Reflections

The internet here is a little bit finicky. Meaning, if you don’t hear from me for a while, assume that no news is good news.

Warning: This post is allllll over the place. A few reflections on my first week in Korr:

In the past week I’ve managed to rip BOTH dresses I brought and one of my three skirts. Meaning, my students are going to see a whole lot of this stylish black and white skirt I bought from Ross that looks like it jumped straight out of the early 1980’s.

The only shoes I’ve really worn are my Chaco’s - the desert is ruthless and rough and will rip most shoes to shreds rather quickly. The other ones work well for killing bugs in our room, though.

We have a lizard that lives in our cho (toilet…latrine…whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t flush because it’s a hole in the ground. BUT we do have a toilet seat!). I’ve named her Bertha Junior – mainly because thinking that the giant lizard peering up at me from inside the cho or from behind the stack of toilet paper is a female somehow makes it less terrifying. I stopped trying to name the cockroaches and spiders a long time ago…too many to count. By “terrifying,” I mean I have this huge fear that one of the aforementioned creatures will crawl on me why I am trying to use the restroom. Most of the time this results in me using Nick & Lynne’s cho instead of taking the chance of a cockroach or spider crawling up my leg.

Some more shuffling of subjects occurred and now I’m teaching Geography instead of Chemistry…don’t worry though. I’m still teaching Kenyan History. I tried to explain the irony of an American teaching Kenyan History to my class the other day (because I find it HILARIOUS – they know more about it than I do) and they just stared at me blankly. Apparently American irony does not translate well into Kenyan irony.

Tirrim Secondary School – AIC’s first secondary school in the north. BIG deal – there aren’t that many secondary schools for kids to go to up here – especially Christian ones. Tirrim just opened in January, and we only have Form 1 (9th-ish grade) this year; we are hoping to add Form 2 this January. We have 32 students in Form 1 – 29 guys and 3 girls. They range in age from 14-27. They are the EXACT opposite of American students. Attentive…polite…studious…and they have SUCH a desire to learn. But the combination of soft Kenyan accents and too many eager students trying to answer my questions at once results in me saying a lot of “HUH?” “I’m sorry…WHAT did you say?” and “Whoa. Uh…could you say that again slower?”

Like for example – today we were talking about what the students eat for breakfast in the morning. “Kahawa!” they proudly told me.
“I’m sorry…kaha-what?”
“Coffee, Madam!”
A few exchanges later I figured out that kahawa is coffee in Swahili.
“Oh! Yes, Kenyan coffee is good. I drink Kenyan coffee back in the States!”
“Yes, Madam. Here we drink coffee from (soft mumbling)-opia.”
“Um…what?”
“Utopia!” (or so I heard)
(Me, trying to think fast and make sense of what I think I just heard) “You drink…Utopian coffee?”
“NO, Madam. ETHIOPIA! We have coffee from Ethiopia.”
(Cue me trying SO hard not to laugh and feeling like a complete fool) “OH. Ethiopia. Well, that makes sense.”
“YES, Madam. They are so near!” (The Ethiopian border is just a few hour’s north of Korr.)

I also catch myself using intelligent phrases like “between a rock and a hard place” and “a rule of thumb to go by,” as well as using the word “y’all” about every three sentences. None of my students understand what I’m saying, but they’re way too polite to tell me that.

There’s SO much more…I’ll be posting again soon. But for now, know this: the Lord is moving mightily here in this small desert town, and I am so humbled to be here to play a part in it.