Home life and trip to dump site

Hi everyone,

My family has been getting many questions. So to answer some of them: the place where I live has electricity which is very lucky. We have running water on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Although that's not very reliable - no running water today and it is Thursday. I had a bucket shower since I didn't shower yesterday either haha. The house has concrete floors and we sleep on wooden bunkbeds. The shower is literally right beside the toilet. There is a drain right in front of the toilet that the water goes into (no stall or anything). School goes from 8:20-4:10 and I have about a 20 minute walk to the school. I am also finding it very lucky that there are not too many mosquitos...although there is sooo much dust! I inhale about a tonne of dust everyday lol. These are some of the kids at the school:

Today was hard. We went to school in the morning and then in the afternoon we went into town with our host dad (James) and one of the teachers. We bought water for ourselves and then juice and bread because we were going  to visit the garbage slum which is very close to where we live. It was really hard to witness...there are so many families literally living on garbage. The way they survive is through running after trucks that dump garbage and picking through the garbage to find anything edible. The women knit hats and make cool purses out of the garbage to try to sell to visitors. There are 600 kids living in this slum and only about half can afford to go to school. It was really sad to see people living in such poverty. Most kids didn't even have shoes and they were walking on garbage all day.

The girl to my left is name Ruth and she is 19. She has a 3 year old baby which apparently is quite common in this slum.

They all sung a song at one point. It was beautiful. I tried to upload a video but it didn't work :(

It is hard because all of the people think that we are rich and will be able to give them lots of money. It's hard to say no to buying things for people, but I have to become better at recognizing their need but also recognizing that I'm not really in a place financially to fill everyone's needs. Especially since financial aid won't solve most of these problems unless there is a sound action plan to go along with it. Instead, I am trying to focus on more sustainable ways of helping...one thing I am doing is looking into building a website for the school to raise awareness of their issues. I have some other ideas...we will see what happens. :)
Kweheri!

Lisa

P.S. Shoutout to my beautiful sista Bridget...the kids here think your name is really funny!

First week teaching

Hellooooo friends,

So I arrived on Saturday and stayed at the volunteer house in Nairobi which was very nice. I stayed with a lot of other volunteers from the US and Europe mainly. It was a relaxing weekend where we toured Nairobi and hung out. On Sunday we went to church and let me tell you, it was a lot different from the Bracebridge masses I'm used to! (haha). The singing was very engaging and there was a lot of dancing. I found it very inspiring.

On Monday we had orientation. We were told to be ready by nine but Kenyan time nine actually means 11:30 haha. We ended up leaving for our placements a couple hours late. Then when we were driving in this huge van with 11 of us jammed in it, we ran out of gas and one of the guys had to ride a matatu (the public bus system in Kenya - large vans that fit 10-20 people and are relatively cheap to get around) to get more gas. But of course, there was a gas shortage so he had to go very far to get gas and didnt return for over an hour. We didn't arrive at our placements until 10pm with all the stops...only 4 hours late!

I am staying with a family - the parents are really nice and they have a 7 month old daughter. Her name is Lovelin and she is the happiest baby I have ever met. She is SO cute! There is another volunteer here from China. She is really interesting to talk to and the kids love learning kung fu from her.

ANDDDD now the school. It is a small school in size, but has 1000 kids from grades 1-8. There are 60-80 students in each class. There is only ONE text book for every 5-8 kids, isn't that crazy? That makes it hard to teach...with no overheads or photocopies or text books. My teaching schedule is very random, someone just takes me to a class, hands me a text book and says "teach." There is no prep time or anything beforehand, it's been weird.

After school, we have about an hour to play with the kids. They had a fashion show today for me where they take turns walking the catwalk...quite funny. They are always getting me to sing them songs, so I'm glad I spent so long at camp haha! They think my hair, arm hair and freckles are baffling. They have never seen white people before, so they ask me if the other girl from China is my sister hahaha! Overall, it's a little exhausting to be the center of attention at all times, but I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon lol.

I have much more to write, but don't have enough time. So, until next time...I will try to add pictures!

Lisa

Leaving...today!

Hi everyone!

For those who don't know, next Thursday I am off to Kenya where I will spend 3 months teaching at a local school. I will be teaching all subjects (math, science, english...) and be teaching kids in all grades. This will be my fifth work term (although it won't count for coop credit unless I do some kind of engineering work- but I only need 5/6 coops in order to graduate on time).

When I tell people how I'm spending my winter, the first question I hear is "why?" My interest in international development was sparked very young...I was recently reading a journal from when I was in grade 5 and my career goals were “to teach in underprivileged countries and write about my experiences.”

Then, when I was in grade 12 I went on a mission trip to Nicaragua with my high school. We painted a school and it was a really amazing experience. Though it was a short trip, it further solidified my interest in helping developing countries and ever since, I have wanted to do more.

But, since starting university I haven't done much that was aligned with that goal, so through this trip, I will be fulfilling a dream that I have had for a long time, and who knows what I will discover?

I recognize that 3 months isn't long enough to really change the world or anything, but I'm hoping to form some meaningful connections and if I can even help one person, I will consider this trip a huge success.

My flight leaves in 6.5 hours and I should be arriving Saturday morning at 7:00am their time. I'm so excited!!

Cheers,
Lisa