Chai Tea Sunday (14 page)

Turning to address the entire group, Hasina held up the book opened to page seventeen and explained that it showed a map of Africa. She pointed out where Kenya was in relation to the other countries, and traced its boundaries.

I watched the students in front of me each take a long look at one of the textbooks and then pass it to their neighbours. From what I could see of the pages, the textbooks looked to be at about a Grade 1 level.

When everyone had their chance to take a look at the map, Hasina went through the entire exercise again, but this time pointed out the Republic of Somalia, explaining that it was the country that fell to Kenya's northeast.

“Now, please take your pencils and use the piece of paper in front of you to write down everything that you already know about Somalia. You will have fifteen minutes to complete the activity, and then we will share our answers as a group.”

Once Hasina was convinced the students were buried in their assignment, she came to the back of the classroom to talk quietly with me. I was in the first hour of my volunteer work and already I had enough questions to last the rest of the day. Her multi-age approach was interesting, yet I sensed the students falling at the extremes of the age range weren't absorbing what they could be. I was eager to learn more about the curriculum that Hasina had been given, and how she adapted it to such a broad range of ages.

“The curriculum?” Hasina scoffed. She shook her head, pursing her lips. “There
isn't
a curriculum, Nicky.”

As a teacher, what I learned shocked me. Hasina had to do much more than any other teacher, but with so much less. She had no guidance, given that Kidaai only had a makeshift classroom within an orphanage school that was not validated, or even regarded, in the eyes of the Kenyan government. Any school supplies Hasina had to use were donations from previous volunteers and a few warm-hearted families from Mombasa. The government had simply disregarded these children because they were orphans.

The majority of donations went towards basic survival, which never included schooling. The children first needed to eat, drink and have access to medicine when they were sick. The academics part of growing up — getting an education that would teach the children to read and write — was considered a bonus. On most days, Hasina and her class went without.

As the kids finished their activity, the room started to stir. The younger children had long since been bored with the activity, many of them writing nothing but scribbles on their papers. Some even still had blank pages.

Hasina asked for a volunteer and I watched as a few of the kids raised their hands, offering to share what they had written down with the class. I quietly strolled around the sides of the classroom and tried to peek at the students' papers. The majority had five or six things written down, but one eager student had an entire page of Swahili writing; she was sitting on the edge of her seat, anxiously fluttering her hand in an effort to be picked.

Hasina pointed at the girl, who stood up and started reciting facts about Somalia. She spoke only in Swahili.

As the eager student droned on, I noticed a boy about thirteen at the very back of the class, off to one side. He was by himself, sitting perfectly still, but twisting his hands in his lap. I walked behind him and noticed his page of paper remained completely blank. The pencil he had been given was sitting perfectly vertical on top of it.

“Do you speak English?” I asked quietly.

“Yes,
Mwalimu
Nicky
.
A bit.”

“Do you want to write down what you know about Somalia?”

“Yes, me
really
do.” The boy looked at me with wide, round eyes as he nodded his head.

“Okay, well there's still a bit of time. Why don't you quickly list what you know about the country?”

“Because,
Mwalimu
Nicky, me not know how to read or write.”

The next morning, I was anxious to speak with Hasina. The day before had been busy. Given Hasina had to leave the classroom early, I hadn't had a chance to thoroughly speak with her and I was anxious to continue our conversation about teaching the children. I wanted to learn more about the lessons she was using and ask about my role to understand how she thought I could help.

I stuffed my backpack with a few of the supplies I had brought with me from home — markers, activity books, construction paper, stickers, a few rulers, some Play-Doh, a package of pipe cleaners and four bottles of glue. I didn't know where Petar or Kiano were and I hadn't seen Mama Bu since Sunday as she was still nursing her niece back to health, so I grabbed some fruit from the kitchen and headed out the door.

When I got to school, I walked into an empty classroom. I was hoping Hasina would be there, since she had arrived so early the day before, but the classroom was still and quiet. The shared textbooks we had used throughout Hasina's lessons the day before were piled neatly on her desk. The dusty wooden floor the classroom had been built upon was still marked with the prints of shoeless children.

Not knowing what lessons we would be covering that day, I wasn't sure how I should set up the classroom. Instead, I took my seat on one of the unbroken benches and waited for Hasina's arrival.

Forty minutes later, I was still waiting. I could hear the children playing in the field and I wondered if it was typical for Hasina to be late. I had heard Petar joke about “Kenya time,” which coined the consistent way Kenyans showed up late for everything, yet Hasina didn't strike me as the type of teacher who would approach the classroom in such a lackadaisical manner.

I left the classroom and wandered through the orphanage back door to find Johanna finishing up the dishes.

“Good morning, Johanna. Have you seen Hasina? She isn't in the classroom and I expected her to be here by now.”

“No, no, Miss Nicky. Me not know. Here, I get Jebet.” Johanna wiped her hands on the tea towel that was hanging off her shoulder. Her eyes seemed weary, yet she forced a wobbly smile onto her face, revealing a large gap between her two front teeth. When she smiled, her nose turned even more upwards than it already was, giving her an almost cartoonlike quality, yet she was still pretty in her own way. Beautiful, even.

I clasped my hands together and tried not to be nervous about meeting Jebet. She was just the orphanage director, after all. What did she have over
me
?

But when Jebet and Johanna walked into the kitchen, the room turned icy cold. The orphanage director's persona instantly juxtaposed Johanna's calm and gentle demeanour, and the pair looked like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde standing next to each other. Sweet and sour.

Jebet's craggy face served as the backdrop to her flat and wide nose with nostrils flaring into perfectly matching circles as she breathed. The orphanage director still carried the stick that I had seen the day before. She ungraciously barked her way through our first conversation.

“Hasina's not here. She won't be back today.” Jebet's words were quick and irritated, despite the fact I hadn't yet said two words to her.

“Hello, Jebet. I'm Nicky. It's a pleasure to meet you,” I said in the warmest tone I could muster. I held out my hand, determined to, at a minimum, comfortably coexist with the orphanage director during my days in Kenya. After five seconds of my hand hanging empty in the air, I returned it to my side. “Do you know when Hasina might return?”

“Who knows? There's another teachers' strike, so now none of them are working. Hasina is probably off screaming at the government with all of the other teachers, asking for more money. Like they need it! All I know is that now these damn children have
nothing
to do all day. And
I
am
stuck
with them, you hear? Hmmph. I need to have the dirty monsters around me all day like I need a bullet in my brain.”

Did she say . . . a
teachers' strike
? An actual
strike
?

There had been no talk of it. And nothing on the news, which I had continued to watch every night.

I was sad for the children who would be pulled out of school, particularly those who needed it most. And I was disappointed to have spent only one day in the classroom with the children before the strike rolled in.

I wondered what else I could do in Kenya; I wasn't scheduled to go home for three months. Maybe work at Kiano's bank? No, that wouldn't work; I was terrible at math and never accurate when I counted money. Take care of Lucy's children? They had Chege's mother. Teaching was my
passion
. I had no other skills, and nothing else to offer. Nor did I want to spend three months volunteering in some other way.

Jebet started eyeing me suspiciously, and took a step closer. I could smell the faint trace of alcohol on her breath. “Unless . . . unless
you
want to take over? We need a teacher, and I'm sure you can figure all that classroom stuff out. Yes?”

I couldn't believe how Jebet's mood could swing so drastically from one minute to the next. She went from barking at me to asking me for a favour.

I glanced at Johanna and watched her nod encouragingly at the orphanage director's suggestion. Despite it being obvious that Jebet's offer stemmed from not wanting to deal with the children herself, I was intrigued and interested at the thought of taking over the classroom. At least until the teachers' strike was over, at which point I would happily hand the reins back to Hasina.

The challenges of so many kids in one classroom was intimidating, particularly given the broad age range, but my mind hadn't stopped racing with ideas of ways to teach them since the day before.

“I'll do it!” I exclaimed. I was surprised to hear my voice, and my confident tone surprised me even more.

“Well . . . good. There, it's settled. Now, go and get the dirty brats and start teaching them.
Out
of my
sight
already!” Jebet picked up her stick and turned, leaving the kitchen as quickly as she could.

“You be good teacher. Hasina tell me that she like you,” Johanna said as she scratched at her chin. Her left hand rested on her lower abdomen, which she rubbed lightly as if her stomach was aching. I wondered if Johanna was hungry.

“I guess I should get the kids and tell them what's going on,” I responded timidly. Out of nowhere, I became incredibly nervous. My stomach curled in knots and I suddenly wondered if I had spoken too quickly. I didn't even speak the language the majority of them knew best. And I certainly had no clue how to effectively teach thirty-five children who ranged from age four to fourteen.

“You be good,” Johanna said again, as though she was reading my thoughts.

I smiled and took a deep breath before leaving for the classroom, where I grabbed the little bell from the desk to call the kids to class. Within moments, all thirty-five of them were mashed back together and sitting in the exact seats that they had sat in the day before.

“
Hujambo
,” I started, clearing my throat. I inhaled the musty air of the classroom and watched as wide eyes waited for me to continue. Several of the students blinked repeatedly, their eyes looking almost mechanical. “Would any of you who speak English like to help me out? I have an announcement to make and I would like for everyone to understand it.”

No one moved an inch. No one put up their hands or even offered to help. All thirty-five children sat staring at me.

“Okay, I need you to listen then, and understand as best as you can. Hasina won't be here today, but I will be teaching you. I would really like for one of you to translate for me. It would really help me out.”

The girl who had translated Hasina's lessons for me the day before timidly raised her hand, looking sheepish and afraid. I smiled in relief, grateful to have a volunteer, and motioned for the girl to join me at the front of the class.

“Thank you for volunteering,” I said to her quietly. “What is your name?”

“It is Esther. And I am happy to help you.”

I spoke slowly, so that Esther had time to translate my English into Swahili. For the most part she did really well, although I had to give her a few synonyms for the English words she didn't recognize.

“
Mwalimu
Hasina won't be with us for the next little while. She and the other teachers in Kenya are working together to figure out solutions for some issues that have come up.” I paused, letting Esther catch up. As the little girl spoke to the class in Swahili, the students looked sad — and a bit scared to learn their teacher would no longer be with them. “Until Hasina returns, I will be your teacher. I am excited to be here and I look forward to teaching you.”

The scared faces softened. Slightly.

“We will need to figure some things out together,” I said honestly. “The truth is that I wasn't prepared to be your only teacher today. I'm going to need to find out what supplies we have and what types of things we will be learning about over the next little while.”

A young boy about seven sitting in the third row raised his hand timidly. “Yes?” I asked him.

“Our supplies that we have are in Miss Hasina's desk. They are all in her drawers,” the little boy said, pointing to the desk.

“Thank you. What is your name?”

“John. My name is John.” The little boy smiled and wiped his running nose on his sleeve.

“It's nice to meet you, John. And thank you for pointing me in the right direction.” I walked to the desk and opened the drawers. Inside, I found a thick stack of blank papers, and some extra pencils and erasers.

I thumbed through the drawer, stalling for time. I had
no
idea where to start.

Given that I had just found out that I would be on my own, I hadn't had time to properly plan or come up with fleshed-out ideas. While it was true that my mind had been racing with teaching tactics since the day before, my inspiration consisted
only
of spiralling ideas. No concrete plans of attack.

I decided to start with the basics.

“There are many of you, and only one of me, so I hope that you will be patient with me as I learn your names,” I started, taking the pipe cleaners, markers and construction paper out of my backpack. Esther continued to translate. “Let's begin with making name tags for each of us to wear. I will show you how to make one, and then you can all make your own.”

I took a piece of yellow construction paper and cut out a large rectangular shape. I used a red marker to write “
Mwalimu
Nicky” in big, bold letters. To decorate it, I drew a few flowers with some of the other markers. Then, a few stickers.

Using one of the pencils, I poked a hole in the top centre of my name tag. I pushed a piece of blue pipe cleaner through it, threading it through one of my button holes. I secured the two ends tightly together to ensure my name tag wouldn't come off.

“There!” I said, showing my name tag to the students proudly. I started passing out the supplies I had used and encouraged the kids to make their own version of my name tag. “Now, it's your turn. Please be as creative as you like — it can be a rectangle like mine, or a heart or a star or a circle. And you can decorate it in whatever way you choose. The only thing I ask is that you write your name in big letters so that I can see it. I'm going to try to learn all of your names as quickly as possible.”

The kids eagerly took the supplies and stared at the stickers in awe. Although I couldn't be certain, I suspected that some of them had never seen stickers before — particularly the ones that had googly eyes, which instantly became the number one pick among the group.

Many of the older kids jumped in right away, taking brightly coloured construction paper and a few markers and stickers back to their seats. Others took longer to choose their materials.

“
Mwalimu
Nicky? Can I use two colours of the long, fuzzy things?” one of the girls asked, referring to the pipe cleaners. I peered over her shoulder and saw that she had spelled out
SADIKI
on her name tag.

“Yes, of course, Sadiki. You may do whatever you would like with your name tag. Be as creative as possible so that yours is completely different from everyone else's.”

I watched Sadiki light up as she chose yellow and orange pipe cleaners to create the hook for her name tag. Then, as though she was replaying my creative nudging over again in her mind, she twisted the top of the two-colour hook around and around until she had created a spiral. Looking pleased with herself, she fastened her completed name tag to the top button on her uniform.

As the rest of the children finished up their name tags, I racked my brain, trying to think of the best way to teach this particular classroom. I scoured my memory for concepts we had learned in teachers' college, or suggestions from other teachers that I had worked with.

But everything I knew of was specific to a particular age. Nothing in the curriculum I had used leveraged teaching methods for such a broad age range of kids. Multi-age methods simply didn't exist, because our classrooms didn't have a four-year-old sitting next to a fourteen-year-old.

And then it dawned on me. While the method of teaching wasn't created with a ten-year age span in mind, I remembered that Montessori schools purposely educate children in a multi-age group. The belief was that a mixed age of children would create an environment where students would spontaneously learn from one another. While the obvious insight is that older children would share their knowledge with younger ones, it made sense to me that the older children would
also
be learning, particularly given that teaching reinforces previously learned concepts. As I had quickly learned in my own career, a teacher needs to fully and completely understand the lesson before being able to
teach
it. For that teacher — whether a certified post-grad or a nine-year-old mentor — the full comprehension of the lesson they are teaching ultimately serves as an aid in the complete mastery of the concept.