Today was at last day visiting a project. We went to St Aloysius Secondary School. All the students in this school were either infected or afected by HIV aids. The school use it be located in the Kibira slum, which is were all of the students live. They recently built a new school for them at the edge of Kibira. Although the school may be farther now for some of them the new school is much nicer and way bigger. We had a chance to see the old high school on friday. I was very surprised to see how small it is, the old hall was no bigger then a small classroom. Not to mention they didn't have electricity. Also the environment was very dirty and noisy, making it very hard for them to learn. But now the new school is large and very clean. They now have electricity, most of the time. And can learn much better in a quiet classroom. Each class has around 35 students and for the majority of their subjects the girls and boys are in separate classes.
Each of the youth from our team were pared up with a student from the same grade level as us. I just finished grade 11 so I was put in a form 3 class (in Kenya they call their grades forms). The name of the student I was with was Kennedy, he was 18 years old. First we stayed in the class, with no teacher. I asked Kennedy why there wasn't a teacher, he told me that because exams had just ended they were waiting for them to be marked. So instead of the teachers being in class they were off marking exams, this gave us some time to explore. For a while we sat in the class while many of the students asked me questions about my school and I asked about theirs. They were very interested to find out that in Canada we don't have to pay for secondary education, while in Kenay you do. We discussed many topics like what we wanted to be when we grow up and how many brothers and sister we had. I was interested to learn that many of them could speak 4-5 languages. Kennedy could speak key swahili, english, french, his mother tongue, and another mother tongue from his area. He also told me that many of the students make up their own languge that others can't understand. Kind of like how some people I know can speak piglatten. Ancay ouyay peaksay iglattenpay?
Once we got tired of sittin in class my new friends decided to show me around. We started on the bottem floor and worked our way up the three floors. aside from the closed in classrooms the school it open because they don't need to keep out snow or any thing like that. They pointed out the sience labs and the computer labs ( I even got to poke my head into a computer lab with students that had graduated form 4 and were taking computer classes). they pointe out were the elevator would soon be and the main office.
Next they took me to the hall for some entertainment. Many students were in the hall aswell as most of the Hope 2 Kenya team. We got to see a girl recite a peom she learnt in french. A choir sang a few songs for us, I liked it very much. We as a team decided that it was our turn to entertain them, so we got up on stage and sang acouple songs. While we were in the hall I have Kennedy a small gift (a small football with Canada on it) and I gave some candy and pencils to some of his classmates. I was very pleased then he gave me a small card saying I was a wounderful person.
After the hall we went to the art room and watched the art club work on some peices. Alot of the art work was impressive! I could help but buy one to take home to Canada. My new classmates kindly escorted me to the front gates, where we said our goodbyes. I really injoyed my day and will not for get my new friends in Kenya
- Sarah
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