Life Skills Week with Denae and Lizzie

A few weeks ago some PCV friends, Denae and Lizzie, came and visited my school for the week. Both Denae and Lizzie are public health volunteers so while they were here they taught my life skills classes, taught the weekly guidance and counseling session and met with my health club to do some activities. It was great to have guests for the week and we had a lot of fun cooking and watching movies in the evening and then working all day with the students.

In life skills class we taught decision-making skills and how to say no to sex. To do this we gave the girls different scenarios and they had to decide what to do and the steps they might take before making a decision. Then we gave them pressure lines that boys may use to convince them to have sex and asked them to write responses. The students worked in groups and then presented their choices and their responses to the pressure lines as a skit for the whole class. Some of the girls got really into playing the parts in their skit and it was really entertaining. We also discussed all the consequences of having sex to encourage them to delay sex. Of course we didn't want to ignore the fact that not all students will choose to say no to sex, so during the health club meeting we taught them all about condoms. We played games to get them comfortable talking about condoms and sex and get them use to touching condoms, then we did a condom demonstration and then taught the girls how they can do condom demonstrations for their classes. And finally, during the weekly guidance and counseling session for the school, Denae and Lizze talked about rape. They told the girls the steps to take if they are raped, strategies to minimize the risk of being raped and the emotional and physical impact that being raped can have on someone. All of these topics are subjects that are not usually openly discussed in Kenyan society, so it was an incredibly educational and useful week for the students and they really enjoyed having more "mzungu" (white people) around to interact with. Lizzie, Denae and I also played volleyball with my team in the afternoons and we had them do a relay race so we taught them the three legged race, the crab walk and wheel-barrow racing. So, basically, it was a blast! Lizzie and Denae also sat in on my biology classes and Lizzie was nice enough to take some pictures of me teaching, so now you can see what I do here everyday! Here are the pictures, enjoy:


Lizzie and Denae with some of my students after they taught guidance and counseling to the whole school.

Teaching about rape at guidance and counseling
The condom water balloon toss game with the students in my health club
A student from the health club demonstrating how to do a condom demonstration for class mates.

The condom hot potato game with the health club. The condoms were blown up as balloons and contained questions related to sex and condoms. Whoever had the condom when the music stopped had to break the condom and answer the question inside to get a candy.

Making condom water balloons for the health club games.

Me teaching my form 2 biology class. This is what I do everyday!

Doing a relay race with my volleyball team, they had never done the crab walk or wheelbarrow before.

The students presenting their skits of how to respond to pressure lines with Lizzie and Denae in life skills class.