jmpippen

for the last two summers, i have worked as a preschool teacher in a little building that is filled with a whole lotta these wild animals they call "children." i've come to realize that there is something special about my preschool. it's just a tad bit more chaotic than other schools. first, there is my dear friend enzo.

this is the essence of enzo, at 5 years of age:
1) he shoved legos up both nostrils and pulled them out so hard it made his nose bleed
2) he tried to stand on the roof of a dollhouse, fell off, and smashed his face onto the floor (within the same hour as the lego incident)
3) he intentionally ran into a stone wall, hit his head, and bled all over
4) he fell while running and bit a hole through the center of his tongue
5) he throws rocks, scissors, and other dangerous objects at his classmates' heads
6) he uses sophisticated insults like "shithead" that the other children cannot comprehend
7) he plays halo at home
8) upon being picked up from school, he told his mother, "mommy, mommy, today i ate chalk and tomorrow i'm going to burn down the building!"
9) he swallowed a battery (on purpose)
10) he told me he wants to pour gasoline all over the playground, light it on fire, and "throw all the pretty girls in the fire"

despite his penchant for the destruction of himself and others, enzo is the smartest kid in the whole damn class. he knows about everything from shark anatomy to the missle defense system. i think of him as a mad genius.

there is another kid who I think of as the new enzo, but stupider. he's a four-year-old named toby who has his own list of feats:
1) every day, without fail, he will lick up the crumbs of old food that he finds on the floor
2) he came to school in a fuzzy full-body cow costume and didn't wear any underwear or bring any other clothes, so he had to wear it to the park in the 90 degree weather
3) today he chose to pee in the trash can instead of the toilet (which was 3 feet away from him)
4) at any given time, you can pry toby's mouth open and discover something he found lying aruond and decided to chew on: cotton balls, woodchips, flowers, paper, string, marbles...
5) he sleeps with his eyes open, which is no indication of his personality, but totally creeps me out
6) if he wants, he can talk in a deep, husky, growly voice that sounds like mufasa which, again, totally creeps me out

toby's list, i'm sure, will grow as he approaches enzo's seasoned age of five.

my favorite thing about preschool is playing with the kids. we do legos, puzzles, artwork, blocks, etc. when you get to be my age, sometimes you forget how much fun building a castle out of blocks can be! and at the park, i like to i run around with the kids playing "the little mermaid," "101 dalmations," or any game with the theme of a witch (me) capturing the innocent heros (the kids). sometimes, as i frolick through the grass and woodchips, i seriously feel like i'm five again.

This is the inaugural entry in this fancypants livejournal. My intention is to write about my travels to Kenya and Cameroon in this here blog so that my dear friends and family can check up on me if they wish.

So here is a little bit about Kenya:

I stayed in Kenya for five weeks, four of which were in a rural village called Rabuor. For the last week, my parents and brother flew in and we all went on a safari. I travelled to the village with my 17-year-old friend Audrey and her mom, Loyce. Audrey grew up in Nairobi and Loyce grew up in Rabuor village, but the immigrated to America together ten years ago and they now live in Seattle. Loyce is the oldest of 10 children and half of her siblings still live together in Rabuor on a compound with Loyce's parents. Loyce has sent back money from the U.S. so her family was able to build a two-room guest house, which is where Audrey, Loyce, and I slept while we were in the village. Everyone on the compound treated me just like family. There were seven cousins between the ages 5 and 10 and I spent a lot of time playing with them and practicing catching chickens with them. One of the kids, a five-year-old boy named Jababu, was responsible for taking care of his one-year-old brother all day long. He did a remarkably good job, but the baby got extremely sick twice while I was there and almost died both times. I took care of another cute baby cousin (a 3-month-old who is probably HIV positive because both his parents have AIDS) on most days.

My job was to teach English with Audrey at a nearby primary school that was falling apart. We liked teaching the 8th grade class best (we also tried out 7th and 6th grade) so sometimes we would teach them English for four hours straight in a day even though they were supposed to be learning other subjects from other teachers too. Nobody really cared though because oftentimes the students would just sit in class for hours with no teacher present to teach them any subject at all. The kids were a lot older than American 8th graders because so many of them had to stay home for a few years to take care of siblings or the house instead of going to school. The average age was 15 or 16 and some kids were even 17 and 18 years old. Most of them were orphans. The area around Rabuor has an HIV prevalence rate of about 50 percent, so people were dying quietly all around us. At the primary school, there are 233 students and, between them, only 55 parents. They were all such respectful and attentive students that Audrey and I absolutely loved teaching them.

Loyce has started a non-profit organization to help the people in her village and the surrounding area, so we saw a lot of the fruits of her labor. She built a nursery school for the 3- to 6-year-old orphans in the area. Through her organization, Loyce pays to feed the children one cup of porridge per day (many of them don't have any other source of food) and she pays the teachers' salaries. There are only a couple of teachers for 150 little kids. But again, the kids are unbelievably well-behaved. I kept imagining the chaos that would ensue if the kids I work with at the preschool in Seattle were to attend the Rabuor nursery school.

Loyce also built a well because the villagers used to have to walk miles and miles to get water. And she sponsors secondary school students, gives the villagers seeds for healthier crops, bought stethoscopes for the hospital, and brings lots of medicine and other supplies when she comes to visit. While we were there, she arranged for every one of the nursery school children to get new shoes and a medical check-up. She also built a well by the hospital because they were using dirt-brown water full of cow excrement.

But enough about Loyce and the troubles of the village. It was a really fun place in spite of everything. My favorite memories from the village were:

1. Spontaneous dance parties with Loyce's sisters-in-law, the little cousins, and the painters and bricklayers who were working on the compound.

2. Watching as the family delivered a baby calf in the middle of the night with utter chaos: no light, dogs running around and trying to eat the calf, puppies getting stepped on, everyone yelling at each other in three languages, people tossing cowfeed on the calf to dry it off, and the baby cow trying to stand up but failing and smashing its head repeatedly into the ground.

3. Hiking up a hill with a few friends to see a view of the whole village and Lake Victoria (biggest lake in all the land)

4. Answering the 8th graders' questions about America. They asked stuff like, "Why are Americans so weak?" and "How many wives can a man have in America?"

5. Going to the nursery school for the first time and have a 150 children swarm around me and try to touch my white skin.

6. Hearing the choir sing at church

I'll write more about Kenya later. But in a nutshell: I saw or heard about a lot of horrible things, but I was surprised to see how resilient most people seemed to be and how they were able to live happy lives in spite of intense poverty, crime, and disease. The trip was better than any other travel experience for me because I wasn't just observing and reflecting upon life in Kenya, but I was actually living it. It was beautiful in Rabuor and that's all well and good but what made the trip really valuable were the relationships I started with the people there. I am planning on returning as soon as possible.