Things we take for granted

I think being a teacher in a place like Kosele must be one of the ultimate challenges in the teaching profession. Despite our ten year long experience of living and working in Kenya I’m always learning about the reality of growing up in ‘the rurals’ and the challenges that young people face.

I’ve had a really enjoyable day today – walking round the farm and talking to Duncan, our farm manager, about the prospects for the current growing season, meeting the teachers after school, plotting and scheming and trying out my new gumboots (the correct phrase in Kenya for Wellington Boots). This evening I spent the first of what I hope will be many happy evenings helping some of our older children with their homework. Sharon, Ephy Faith and I covered a lot of ground as we worked through business studies, RE and social studies questions. Our discussions helped me to appreciate how easy it is to take a western understanding of the world and the way it works for granted, and how difficult it is for our youngsters to understand big world issues like the environment, climate change, consumerism and peak oil. Our young people’s commitment to learning is really admirable. Their frame of reference and personal experience is a barrier to learning and understanding that I find very challenging. It’s a challenge to find and develop examples that help them to connect to the world issues that they will be expected to write about and comment on in their exams. It’s a bigger challenge to understand why one part of the world should have so much of everything and another should have so little. The complex web of inequalities and injustice that effectively limit our young people’s horizons make me angry.

Having the rest of the year to work with the youngsters and a computer full of good resources to help them gives me hope that we will be able to make considerable progress in the months ahead. As one of life’s optimists I am unwilling to believe that there is nothing that can be done and am looking forward to getting to grips with the challenges.