Easter Weekend

Another holiday blog post….Happy Easter to all J I hope everyone had a fabulous day and enjoyed the weather!

My Easter was different than most Easters I’ve celebrated though more similar than Christmas or Halloween was. The weather feels exactly like spring at home, it rained yesterday so the ground is damp and the birds are singing loudly. The air is warm but with a slight chill that comes rustling through every so often and the sun is shining brightly. I even painted 3 eggs J The strange part was that I didn’t go to church this morning which felt very odd.

Last Sunday I went to church for the first time since arriving in Sipili. The kids had asked me to go a few times but they attend a Catholic Church weekly and I wasn’t sure how I felt about going. Last week I decided to attend since it was Palm Sunday and I thought it would be a good service. I left my house at 9:30 and went with the kids to wait outside the gate while we watched tons of people enter the gate to the hearing school next to ours. The service started differently in honor of Palm Sunday. The Catholic Parish had the 4 churches that make up the parish all meet at the school before going to church. At 10:00, they started praying and singing with palms up in the air and then at 10:30 we all started to walk to town. This was the coolest part for me. Everyone had come with palms or olive branches they had gotten from their gardens or off the side of the road and when we walked, everyone had them up in the air. Now I’m realllllly bad at estimating amounts of people but I’d say there were between 500 and 800 people all walking the 30 minutes to the church by way of the town with their branches raised high. Some people were singing and some just catching up with friends but it was really neat. It felt much more real than any Palm Service I’d attended since those all consisted of palms bought from a store and held in the air while standing in our pews. After we arrived the church around 11, the service started. It lasted 3 hours and was all in Kiswahili. The worst part was there was no interpreter! I don’t know how often they have one because I’ve heard the teachers talk about rotating each Sunday but I’m pretty sure it rarely happens. They had asked me to interpret for the service but there was no way that was possible. They wanted to whisper the English into my ear so that I could then interpret from that. Besides my signing not being strong enough to fully interpret in the first place, so much would be lost from that system and it would be exhausting to do for 3 hours. I couldn’t believe there was no one there for the kids; it would’ve been helpful for me too since I can understand KSL but not Kiswahili. I just found it ridiculous.

A few days later I find out that Wednesday there are no classes because they kids go to church for an end of term service with maybe 6-7 other primary schools, all hearing. This was a school day and other teachers showed up at school before we left for church. We left at 10 but only the two housemothers, me and one other teacher actually went. I thought the other teacher would interpret, silly me. We got there and listened to a Kiswahili sermon for 45 minutes, then waited for 10-15 for the priest to show up only so we could have a 2 hour and 15 min church service…with no interpreter! The teachers say they don’t want to interpret because they aren’t Catholic. When I told them I’m not Catholic but I went they said ‘oh, but it was a good experience for you, huh?’ and when I told them there was no interpreter, they said ‘Oh. Really? That’s too bad’ and then went back to reading the paper. That’s 6 hours sitting in a church not understanding anything all within 2 days. So long story short, going to church has only pressed my buttons and I haven’t gotten anything out of it since I cant understand a single word so my Sundays are now for long runs and self-reflection on those runs J

Other than that, things are going well. I worked on an art project with my kids on Saturday which was a little crazy but fun for all! My headmaster had given me a paper about this project called ‘MASK Art Prize’ that any Kenyan kid could enter. He asked me to work with the kids on it. The theme of the drawing/painting was supposed to be on ‘What Makes You Proud of Kenya?’ and so I helped them talk about out what they loved about Kenya and made them proud and then tried to a rough copy out of the ones who were interested. I got about 12 rough copies and so on Saturday I wanted them to work on the final piece. I called the 12 kids out and naturally, all of them wanted a part in it so after they showed me a rough copy, they were allowed to do their own. I think in the end I got 25 papers. Some just looked at their friends papers and did what they did-I got a lot of churches drawn which I found a little ironic since they usually don’t have an interpreter. However, they do have 4 Christian classes each week and on Tuesdays a sister comes in and teaches them about the Catholic Church for an hour and a half. I think overall they just liked being able to draw with markers, colored pencils and paint, which I love too so it all worked out! I now will pick the best ones to send pictures of to the contest and then hopefully all of them will be hung up somewhere in our school. I plan on posting pictures on facebook during my in-service training in mid-April so you can see some of them.

The election news is that the petitions were denied and Kenyatta will be president. Swearing in for him is on 9^th April I believe.

Lastly, exams are this week, starting tomorrow and then Games start the following week. I’m really excited to see how my kids do and what exactly happens at these Games. It should be a lot of fun I hope!

And I wanted to say a BIG CONGRATS to my cousin Rachel who was recently nominated for El Salvador doing Economic Community Development!!!!!!

Kisses from Kenya J

p.s. if anyone fooled anyone/was fooled by someone really good yesterday, please share!