Today was such a GREAT first day as a TEACHER in AFRICA!! We woke up bright and early at 5:45am, had breakfast at 6:30am and headed to our schools at 7am. I was teaching Form 4 Chemistry. I wore my blazer today and my glasses so I was feeling just like a teacher! When we got to the school, the building was the only thing around. There were no windows in any of the classrooms, no electricity, lots of problems as the headmaster would keep telling us. The main problem we noticed is that the kids had no water. The headmaster admitted this was their largest problem. They did have a garden though, they were growing many different types of vegetables that they were going to use for the students and sell for revenue. They also were growing trees that would eventually grow and provide shade for the students.  I was impressed with their efforts.

            I was shocked at how they treated my friend Shana for being black. In Africa I am beginning to realize that they think that all Americans are white. They treated Shana as if she was not good enough to teach.

When the headmaster met us he introduced himself to me, Emily and Forrest but he completely skipped over Shana. It was as if she didn't even exist. He looked at Kim and said I thought 4 volunteers were coming and Kim said we have 4 volunteers this is Shana our 4th volunteer. He looked so confused, and said but she's Negro. My face was so hot I was so confused how could there be oppression amongst his own people? Kim said she is an American, in America we have African Americans. He looked confused again but shook her hand. Shana just took a big swallow and nodded. We headed into the teachers lounge, which is an empty room with no chairs or windows and met the academic master. He asked us to sign the log book so he could set the schedule for the morning. He brought us chairs where we could sit and once again he wouldn't pass the log book to Shana. Shana spoke up and said, "Excuse me sir I will be teaching as well" and he looked so shocked. He said "But you are the same color as me." As if she wasn't good enough to teach? Shana and I talked later that night and it has really been brought to our attention that many people here believe that only white people come from America. Even though Obama is our president he is only half black. And even Shana pointed this out that the majority of major American films they see with black people in them are about oppression or slavery. They never see African Americans in films that are educated, successful and traveling, so they didn't understand that. They didn't know any better to act that way towards her she said. I was so proud of her for how strong she was and for keeping her head held high.

After the students started to arrive at school they unlocked the classrooms and I was able to settle in. I had a 90 minute block which for my very first time teaching I was nervous I was going to run out of material to talk about and have extra time. There were a lot fewer Form 4 students then Form 2 students because many students had not passed there Form 2 exams. Therefore they could not move on to higher levels. I had so many insecurities. Will the students like me? Will the material be challenging enough? What if they already know what I am teaching? What if they are extremely disruptive? Tons of these thoughts were running through my head. None of those things happened, I was extremely flexible and everything went according to plan. The students really loved me! I brought in different types of leaves from outside and we learned about quantitative and qualitative analysis. I had the students get in pairs and use their five senses to describe the leaves and then I had them use their rulers to measure the length and width of each leaf. We talked about our results as a class and then we had a discussion about how we use qualitative and quantitative analysis outside of the classroom. Two students came up and read some of the things they wrote down and I gave them pipis (candy). I was so proud of them for their courage! Students here do not have the courage like students in the US to stand up in front of the class so I was very proud! After school we took the bus back to where we were staying and debriefed on our lessons. We had lunch and then we had a break until we walked over to the language school for our first Swahili lesson. Chuma the director was our teacher. He gave us a binder full of worksheets and homework. Every day this week we will get a 2 hour Swahili lesson at the language school. Today we did noun agreements and went over more in depth greetings. The language school is so nice! It is in the middle of the forest almost and people come from all over to learn Swahili. I really enjoyed the class and the teacher is great. Tea time where we are staying is every day at 4. So after our lesson we went and had tea, which is my absolute favorite here. We had 2 hours to lesson plan after tea before dinner. Shana and I walked to the dukanis (shops) and bought pipis for our class. Then we came back and just hung out instead of lesson planning we did that after dinner! Dinner was delicious we had an African pizza! It had lots of vegetables on top. After dinner we came to the common area and lesson planned for the next day, that’s when I realized what my new life was going to be like! Lesson planning every day! Haha. I think tomorrow I am going to teach a lesson on organic and inorganic waste, and have my class do a little experiment! So we will see how it goes I will let you guys know! Good night J