Final Week of School

The past weekend when we travelled as a group to the Samburu Game Park, we had the chance to meet a nomadic group called the Samburu. They are close relatives with the famous people of the Masai. It was extraordinarily eye-opening experience to witness the everyday lifestyle of this group. They were living on a desert plane, in huts covered with tarps, with no ability to grow their own food. They live solely on the meat and blood of cows and goats. Most people would have maybe a couple articles of the clothing and couldn’t afford to buy any others. The school was a one room house, with practically bare walls and little to no resources. The rights of the women were little, but with education as the women leader of tribe made a point of saying, things for everybody in the tribe will only get better. When you can visibly see the struggle many people face merely to survive.
During the final week of classes, most of the time spent at Matuto was focused on developing drama acts for a prize giving day to end the semester. It was amazing how gifted some of the students became once they received the opportunity to express themselves. Hannah and I wrote a play about teachers coming to Kenya for our Standard 6 class to perform. At the beginning, it seemed as though it would take too much effort. But, the students have such a strong work ethic, that even when we were not helping them practice, they eventually perfected it by themselves. It was amazing to see the work ethic of these students translated into something besides studying books. Giving gifts
All 3 of us decided we were going to give gifts to the students during our final week. The pandemonium that a few candies and some stickers and Canada pins created was truly amazing. Many of the students have little possessions and when they received something, they were truly appreciative. They began to really warm up to us over the past few weeks and it is going to be very difficult to say goodbye.
Prize giving day occurred on the Saturday of Easter weekend. The day consisted of planting trees in a new forest at Matuto, many different speeches from different distinguished guests, performances by different classes at the school and of course prize giving for the top students during the examination period for this semester. Although most of it was interesting, the day was very long, especially when most of the speeches were in Kikuyu. It was longer than a University graduation and they do it 3 times a year. The patience shown by the students was amazing, as even I couldn’t really stay focused for a long period of time.
During the Easter weekend, I decided to take a little time to reflect upon my experiences at both school and throughout my time in Kenya. Here a few of my thoughts:
a) I will never take for granted the liberties we as Canadians have on a day to day basis.
b) Complaining about the most minute events or occurrences is not acceptable to me anymore.
c) I will never complain about the resources I have during my whole teaching career.
d) I have never felt privileged until I came here. I wish everybody could have this experience first hand.
e) Small things can truly make big differences

Today we are having the teachers over from both Ithanji and Matuto as a show of appreciation for having us come to teach and visit their schools for the past 4 weeks. Over the next week or so, we have decided to visit some different farms, learn about the biogas project, go on the Wakulima dairy run with the teachers from Meru, and spend a week with our students at Matuto playing games, sports, art and other creative activities. We felt this was important as many of our students never get to have a camp type experience. It is going to be a lot of fun and it’s going to be very difficult to leave next week.

Evan Killorn