Teaching underway!

I visited all the students in their villages this week and can tell you that there is a lot of action! Students are teaching life skills, math, chemistry, biology and many more subjects…giving great relief to some overworked Kenyan teachers who are highly underpaid or not paid at all, and also bringing a lot of joy, entertainment and curiosity to the Kenyan youth in the classrooms. The GR students are starting to engage in their independent projects that range from helping at the local clinic, to building a volley ball net at the schools, to landscaping and planting native trees to provide shade, and also more personal projects like financing a new couch for a host family who has just a few chairs in their modest house.

The GR students are persevering through many challenges such as homesickness, lack of access to computers and common entertainment, and missing the group as a whole. However, they are proving to be very determined and open to each new day in their villages and are learning monumental lessons about patience, joy in new things like cooking over a fire, bathing with a cold bucket of water, and sharing conversations about the state of the world that we all live in together. It did not go unnoticed that the 7 billionth person was born this week and what population, equity and human resourcefulness can mean for the generations ahead.

Again I am honored to be leading with this group of young people. We are looking ahead to next weekend when we will be getting together for a trip to the beautiful Kakamega Forest again to stay in huts and enjoy storytelling and dance from the local Luhya people there. We will also take some time to visit Munjiti at long last to see the progress on the school where we renovated one classroom. With help from the government and another NGO, they are now renovating 4 more classrooms! We look forward to the next few weeks and our final travel to Zanzibar and of course seeing our families in December!