Lena's First Days of School

Note: I wrote this on Friday but we forgot to post it until now!

After a four week teacher’s strike all across Kenya, my school restarted yesterday.  Even though it’s a public school (Chogoria Complex) we have to wear uniforms, and I call it “My Dorothy Costume” because it looks just like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. 

My school starts at 8am, and classes end at 3:45pm.  There are clubs and games, cleaning the school, and “personal studying” (homework) until 5:30.  But I just leave at 3:45.  I also go home for lunch. 

At 11am and around 3pm, everyone “takes tea” in reusable plastic cups from the school.  The cook scoops tea (with milk and sugar) from a giant bucket into your cup.  The cups are sometimes dirty, so you have to clean them out with your fingers.  There’s also a bucket of bread and you must take it.  When I hadn’t taken it, my teacher called me over and said “Take bread!”.  When I told him I wasn’t hungry, he told me again “Take bread!”. I did, and by that time EVERYONE was staring at me. The other students eat the bread in literally a minute.  Because I hadn’t finished mine, and everyone was leaving, I threw out half of the bread.  Then a girl came up to me, and she asked why I threw away my bread.  I told her I wasn’t hungry and was it bad to throw it out?  She said “yes”.   I was so embarrassed.

For the first two hours of school on both days, there was no teacher and kids led the class in checking their previous work.  Throughout the day, teachers just leave and don’t come back.  Then sometimes 10 minutes or an hour later, another teacher will come strolling in and start the next class.

Every morning at 8am, we have assembly outside for the whole school.  Today, a couple of the teachers gave little speeches about working hard because of the strike.  Then they sing the national anthem, and one student marches to the flagpole and raises the flag.  For the assembly the students stand in a specific order, with the oldest group (my class of 8^th graders) in the back and the youngest group (preschoolers) in the front. 

In my English class, my teacher started talking about awful situations.  She had us think about “you and your friend walking into a house and then the people in the house make you start doing what they’re doing, or think about walking alone down the street and being kidnapped”.  Then she told us to write a story about this, and she walked out of the classroom. 

The first day at school, I was stared at the whole day!  Today, I was ignored by my peers.  I’m pretty sure they just don’t know what to do with me.