I am a Banana

I have now been a Peace Corps Volunteer for about two months now and the time has been passing fast. I started teaching English at the beginning of January and am loving it. There are supposed to be 75 kids in my class whose language levels range as much as their ages (10-17 years). On a usual day, however, there are about 50-60 kids who show up. Only a few kids have textbooks which makes teaching even more challenging, but their enthusiasm for learning trumps the challenges.

Currently all of the teachers are untrained community members who stepped up to try and prevent the children from falling behind while hoping that the state would evenutally send teachers. This week, under the amazing leadership of a new director who was just affected to Nyambaka this year, the state has approved his proposal and has sent Nyambaka 9 new (state-paid and trained) teachers!!! It is amazing to witness such positive community development that truly came from the community itself. The new director has served as the catalyst without a doubt and is helping the school evolve in many other ways as well: electricity, a volleyball court, school clubs and of course the new teaching staff. Currently a student can't finish their high school education in Nyambaka (they must move to a larger, nearby city for the last 3 years of high school), so the director is working hard to expand the grades offered for the upcoming school year.

Along with teaching English, I'll be helping with the Health Club and working on a project with the director to start a library. Just this last week, one of the new vocabulary words my class learned was "library." Heartbreakingly, I had to not only teach the meaning of the word "library" but also the concept as the majority of my students have never seen or heard of one. It is things like this that make me truly value the education I received.

There is so much more to write, but I will leave it at this for now. My posts are going to be less frequent as I will only have internet access every 2-4 weeks, but I will continue to post when I can.

My favorite thing one of my students have said? I am a banana.