My Future As a Piki-Piki Driver

Now that I’ve shared one blog focused on the negative side of things here and I feel I can’t be accused of solely glamourizing life in Africa, let me go back to telling you all about how perfect life in Kenya is.  I had two experiences this week that were thrilling for me in very different ways.

Experience 1: The Treacherous Boda Ride:

The view from Bingutwi school.

Thursday the team was teaching at a school called Bingutwi.  It’s way off the beaten path.  Literally.  But the views once you make it there (if you manage to make it there) are breathtaking!  Sweeping landscapes with two large mountains right in the middle that used to be crawling with leopards and baboons.  Tall beautiful trees blowing in the wind and gorgeous scenery for as far as the eye can see.

I called Charles, a dear friend and one of my favorite boda (also known as a piki-piki or a motorcycle taxi) drivers to take me out there.  By the time the morning meeting at the house was over, it was raining quite hard.  Very strange, as it normally rains late every afternoon but very rarely earlier or later. So, the roads were bad.  One thing I secretly love about Charles is his need for speed.  I think he knows I’ve got good balance and a high threshold for fear, so despite the rain, we were making it to Bingutwi at a decent clip.  Anytime half of my brain is saying, ‘Wow. We sure are going fast, we should probably ask Charles to slow down and take his time,’ the other side of my brain promptly punches the cautious side of my brain in the face and takes the reins, allowing me to enjoy in the thrill of the ride. 

Charles the awesome boda driver.

Once we turned off the main road to the very bumpy, boulder filled path, I remembered why it’s so dangerous to take a boda to Bingutwi.  Charles was navigating his piki over huge rocks and muddy sinkholes with a high degree of skill, but it was a very narrow path lined with sharp rocks and thorn-bushes on steroids, and was way too dangerous for both of us to go over the rocks together, so I climbed off and ran ahead of the boda in the rain.  I had forgotten just how long the dangerous stretch of road extended and ended up running through the mud and over large slippery rocks for at least 10-15 minutes.  I kept asking Charles if I shouldn’t just pay him and go on alone, but he wouldn’t hear of it.  We’d run into some strange people already and I don’t think he liked the idea of sending me down a slippery, dangerous and isolated path on my own.

Needless to say, we made it just fine, and though I suggested I traverse the tricky part of the journey back on my own and meet him on the main road he told me he’d be at the front gate of the school to meet me at the end of the day and wouldn’t hear otherwise.  He arrived as promised and this time we had to navigate the slippery boulder going uphill with gravity against us.  There were so many opportunities for us to both end up with our brains bashed against slimy oversized rocks. It was terrifyingly awesome.  And sometimes just terrifying.  And very, very muddy.

But Charles had a plan; he decided if he built up enough speed he could get the momentum to just fly up the boulders.  He hadn’t shared this plan with me, so I just thought he’d lost his mind and decided that it was a good day to die.  I tried to put all my faith in him and his skill as a driver and just pray for the best, which again allowed the thrill-seeking side of my brain to charge my body with adrenaline and dopamine and enjoy the ride.

We tore over boulders at an alarming rate and once we made it (amazingly) to the open road, we picked up the pace even more.  Against reason, I wondered why I have never owned a motorcycle and even, once I reached home in one piece, started looking into how much one would cost.  There are few simple pleasures I have found that compare to the thrill of the piki....the wind in my hair (and this time, the rain beating down on my face), while the world flies past in a glorious blaze of color and movement.  The rush of it all.  If this whole international development thing doesn’t work out, I may have just found my calling among the Kenyan piki drivers of Kuria.

Some students who were very proud of their work.

Experience 2: Spelling Sheep and Kitten: Now for what happened during the day on Thursday after the first crazy boda ride.  I arrived safely, though a bit muddy and rain-soaked, to Bingutwi thanks to Charles.  I went to observe our Field Officers (we have a Program Leader, three Field Managers and six Field Officers and all but the Field Officers were in a meeting).  I had spoken with the team a few times about how they are trying to teach reading and writing of English without any attention paid to the sounds that letters make and how to add those sounds together to create words.  To us, this is a basic and foundational concept; to them it was a highly irregular and novel one. I’d been trying to give feedback to each of them on this one by one, but finally on Wednesday had talked to the team as a whole and given them examples of how to break intimidating words down into sounds with students and walk them through how those sounds can be added together to create a whole word.  I tried to introduce fun teaching techniques and games that use letter-sound recognition and phonetics.

So, on Thursday I was so excited to see some of the Field Officers trying out new ideas.  For example, George (one of the best Field Officers) was teaching with a book about animals to a group of Class 2 students.  There was a group of girls in the back too afraid to attempt writing simple words like dog, cat, or cow at the beginning of class.  George was so patient with the class and did an amazing job.  He used some phonetic teaching techniques but put his own innovative spin on them.  When the children had no idea how to spell ‘sheep’, he asked them to shush each other (as in to tell each other to be quiet).  He asked them to guess how to spell ‘shhh’ and they guessed correctly, then he asked them about the ‘eep’ sound from sheep and the first student guessed ‘ip’ (the letter ‘i’ in Kiswahili is pronounced like the letter ‘e’ in English), and George walked them through what a soft ‘i’ in English sounds like and what a long ‘e’ sounds like.  He drew a ship and a sheep and helped them understand the difference in pronunciation.  When they were too afraid to try ‘kitten’ he asked who knew how to spell the word ‘kit’ and who knew how to spell the word ‘ten’ then showed them how the sounds of the two words together make the word kitten.  They were thrilled to know how to spell a six-letter word.  At the end of the class, the group of girls who wouldn’t even make eye contact with George at the beginning of class were jumping up to volunteer to write the new words they’d learned and wrote them correctly.

To see something that I had shared put into practice and have an impact was elating, but especially so because it was not exactly what I had shared.  Someone listened to me and learned from me, but then took that knowledge and crafted it into what worked for them.  I don’t want to be here handing people instructions on how things should be done. I want us all to share with each other what we know and what we have seen work and then incorporate what works the best in our own ways.

Our Program Leader Vicky in action.

On Friday morning, while I was sitting in the corner as the team was learning Excel in computer lab, I was still riding high on the wave of the impact we’d had at Bingutwi on Thursday.  Beyond teaching the sounds of letters, the other main issue I have noted is the lack of advance planning for lessons.  Often it can seem that the team is just showing up and deciding last minute what grade level to teach and which books or materials to use.  Because there is no plan, it seems easy for them to get off course or to not have a good sense at the end of class whether or not the students learned much or if so, what they learned.  I had about an hour of pondering this while they were on the computers and afterward asked them if they still wanted my feedback on lesson planning.  They did, so I created a full lesson plan on the spot (objectives and all), involving spelling games, walking through developing a lesson plan, learning objectives, and ways to assess whether or not those objectives were met.  Afterwards, I got so much positive feedback and one member of the team even commented, ‘Wow!  Learning can be so fun!’.

My team is incredible.  They have worked so hard, come so far, and they truly have a passion for education and the students they work with.  It is so amazing to support them as they both expand their horizons and refine their methods to ensure they are equipping the students to break the cycle of poverty to which their families and communities have been bound for so long.

Snowballs from the hailstorm.

Dark chocolate chip banana bread!

Other thrilling events: We had our first massive hailstorm, I knew enough Swahili to jump off a boda and help an injured school girl on the side of the road, I did my first baking without an oven (dark chocolate chip banana bread that was amazing, thank you very much!), Mateo made a chocolate cake with coffee icing that was incredible, and we found out that this guy whose house we pass everyday on the way to work killed his wife and dropped her body down the well. 

As I could write for hours about all the crazy, thrilling, or incredible things that happen here every day, I will just leave you with the image that I am sitting here typing with birds chirping, a soft breeze blowing, and the warm glow of sunlight on my face, breathing in the fresh air and thinking of how there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than right here, right now.  It seems that every week here is more fulfilling than the one before, despite any hardships or tribulations.  It took me over thirty years to find this place that fills me with such joy, excitement and peace, and I am drinking in every accomplishment with the education team, every amazing moment and meal with the team at the house, and every thrilling boda ride to the fullest.

To all with love, Jesi

PS For those of you who wrote to me about sending care packages, please be sure to send anything within the next week or hang onto it and post it sometime around Christmas.  If packages arrive while I am out of the country on break, they will charge me a storage fee at the post office for every day they had to hold it.  I will be back in Isibania around Jan 18.