My Kiswahili is slowly but surely improving. I’m trying to speak it everyday so that I will get more comfortable speaking because I really want to know this language. It’s actually pretty cool and would be the first language other than English that I will have a full grasp on. I think at this point I need to try to expand my vocabulary and known verbs because I’m starting to run into more words that I don’t know. Kiswahili also has 5 different verb endings that I have yet to delve into but is used so much by native Kiswahili speakers. Those are definitely going to take some time to get used to. The native language (mother tongue) that is spoken here is Kitaita which is very similar to Kiswahili so once I have Kiswahili done I should, mind you should, be able to understand more Kitaita than I do now. In the last three and a half months I think that I’ve learned more than in the three years that I took Spanish in high school. Immersion is an amazing learning environment and is vital to integrating into the community. It also makes the whole experience better. Knowing Kiswahili I will be able to join in on all the conversations that my fellow teachers are having and contribute. It will also lead to a better relationship between me and the teachers. Hopefully be able to understand the jokes that they are telling although I probably will never fully understand them.
So as you know I have started life skills class for all the forms and so far I have just done the introduction of what I will be covering. I was going through the life skills manual that we get from Peace Corps and I found peer educators. I think that I want to try this. 4 students from each form would be nominated and voted for then we would meet on Saturday’s and I would teach them how to be peer educators and how to give their classmates the right information. If they couldn’t find it more importantly I would give them a place where they could find it. I think that it would work very well because instead of just receiving information from me they would also be receiving it from classmates. This would also help to give them ownership to the information and something I know from experience students are more likely to listen to their peers than they are to me. The idea of peer education is very important to me and it’s also something that I wan to try with my fellow teachers in the hopes that life skills would continue after I’m gone. Think sustainability. This I know is going to take some more effort and I don’t think that I should introduce it just yet but maybe in a few months. We’ll see what happens.
On a side note I found an egg in my laundry today. The chickens that hang around the outside of the house tend to like to sneak in to my house. I have chased them out more than once and accidentally locked one inside for like an hour or two. Apparently either that chicken or some other had time to do a bit of nesting. Oh well free egg for me!
Sorry no pictures this time but I will definitely post a bunch of pictures next post!
