In the Village, the mighty Village...

June 6, 2012- Daytime

We got a late start today, due to our late arrival in the village.  Around 10, we enjoyed a breakfast of Chapati and other sides, and by noon we were on our way to our sites for the day.  About 30 minutes down the road, the men dropped us women off with some of the Kenyans to head to the school.  Since there was no school in sight, we looked around in confusion, only to find that our rides out to the school were motorbike taxis through the jungle paths.  Elise and I jumped on one together, and we were off!

I can’t describe the excitement of riding through the jungles on the back of a motorcycle, with my side bag slung over my shoulder, a guitar strapped to my back, straddling the bike in a loose skirt!  Elise and I couldn’t stop laughing and joking around as we drove at the amazingness of it all.  We leaned with the turns, waved to the over-excited kids who shouted “Mzungu mzungu!” over and over again! 

When we arrived at the school, most of the kids had trekked home to eat lunch already, so we walked through the quiet classrooms uninterrupted by the shouts and touches of a crowd of children.  The school holds up to 300 kids from what I understood, so each of the classes from K-8 are rather large.  When the kids returned to the school, we had about an hour and a half to cover 2 lessons with all 300, so we broke them into two sessions, doubling up on lessons at the same time.  Elise and I taught them “I’ve got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy,” and since they didn’t know it, it took all the allotted American time to teach them the once song.  Clearly, the Mzungus don’t make it out to the school often!

We then taught our lessons over creation with the pictures that Elise drew, and the kids were enamored.  I followed with the story of Jesus’ life, focusing on His incredible miracles!  The older kids were especially engaged, answering questions and following the stories without the aid of an interpreter.  They mastered the first two verses of the their bracelets, and loved the Bible verse books we gave them, again, turning them into huge nametags pinned to the fronts of their shirts.  We concluded with singing “Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy” one more time, giving the kids high fives as they moved on to the rest of their afternoons. 

We left the school around 3:30, again enjoying the smooth, clean ride of the motor-taxis as we traveled up to the church where the men were running the conferences.  As soon as we arrived, we were shepherded onto a bus waiting to take us to the crusade we didn’t know we were doing that night!  We enjoyed a few minutes of down time, working up the energy for the evening sessions!