Back to School…Ben

June 7th, 2009 by Sarah McNamara

Sarah and I have been back to school as teachers and have learnt a lesson or two ourselves the past couple of weeks.

Our time at El Shaddai has been shared with a girl from Canada named Robin. Robin has been carrying out HIV/AIDS workshops for high schools and Uni students in Canada for the past 4 years and has also run a few in Nairobi.

After discussions with the directors of the orphanage they agreed to allow the workshops to be carried out at the orphanage and said we could approach the local schools. The workshops consist of two one hour sessions. Robin carried out the first session alone and then asked Sar and I if we would assist her and do certain componants of the workshops in the remaining sessions. We agreed and found ourselves being the teacher.

It was great fun. Sar mainly scribed info on the blackboard; which she enjoyed. I was nervous to begin with as I was supposed to be a subject expert after watching one session and doing some light reading that Robin had provided, not to mention the 120-140 students in two of the groups and a smaller group of around 25 listening intently to every word you were saying!

The first session consisted of what was HIV/AIDS, how you contract it, discussion on some ‘untruths”, risks etc. The first part of the second session was answering questions that the students wrote after the first session and about prevention including a condom demonstration on a banana. I refused to touch the banana. I found it quiet funny when I was reading the workshop doc’s and I saw that they named the banana George. It took Sar a while to cotton on why I found it so funny but the father of our host family name was George.

The kids knew a lot more then us about HIV before we began as they are taught about it to a degree at school. HIV is a massive issue in Kenya as 1.3 million people are HIV positive.

The idea of the questions after the first session was that they could ask questions without putting their name to it to save embarrassment. Some of the question were very interesting.

As a result of the HIV issues and a large number of young pregnacies there has been a huge campain in Kenya on abstaining from sex before marriage. After reading some of the questions the Kenyans should be focusing on Sex education because I can tell you they are very very curious without any knowledge on the subject all all.

I the wash up the children learnt a lot and Sar and I are know experts on the matter.

P.S In the next journal we will give some details on the how we have decided to distribute the funds raised.

Til next time.