Rude Awakening

One of the highlights of my experience so far is that I have been very fortunate to spend a lot of time with children.  I have never had this opportunity before.  I come from a small family and I guess the only time I had such an opportunity was during a brief stint as a swim coach for a community swim team in La Crosse.  But other than that the opportunity simply never presented itself.  I did not even know that I would be around kids as much as I have.  I knew that my responsibilities would include working with deaf children in some capacity, but the Peace Corps pretty much kept a tight lid on everything.  I was blessed to spend quality time with my three host brothers and now I am blessed with 10 kids in Class one.  This shouldn’t be too hard right?  I mean its class one, just give them some coloring books and they’re happy.  They’re just so excited to have a mzungu as a teacher, so everything I do will be equally exciting, right?

WRONG!

Good God, these kids are going to give me a heart attack.  I don’t even know where to begin.  At various points throughout the last few weeks I’ve had kids bleeding, crying, throwing rocks at each other, fighting, and just not pay attention at all.  One girl was frantically running around the room with a piece of paper.  I tried to coax her into giving me the paper but only to watch her put it in her mouth and swallow it.  I have another student who will not mind his damn business, he is constantly starting fights because he thinks he is looking out for the rest of the class, but he only is a nuisance.  Another student I swear is hyperactive and my superior at the Peace Corps even thinks so.  Another student cries if anything happens.  Two of the students are brothers, so they are constantly fighting.  One student throw a rock at another student’s head.  One threw a rock at me today! They locked me out of my classroom.  One student got a math problem wrong and started bawling as if I told him WWE is fake.  One girl is very bright, but only wants to work on math. And I haven’t even mentioned how one boy tried to choke another with a jump rope.

The most frustrating thing is, is that I feel like I am all they have.  Most deaf children in Kenya are neglected by the majority of society including their parents.  But some days are just so hard it becomes a challenge in itself to find the motivation to help them.

• As crazy as it has been, I still try to look at the positives:

1. As I previously mentioned, this is a good experience for me simply to be around children even if they are a rambunctious bunch.

2. The best way I can get them to settle down is by giving them something to do.  But when they are well behaved I just know that at any moment one of them can trigger a bedlam or as a fellow volunteer so accurately describes as Dante’s Inferno.

3. This is the best way to learn.  I learned a few little things: they like to “sharpen” their pencils to waste time. To counter this behavior I make sure all of their pencils are sharpened and that there is an extra one ready in case someone needs a new one.  This also keeps them from using the dangerous pencil sharpener that resembles a small knife and is a fantastic way to spread HIV/AIDS.

I know that the biggest if not the only reason they are so crazy is that they know I will not resort to any form of corporal punishment.  Now, I have not seen anything too crazy in terms of this form of punishment but I have seen a couple kids pinched and another student hit over the hand with a pencil.  At first, I was in shock when I saw it happen, but it really wasn’t anything more than a spanking.  In reality, it is part of the culture in Kenya and the children expect it to happen.  Maybe it explains their aggressive behavior.  I should point out that it is incredibly effective.  Yes, I consider it to be unethical and inhumane but whenever I have a teacher teach a lesson in my class, those little heathens turn into the perfect little angels.

So my biggest task is trying to come up with a different way to punish them.  I have tried a reward system: each student has an envelop posted on their desk.  In the envelop are five pieces of play money.  They start each day with all five pieces, but if they misbehave, I take one away.  But if they change their behavior later in the day, I give them the money back.  At the end of the day, if they still have all five they get a sticker.  On the surface I thought this was a good idea.  I actually stole the idea from one of the many Peace Corps manuals and improvised it a little bit.  But, it seems like it only made matters worse.  They raise hell when I take money away from them, they complain that another student has more, they’ve broken into my desk and stolen my stickers, and they rip the stickers off the other envelopes.  I tried to be consistent with this, but I got so fed up with it today that I took all the envelopes down.  I will figure something else out.

After a long and stressful week I went to Meru to hang out with some quality mzungus over the weekend.  Its amazing what some time away with friends will do to my morale.  We baked a cake on a jiko stove and I finally got a haircut.  But by far the best part of the weekend was on Sunday morning when we made a visit to an orphanage.  Many of these children were deserted by their parents and are HIV positive. The older children (the oldest is age five) were at church but we were greeted by numerous crying babies.  The three of us held almost every baby and when the other kids arrived we were practically tackled.  They were so happy to see us and all they wanted was to be held since they’ve been neglected their entire lives.  It was a very nice orphanage and I hope to make another visit the next time I’m in Meru.  

I have also given a lot of thought to possible secondary project ideas.  This is pretty self explanatory, these are projects that the Peace Corps requires us to have in addition to our teaching responsibilities.  I think I am really going to enjoy secondary projects because it can be something that I will be accomplish through my own foresight and determination.  So far I have already started a group for the deaf adults in the community.  One idea that I am kicking around is the possibility of building a library for my school and maybe even the neighboring schools.  The students really have nothing to do in their free time except to push old tires around, so I figure give them a book to read!  I’m still trying to learn more about how to do this and if it is even possible so if anyone has some ideas, send them my way.

Today’s Picture

Some of our youngest students taking a break from the national pastime of pushing tires around: