Kenya

Kenya, Miscellaneous, Teaching

Everybody knows I’m a teacher, but there’s so much more to my every day life than teaching! Here’s what a typical day looks like:

  • 7:00 AM: Wake up, make tea, revise notes for class (if I have one that day).
  • 8:00 AM: Walk to school, stopping in the staff room to greet the secretary and drop my books off. After greetings I head to the computer lab to turn on the servers, routers, and computers. I usually don’t have class until 10:30, so I will check e-mail, catch up on news, and work in the computer lab until 10:00.
  • 10:00 AM: Tea break. I’ll spend a half hour or so drinking tea and chatting with other teachers. Sometimes I bring a book and read that instead of chatting.
  • 10:30 or 11:00 AM: Class for 1 or 2 hours, depending on how my mood is and how much material I have to cover.
  • 12:30 PM: Lunch. On MWF it’s githeri (corn and beans, staple food around here) and TR it’s rice and potato stew (blah). We chat and eat until around 1:30 or 2:00. Sometimes I go home and do laundry at lunch too.
  • 2:00 PM: Work in computer lab, either researching class notes or maintaining the lab computers and servers.
  • 4:00 PM: Ride bike to Tala market (1.5 km).  I usually do shopping for vegetables on Tuesday and Friday, but there’s plenty of other things to buy in the market.  Drinking tea and eating a chapati is a must in Tala market, I do it almost every day without exception.  Other days I go visit the barber and have him clean up my beard.
  • 6:00 or 7:00 PM: Ride my bike home and change out of my work clothes into my cultural dress (shorts, sandals, no t-shirt).  Only after I’ve done that can I start thinking about preparing dinner.
  • 9:00 PM: Dinner is usually done by this time (sometimes I get a late start!) and then I can sit down to do any combination of the following: check e-mail, watch a few episodes of Arrested Development, read a book, prepare notes for the next day’s class.
  • 11:00 PM: Bed time!

So there you have it, that’s my daily routine.  It’s nice that I’ve actually got a routine now… my little, lonely house is starting to feel like home to me now (though it’s a bit lonely!).  Post a comment if you have any questions!

Kenya, Teaching

My students were supposed to report to school on August 18th but there was apparently a mix-up, so they came yesterday, September 1st. The students picked their classes and then the teachers sat down to figure out the time table. I was assigned two units, Intro to Programming and Algorithms and Network Essentials. I taught these same two classes last semester so I’ve already prepared notes, assignments, and tests; all I have to do this semester is review/revise my notes kidogo (a bit) and show up to class!
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Miscellaneous, Rants

You’ve probably heard that Barack Obama’s father is from Kenya, so there’s a sort of Obama-mania around here. Here’s how most of my conversations go with the locals:

Local: “Do you think Obama will win?”
Me: “Yes, but I’m not going to vote for him.”
 Local: “What? Why not?”
Me: “Why should I vote for him?”
Local: “HE’S KENYAN!!!”
Me: “But that’s not what Democracy is about…”

One teen-aged girl proceeded to ask me if I hate black people.  I told her that I don’t care if the next president of the United States is white, black, green, or a tree.  American politics make it so that any candidate with drastically different ideas has absolutely no chance to get elected.