More Adventures in Africa: Second Work Week

We finished reports, and wrote grant proposals and concept notes. I spent two days in Kisumu meeting about, and participating in, a time travel event for fifty 6th graders. This event was orchestrated by a group of museum officials and math professors from Sweden. The idea is to combine concepts of math and social studies by bringing students to a local place of historical interest, taking them back in time and having them do tasks requiring math calculations. In this case, the Kisumu Railway Station was used and the time period was 1972 when the station first opened. (The station is now closed as the train to Kisumu is no longer running mostly due to a decline in Kisumu's status. Unfortunately, the prosperity of regions of Kenya is based on having a national leader from the tribe indigenous to that region.) I'm not sure how much math or history the kids actually learned during this event but they definitely had a good time. It's rare for the kids to have an outing away from school.

My favorite event of the week was a visit on Wednesday back to Bishop Abiero Girls HS where we taught in 2012. This was our first trip back as school just started this week. It was a wonderful reunion, especially with the Form 4 girls. I am so proud of them as 47 of them have made it to almost the end of HS. They only have a few more months before taking the national exam. There were about 65 of them in Form 2 when we taught them. Some transferred and only a few dropped out. This is remarkable for a girls secondary school in a poor rural area of Kenya. There was lots of hugging and kissing and tears of joy when we arrived. I've said this many times before but I am always amazed by the perseverance and resilience of these girls. We found a few minutes to talk to our buddy Mark Kitegi, the English teacher there. We'll get together with him soon and meet his new wife and baby.

Five of us working on math initiatives made the trip to the school to set up a math club there. We met with the new principal who is a wonderfully open to new ideas as well as the math instructors (including our friend George Outa) and twenty girls who are interested in forming a math club. We will go back every week to work with them. We will also be trying to get a grant to provide each student with basic computer tablets. While we were there the principal discussed with me the idea of coming back to teach life skills. I'd also like to get creative writing started again.

The Time Travel event: