Interviews and teaching

My interview with Martha Mutch, the computers teacher at Maasai Girls Lutheran Secondary School went quite well this morning. An hour into the interview, we decided to call it quits for the day, stop into the teachers' lounge for afternoon tea, and set up another date for Friday.

Before meeting with Martha, I met with Mr. Mduma, another computers teacher at Maasai Girls. He brought me to his form 5 level General Studies class, where I met his nine lovely students. Mr. Mduma asked me to lead a discussion about urbanization in the US as compared with urbanization in East Africa - and though my knowledge in this area is a bit limited, it seemed to be comprehensive enough to provoke some discussion among the students, which is all one can really hope for. I'll return to Mr. Mduma's class on Friday morning, after the students have researched urbanization in East Africa tonight and tomorrow, and hopefully I'll bear witness to a thoroughly exciting exchange of ideas. It will be especially interesting to hear what these girls think, as the majority of them are Maasai people, and therefore come from extremely traditional tribal culture which is beginning to evolve with the introduction of more modern farming equipment and the introduction of education to their children (this is especially new to the Maasai girls, as boys have been receiving education for probably two decades or so now).

I'm quite interested in helping to teach these students; according to Martha, there is a pre-form 1 class (basically a prep class before the students enter secondary school at form 1 level) which consists of 80 students, and there are only TWO teachers for these eighty students! AND, to make things worse, there's talk that one of these two teachers is going to leave Maasai Girls at the end of November. So Martha is going to discuss things with the Headmistress this afternoon, and I should be able to start helping out at pre-form 1 level English and General Studies next week. Hooray!

Today, I spent a good amount of time mulling about Monduli on my own. The jakaranda trees are in bloom, and their purple flowers on leafless trees are quite striking. It's nice to listen to these melodic birds and to take in the scenery, and the absolute silence underneath the sounds of school children playing playground games. I like Monduli.