Discussion group

Hi everyone!!

So after a short and quite uneventful - apart from the vomiting- weekend in Nairobi, we came back to Elangata Wuas, and it really felt like coming home. The polluted air and craziness of the city made me appreciate even more the breathtaking view of the mountains and the delicious smell of the wind in the bush.

On Tuesday we went back to school, ready to teach again. Since the beginning of our internship, we have spent most of our time adapting, meeting new people and getting used to the new environment, so teaching is the one thing that gives me a real sense of accomplishment (that and doing our laundry!) so I want to do it as much as possible. We decided we would now teach three days a week, plus a revision session on Saturday mornings. This is mostly because our students in class 8 will have to take their final examination in the hope of moving on to secondary education, so one of our tasks is preparing them for this exam.
We had our first discussion group yesterday with both our classes, and it was very interesting! We chose "culture and traditions" as our first topic, knowing that it would be easy to get the students to talk about Maasai culture. We asked them what they thought tradition was, and what kind of traditions they had in their community. They naturally mentioned things like traditional Maasai clothes and jewelry, building the manyattas (their houses - traditionally done by the woman) and of course circumcision. They also asked several questions about our own culture, such as whether or not circumcision is practised in Canada and how people get married (they were laughing hysterically when Alana got down on one knee and asked me to marry her). Another interesting question they asked was how, if we don't get circumcized, can we know when a boy becomes a man, and when a girl becomes a woman. In Maasai culture, life stages are extremely important, and so we had to explain that in Canada it's different, and that it mainly follows schooling years. It is very interesting to have to explain our own culture to other people, and try to make parallels so the students can understand, because it pushes us to try to better understand the way we live, and the origin of certain customs. The discussion was therefore a very good period for the students to get to know us a little better, to make them more at ease and to encourage them to speak. However, I couldn't help but wonder how many of their answers were things that they thought we wanted to hear, rather than true reflections of their thoughts. I feel like people here will often discuss topics such as circumcision, HIV/Aids, and marriage bookings, thinking that this is what "white people" want to hear about, and students especially seem to be saying what they have learnt in school. Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, and hopefully, as the weeks and discussions go by, I will get a better feeling of how teenagers and young adults in Maasailand actually feel and think.

Next Sunday, I will have been here in Kenya for a month! I can't believe it, time goes by so fast. At the same time, as I mentioned before, I am still looking for the feeling of truly accomplishing something, "making the world a better place". Haha, it sounds very cheesy, but I think I'm starting to realize that development work is not always as grand as it sounds. Twice already, we have spent entire afternoons just covering books for the library. Such a silly task takes up a lot of time, and actually needs to be done, but after a day like this, it's hard to feel like I'm really making a difference. I think I embarked in this adventure with an idealistic view of my role as an intern, but I know that by the end of the summer, I will feel like my experience will have been extraordinary, and hopefully I will have made a contribution to this community, even if it's a tiny one.

So that's it for this week! Je vous embrasse fort!
And don't be shy to send me letters :) They take a while to get here, but I promise I'll write back!

Love,
Julia