A Rainy Day

My second day at Brookhouse went very well. The highlight of today was definitely working with two boys with Down's syndrome. We were playing with water outside, and the younger boy accidentally splashed cold water on himself. He started to shiver, and the older boy - also with severe Down's syndrome - immediately took his towel and wrapped up the younger boy beside him. Whenever the towel slipped, he fixed it. It was so beautiful to watch this boy care and connect with his friend.

That silly Canadian accent of mine posed more challenges today. I was working with a girl from Sudan who is struggling with spelling. We were trying to sound out words together so that she could spell how they sounded. The first word was "steep" - she got the "st", but when I exaggerated the "eee" sound, she confidently wrote an "i" and couldn't understand how I thought the clearly "i" sound that I was making could be spelt "ee". Next, we were trying to sound out "every", which to her should be "evari". I'm worried that I'm just confusing her more with my accent when she's already struggling.

Tomorrow with Brookhouse, I'll be going to Savage Wilderness tomorrow morning for the weekend with the grade 10's (or year 10's) for a class trip. It's a place 2 hours north of here where we'll be going whitewater rafting, hiking, etc. I'm quite excited - it's my first overnight school trip, so I hope the year 10's are alright... I'll be out of email contact of course during the trip, but I'll share all about it when I get back on sunday night.

Today, everyone welcomed me to Kenya's rainy season. It rained most of the day, and quite a bit. The mud is a lovely bright red since much of the dirt is red. And people have the most innovative ways of staying dry. Some people were wearing plastic bags as shawls, as interesting hats, as capes, as coats, as anything. My favourite pedestrian we saw, however, was carrying just the handle and stick of his umbrella. I suppose the wind must have taken the rest away, but he had kept his stick. The huge number of pedestrians didn't decrease at all in the rain, and the drivers only got more aggressive with the weather. In our short ride, we passed two accidents, and I was so worried a pedestrian would be hit. The philosophy of traffic is very different from Canada - in Canada, I think there is an atmosphere of knowing the government will take care of us. It will post safe speed limits, put up barriers, fill in dangerous holes in the road, clear dangerous brush, keep the stop lights working, arrest other dangerous drivers, remove falling apart vehicles from the road, test vehicles emissions, etc. Here in Kenya, the atmosphere seems to be much more - don't rely on the government - you and your family is all you have. So you choose what risk you want to live with - how fast you want to drive, which roads you take, whether you drive your falling apart vehicle, etc. Fortunately Irene is a good driver, and she is careful in the very busy intersections with broken stop lights!

The route we took home tonight was a bit different - through an area with many small businesses. The people make amazing furniture and some incredible metal sculptures - very beautiful workmanship - and they set everything for sale out on the yard in front of the shop. The actual building for the shop however, was barely standing up - despite the people's obvious talent and good craftsmanship. One couple didn't have a shop, so they stood together under an umbrella with a small stove and a bag of corn to sell grilled corn to pedestrians. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to how stark the class level seperated by income are here. It's hard.