Onions

After being terrified I would have nothing to teach today, I ended up having a great lesson plan. The topic this week is family conflicts, which is a tricky one like I said in the last post because of the issue of respect. Well anyways, while reading the Daily Nation, the Kenyan newspaper, yesterday, I came across a poll that asked, "In your opinion, what is the most serious problem facing Kenya today?" The options were tribalism, poor leadership, corruption, high cost of living and lack of employment. I redid the poll with my students, asking the question in two different ways. First I asked what they thought the most serious problem facing kenya as a country was, then I asked what was the most serious problem facing kenyan citizens. The answers were drastically different, which is what I wanted. For the first question, most of them said corruption and poor leadership, and for the second question most of them said high cost of living and lack of employment. Which made complete sense. Then, I compared it to the layers of an onion, talking about how the outer layer was the one that was right in front of everyone's eyes. Props to Deb for the onion idea by the way! I asked them what they thought the order of the layers should be, from outside to inside, and this is what they said:
1) High cost of living
2) Lack of employment
3) Corruption
4) Poor leadership
(We left tribalism out because it only got 1% of the votes)
Their answers were EXACTLY what I wanted them to say which was great to see.
In the nation the percents of the people they asked were as follows:
1) High cost of living 76%
2) Lack of employment 10%
3) Corruption 7%
4) Poor leadership 5%

As you can see the numbers lined up perfectly with our onion layers, which I used to explain what critical thinking is, and being able to understand the root cause of a problem. Critical thinking barely exists in the teaching here, it is all memorization which I might have already said, but this little activity was an excellent transition into root causes of family conflict, and critical thinking. Both of which I want to cover this week. So that went really well!
And in my favorite class, form 1 purple we had a blast today. When I said onion in english they all started saying the word for onion in swahili, which of course I forget already. But, when I finally said it right (it took me about 5 tries) They all started clapping for me and said we're so proud of you!!! We were all laughing and having a grand old time. The next fun moment in that class came about when I was talking about how it's hard to me to really understand what their family life is really like because I've never been in their house (what I meant was the same type of thing as walking in someones shoes) as a metaphor, and immediately they all started shouting out "you are welcome in my house!!! come to my house!!! No you can visit my house!!!" Which was absolutely hysterical and so sweet of them.

Lastly, Deb told me to always carry my rain coat with me these days because of these lovely short rains. After a beautiful weekend with not a drop of rain, I was hesitant to bring it with me this morning. Then I thought, knowing my luck, if I don't bring it it will rain. And MUCH to my dismay, as soon as I got on my bike to come home the rain began. Glad I had my raincoat! Now all I need is some sort of mud guard so I don't get mud in my mouth anymore. (Or all over myself for that matter.) Well, what's life without a little dirt and adventure!