“We do!” a few of the older kids answered, sticking their hands in the air. One of them asked, “Are you teacher?”
“Yes, I am. My name is Nicky. What are your names?”
“I am Nadia and this is my brother, Ita. We speak English.”
“It is nice to meet you both. Can you please tell me where I can find Jebet?”
Wide-eyed, Nadia and Ita both pointed to the second floor of the large and decrepit orphanage. Just as I was about to ask which door I should go in to find the mkuu, I noticed piercing eyes so pointed they looked like slits staring down at me from the largest of the upstairs windows. I instantly knew it was Jebet. She held the sheer curtain to the right side of the window with a thick, oversized stick. Through the barred opening, the woman looked stern and ominous as she cast her browbeating stare onto the group of us standing in the field. She shook her head slowly from side to side and I could practically hear her hissing insults.
I raised my hand in what I hoped was a welcoming wave, but the woman darted to the side of the window and out of my line of sight, marking her departure with the clash of her stick against the metal-barred window.
“Hello?” I called, entering the orphanage through the red front door. As I pushed it open, paint peeled off and fell to the floor.
“Ndiyo?” A voice called back. Yes? A skinny woman wearing a dark blue apron emerged from what I could only imagine was the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel filled with holes. “Oh! Karibu! You Nicole?”
“Yes, I am Nicole. I am here to volunteer in the classroom and help teach. Are you Hasina?”
“Oh no, Hasina no help in kitchen. She teach in classroom,” the woman replied. “I am Johanna. I help with cooking and cleaning for orphanage. Jebet told me that you coming this morning to help teach.” Johanna smiled at me and pumped my hand up and down energetically as she introduced herself. After the chilly stare of Jebet, I was grateful to meet a smiling face.
“Do you know where I can find Jebet? I was told to meet her here this morning.”
“She not down yet. Still sleeping in her room. But I can show you to class if you’d like?”
“Yes, thank you. That would be great!” I knew I couldn’t avoid Jebet forever, but was admittedly relieved to have postponed my first face-to-face encounter.
Johanna took me on a route through the orphanage and out the back door. As we passed through the crumbling kitchen, its stone walls decaying and in desperate need of repair, I noticed a stack of dirty plates piled high in an oversized, square sink. In the centre of the room, a bulky pot with a cinched waist held a round bowl-like top. Upon eyeing it, Johanna pointed to the ceramic pot and told me it was called a jiko. “We use it to prepare food. It make cooking easy and cheap.”
I followed Johanna through the back door. It swung awkwardly outward on two broken bottom hinges.
We continued through a dusty backyard passageway to a separate, self-standing building with a shingled red roof. We walked through the open door frame of the school into a single classroom where a short black woman passed out papers to a row of empty desks.
Watching the woman, I was transfixed by how much the scene reminded me of my own classroom: a teacher passing out papers in an empty room in hopes that proactive preparation would help create focused learning once the kids came in from playing. Yet the differences were as glaring. No kids’ paintings hung on the crumbling cement walls, the thick globs of bright red and purple brushstrokes still drying from that morning’s art lesson. There was no seasonal bulletin board filled with influences from that month’s traditions and festivities, and no sand or water stations littered the classroom. No chalkboard hung at the front of the room, and there certainly was no bookcase filled with Dr. Seuss and Robert Munsch.
It was simply a dirty, bare room. Squished together rows of rectangle tables were used as desks. Lining the tables were benches, some broken and some not. All were scrunched together in an attempt to ensure that as many students as possible could fit into the classroom. At the front of the room was a small desk with three drawers lining each side of the chair. I assumed it was Hasina’s. The top of the desk was bare with the exception of a tub of chewed pencils and nubby erasers.
The petite woman looked up from distributing the papers and smiled at me, her almond-shaped eyes crinkling in the corners. “Hello there. Might you be Nicole? I’ve been expecting you. And I’m so glad you’re here to help.”
“Yes, Hasina, I am Nicole, but please call me Nicky. I’m excited to be here. Can I help you pass out the papers?”
Johanna gave a little wave and quietly exited out the door we had come through, her English not strong enough to keep up with the conversation.
I took the stack of blank papers Hasina handed to me and placed them side by side along the front tables, mirroring the Kenyan teacher’s squished spacing.
When we were finished, Hasina retrieved a handheld bell, reminiscent of what my mother would give us to ring when we were in bed with the flu and needed her attention. Hasina motioned for me to follow her outside where she rang the bell high and loud. Within seconds, the children I had seen playing in the field came stampeding by us like the running of the bulls. Shrieks of laughter trailed behind them as they took their seats.
Hasina rapped a flat stick at the front of the classroom to get the students’ attention. I looked around, wincing at how mashed together the students were, sitting side by side on the benches. For the most part, the older kids sat together at the back of the classroom and the younger ones gathered at the front.
“Sabalheri wanafunzi,” Hasina opened the day, bidding her students good morning. Thankfully, I was standing beside an English-speaking preteen who took one look at me before whispering the translations in my ear. The girl looked to be about twelve with breast buds revealing the onset of puberty. I smiled, quietly thanking her.
Hasina continued by giving the pupils the habari za asubuhi — in English, the morning news and messages. She explained that school would let out early that day because she had to leave to attend a meeting. I waited for the children to jump up and down, clapping and cheering at the prospect of trading in school lessons for playtime, just as they would have back home.
But not one of them responded the way I was expecting. If anything, some of them looked a bit disappointed. Even more surprising, complete silence continued to fill the room as Hasina went over the morning announcements. Somehow, the teacher was able to continue to hold the undivided attention of all thirty-five students. I admired her proficiency; classroom management was a skill that I constantly worked at mastering.
I wondered if Hasina was going to introduce me next, but instead she updated the class on one of the younger students, who was absent from school. Iman would not be returning to school on that day, or in the future. Johanna, who had shown me through the school, would tell me later, in confidence, that Iman had been with the orphanage for two years, but that his uncle had unexpectedly visited Kidaai and retrieved his nephew to work on his land. The uncle hadn’t wanted Iman until he was old enough to tend to farm work; he had no use for his nephew when he was young and weak, but wanted him back now that the child was old enough for man’s work. At seven years old.
Now Hasina waved for me to join her at the front of the class. I stepped forward and waved at the class, bidding them hello in Swahili. They smiled and waved, but still remained perfectly behaved.
“This is Mwalimu Nicky,” Hasina said, “Teacher Nicky. She will be with us for the next little while, helping you to learn.” Hasina bounced back and forth between English and Swahili, wanting to make sure both the younger children and I understood.
“Now, let’s begin our studies,” Hasina continued. “We will start this morning by continuing our social studies discussion on the countries of Africa. Yesterday we spoke of Kenya, and learned all about what surrounds us, including our location within the African
continent, our cultures and what animals roam throughout our land. Today we will look at other African countries.”
I took a seat at the back of the class and observed the children. Hasina seemed to connect directly with the seven- to nine-year-old students, their eager faces nodding and taking in what she was saying. But the youngest students looked lost. And the older students, bored.
The twelve-year-old that had translated for me earlier ignored what Hasina was saying, silently rolling the sides of the blank paper sitting in front of her, shutting out her surroundings. I suspected it was because she already knew what was being taught.
Hasina crossed to her own desk and removed a small stack of thin textbooks, almost all of them falling apart at the seams. “We share the books as we only have eleven,” Hasina said to me in English, handing ten of them to me so that I could randomly distribute the books throughout the class. I passed them out and the children quickly clustered together to share the book closest to them.
Turning to address the entire group, Hasina held up the book opened to page seventeen and explained that it showed a map of Africa. She pointed out where Kenya was in relation to the other countries, and traced its boundaries.
I watched the students in front of me each take a long look at one of the textbooks and then pass it to their neighbours. From what I could see of the pages, the textbooks looked to be at about a Grade 1 level.
When everyone had their chance to take a look at the map, Hasina went through the entire exercise again, but this time pointed out the Republic of Somalia, explaining that it was the country that fell to Kenya’s northeast.
“Now, please take your pencils and use the piece of paper in front of you to write down everything that you already know about Somalia. You will have fifteen minutes to complete the activity, and then we will share our answers as a group.”
Once Hasina was convinced the students were buried in their assignment, she came to the back of the classroom to talk quietly with me. I was in the first hour of my volunteer work and already I had enough questions to last the rest of the day. Her multi-age approach was interesting, yet I sensed the students falling at the extremes of the age range weren’t absorbing what they could be. I was eager to learn more about the curriculum that Hasina had been given, and how she adapted it to such a broad range of ages.
“The curriculum?” Hasina scoffed. She shook her head, pursing her lips. “There isn’t a curriculum, Nicky.”
As a teacher, what I learned shocked me. Hasina had to do much more than any other teacher, but with so much less. She had no guidance, given that Kidaai only had a makeshift classroom within an orphanage school that was not validated, or even regarded, in the eyes of the Kenyan government. Any school supplies Hasina had to use were donations from previous volunteers and a few warm-hearted families from Mombasa. The government had simply disregarded these children because they were orphans.
The majority of donations went towards basic survival, which never included schooling. The children first needed to eat, drink and have access to medicine when they were sick. The academics part of growing up — getting an education that would teach the children to read and write — was considered a bonus. On most days, Hasina and her class went without.
As the kids finished their activity, the room started to stir. The younger children had long since been bored with the activity, many of them writing nothing but scribbles on their papers. Some even still had blank pages.
Hasina asked for a volunteer and I watched as a few of the kids raised their hands, offering to share what they had written down with the class. I quietly strolled around the sides of the classroom and tried to peek at the students’ papers. The majority had five or six things written down, but one eager student had an entire page of Swahili writing; she was sitting on the edge of her seat, anxiously fluttering her hand in an effort to be picked.
Hasina pointed at the girl, who stood up and started reciting facts about Somalia. She spoke only in Swahili.
As the eager student droned on, I noticed a boy about thirteen at the very back of the class, off to one side. He was by himself, sitting perfectly still, but twisting his hands in his lap. I walked behind him and noticed his page of paper remained completely blank. The pencil he had been given was sitting perfectly vertical on top of it.
“Do you speak English?” I asked quietly.
“Yes, Mwalimu Nicky. A bit.”
“Do you want to write down what you know about Somalia?”
“Yes, me really do.” The boy looked at me with wide, round eyes as he nodded his head.
“Okay, well there’s still a bit of time. Why don’t you quickly list what you know about the country?”
“Because, Mwalimu Nicky, me not know how to read or write.”
16
The next morning, I was anxious to speak with Hasina. The day before had been busy. Given Hasina had to leave the classroom early, I hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly speak with her and I was anxious to continue our conversation about teaching the children. I wanted to learn more about the lessons she was using and ask about my role to understand how she thought I could help.
I stuffed my backpack with a few of the supplies I had brought with me from home — markers, activity books, construction paper, stickers, a few rulers, some Play-Doh, a package of pipe cleaners and four bottles of glue. I didn’t know where Petar or Kiano were and I hadn’t seen Mama Bu since Sunday as she was still nursing her niece back to health, so I grabbed some fruit from the kitchen and headed out the door.
When I got to school, I walked into an empty classroom. I was hoping Hasina would be there, since she had arrived so early the day before, but the classroom was still and quiet. The shared textbooks we had used throughout Hasina’s lessons the day before were piled neatly on her desk. The dusty wooden floor the classroom had been built upon was still marked with the prints of shoeless children.
Not knowing what lessons we would be covering that day, I wasn’t sure how I should set up the classroom. Instead, I took my seat on one of the unbroken benches and waited for Hasina’s arrival.
Forty minutes later, I was still waiting. I could hear the children playing in the field and I wondered if it was typical for Hasina to be late. I had heard Petar joke about “Kenya time,” which coined the consistent way Kenyans showed up late for everything, yet Hasina didn’t strike me as the type of teacher who would approach the classroom in such a lackadaisical manner.
I left the classroom and wandered through the orphanage back door to find Johanna finishing up the dishes.
“Good morning, Johanna. Have you seen Hasina? She isn’t in the classroom and I expected her to be here by now.”
“No, no, Miss Nicky. Me not know. Here, I get Jebet.” Johanna wiped her hands on the tea towel that was hanging off her shoulder. Her eyes seemed weary, yet she forced a wobbly smile onto her face, revealing a large gap between her two front teeth. When she smiled, her nose turned even more upwards than it already was, giving her an almost cartoonlike quality, yet she was still pretty in her own way. Beautiful, even.
I clasped my hands together and tried not to be nervous about meeting Jebet. She was just the orphanage director, after all. What did she have over me?
But when Jebet and Johanna walked into the kitchen, the room turned icy cold. The orphanage director’s persona instantly juxtaposed Johanna’s calm and gentle demeanour, and the pair looked like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde standing next to each other. Sweet and sour.
Jebet’s craggy face served as the backdrop to her flat and wide nose with nostrils flaring into perfectly matching circles as she breathed. The orphanage director still carried the stick that I had seen the day before. She ungraciously barked her way through our first conversation.
“Hasina’s not here. She won’t be back today.” Jebet’s words were quick and irritated, despite the fact I hadn’t yet said two words to her.
“Hello, Jebet. I’m Nicky. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said in the warmest tone I could muster. I held out my hand, determined to, at a minimum, comfortably coexist with the orphanage director during my days in Kenya. After five seconds of my hand hanging empty in the air, I returned it to my side. “Do you know when Hasina might return?”
“Who knows? There’s another teachers’ strike, so now none of them are working. Hasina is probably off screaming at the government with all of the other teachers, asking for more money. Like they need it! All I know is that now these damn children have nothing to do all day. And I am stuck with them, you hear? Hmmph. I need to have the dirty monsters around me all day like I need a bullet in my brain.”
Did she say . . . a teachers’ strike? An actual strike?
There had been no talk of it. And nothing on the news, which I had continued to watch every night.
I was sad for the children who would be pulled out of school, particularly those who needed it most. And I was disappointed to have spent only one day in the classroom with the children before the strike rolled in.
I wondered what else I could do in Kenya; I wasn’t scheduled to go home for three months. Maybe work at Kiano’s bank? No, that wouldn’t work; I was terrible at math and never accurate when I counted money. Take care of Lucy’s children? They had Chege’s mother. Teaching was my passion. I had no other skills, and nothing else to offer. Nor did I want to spend three months volunteering in some other way.
Jebet started eyeing me suspiciously, and took a step closer. I could smell the faint trace of alcohol on her breath. “Unless . . . unless you want to take over? We need a teacher, and I’m sure you can figure all that classroom stuff out. Yes?”
I couldn’t believe how Jebet’s mood could swing so drastically from one minute to the next. She went from barking at me to asking me for a favour.
I glanced at Johanna and watched her nod encouragingly at the orphanage director’s suggestion. Despite it being obvious that Jebet’s offer stemmed from not wanting to deal with the children herself, I was intrigued and interested at the thought of taking over the classroom. At least until the teachers’ strike was over, at which point I would happily hand the reins back to Hasina.
Chai Tea Sunday Page 13