Two months!

Yes, I have now been here for two months! In many ways it feels like longer, because here feels like home to me now. My morning routine is starting to be something I do in my sleep - up, shower, breakfast, out at 7:45-8ish (has crept a bit later this week, oops), walk up the road, catch a bus or matatu, negotiate the road crossing and the mud/rubbish/men on motorbikes/occasional policemen with guns around Karen roundabout, catch a matatu, get off, walk up the track, say good morning to people on the way, get to school, greet the staff, start the day.

Last week all the children had assessments, so I mainly helped the teachers with those, sitting with a few children that needed support and then doing some of the marking. This was another fairly eye-opening time, in that each class had tests in every subject, including 'creative' which I'd have thought was quite difficult to test for in a meaningful way!

With less than two weeks until we finish for Christmas, it's all got pretty busy this week. I've been compiling a brochure to advertise the school to parents who could potentially afford to pay a fee to send their children to Mahali. I'm quite pleased that I managed to get to grips with Publisher, which I've not used much before, to produce a threefold leaflet thing. My family will know what I mean when I say Grandma would have been proud (she used to rave about Publisher as she used it to produce cards!) Here is a picture of each side of the leaflet:

If you are a praying person, please pray that this leaflet would be distributed to the right people and that God would bless this new stage in the work of Mahali Pa Watoto. The thinking behind introducing some fee-paying places is mainly to increase local involvement, making this a more sustainable project and not wholly reliant on funding from overseas.

I'm also continuing with my groups this week and had a lovely 1:1 session with Hannah, one of the girls I've talked about previously (see this post) She can be extremely difficult in a whole class situation, very attention-seeking and hyperactive, but she thrives in a small group or individually where she can have plenty of attention and feedback from the teacher. It's a huge worry because she should be leaving us and starting at a primary school in January, but given what I've seen and heard of the government primary schools, she is going to find it very hard. Added to that there are several issues with her home situation and we really need wisdom to know how to deal with them, and whether there is any alternative for her education.

So, one more week after this one which will finish with the Christmas party. This is an eagerly anticipated event, incorporating the graduation of the children who are leaving us as well as some drama, singing, and (most importantly) sausages, chips and ice cream! I'm looking forward to it!

I shall leave you with some fun pictures I took last week.

I love this - they're 'cooking' with leaves and flowers!

A small visitor!

The beautiful garden

I am very blessed to be living where I am. I have friendly people around me and the compound is safe and quiet (except the hyraxes at night!) The surroundings are absolutely beautiful, and I hope I don't ever take them for granted. After we'd had quite a few rainy days in the past couple of weeks, I took the opportunity this week to get out with my camera and take some photos of the flowers, and I thought I'd share some of them with you along with a few of the birds that come to the feeder/bird bath outside my window.

God's wonderful creation!

Today in the playground...

Update

Well I'm feeling rather bad that I haven't posted for a while. I was feeling quite under the weather last week; I didn't go to school on Wednesday and was still a bit weary at the weekend, so didn't do much at all on Saturday. Then on Sunday I had an eventful afternoon, much of which was spent at a local hospital, because Dee's stepmother had a nasty fall while we were out for lunch. She's getting better now but she came right down on her face and did quite a bit of damage, so needed to be checked out.

So what with one thing and another, and my failure to get to bed early enough, this week seems to be hurtling past so quickly and I'm tired out by the time I get home. And tired out doesn't make for a good post, so I'll try to get on and stop rambling! Here's what I've been up to:

•  Having meetings

(This one's just to prove I was there!)

We had a meeting a while ago now with all the staff and some of the trustees which was long but good I think. We were mostly discussing next year, when we plan to take in an extra class so we have two baby classes, and there will now be fee-paying places alongside the normal places. The aim is to make Mahali Pa Watoto a little more self-sufficient as it currently relies largely on funds raised in the UK. There is a lot to be done practically to prepare for this and we would value your prayers.

We also met last week to discuss the teachers' visits to the Montessori nursery. Most of them really enjoyed going, and thought the place was wonderful! However, it's clear that many of them still didn't really see the independent activities that the children were doing as learning - rather they seemed to think that unless they were with an adult they weren't actually learning. And because they don't get started on formally learning letters and numbers as early as ours do (which is far too early in my opinion) the teachers saw those children as 'behind' ours. It's hard for our teachers, who have been through a very traditional education themselves, and have been trained in traditional teaching methods, to accept that there is any other way. But I think gradually they will start to see the benefits of using play and letting the children make choices. One thing that was suggested is that we use a spare classroom as a 'Montessori room', where we keep all the equipment, instead of each class having a small selection. The room could be set out like the rooms they saw, with no tables and chairs, just a big carpet space, and child-level shelving around the walls with the equipment there for them to access freely. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but actually I think it could work well and I'm quite excited about it.

One of the shelving units at the Montessori nursery

Lucy doing an activity on the carpet!

• Teaching groups

I've really enjoyed doing this (have I said that already?!) although it's been a bit on and off with the nursery visits, my day off sick and the fact that this week was assessments anyway so the children all had to be in class. But it's been rewarding to see the children making little steps and most of all having fun learning!

• Holding a choir each day (and trying to get better at the guitar!)

•  Helping do some cutting out for the card-making group that Dee has started up with a few of the mums and Joyce (teaching and kitchen assistant) This project has been a real eye-opener to me; the mums mostly have little or no experience of using scissors and glue, of straight lines and spacing and all the things we take for granted when we make a card. But they're coming along nicely :-)

• Mopping the floor!

We all have our allocated rooms to mop on a Tuesday and a Friday - actually this isn't my area but my room wasn't too bad so I did a bit of the veranda too - one of the mums was doing most of it in lieu of a food contribution for this month.

• Generally having lots of fun with these amazing children! 

Choir!

Apologies for the quality, and the fact that there's at least one child singing up in the stratosphere somewhere, but just to give you an idea of the choir - they're all in top class, about 6 years old, and we've been going a few weeks.

Some pictures from my groups today

Elizabeth from middle class counting out ceramic zebras (donated by Dee)

She's counted out 9 correctly!

We also did number matching (Steve I've stolen the foam numbers!)

Language group from top class making words

'Navigating your journey'

This was the title of the church retreat that I went on last weekend. It was based on the story of Joseph (of technicolour dreamcoat fame!) from Genesis, and linked the journey that he undertook, with all the events surrounding it, to our spiritual journey. It's impossible to summarise all the things that were covered, but I wanted to write a little about a couple of things that stood out for me.

The first session was entitled 'The presence of the future' and it was mainly about dreams that God gives us. Joseph of course had some famous dreams that he got into trouble for, because he boasted about them, but they were dreams from God and accurately predicted future events in his life. We were challenged to think about our own dreams, and were then given a practical exercise - to write or draw about them and think of some steps we could take towards them. I found this extremely hard, as did most people on my table, perhaps partly because it was the first evening and we had really only just arrived and hadn't quite got our brains in gear! But also, and more significantly, I think we often learn to ignore or even bury our dreams, looking on them as silly fantasies that bear no relationship to real life, rather than as God-given and possibly pointing us in the direction he wants us to take. I think once you've entered the 'real world' of work and so on, there seems little choice than to continue in the path you have started on, whether or not it is really what you dreamed of. I suppose I've taken this year out and come to Kenya partly to get off the treadmill, and to think about where I should go next, but it is a gradual process and at the moment I don't have any definite answers. I know the picture I used to have of my future hasn't worked out and doesn't look likely to, and I am starting to realise perhaps it was not from God and was more of an assumption I'd made. I know I love teaching but not the way it is in the UK at the moment, and I know I have a particular heart for children who are needy in some way, whether that is because of disability, poverty, lack of family or something else. I am keen to use play to help children learn in a fun way, and I feel strongly about helping each child to develop as a whole person, addressing his/her social and emotional needs not just intellectual. I also know I love to be outdoors and to encourage children to be outdoors getting hands-on and dirty! And I have been drawn to Africa for a long time and feel largely at home here (despite the frustrations along the way). But I have no idea how these different things could link together into a coherent 'dream' or vision for my future. And whenever I think about things like this a voice says "But these are for other people, people who are stronger/ braver/ more outgoing/ more talented/ better Christians than you" - and that's hard to get past in the first place.

Some of the other things that particularly spoke to me at the retreat need more thought before I can be coherent about them. Broadly speaking, another big point that came out was the barriers that there are along our journey, that hold us back from taking the next steps. Pastor Doug referred to these as 'equators'; several of his pictures linked in to explorers of the past, including those who were brave enough to cross the equator for the first time, even though people thought there was nothing there or they would fall off the edge of the world! The equator was a huge barrier for a long time, but once it had been crossed they made new discoveries. Joseph had several barriers in his journey, not least the betrayal of family and friends and his long imprisonment. Lots of things can be 'equators' in our lives, such as our own or even society's long-held beliefs that are hard to get past. I know this is true in my own life.

The last thing that I want to share was the most exciting for me really, and also the most personal. We had a session where we talked about 'home' - which included an enlightening theory about integration into a new culture which was pretty relevant to me! The practical part of that session involved us building 'home' out of various crafty materials - not our table's strong point - but it was nice seeing what others had come up with. We thought about different words that defined home for us and the one that kept coming out for me was 'acceptance'. Anyway, after that we had a sort-of directed prayer session where a lady who does coaching (a little bit like counselling but different) led us in a time of prayer/meditation and listening to God. She encouraged us to 'build' a little prayer home that we can take with us wherever we go. We physically stepped 'into' it and 'out' of it several times and each time she asked us to focus on the word that had stood out for us and ask God for a picture or words/verses about it. My word was acceptance and I had a really strong sense of God's presence in my 'prayer home'. My picture was that he placed his hands on my head and told me that I was his precious child. There were other words and impressions but it's hard to express them, it was more of an overall feeling. Anyway it was exciting to me because I've never really had anything like that happen before and it was what I needed to hear at the time. No doubt I will need to hear it again and again before it really sinks in but we were told to pack up our 'prayer homes' and put them somewhere safe about our person, because we can take them out anywhere and God will meet with us.

Well I feel I've written more than enough for one post now. I will finish with a quotation from the weekend that also stood out to me, and some pictures from our nature walk early on the Saturday morning.

'The safest place for ships is in the harbour, but that's not why ships were built.' (Anonymous)