GIRLS CAMP!

With school closed a week early and a travel ban put in place by Peace Corps due to the referendum I had a week of free time to try and fill. Chris and I decided to use this time to organize and hold a Girls Empowerment / Life Skills camp for the girls of his school and the girls from my school that live in and around Muhuru Bay (where Chris teaches at Rabwao). Chris and I were lucky to have the help of two other PCVs to help facilitate the different sessions. Whitney had come to stay with me since her site is in the Rift Valley, where there had been a lot of speculation that violence would occur, and Sonya, a public health volunteer, was also staying in the area for the travel ban since her site is also in Rift Valley.

Together, the four of us put together a packed day of sessions about goal setting, female role models, assertive communication skills, female reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and condom use and healthy relationships. Between the two schools about 70 girls were invited to the camp and we had an excellent turn out of 50 girls. In addition to the sessions that we held we also had some fun with the girls teaching them all about how to make and love PB&J sandwiches, holding condom "races" and we also provided lunch for the girls, complete with sodas (a big treat for Kenyan students). The whole day was a huge success and it was great to see the girls getting a chance to talk about and ask questions about topics that are often neglected both in school and in the homes here. I had a number of students tell me what a great time they had and Chris, Whitney, Sonya and I all felt very accomplished and fulfilled (oh, and exhausted) at the end of the day. Here are some pictures from the day.




Goal setting session where we talked about what the girls want to achieve after secondary school, we talked about careers and how to realize their goals.



Female reproductive health session, here the girls are arranging the stages in the menstrual cycle.



Group photo at the end of the day

Its August?

End of Term 2

Term 2 came to a close. Schools all over Kenya closed a week earlier than had been originally scheduled because of the August 4th Kenyan referendum on a new constitution. Looking back on this term I think it went a lot more smoothly than my first term at Bande and the weeks really flew by. I am much more comfortable in the classroom and feel like I am making more of an impact on the teaching styles of the other teachers and connecting even more with the students. The term of course had its ups and downs but I've learned so much and I think things will continue to be challenging but the longer I am here the more equipped I feel to face the challenges. I try to omit most of the downs on here and focus on the ups, but maybe I shouldn't do that... it doesn't give the whole picture. The highs in Peace Corps life are incredibly high but the lows can be really low. I am still incredibly happy to be here and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else anywhere else right now, but that doesn't mean I don't have bad days. I would have to say my biggest challenge at my school is the use of corporal punishment (caning) as a form of discipline. I've come to terms with the fact that I can't expect caning to go away over night but I am working with the administration and the other teachers to try and move my school away from this punishment. This of course doesn't make it any easier for me to see the students being hit, but I have found ways to cope and I have gotten a lot of support from other PCVs and the Peace Corps Kenya staff. As far as the students' classroom performance the form 1s once again performed really really well in biology with the lowest grade for the whole form being a C-. I've been so happy with how hard they work and even as we add more and more information they still continue to do well in their exams. My form 2s had kind of a rough time with their end term exam, it was the longest, most challenging and most comprehensive exam we have given to them and a lot of them struggled with the graphing questions and I think some were just intimidated by the length of the exam itself. But its good to see the areas where the students need some extra revision and we will be tackling a lot more graph questions so they can get comfortable with those. The end of the term snuck up on me for sure, and things were complicated when I got stuck in Kisumu on medical, I came down with a stomach thing that turned out to be dysentery (what am I a character on the Oregon Trail game?) and needed a few days of lying in bed before I could travel back to site. I was lucky that my fellow teachers stepped in and when I got back to site they had finished calculating all of my students grades and had completed their report cards for the term, I am incredibly lucky to work with such a great staff! Now it's time for a month off from teaching to recharge for the last term of the year!