Model School

Model school was last week! Whooop Whooop! Model School meaning that Peace Corps was trying to help stimulate a real-life school setting for us for one week. Peace Corps asked Machakos School for the Deaf if some of their students would be willing to stay at school for one additional week of school so we could practice teaching them and make it as real as possible. They just finished school but the headmaster picked 10 students from grades 4,5 & 6 along with 15 9^th & 10^th graders for the guys in our group who will be teaching at a secondary school. We had 2 volunteers who have completed one year of service and 2 who are about to finish their service who agreed to help out the whole week as well as 4 Kenyan teachers who normally teach the classes we were teaching.

Monday we observed the volunteers and Kenyan teachers and made our lesson plans. We then taught a total of 7 classes (35 min/class) over the next 3 days on various topics/subjects. We taught science, math, English or social studies. It went better than I thought it would since I still don’t feel like I have a wide range of KSL vocabulary and seeing as it was my first time ever teaching a class! The students at Machakos School are so incredibly smart and since we were doing lessons on topics they had just covered that year it also made it easier. I know I’m going to have my work cut out for me when I go to site to start teaching but this stimulation definitely helped. I’m going to have lessons go really well sometimes and also have lesson plans that I feel good about but then go horribly wrong. It’s a learning process and I’m getting more excited about teaching each day.

On a different note,, two weekends ago I went to my first Kenyan wedding…reception. It was about 10:30 am on a Saturday when I get a knock on my door from Whiney (Moosami’s mom, my Mamas one daughter who lives with us). She asked me what plans I had for the day and I didn’t have much except purifying my water and washing my clothes…I know, my weekends are craaaaaazy here! She invited me a wedding she was attending….in 1.5 hours. Haha no biggie. I tell her I don’t know what to wear and end up in jeans and blouse since she told me I could and I don’t have any real special occasion clothing, plus I figured I’m going to stand out either way. We left 2.5 hours later (Kenyan time as usual) and were driven about 15 minutes to a theological college where the wedding was being held. The wedding ceremony was supposed to start at 9 I think but she guessed that it started at least an hour later. Whiney had decided that we would miss the actual ceremony because they were usually pretty boring and since it was just the 2 of us plus her son who is 4 and Mumbi who is 11, it wasn’t worth it I guess.

We arrived about 10 minutes before the ceremony finished and got to see everyone taking pictures galore! There was a wide range of fancy dress and it was fun to see. After pictures everyone filed into 3 tents that were set up with chairs in maybe 4-5 rows-no tables except one for the bridal party. We started by eating a good meal of 1 chapatti, stew, one banana, pilau and a coleslaw type salad. We ate while the bride and groom took more pictures. When they came back everyone stood up and started dancing behind them and following them into the reception area. It was high energy and a lot of fun to watch. There was a little more dancing to follow while the bride and groom ate their lunch. A few speeches were given then it was time to cut the cake. This was crazy to me how many people got fed in this process…..ok so the bride fed the groom and vice versa. Then the bride fed the maid of honor and then the groom fed his best man. Next the bride & groom walked over to her parents and fed them and then they did the same for his parents. After that they walked back and cut more so that the groomsmen could walk around and give bite size (about quarter-size) pieces to every guest. The first 2 rows got a piece actually cut from the cakes on the table and then the 4 rows behind that got a piece that was in a little baggie with a ribbon tied around it. It looked like so much work! After all the guests were fed the bridesmaids and groomsmen each got a piece as well. The last thing was the presentation of gifts from the parents and maybe grandparents, I couldn’t quite tell. Everyone else put their gifts on a table but the parents each came forward with their wrapped gift and handed it to the bride and groom while a picture was taken with everyone’s hand on it. It was funny because after the first gift Whiney leaned over and said that back in the day it was crazy because some parents would buy mattresses and bed frames and have them carried in but they don’t do that any more….all of a sudden what’s brought in? A queen or king size mattress and all the pieces to make a bed frame…Hahaha we laughed and deiced maybe it does still happen.

The reception was pretty much over after that and people cleared out pretty fast. I found out that it was a smaller wedding than most though it looked like a medium/big wedding to me. Also, in towns crashing weddings, like I was doing, is pretty common but not that many people do it whereas in villages it is very common and they have to plan for tons of extra people who weren’t invited. The last interesting tidbit is who the bride and groom are…now I still don’t know their names, I tried to ask but got no answer, but I found out that they are both members of the Navigators Club…which I think is the same one my brother is in at Penn State!! The one director of the club was there and he said he had connections at Penn State and that there are a lot of Navigator groups based all throughout Kenya and Africa! I just thought that was pretty cool J