Bio-Diversity, Painting, Beach Olympics.


Advertisement
Kenya's flag
Africa » Kenya » Coast Province » Shimoni
August 6th 2010
Published: August 6th 2010
Edit Blog Post

Jambo! Well, week 5 has come and gone. I can’t believe how fast the first half of this expo has gone for me. I’m still having fun, and loving my time out here.
This week I was doing community work in Shimoni. Normally this would involve mostly teaching at 3 different schools, but it turned out that this was the first week of holidays for the kids, so I did more community work.
On Monday my fellow volunteer and I got our TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) training. It’s harder than I thought, but at the same time it all makes sense. Ours was geared more towards children, and it told us things like, keep the language simple, don’t over complicate the lessons, and make sure they know you are the one in charge. After getting that lesson, I actually felt quite scared at the thought of what I would do if I had taught a class. After lunch the other girl and I lesson planned. In community there are adult classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday every week, and because we were the volunteers this week we were in charge of running the lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday. I now admire my mother very much. She is able to lesson plan for an entire year. We could barely manage 2 hours. But it was very fun once we got the basic idea down, and from there it got easier. For adult class that night it was a grammar lesson taught by the community staff, and was I ever surprised. My knowledge of English grammar is very small, even though I am a native speaker. Most of the concepts she was going over I had never heard before, and seemed quite confusing. I have a better idea now of why people think English is such a hard language to learn.
Tuesday was another presentation day. We were giving a presentation on childhood illness to the local women’s group, so I did research and took notes on illnesses such as diarrhoea, dysentery, fever, and meningitis. The presentation went really well. Most of the women didn’t speak English, but the chairman of the group did, so he translated for us. Several of the women took notes, and they had tonnes of questions. That lasted 2 hours, and I also learned a lot about those illnesses. It also drove home to me how remote this place is, and that medical help is quite far away. Even for us, if we need to call an ambulance, it needs to come from Diani, which is about 1.5 hours away from us by car. Adult class that night was another successful presentation. The class was on bio-diversity, and we had done research on terms such as ecology, endemic, indicator species, and the like. I also looked up statistics about the Kenyan coastal forests, and the Shimoni forests. There were only three of them, but they were all super keen and interested. I got to do circle diagrams on life cycles, which I hadn’t done since elementary school, and that was fun.
One of the highlights of the community week for me was the painting of Base Academy, which we did on Wednesday. When I first went there for Wildlife Club there were stencils on the walls of trees, fish, flowers, fruits, etc, but no painting had been done yet. This week the children are on holiday, and with no classes it was a perfect time for our inner artists to come out. After getting delayed a bit because of rain we were off to Base with brushes, powder paints, water, painting clothes, and smiles. There was quite a lot to be done, and the four of us set right to work. I was in one of the classrooms where I worked on a school bus, a car, a water jug, and a tea cup. It took a little to get into the groove of painting because the paint was quite watery and drips if you are not careful. My school bus looks like it has an oil stain at the back from one such drip. When we went for lunch I was pleased at my work. It was relaxing to just stand and paint, and with some good tunes playing the hours flew by. After lunch I was in the main hall, where I worked on a set of human lungs, as well as some geometric shapes. By the time we left for the day the school looked very different. We had managed to complete, apart from my things, several fruits, a tree, a human body, a fish, a flower, both male and female human reproductive systems, and several equations for figuring out volume and area. I loved the painting we did, and since I wasn’t able to teach a class I was happy to still be able to contribute to the schools of Shimoni. After painting we went to adult class, where we ran a debate on whether tourism has a negative effect on the environment. I would call that class a success as well. Those men love to debate. They all came up with really good points, and the class was extended by 15 minutes before we had to cut it short because we had to get home. I felt proud of myself that I was able to run two successful classes, along with my fellow volunteer.
Thursday we did get some teaching in, but not of children. We gave a basic first aid session to one of the members of Friends of Shimoni Forest, which is a local conservation group that wants to preserve the forest around Shimoni. They are working on a tourist trail right now, and want to be guides on it once it gets up and running. Apart from first aid we also gave him a shortened version of the bio-diversity lesson that we gave at adult class, so that he will have some cool facts to give to the tourists about the area. After lunch we went back to Base Academy for a few more hours of painting. We got through the geometric shapes, as well as the entire alphabet drawn on the wall, and part of it painted. That was cut shorter today because of a very important event: Beach Olympics!!Trust me, it’s even sillier then it sounds. We all met at the house, and the forest officer even wore a ridiculous Planet Hollywood tourist shirt. We all walked down to the beach and split up into our teams. Because I was on community this week, I was on their side. We had fewer people then forest did, so another girl recruited some of the locals to play on our team. The events consisted of: Limbo, wheel barrow race, long jump, three-legged race, flip-flop-fling, and dizzy relay (this is where you run to a point, put your forehead on a stick, spin 5 times around it, and run back). I haven’t laughed so much in quite a while. We all had so much fun. Forest ended up winning, but community were tied with them going into the final event, the dizzy relay, and we lost by seconds. I did come in third in the three-legged race with my partner, and we were very happy and proud of that. There were also many children on the beach laughing their heads off at us. They even stopped their football match so they could watch us, so you know we were pretty good.
Now, it’s Friday, my birthday. I got to open a wonderful card from Liam that I wasn’t allowed to open until today, and it made me smile. It’s a quieter day today. Since there are no volunteers on Shimoni community for the next 2 weeks the other volunteer and I helped the community staff lesson plan revision lessons for next week. We were going to read in the village, but even as I write this it’s raining, so that will not happen. We are however going to watch a David Attenborough film which should be fun. The staff is making a chocolate cake for me, and I’m super excited about that.
Now it’s on to the next adventure. I start my marine work on Monday, so I will be moving over to Wasini Island. It seems strange that, after 5 weeks in Shimoni that I will be leaving. But I am excited to see what marine is like. I also get to go on a mini safari to the reserve park of Shimba Hills this weekend, and that should be fun. I’m writing this on Friday because I leave for Shimba Hills tomorrow, so I won’t get the chance to write then. Also, my weekly blogging may lag, because there is no electricity on the base in Wasini, so I will need to come over to Shimoni, or go to Diani on weekends if I want to update. I will try though, and I if I can’t do one week you will just get a longer entry for 2 weeks.


Advertisement



8th August 2010

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Hey Orla. I'm glad you are still enjoying yourself. Just a quick note to wish you a happy birthday. I hope you have a loely time, Conor.

Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0507s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb