July 25, 2013
Marjie here!
We’re coming to the end of our second week here. I find myself surprised that half our stay in
Chogoria is over already, yet looking forward to our travels at the end of our
trip.
Did we mention yet how cold it is here?? Yep, it’s July on the equator, and I
completely advised the family incorrectly on packing. Our first day here, we went out and bought
used American fleece jackets at the small market stalls. Today, I bought everyone hats, scarves, and
more fleece! It’s probably been in the
low-50’s at night, and maybe the low 60’s during the day. But of course, there’s no indoor heating, and
many of our house windows are broken, so the cold comes right in. The silver lining to the weather is that
there are few mosquitos, so though we continue to take our malaria meds, and
sleep under mosquito nets, we might not really need to.
Having settled the kids in school (more or less) last week,
I spent much of my time this week trying to put some of my skills to use. I’ve been volunteering at the local community
health clinic in their family planning, immunization and prenatal clinics. I’m not sure I’ve contributed anything to the
clinic, but it’s been fascinating to see how things are done. Great care is paid to cleanliness, though at
first glance, the place looks old and run down.
There are six nurses that run the place, and about 15 nursing students
from the nearby college that work alongside.
As interesting as my observations are, it’s even more interesting to
spend downtime just speaking with the nurses and students. We’ve
discussed adoption (unheard of here), marriage, family structure, homosexuality
(doesn’t exist), religion (very religious Christians), teen pregnancy,
etc… These are interesting women, well
educated, and curious about the US.
In addition to my work at the clinic, I have also been
volunteering at the local primary school (grades pre-K through 8). Lena attends this school, and this week,
Talia and Zoe have been volunteering as well.
(Zoe hasn’t attended school this week because her classmates have been
taking exams all week.) Volunteering at
Chogoria Complex has been a complete pleasure!
The children are incredibly well-behaved, adorable, and fascinated with
us. They cheer when we enter the
classroom, and chase us around the soccer field nearby. I have read to the kids, helped with math
lessons, and gave a social studies lesson on how to go to school safely (i.e.
stranger danger), as I had been instructed.
One of my favorite parts of the day is “taking tea” with the teaching
staff at 3:15 each day. They spend much
of this time grading papers, but we will sometimes have conversations on
education differences in our countries.
I met this week with the local school board to discuss
developing a sister school arrangement between Traverse City and the primary school
in Chogoria. We brought several donated
laptop computers from our school district, as a goodwill gesture. They were most appreciative, and have already
used them with the students. The school
board is interested in exploring this further, including such activities as
skyping, pen-pals, etc…
The past two days we spent at a Music Competition nearby.
This was an extravaganza with over 1000 primary school students from around the
country. There were numerous
competitions including: choir, traditional African dancing, poetry performance,
speech writing, etc… It was amazing to
see little 5 year olds reciting poetry and exquisite dances performed by the
students. I think as much as we enjoyed
the performances, the students enjoyed watching our girls. They were quite the spectacle among the
students, and were often swallowed up in crowds of students touching their
hair, asking them questions, rubbing their skin!
Signing off for now! Happy
birthday, from afar, to my mom!
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