It has been quite a busy time for me since I last posted to my blog. There had been so much going on that it was very difficult to carve out time to write. I’m so happy I finally have the opportunity to catch up with everyone on what I’ve been up to in August and September.
August
We were busy the whole month of August with tutorials for our students. The school year in Kenya is divided into three terms. Roughly speaking, the first term goes from January through March with students off much of the month of April on break. The second term consists of the months of May through July with much of the month of August serving as the term two holiday. The final and shortest term of the year, term three, spans the months of September and October. There are also week-long half term holidays for terms one and two, which occur roughly in the middle of the term. There is no half term holiday for term three as it is short in duration. The big school break here in Kenya is November and December after the end of term three, where the students are off for roughly two full months. I equate this to summer school break in the US.
The one big exception to this two-month vacation is for those in their last year of secondary school (high school), which is called Form 4 (what in the US would be twelfth grade). Students in Form 4 have a month long set of exams called the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). These exams are literally make or break for students in Kenya. A KCSE certificate is required for any further study beyond secondary school – not only college, but even vocational schools in most cases. On top of that, a student’s scores on the KCSE exam will determine, what type of school they are eligible to attend for further studies. In short, to a large degree, the future and career of a child depends on the results of their KCSE exams. (There are also a set of standardized exams for eighth grade students called Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), which have similar importance in determining secondary school placement, but these exams are only span three days.) So, the month of August was the last chance for us to work intensely with our Form 4 (twelfth grade) students before their KCSE exams in November.
During the year, my ministry project, Helping Orphans Pursue Education (H.O.P.E.), runs tutorial sessions every Saturday in the two locations in Mombasa – Changamwe and Mbungoni. However, during school breaks we run tutorial sessions three times a week in Changamwe as there are more than double the number of students there and a much higher concentration of secondary school students. So, during the month of August, we run four tutorial sessions a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Changamwe and Saturdays in Mbungoni. Before I started working on the project, Coralis would run the Mbungoni sessions and Florah the ones in Changamwe. Since joining, I’ve been floating between the two locations and trying to get to know the students in each. However, once Coralis leaves Kenya at the end of the year, I will run the Saturday sessions in Mbungoni. However, during school break, I felt it would be a better use of my time to do the tutorial sessions in Changamwe. The secondary students there really needed help in math and sciences – most specifically physics, chemistry and biology – and this is something I’m equipped to do, or more accurately used to be equipped to do a number of decades ago when I was studying all this stuff at a college level.
Although I have degrees in Physics and Engineering, I hate to admit it, but I’m pretty rusty in these areas. I spent most of my career at IBM as a software engineer with the latter part of my career focused on cloud computing (for those of you who know what that is) and artificial intelligence (most specifically, what is referred to in the industry as machine learning). Ask me to create a model to predict if prospect is likely to react positively to a promotional offer and I can probably still pull that off. Although, I have to admit, that even these more recent skills are quickly deteriorating. I can’t believe that it’s now been just a little over one year since I left IBM to pursue my dream of becoming a missioner.
During the month of August, I was still living with my Kenyan family in Frere Town, which meant I had about an hour commute in each direction to and from Changamwe. I won’t go into another rant about the difficulties of getting around here. I’ve done that enough in other blog posts. On most days, I would leave the house a little after 7:30 AM, get to Changamwe a little after 8:30 AM (assuming no major problems with the commute), do tutorials from 9 AM until 4 PM, leave a little before 4:30 PM and get home around 5:30 PM. In addition to tutorials, we still run normal office hours in Changamwe from 9 AM to about 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Depending on what was going on, I would sometimes take a Tuesday or Thursday off, but this still meant that I was commuting to Changamwe at least four times a week and doing tutorials on Saturdays in Mbungoni, which is luckily only about a twenty-minute walk from where I was living in Frere Town.
During the month of August, I pretty much focused all my efforts on tutorials. In Changamwe, we generally would do math in the morning and then a science during the afternoon – alternating between physics, biology and chemistry. At the end of the day, the students would give me a list of specific topics they wanted to cover in the next tutorial. In my “spare time”, meaning when I got home, I would spend several hours preparing the lessons for the next session, including problems I would review with them and ones that I would have them try. At first this whole preparation process was extremely difficult for me as I had to search around on the web for material to review and use, which took a lot of time. Luckily a few major donations to the H.O.P.E. project came in from a few of Coralis’ donors and we had some funds that we could use to help improve our tutorials. We made two major upgrades to our tuturials. First, we bought a set of textbooks for the secondary school subjects (math, physics, chemistry and biology) that I’m tutoring the students on – one per grade level. Although we have a library of books for the students to use during the tutorial sessions, we did not have a full set of textbooks that I could use for lesson preparation. The addition of the textbooks has helped me tremendously in preparing for tutorial lessons. Additionally, I now get to see exactly how the concepts are presented to the students in the classroom, which is also a big benefit. The second purchase was that of a flat screen TV, which is now mounted on the wall in the office and which we use as a computer monitor. Unfortunately the office is not very big, but you would be amazed at how many students we can cram in there to watch a video.
Tutorials in Changamwe are held outside behind the parish center under an overhang that stretches the length of the building. Our Chamgamwe office is in the church compound of St. Mary’s Church and the parish lets us run tutorials there. Typically, I use a chalk board for presenting lessons and having students solve problems. This works fine, especially for math. However, I wanted to bring the science tutorial sessions to another level. For example, talking about how food is digested in the body and supporting this with some crude diagrams on a chalkboard is one thing (and anyone who knows me, knows that I have exactly zero drawing skills), showing a video that animates the digestive process is another. I now use the TV/monitor to supplement tutorial lessons with diagrams and videos that I believe greatly enhance the learning experience for our students, including primary school students. We’re still exploring more ways to use multimedia, including the use of educational videos and movies that are not necessarily tied to the curriculum. Grades are important, but I also want to expose the children to more than what is presented in textbooks and get them to start thinking about the world around them and their place in it.
On August 15, in the middle of the term break tutorials, we ran our yearly Career Day workshop for our students in Grades 7 – 12, which made August even more interesting and challenging. I’ve written about the Career Day Workshop in previous blog post, my last blog post, dated August 19. Please check that out if you have not seen it. I had such a great time planning and running the workshop.
Suffice it to say, it was a long month, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. As I’ve mentioned before, although I spend a lot of time in my ministry doing administrative and technical stuff, like building a website, which I’m still working on but at least now have a prototype, my favorite part of the job is doing tutorials with the students. I love to teach students and help them learn new concepts and new ways of seeing things. I think we’ve all experienced that feeling with a child when you see the light bulb come on. It’s priceless.
September
With the exception of my first few days in Mombasa in mid-April when I stayed with Mike, my fellow Maryknoll Lay Missioner, I had been living with a Kenyan family. I have now just recently moved into my own place. Although both the family and I would have loved the living arrangement to have continued on, I’m not sure it was practical for me to live with them indefinitely and Maryknoll certainly would not have approved of it. Part of the experience for the missioner is to live in the environment where he is serving. While there is no question I was doing that living with Richard, Anne and their family in Frere Town, there were many things that didn’t have to worry about. Although while living with the family, I had to learn how to get around Mombasa, buy personal items, and do my ministry job, I didn’t have to worry about anything in the house. Everything at home was provided for me. While I’ve lived on my own and even owned my own house since a few years after graduating college, it’s a whole different ballgame in Mombasa. I don’t understand how a lot of things work here and struggle many times to get the simplest things done. While many times I wish I didn’t have to deal with any of this stuff and could just focus on my ministry, which is why I came to Kenya in the first place, I have come to realize that that the struggles of living here are all part of the package. You really can’t have one without the other.
The other motivating factor for moving into my own place was that I wanted (and was determined) to live close to the Changamwe office where I spend most of my time working. I no longer wanted to commute an hour each way in less than ideal conditions. Finding a place close to the office and church turned out to be quite a challenge. When I first expressed an interest in living close to St. Mary’s Church, the Fathers and parishioners took an interest in finding me a place to live. I was told an apartment in the building right behind the back wall of the church was opening up at the end of June. However, the person living there decided not to move out and I was back to square one. I was kept being told to be patient and that something would open up. At the end of July, with no prospects, I started contacting agents as well asking everyone I know to help me find a place. Soon I was getting lots of leads and spent a lot of time looking at apartments. On a side note, the way it works here in Kenya is that the renter has to pay a “viewing” fee to see an apartment. If it turns out you want an apartment, the renter has to pay the agent a fee equivalent to a month’s rent. That is in Kenya, the renter absorbs all the costs, not the owner. Seems backwards to me, but I had no choice. Unfortunately, all the leads I got turned out to be not good. The apartments were either very bad, in a bad location, or both. Also, a few were so far from the church that I might as well live in a nicer area and commute.
Finally, when I had just about given up hope, the parish found a house available just a few minutes’ walk from the church. The house is just one street over from the original apartment I had wanted that fell through when the person didn’t move out. I immediately set up an appointment to see it. The major thing that I didn’t like about the house is the fact that it is a small standalone house in its own compound, not an apartment in a building. That is, the house sits behind its own walls and gate that are not shared by anyone else. Generally, you would think this is more ideal – more privacy and more room. However, as security is always a concern here, I would have preferred to live in an apartment building with other people close by. As I stand out like a sore thumb, everyone will know where the “rich” foreigner is living. Also, the house has three bedrooms and a yard. I not only didn’t want something this big, but also certainly didn’t want to have to take care of anything outside. Been there, done that for many, many years. As it turns out, although the house has three bedrooms, they are not very big and the footprint is actually no bigger than the homes of the other missioners here in Mombasa, who all have two bedrooms. After much deliberation and praying, although I actually only had a few days as the owner was keeping the house off the market for me to decide, I decided to rent the house. There really were no other options and from what I was told, it was unlikely that there would be any other apartments coming on the market this close to the church in the near future. I signed a rental agreement at the end of August that began on September 1. I was determined to live within walking distance of the office and church and after much frustration was finally able to make it happen.
After signing the rental agreement and beginning to pay rent, it took several weeks before I was at a point that I could actually live in the house. I needed to acquire at least the bare necessities for me to live. In Kenya, apartments don’t even come with refrigerators or stoves, so I was starting with nothing. I was given a few items handed down from other missioners who have since left Kenya– mainly an extra twin bed, a small table, two chairs, a bookcase, an office chair, a stool, an older microwave, a set of sheets, a few towels, and some odds and ends kitchen items. I had to buy pretty much everything else – refrigerator, stove, bed, mattress, pillows, extra sheets and pillow cases, more towels, dishes, silverware, knives, pots and pans, glasses, mugs, kitchen utensils, storage containers, a water filter (I can’t drink the water directly from the tap), surge protectors (everything of any value needs to be plugged into a surge protector here), power strips (there is only one power plug per room), and padlocks (padlocks are used on all the doors and gates).
Furnishing the house is still a work in progress. Although I have all the basics to live here, I really can’t have anyone over as I currently have no furniture to sit on besides the small table and two chairs that currently serve as my dining table. When Coralis leaves at the end of the year, I will get some of her stuff. In the meantime, I’m not sure how much more furnishing I will be doing. I hate shopping and will only do it when absolutely necessary. Where is Amazon when I need it?
This is now my home here in Kenya. I love living close to the office and the church – about a five-minute walk. I love not having to commute – except on Saturdays when I go to Mbungoni for tutorials. But I miss my Kenyan family.
When I moved in with Anne and Richard; their two children – Joel, who will turn seven at the beginning of November, and Hope, who turned one at the beginning of July; and Dorothy, their inhouse help, none of us knew what to expect. I had been used to living alone most of my life – in my own house with spare bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen all to myself. Now I was living in a house with five other people (sometimes six or seven people when they had other guests) with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a galley kitchen, and one sitting room. They on the other hand, were used to sharing their home with visitors, but now had this American moving in whom they knew little about. The initial understanding was that I would live there for a month. As time went on, we grew closer, got to know each other more and more, and shared everything together. We ate all our meals together, I went on weekend trips with them to visit the extended family, we watched TV together, and we played games together. They taught me how to navigate Mombasa and deal with living in a new and different place. By the time the month was up, none of us were in a rush for me to move out. They were now my family here in Kenya and treated me as such. I more than felt the same way about them. It wasn’t until I settled on my ministry job and decided that I wanted to live in Changamwe, that I even really began looking for another place to live and that wasn’t until the end of June.
When the time came to actually move out, it was very difficult for all of us. I’m now living in my own house. I enjoy living close to work and the church, which I so much wanted, but I certainly miss my Kenyan family and they tell me that they miss me a lot too. I miss them all very much, but I especially miss Joel. I took him a little while for him to warm up to me. At first just I was kind of there and he didn’t really interact with me that much. However, over time, we became very close. I love him very much. We would often play games when I came home from work – floor hockey with a roll of tape on the floor or with his toy cars racing around the table and up and down the sofa. I’d also sometimes watch cartoons with him – Joel loves Sponge Bob and Disney’s the Lion Guard among others. Many times Hope would wander over, especially lately as she can now stand up holding on to furniture and move around, but Joel would have no part of it and would generally pick her up and move her off to somewhere else. However, the most fun I have with Joel is playing Uno.
Several months ago, after a game of tape hockey on the floor with Joel, I was trying to think of some kind of game I could play with him and came up with the idea of Uno. The reason this stuck out in my mind is that while in Nairobi before coming to Mombasa, I visited the house of my friend and classmate Joseph. He and two other members of his congregation live together and teach catechism to children. While I was there I played Uno with the children and I thought it would be great to introduce the game to Joel. The challenge was finding a deck of Uno cards. After searching in the few malls here in Mombasa and coming up empty, I asked Dee, my fellow lay missioner in Nairobi, to look in the malls near her. There are a lot of malls in Nairobi and she lives within close walking distance to one. Dee found a deck for me. After waiting for someone to bring the cards back from Nairobi, I finally introduced Joel to the game.
Joel took to the game immediately. In fact, he is pretty much an Uno card shark now. I have a hard time beating him. When Joel wins, he will break into a victory dance and yell “I win. I win. I win.” at the top of his voice. I’ve never seen someone as lucky as he is. As Joel has not yet mastered how to shuffle a deck of cards, I generally deal the cards, although I’ve more recently begun having Joel deal after I shuffle the deck. However, whether I deal or Joel deals, he always seems to get all the good cards to start the game. The streak continues after that as he’ll pick up a number of the special Uno cards – the Wild Draw Four, the Wild and the Draw Two – during the course of a game, while they are nowhere to be seen for me.
There is always a lot of contention with respect to whether someone actually calls “Uno”. Those of you who play Uno know that the moment a player has just one card left, they must call “Uno”. If they are caught not saying “Uno” by another player before the next player takes their turn, the player who forgot to call “Uno” must draw two cards as a penalty. Joel often forgets or will call “Uno” right before putting down his last card to win the game. Then he will proceed to claim that he called “Uno” before. Or he’ll often claim that another person did not call “Uno” when everyone else heard it.
Joel is also sneaky when it comes to drawing a card from the draw pile. You can often see him lifting the top few cards on the pile and trying to pull out the one that is most advantageous to him rather than the one on top, which is how the game is supposed to be played.
It’s even worse when he is playing one of his friends. Sometimes I’m in my room working on my computer and can hear a fight break out. Joel is claiming he won, but his friends are contesting that he cheated somehow. I go out and try to see what happened, but most times it’s impossible to get to the bottom of it through all the yelling.
Luckily, this is not the end of the story. Although I don’t live with my Kenyan family anymore, I hope to still see them often. As I have to go to Mbungoni on Saturday mornings for tutorials, I can always visit while I’m in the area. Last Thursday, Anne asked me to come for dinner on Friday, sleep over, and go to the tutorial in the morning. They were all expecting me. I gladly accepted. It was like old times (OK, maybe not so old as I only moved out two weeks ago). We had chai (tea), I played Uno and cars with Joel, got to see Hope’s pierced earrings, which look very nice on her, ate dinner and watched some TV as a family. They like these prime-time programs (which to me are pretty much soap operas) from India that are broadcast on one of the channels here. They got me hooked on them while I was living there. Having no TV (which is a good thing) in my house, I’ve had to wean myself off of them. For dinner, Dorothy made my favorite – chapati and beans. Chapati is a flatbread that is a staple here in Kenya (as well as other East African countries and on the Indian subcontinent). The beans are pretty healthy, the chapati not so much as they are made using tons of oil, but I’m addicted to them and they are everywhere.
I can’t thank Richard and Anne enough for welcoming me into their home the way they did, sharing their life with me, and making me part of the family. If I get nothing else out of my time in Kenya, becoming part of their family would have made coming here all worthwhile. While, I’m confident that God has lots more in store for me before my time is up here, it’s great to be part of a family while I’m here.
One last note on Dorothy, who is not only the inhouse help, but also part of the family too. Joel and Hope love her a lot. She works so hard. She is the first one up in the morning and the last one to go to bed. When I first arrived at the home, I thought she might view me as one more thing she now has to take care of. I thought that she already had so much to do and now she has to worry about me on top of everything else. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. From the moment I got there, Dorothy did everything to make sure that I felt comfortable there and had everything I needed. When I come home from work, she gave my chai and a snack. If I had to leave early for work or Mass on Sundays, she made sure I had breakfast before I left. For the first few months I used to wash my clothes at Mike’s house on my day off while he was at work (we usually have different days off). At Dorothy and Anne’s insistence, I started letting them wash my clothes. Dorothy kept insisting that it was no big deal for her to wash a few more clothes.
When I was getting ready to move out, I asked Anne what I could get Dorothy to thank her for all she did for me while I was living there. Anne said that she would appreciate anything. I thought about it for a while and came up with what I hoped was the perfect gift. Dorothy has an old mobile phone, which is not a smart phone and not really a flip phone either, which the battery always falls out of. I think you get the picture. So, I purchased a new smartphone for her right after I moved out, but didn’t have the chance to give it to her until I visited this weekend. When I gave Dorothy the phone, she could hardly hold back tears. I certainly didn’t want her to cry and felt that the gift was the least I could do to say thank you for all she did for me, but seeing her reaction was so special. Later on, Anne and I were talking about the fact that many times we do things, hopefully good things, that we think go unrecognized. However, we may never truly know how our simplest actions, or words for that matter, impact another person and sometimes even make a difference in the lives of that person. I’m glad I got the opportunity to tell Dorothy how much her kindness meant to me. I tried to give her something, but I feel I got more in return by her reaction to my small token of appreciation. It’s funny how that works.
God is good.