Upon arriving in the village, we each spent the day with our respective families. Some toured the village a little with them, some were introduced to other members of the village. I discovered that the animals here are not used to being affectionate or treated nicely. In other words, they’re not really my friends.
The next day we all met as a teaching group to tour the schools we would be teaching in. Our village teaching group has three schools: two primary and one secondary. We’re excited to have a secondary school, because not all the teaching groups do.
Maroroni Primary lies near the center of town, about twenty minutes walking from my homestay, not too far from Maroroni Secondary. We also teach at a school we call Nazareti Primary (I think that’s actually its name) that is about an hour’s walk from the village center.
Friday (Ijumaa), our second day in the village, we walked to each school, met with the headmasters and teachers, introduced ourselves, and confirmed our teaching schedules with them.
On Saturday (Jumamosi), we had our scheduled meeting with the village leaders. About twelve people showed up… about an hour and a half late. The meeting went very well, actually. I expected it to, but it was really cool to experience it.
The meeting was held in a semi-enclosed area that was a cross between a patio porch (all cement) and a rectangular room. The window openings were arch-like holes in the walls and were never meant to hold glass. The village leaders (former members of the village council, respected elders in the community, general members of the council and an SIC-trained Community Health Worker that was wearing an SIC shirt) all sat on a long bench facing the vice-mwenye kiti, standing in for the mwenye kiti, and meeting leader. One of the women on the council prayed us into the meeting, and we were asked to begin with our plans. Jonas, one of our teaching partners, did most of the translating and back-translating for us throughout.
We went there to introduce ourselves, SIC and our goals and services to the leaders, asking for their support in our efforts to launch a sustainable awareness campaign in their community. They’ve heard much of what we wanted to tell them, but they wanted to hear it from us, too. (We’ve been told that even homestay families and teachers will ask us why we’re here, even if they’ve already been prepped by SIC staff, so they can hear it from us personally.) We also wanted to schedule community teaching days for the sub-villages and a village testing day for the whole village with the advice of the leaders, who know their communities best. Finally, we wanted to share some of our curriculum with them so they would know what topics we’d be teaching in the schools and communities, and make sure that they’re all approved by the leaders.
The response we got from them was overwhelmingly positive. They welcomed us very sincerely to the village, saying it was an honor to have us here helping their community. They said they would do anything at all that we asked of them to help us in our campaign. They made themselves available for us to use and talk to whenever we would need them. They said they wanted us to teach the whole curriculum—not leaving anything out, including condom use and demonstrations—because they want “the truth.” They said their people want and need to know everything we have to teach to them. Finally, they said they wanted to be taught the information themselves so that they could vouch for our legitimacy and round up community members for community teachings, which really need to be advertised by the sub-village leaders themselves in order to be successful. We really are…
TUKO PAMOJA KUUSHINDA UKIMWI!
So we scheduled a time (for that Wednesday) to have a teaching for the sub-village leaders and the mwenye kiti, after which we would schedule the community teaching times and dates.
Sunday (Jumapili), most of us were planning on going to church with our families, myself included. But this didn’t happen for me. In the morning I got a text message from Joey, who lives with the mwenye kiti, saying that the village leaders teaching got moved up to that Monday. We had to plan for it as well as plan for our first day of teaching in the schools, which we hadn’t done much yet. So I didn’t go to church (which takes about half the day). Long story short, we also didn’t plan until after my Mama had returned from church because of a misfire in communication. Stefanie and Gaby went to church without getting our text message on time. So we planned over the phone a bit and decided who would teach what in the leaders teaching as well as in the classes at schools.
Monday (Jumatatu) was a big day for us. It was raining in when I woke up and drizzled a little on the way to school. We were going to be teaching in the Secondary school first (Forms 3, 2, then 1) and then moving over to the village office to wait for the leaders to trickle in. We started an hour and a half later, when enough people were there to begin. I’m going to go over this briefly because there’s more to write about beyond the village leaders meeting. But we taught them the topics they wanted us to teach them, and finished by planning the dates and times for our community teachings. So this upcoming week we’re teaching three community teachings in the sub-villages!
When we were finished (quite late, too, which was a source of very much frustration for the group at the beginning of the week), we rushed over to the primary school to do our scheduled lesson there and finish our day.
The week continued in a pattern of planning in the afternoons, teaching in the mornings and at midday, and planning again for the next day.
The experience of the first week was… well, a first week in many ways. And a very dynamic first week, at that. For the first few days we were putting in way too many hours working for healthy living and not communicating well enough to be efficient. There was an abundance of frustrations and stressors on many levels, from not wanting to inadvertently be rude to my family for any reason, to not feeling like I could do what I’m best at (one-on-one interaction with people) because of a language barrier, to being disappointed with the quality of interaction in our group, to not being able to fulfill the one need I felt I had, which was to talk these things out with a like-minded friend or family member from home to see them in a new way… Needless to say, these things built up quickly and came out in a big way early in the first workweek. I can’t say what exactly turned it all around, but I’m grateful for Daniel Nahmod’s music, having Joey in my group who’s proven to be a good listener and supporter, having Jonas in my group to also serve as a support and someone who’s done this before, and knowing that there are plenty of people at home who love me, support me and believe in my ability to do this regardless of any limitations I may perceive. Somehow, things in me changed around, our group is working better, we’ve started having fun and laughing, we’re more efficient with our time, we’re communicating better, and understanding each other’s needs and personalities in a more harmonious way. For that I’m grateful, and I can see this working again. Once again… Tuko pamoja kuushinda UKIMWI!
