Nilienda Nairobi, rafiki mgonjwa

That is my broken kiswahili explanation of why I was gone for two weeks, "I went to Nairobi, sick friend." I think it got the point across. I went back to school on Wednesday, and it has been SO good to see my kids again. There are also kids that walk with me on segments of my trip to and from school, who I finally got to see again! I was scared they wouldn't wait for me since I'd been gone so long! Its so good to be back in Moshi.

A lot of people have been asking about the way the school is run, what the kids are like, how it is different from schools at home, etc, so here we go....compare and contrast!

In schools at home, there are about 15 kids (in my experience) in a preschool/kindergarten classroom- Here my class has around 25 students

At home kids wear what they want to school- Here, every age of school-child, from the youngest to the oldest, wears a uniform. They look really cute on the young ones, but tend to look much more awkward as the kids get older.

In the preschool where I worked at home, there was a HUGE emphasis on accepting any sort of marking on paper as a positive step towards writing, no matter how accurate the letters were- Here the emphasis is too often placed on writing the letters correctly, rather than understanding the correlation between writing, reading, speech, and the sounds that each letter makes in a word. (this is a big pet peeve of mine if you couldn't tell)

At home kids wear shoes in the classroom- Here they don't. I love teaching bare-footed.

At home if a kid falls on the playground, they bawl, and demand a band-aid- Here, when poor little Denisi knocks out his four front teeth, he is sent to squat by the water basin and rinse his mouth out, while the teachers ask him if he thinks he will still be able to eat ugali for dinner. (He is doing fine now!)

All the little girls at home have bows and ribbons in their hair- Most of the girls here have their heads shaved (just like the boys). I'm glad they wear uniforms because it can be really hard to tell them apart!

At home my preschool classroom was divided into sections for different parts of the day e.g. circle time, snack, playtime, crafts, etc.- Here we have only one space with three benches and a blackboard. Planning is more difficult in such a small space, but since the resources are so limited, much of every activity is already done on the blackboard.

Children at home raise their hands to answer questions- Here the answers are shouted in unison, and when I try to signal that I want someone who knows the answer to raise their hand, everyone raises their hands in imitation of me.

There is so much difference and I think I covered a lot of the main ones, but keep the questions coming if you have any!

Instead of a daladala them today, I just want to write a question that I was asked, VERY seriously, while waiting for the daldala yesterday. "Do you think Tupac is really dead?" I told him yes. I don't think he agreed.

Abby