9. School Begins: East Africa a New Life Adventure

Dr. Kariro, the headmaster, as well as the other tutors arrived that next week and activities began to pick up.  The Faculty had about ten tutors. At the first faculty meeting there were four tutors from England, one from Australia, four Native Kenyan (mostly KiKuyu the local tribe), and Myself from the United States.  Teaching at Kigari, as I observed, amounted to the teacher writing a lesson on the blackboard and the students copying that same lesson in their hand books, which were then turned in to the teacher who checked to see if the lesson had been copied correctly. I did not think this amounted to any kind of education that I knew of.  First of all, the education level of the students being trained as teachers were the low level passes from middle school or “standard” (or grade) 8. Most of them were in their early 20’s, and they were now being taught in English which was at least their third language; Mother Tongue representing 20 or so Tribes and Swahili the national language for Kenya. Perhaps copying lessons from the blackboard did have a purpose, but I could not teach in that manner. The science that I was to teach had to have some substance that could be used to solve problems.  It took me about 6 months to make an assessment about the students’ general usable knowledge, which enabled me to design lessons that were meaningful.