieces. The children are already lobbying for two goats to be slaughtered for Christmas, rather than the one already planned.
My Dreams of a Short Order Cook
The cook we have had since we came here, Teresa, recently had to leave because of some family problems (we are unsure if it is permanent or not), and Margaret brought in a new lady named Elizabeth. I confided in Tammi that I was hoping she was previously employed as a short order cook in Nairobi’s best all night diner.
I longed to able to holler “Denver Omelet!” and have her yell back a few moments later “Denver Omelet up!” But I think she is just a regular cook, which is fine, the food is growing on me more and more everyday. She does have big shoes to fill if she is replacing Teresa, however.
“Goat mEEat Omelet!”
----
Here's Tammi:
The week of 9/16/06 – 9/22/06
I find I am not sure where to start, I did not do a nightly journal like I should have and now I have a weeks full of memories all rushing though my mind. I think everyone likes the run down of a day- to- day life, but well that did not happen this week. However if I had to give the week a theme it would be “a good week of humility”. Something I think we were way over due for. First off we needed to humble ourselves before God and we had not. We thought and I am being completely honest here, that we were above reproach. We were quick to blame others for what was really going on in our hearts. We were not feeling God because we really did not want to. We knew what he would say and well we just did not want to hear it. Maybe I am speaking just for myself, so I will do that from now on. I heard different people say you just need to take it to God, and at first I thought I was, but when I examined my prayers I realized all I was doing was complaining and not really asking or telling Him much of anything. Everything changed coming back home from town. I looked out the window and was thinking some thought that were far from glorifying Christ and I finally just said in a whisper “Satan I rebuke you in the name of Christ” and in that moment something unlike anything I have ever experienced happened. The thoughts left me and I was before my God, talking about everything and feeling completely comfortable and at peace. That moment my heart changed and so did everything else here for me. The next day we went to church and Margaret preached and I felt convicted about a lot of things and at first I wanted to be mad, but God would not let that happen, he convicted me but gave me peace about it. That afternoon we went in the direction of Mombasa and Margaret told us we were going to where she goes to get most of the supplies and so we were taken to a village, a real African village, it looked right and it felt just like Mexico (Michael’s words), however you get my point. All the people looked busy and happy, we went to buy more coal for the house. On the way to there Margaret begin to really open up about the lose of Naftali, we have not heard much about him up to this point. She began to tell me about her feeling about his one year anniversary coming up and how much she thinks about him and misses him. I just told her that I was so sorry and if there was anything we could do on that day to help we would. She showed me the clinic he was taken to on the day of his death and how she has never be able to return. She also told us about the tribal differences that happened after he died regarding how he gets buried. She told me about the way people responded and how much it all hurt her feelings. So everything seemed to change on the way to Mombasa, when I would look out the windows I could see sights only seen on TV or in magazines and it was beautiful. The sun was breaking though the sky and the rays were hitting the valley, which was below us, just right. Margaret showed us the school the children use to go to (it was very far from home), she told us about how Naftali would take and pick up her and the children every day, she just started to tell us everything Naftali did. He was a great man that loved his family very much. I felt so blessed for getting to learn more about him. Margaret did not have to open up, but she did and I don’t think it would have happened if I was harvesting ill feeling toward her. I felted honored and humbled.
The day before Church:
We were going into town that day, however before we could leave Charles had to come back. Margaret told us that Charles had taken a goat to be slaughtered, we had know this day would come but we still thought it may not happen until Christmas. So I thought no big thing, Charles will come back, the meat will get removed and then they will tell us we can go now, or so I thought. I did not even hear Charles come home: Margaret called me to her room, just me, this has happened before but it had just been to talk about a member of staff that she was thinking about letting go, however I still get nervous. So I walk into her room and I am speechless for a split moment because for as far as the eye can see there is meat everywhere, meat in bags, in bowls in trash can, meat and more meat and all raw! So I think, please God keep Michael in the other room. I realize quickly that Margaret just wants to show off all the meat to me and that she is very excited about us getting to be a part of this, but all I can think of is wow this is one goat! (oh and I see his tail, it still had fir on it). I also see how it is the same as going to some ones house that just got back from hunting deer and they take you to their freezer to show you all the meat. Either way I begin to see the pride that she had in being able to offer this to us.
That night when we return from town we don’t hear much and that is never the case when we come back from town, the kids are all over the van and all over us, like we just got their all over again. But this night we heard very little. As we walked around to the back of the house all was explained. The goat was now being cooked over fire outside and all the children were eating and were very peaceful. They cooked the goat in oil and lots of good flavor. So all the kids had shinny faces with big smiles on them. They quickly got us chairs to join in on the fun. Before long we had a plate in front of us with the goat on it. We ate and it was very good. Sam came and sat in my lap and we gave him a piece or two and he fell asleep with a tight belly and a smile on his face. The kids played and waited for more goat to be cooked. Near the end Margaret told us that almost all the goat was gone, this was a goat that was suppose to last a month or so. She said it with joy, she was so happy to see all the kids so happy. It was really something, one day you see a goat and the next day you eat him and go to bed happy.
Another school meeting:
We had another meeting with Margaret regarding the school situation, she told us that she had a meeting with the head of the education ministry and told them about the new time table (the one with Michael and I working with the level one for an hour a day with Montessori material) and well they did not say “no” but they did not care to much for it. So in the end we are going to try to work with the kids in every level using the Montessori material as practicals (classroom aids) rather then as integrating Montessori into the system. I am not sure what to think of this, however I do know it takes a huge strain off of us. We were not a part of this decision, we told her we were open to whatever she thinks maybe best for the whole system. Her fear is that the people from the education ministry may drop by (and they can at any time) and they will not like the way things are ran and that can mean bad things for the school. So we will try to work with a handful of children on Saturdays to see how they might do with the Montessori material, since the kids go to school on Saturday (they do fun things, however it is at school). So we will be going into town on Friday instead of Saturday from now on. We are also noticing that some of the subjects that are covered are lacking to say the least. We know it is not our place to say that the text books that are just little paperback books that are about 50 pages long are not that good, they are poorly written and they say very little about anything. We are also noticing that the textbooks for level 1 is not all that different from level 4 books, maybe a little bit more info. for level 4 but not much. So we are not sure what to do about this, because we think many of the older children are staving for new information, harder information, things that will challenge them to dig deeper into themselves. We also found out that all the material for the year has already been covered. They just spend from Sept. to Dec. going over it all over again so that they will be able to pass an exam. So pray that we can challenge the children at home to think about harder things, and to seek things and questions them.
When it rains it pours:
It rained hard the other day while we were at school. It sounds so loud in the classroom because the roof is large sheets of tin. So it rained all during lunch and that meant no playing outside, so you know what that means, yes you guessed it, 55ish (44 of ours and 11 outside kids) all going crazy in the early childhood classroom. Sounds fun huh? Not as much fun as walking home in the mud is! The walk home seems so far away when you are walking in mud and not just oh a puddle here and a puddle their, I mean crazy kind of mud that gets on everything. So we walk home and take off our shoes at the door and don’t think about them again until the next day. Oh quick side note, the only way to make it during the rain season is to have boots, so we will be getting boots soon, because the rain is coming! So the next day we come home and we see our shoes out and we take the hint and get to work to start to clean them. So we look awkwardly for soap, a bucket, water and anything else we may need to get our shoes looking half way decent. All this is happening while 4 of the ladies sit around and watch. One of the ladies is a new worker to help in the kitchen while Teresa is out sorting out things with her family. So all the women are watching and working at the same time and we begin to work the best we know how, then we hear the women start to laugh and talking in Kiswahili and looking at us. We think no big thing, we have had that happen to us every day since we came here, so we keep trying. Then Joseph the house manager who does lots of things around the house came over and said let me help, we thought ok he is going to show us how to do this and then he will let us finish, not the case, he washed all 4 shoes and they looked amazing. We sat their getting laughed at the whole time and being humbled by having a man that works his butt off clean our shoes. Michael said we would have been out here for hours and they would not have looked half as good, and I knew Michael was right. The most amazing part was that he had a scrub brush but he used a corn cob to clean the sides of the shoes and it worked great, he also used a part of the coal bag to clean the inside of our shoes, again amazing and unexpected. They use everything in the environment and so do the kids. We were a little upset that they women kept talking about us in Kiswahili and kept laughing but we thought we must have looked rather spoiled to say the least. So we walked inside with a wounded spirit and a humbled heart.
It will be taken care of today!
Spiritual Warfare
I have always somewhat scoffed at the term spiritual warfare. It seemed dramatic, a bit crazy even. But in this past week Tammi and I have been struggling through our daily lives and we have come to the conclusion that there is only one reason for our hardships, mostly mine though: spiritual warfare.
I have been spending to much time being homesick and finding reasons to complain about, for a time this was fine, natural even. But you reach a point where you look at yourself and wonder “Is it really always everyone else’s fault or could I, maybe, have something to do with this?” Of course I had something to do with it! Prior to our departure I felt confident in many things: I felt my marriage was strong, better than most, even, I felt I was finally becoming a spiritually mature Christian; I felt good about my life, I felt in control, and that is where the problem lies: we are never truly in control.
When you begin trusting yourself too much, you begin not trusting other beings, namely God. Confidence is spectacular when you are in your comfort zone, but when EVERYTHING around you changes you kinda have to throw that confidence you had become accustomed to out the window, and start fresh, trusting in God to provide for you the new tools you need to function in your new environment.
I did not do this.
I did not trust God to do this for me, and it showed. I could not be a truly good husband to Tammi, as a teacher, in both the classroom and the fellowship/church room, as depended on myself alone to speak for God, instead of allowing him to speak through me, I was not giving all of myself to any of these things because half of me was still in Texas.
This past weekend was rough. I was convicted of many things. Most importantly, I need to trust God for everything to be provided for me. It is not my show---it is His, and I keep forgetting that. I am not here for personal glory, but to be an instrument of his will. Whatever He convicts me of, I NEED to do, and not think about it so much.
Pray for this humility in me.
Storytelling
Once a week each class has a storytelling lesson. This sometimes means that children read a short story and then retell it to the class (which is completely bogus, in my honest opinion) but in my class, Standard One, made up of 6 and 7 year olds, Teacher Njagi (enter Patton Oswalt routine here) allows the children to get up in front of the class and freestyle, that’s right: OPEN MIC!!! Like most open mic stand up comics, the stories are ultimately unimaginative. Most of the stories follow one of two formulas: 1) There was a hare and a hyena and something happens to them, usually a race, or 2) There was a boy/girl (depending on who is telling the story) who goes into the forest to search for meat, and in the forest they encounter any number of wild animals who have the sought after meat and something else happens. Each story lasts about 3-4 minutes and is performed in either English (the older ones) or Swahili (the younger ones). But Tuesday Fedrick, one of the neighborhood children, got up to tell his story and it was, well, *expletive deleted* crazy!
It started: “There was once a mother and a pussy cat...”
Njagi: “A pussy cat?”
Fedrick: “Yes, a pussy cat.”
Njagi: “Go ahead then”
Fedrick: “There was a mother and a pussy cat and one day the mother told the pussy cat to go and dig in the shamba (the garden) but the pussy cat did not want to so the mother made him leave, so he left. The pussy cat found a, umm, dog eating meat (everytime Fedrick says ”meat“ he really emphasizes the word, for example: ”mEEat“) and the pussy cat wanted some meat so he started eating the meat and the dog got mad and started chasing the pussy cat for eating his meat and and the pussy cat ran away...”
Here he abandons the pussy cat and begins introducing character after character, including lions, giraffes, elephants, leopards, and even rabbits and hyenas all in search of “mEEat” (and yes it did not escape me that giraffes, elephants, and rabbits are, indeed, herbivores, this adds to the magic of the story). This goes on for about 6-7 minutes.
Njagi interrupts: “Could we wrap this up Fedrick?”
So Fedrick indeed wraps it up: “There were some leopards who found some goats eating meat (yes, goats too are herbivores) so they killed them and ate their meat (I am assuming the meat the goat’s had as well as the goats themselves). In the morning the farmer came out and could not find his goats but he found the leopards and he began chasing them and some lions began chasing the man and they caught him and ate him. And the pussy cat was at the farmers house because the pussy cat had two homes and my story ends there”.
About 10 minutes total. It was beautiful and completely loony all at the same time.
Good show, Fedrick!
I told a story involving a boy who was bad and had to work in the shamba and miss a trip to Mombasa with his school mates, a mole he finds in a hole in the shamba who shows him an underground world and eventually introduces the boy to an old giraffe who takes the boy to Mombasa, weaving through a hundred mile traffic jam and passing his school bus and getting to Mombasa first.
The kids seemed to really like it. Tammi and I are going to make a book out of it and have the children illustrate it. I’m pretty excited!
I still have nothing on Fedrick, though.
The Goat is Got, Literally.
Those who have known me for a while know that my internet handle is “the goat is got”, after a song from one of my favorite bands. Well this past weekend, Margaret, after much talk about it, had one of the goats slaughtered for everyone’s enjoyment. I was a little scared. I had been a vegetarian for about the past eight years until we began planning for our move to the House of Hope and now GOAT! Tammi will tell you a bit about the uncooked goat further down the post. But upon arriving home from town Saturday, first we noticed that it was unusually quiet which is strange for 44 children, but then I noticed a strangely familiar aroma: Long John Silvers. It was unmistakable and really, really surreal.
Barbecued goat, is pretty good. The kids go bonkers for it. They all appeared to be in a goat coma. Allow me to imitate Will Ferrell’s sleazy professor character from Saturday Night Live: Their faces and hands glistened with fat while there bellies pulsated with still warm goat meat.
Sorry, but I have never, never had the urge to say “goat meat” but after hearing 44 Kenyan say it repeatedly, I cannot, for the life of me stop saying it.
Say it with me once more, with feeling. Emphasize “meat” like Fedrick would:
Goat mEEat!
On a sad note, Tammi and I spoke to Peter, the herdsman, a few days later and he said the goat’s name was “Germany” and he was sad that he was gone. We’re not sure if he ate any or not. He really loves these animals, it’s inspiring.
Also, before the cooking we were told the goat was supposed to last the family a month. It didn’t even last the night, save for a few pieces. The children are already lobbying for two goats to be slaughtered for Christmas, rather than the one already planned.
My Dreams of a Short Order Cook
The cook we have had since we came here, Teresa, recently had to leave because of some family problems (we are unsure if it is permanent or not), and Margaret brought in a new lady named Elizabeth. I confided in Tammi that I was hoping she was previously employed as a short order cook in Nairobi’s best all night diner.
I longed to able to holler “Denver Omelet!” and have her yell back a few moments later “Denver Omelet up!” But I think she is just a regular cook, which is fine, the food is growing on me more and more everyday. She does have big shoes to fill if she is replacing Teresa, however.
“Goat mEEat Omelet!”
----
Here's Tammi:
The week of 9/16/06 – 9/22/06
I find I am not sure where to start, I did not do a nightly journal like I should have and now I have a weeks full of memories all rushing though my mind. I think everyone likes the run down of a day- to- day life, but well that did not happen this week. However if I had to give the week a theme it would be “a good week of humility”. Something I think we were way over due for. First off we needed to humble ourselves before God and we had not. We thought and I am being completely honest here, that we were above reproach. We were quick to blame others for what was really going on in our hearts. We were not feeling God because we really did not want to. We knew what he would say and well we just did not want to hear it. Maybe I am speaking just for myself, so I will do that from now on. I heard different people say you just need to take it to God, and at first I thought I was, but when I examined my prayers I realized all I was doing was complaining and not really asking or telling Him much of anything. Everything changed coming back home from town. I looked out the window and was thinking some thought that were far from glorifying Christ and I finally just said in a whisper “Satan I rebuke you in the name of Christ” and in that moment something unlike anything I have ever experienced happened. The thoughts left me and I was before my God, talking about everything and feeling completely comfortable and at peace. That moment my heart changed and so did everything else here for me. The next day we went to church and Margaret preached and I felt convicted about a lot of things and at first I wanted to be mad, but God would not let that happen, he convicted me but gave me peace about it. That afternoon we went in the direction of Mombasa and Margaret told us we were going to where she goes to get most of the supplies and so we were taken to a village, a real African village, it looked right and it felt just like Mexico (Michael’s words), however you get my point. All the people looked busy and happy, we went to buy more coal for the house. On the way to there Margaret begin to really open up about the lose of Naftali, we have not heard much about him up to this point. She began to tell me about her feeling about his one year anniversary coming up and how much she thinks about him and misses him. I just told her that I was so sorry and if there was anything we could do on that day to help we would. She showed me the clinic he was taken to on the day of his death and how she has never be able to return. She also told us about the tribal differences that happened after he died regarding how he gets buried. She told me about the way people responded and how much it all hurt her feelings. So everything seemed to change on the way to Mombasa, when I would look out the windows I could see sights only seen on TV or in magazines and it was beautiful. The sun was breaking though the sky and the rays were hitting the valley, which was below us, just right. Margaret showed us the school the children use to go to (it was very far from home), she told us about how Naftali would take and pick up her and the children every day, she just started to tell us everything Naftali did. He was a great man that loved his family very much. I felt so blessed for getting to learn more about him. Margaret did not have to open up, but she did and I don’t think it would have happened if I was harvesting ill feeling toward her. I felted honored and humbled.
The day before Church:
We were going into town that day, however before we could leave Charles had to come back. Margaret told us that Charles had taken a goat to be slaughtered, we had know this day would come but we still thought it may not happen until Christmas. So I thought no big thing, Charles will come back, the meat will get removed and then they will tell us we can go now, or so I thought. I did not even hear Charles come home: Margaret called me to her room, just me, this has happened before but it had just been to talk about a member of staff that she was thinking about letting go, however I still get nervous. So I walk into her room and I am speechless for a split moment because for as far as the eye can see there is meat everywhere, meat in bags, in bowls in trash can, meat and more meat and all raw! So I think, please God keep Michael in the other room. I realize quickly that Margaret just wants to show off all the meat to me and that she is very excited about us getting to be a part of this, but all I can think of is wow this is one goat! (oh and I see his tail, it still had fir on it). I also see how it is the same as going to some ones house that just got back from hunting deer and they take you to their freezer to show you all the meat. Either way I begin to see the pride that she had in being able to offer this to us.
That night when we return from town we don’t hear much and that is never the case when we come back from town, the kids are all over the van and all over us, like we just got their all over again. But this night we heard very little. As we walked around to the back of the house all was explained. The goat was now being cooked over fire outside and all the children were eating and were very peaceful. They cooked the goat in oil and lots of good flavor. So all the kids had shinny faces with big smiles on them. They quickly got us chairs to join in on the fun. Before long we had a plate in front of us with the goat on it. We ate and it was very good. Sam came and sat in my lap and we gave him a piece or two and he fell asleep with a tight belly and a smile on his face. The kids played and waited for more goat to be cooked. Near the end Margaret told us that almost all the goat was gone, this was a goat that was suppose to last a month or so. She said it with joy, she was so happy to see all the kids so happy. It was really something, one day you see a goat and the next day you eat him and go to bed happy.
Another school meeting:
We had another meeting with Margaret regarding the school situation, she told us that she had a meeting with the head of the education ministry and told them about the new time table (the one with Michael and I working with the level one for an hour a day with Montessori material) and well they did not say “no” but they did not care to much for it. So in the end we are going to try to work with the kids in every level using the Montessori material as practicals (classroom aids) rather then as integrating Montessori into the system. I am not sure what to think of this, however I do know it takes a huge strain off of us. We were not a part of this decision, we told her we were open to whatever she thinks maybe best for the whole system. Her fear is that the people from the education ministry may drop by (and they can at any time) and they will not like the way things are ran and that can mean bad things for the school. So we will try to work with a handful of children on Saturdays to see how they might do with the Montessori material, since the kids go to school on Saturday (they do fun things, however it is at school). So we will be going into town on Friday instead of Saturday from now on. We are also noticing that some of the subjects that are covered are lacking to say the least. We know it is not our place to say that the text books that are just little paperback books that are about 50 pages long are not that good, they are poorly written and they say very little about anything. We are also noticing that the textbooks for level 1 is not all that different from level 4 books, maybe a little bit more info. for level 4 but not much. So we are not sure what to do about this, because we think many of the older children are staving for new information, harder information, things that will challenge them to dig deeper into themselves. We also found out that all the material for the year has already been covered. They just spend from Sept. to Dec. going over it all over again so that they will be able to pass an exam. So pray that we can challenge the children at home to think about harder things, and to seek things and questions them.
When it rains it pours:
It rained hard the other day while we were at school. It sounds so loud in the classroom because the roof is large sheets of tin. So it rained all during lunch and that meant no playing outside, so you know what that means, yes you guessed it, 55ish (44 of ours and 11 outside kids) all going crazy in the early childhood classroom. Sounds fun huh? Not as much fun as walking home in the mud is! The walk home seems so far away when you are walking in mud and not just oh a puddle here and a puddle their, I mean crazy kind of mud that gets on everything. So we walk home and take off our shoes at the door and don’t think about them again until the next day. Oh quick side note, the only way to make it during the rain season is to have boots, so we will be getting boots soon, because the rain is coming! So the next day we come home and we see our shoes out and we take the hint and get to work to start to clean them. So we look awkwardly for soap, a bucket, water and anything else we may need to get our shoes looking half way decent. All this is happening while 4 of the ladies sit around and watch. One of the ladies is a new worker to help in the kitchen while Teresa is out sorting out things with her family. So all the women are watching and working at the same time and we begin to work the best we know how, then we hear the women start to laugh and talking in Kiswahili and looking at us. We think no big thing, we have had that happen to us every day since we came here, so we keep trying. Then Joseph the house manager who does lots of things around the house came over and said let me help, we thought ok he is going to show us how to do this and then he will let us finish, not the case, he washed all 4 shoes and they looked amazing. We sat their getting laughed at the whole time and being humbled by having a man that works his butt off clean our shoes. Michael said we would have been out here for hours and they would not have looked half as good, and I knew Michael was right. The most amazing part was that he had a scrub brush but he used a corn cob to clean the sides of the shoes and it worked great, he also used a part of the coal bag to clean the inside of our shoes, again amazing and unexpected. They use everything in the environment and so do the kids. We were a little upset that they women kept talking about us in Kiswahili and kept laughing but we thought we must have looked rather spoiled to say the least. So we walked inside with a wounded spirit and a humbled heart.
posted by Michael & Tammi at 3:19 AM
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