5-day update

Emmanuel's 3rd child, Shiloh, has been home from his boarding school for Easter break, but today he has to return to school so I came along to be able to go to a cyber cafe in a town that's on the way, called Kericho. Emmanuel's currently about town with him running errands, so he will come back in a bit to pick me up to return to the village. I'm on the computer for personal and business reasons: while I'm blogging, I'm uploading videos for another Village Volunteer project. Therefore, I don't want to insert pictures to the blog today because YouSendIt.com is being frustrating, estimating anywhere from 1 hr 45 minutes left till 10 hrs 38 minutes. Shoot me now.

Here is a pictureless summary:

3/31 Thursday
Nearly 2 hours in Nairobi morning rush hour traffic to get to the shuttle. Fortunately, that at least meant I had less wait time for the shuttle to fill before we could leave, about 45 minutes. Left the station at 9:30am.
11:00 flat tire. Fixed within 10 minutes!
12:00 arrived into town called Narok. Delayed for reasons I will explain at another time.
2:00 depart Narok
5:00 arrive Kilgoris. Reunion with Emmauel, who came to pick me up in his own car. Quick snack on chai and chapati rolled with egg. Drive 45mins-1 hr to his home from Kilgoris (Emmanuel says it would only take 15 minutes if the roads were paved or smooth)

4/1 Friday
Tour Sirua Aulo Academy. I was the first volunteer on site when the school opened in 2008. They had a couple temporary structures at the time, and about 70 students. Now they have nearly 300 students and a couple permanent buildings, including classrooms and dorms! The rest of the day was spent updating each other about our lives and goals. We also planned there rest of my stay. That evening, we tried to download Skype onto a laptop someone donated to Emmanuel, using wireless internet out in the village, but after an hour we drained the battery and didn't accomplish anything because there was basically no signal. Oh well, we tried.

4/2 Saturday
Sirua Aulo Academy had also been on Easter break, and school would start again on Monday. Staff returned Saturday to prepare and have meetings... and Emmanuel wanted me to start things off with an introduction to special needs and special education. He says it went well, though I always think my presentation skills need a lot of work. We first reviewed the book I brought, "Don't Call Me Special" to introduce the topic, and we had a bit of a discussion about it. It is such a good book that it led to a great start. The teachers said they learned that children with disabilities can and should be included in the same activities as everyone else; that they don't want to be labeled; that they can surprise us with great skills; that they can succeed given assistance. It was a new concept for everyone, they admitted.

I summarized a few of the most common disorders we encounter in the States (autism spectrum disorder, ADD, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc), and they had never heard of any of them, but they said they knew people or children who matched the symptoms I described. In fact, they said there were some in the school they thought fit the descriptions, but didn't know they might have a disability. I will have my work cut out for me in the next couple weeks, identifying them and giving the teachers strategies. I did clarify that I cannot diagnose anything but communication disorders; it is otherwise the role of a psychologist or doctor to diagnose disorders.

A discussion followed, about Kenyans' perspective on disorders, disabilities, witchcraft, stigmas, fear, etc. Fascinating stuff, but we were all looking forward to a future where that's a thing of the past.

After a tea break, Emmanuel kicked off their staff meeting and I stepped out to the library to prepare for the following day's trainings.

4/3 Sunday
For the first part of an hour, I presented information based on a printout of slides from a lecture given by Iowa's Area Education Agency (AEA) on building a robust vocabulary in students. I used the "Don't Call Me Special" book to give the staff practice on the techniques, then split them into partners with a variety of books to practice and then present to the rest of us. We got to see each other teach, and gave feedback about strengths and areas for improvement. The whole thing lasted about 2.5 hours, and it was a blast.

It was the same in Peru -- teachers love pretending to be students, and the worst students at that! They tease each other, there's lots of laughing, and a lot of encouragement. Emmanuel said the staff needed this opportunity to interact with each other. One of the staff gave a speech to thank me, and then we did a closing prayer. It was a good day.

In the late afternoon back at home, Shiloh and I used another laptop of Emmanuel's to watch "The Medallion". I suspect someone donated that other laptop to Emmanuel because this one was old and the battery lasted less than 2/3rd the movie (not sure how much of the movie was left actually, bc I've never seen it). Poor Shiloh; he'd been waiting forever to watch it and now couldn't finish until the end of the month, when he returns home for another break. His school doesn't have electricity either.

4/4 Monday
This morning we stopped by Sirua Aulo to make the videos I am currently sending to Village Volunteers. We stopped by a small town on the way to Kericho to have a simple snack which I found absolutely delicious: ndazi with egg. No picture because I accidentally left the camera in the car when we left it to be washed while we ate. Maybe we'll have it again on the way home :-)

So that brings us to me here and now. Until next time!

Workshop

As usual, I spent a long time preparing to present something that ended up being scrapped anyway! I meant to present for at least 45 minutes on visual aids for expressive/receptive language, but we miscommunicated about where we would meet for the session and started a full half hour late. However, we did end up doing a full 2 hours anyway, and I think it went well.

Having skipped that part of the lesson, we quickly reviewed that communication is based upon expressive/receptive language, then dove right into how to use their limited material/toys to target many areas of development at all levels of difficulty. This brought on many other areas that I didn't expect to talk about or teach, such as how to contain a child who cannot stay seated, pay attention, or even keep hands down. Celeste and I demonstrated how to position ourselves and one or more children who are wild, and how to use immediate reinforcement and praise. We also talked about using the toys and a token system to increase kids' ability to work. The teachers listened, observed, asked questions, and finally paired up to practice these techniques. Then each pair took it in turns to present to the class what they practiced and learned, and we reviewed what the teachers did well and discussed areas of improvement.

It was a great time for all; the information seemed to have been well-received and it was great to see them try out what we just talked about. Definitely a very rewarding day. Tomorrow I'll follow up and see if the teachers can incorporate the lessons immediately into real time situations where kids are pulling hairs and throwing toys, rather than the laugh fest we had with teachers only pretending.

It's been a great week overall. Even though we didn't really have exact plans for my visit, I think it worked well for me to have observed each class for part of the day each day, then taken that and turned it into some valuable lessons for the teachers. It wouldn't have been as respectful or productive if I had just dropped in and tried to push my agenda without having seen what they're up against, absorbed their culture a bit, or determined their current abilities.

I hope to never get tired of being a travel therapist. And I hope to be able to give others the same rewarding experience and knowledge exchange soon, with Therapists Without Borders. This is what it's all about.