Claire Hamilton is an Australian teacher living in New York. After completing a degree in journalism and while working for an advertising agency in Sydney, Australia, Ms. Hamilton volunteered to be a Brownies leader, an experience that made her realize she should be in education. She returned to the University of Sydney to complete a master’s degree in teaching and, for three years afterward, worked as a first-grade teacher at Croydon Public School. Ms. Hamilton loves scuba diving, the Impressionist movement and dining at all the fine restaurants Manhattan has to offer. She joined the The Chapin School faculty in 2008.

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mzungu n. (Kiswahili) white person; foreigner

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To an Australian teacher in Manhattan, who has only ever experienced six weeks of summer holidays, three months of vacation seemed excessive! To fill the time, I volunteered this summer at a unique school for some of the neediest girls in the world.

Below are excerpts from my blog, told while I was on the ground in the Kibera Slums.

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The Kibera School for Girls, where I am volunteering this August, is a tiny, noisy, happy mud-brick styled building, in the slums of Kibera in Nairobi. Kibera is the second largest slum in Africa, is roughly the same size as Central Park, and has somewhere between 600,000 and 1.5 million residents. It mostly lacks electricity and water, there is no sewerage and the homes are tiny, mostly single-room establishments with curtains dividing them into even tinier, albeit somewhat more private, sections.

Kibera is a higgledy-piggledy mass of various building materials, many people and lots of rubbish lying around. It smells terribly. Dogs roam freely, as do chickens and goats, and various foods are prepared and sold on the dirt paths: chapattis, roasted maize, boiled eggs, meat on skewers, dried fish, samosas, fresh tomatoes, bananas, onions, avocados and eggs, among other things.

I’ve been told that in daylight, Kibera is not a place to be afraid. In fact, the mob rule keeps everyone in order – thieves are dealt with in the harshest of ways. I’ve been told that if something were to be stolen from me, I need to make a quick decision about whether the thing that was taken is worth more than the thief’s life – for being beaten or stoned to death is a surety. Indeed, in a Grade 2 class I sat in on at the Kibera School for Girls, the teacher was teaching about the basic human rights for all Kenyans. One of the final rights was “the right to fair trial.” The teacher went on to explain that being stoned for stealing is not fair trial, and that “the next time” – the NEXT TIME!? – the girls saw someone being stoned they should speak up that it is against Kenya’s Charter for Human Rights. “But I know you will, instead, run away scared,” she said, to the eight year old girls, with a chuckle.

Among the chaos, I’ve noticed two things which really surprised me. One, the people don’t look miserable at all. In fact there seems to be a lot of joy among the general populace, from the women who chat and giggle together as they prepare the chapattis, to the children with their inventive games (who knew that filling a little container with dirty water and pouring it on a sleeping dog’s head, or rolling a tyre down a hill, could be so much fun?), to the men building the clinic behind the school (employment for the community being a large part of the school’s governing organization’s mission) – people look happy! And two, the people are incredibly clean. There are showers set up all around Kibera, where you can pay to have a wash – and people do so with regularity. Their clothes are clean and neat, no holes or patches, and they take pride in their appearance.

I had a very endearing moment in the classroom on Tuesday, with the ‘babies’ class (Pre-K, 3-4 years old). One little girl was copying the letter ‘d’ in her book, and was not getting very far. She was able to see that there was a circle and a line in the letter, but was unable to form the letter. There being no desks in the tiny classroom, she was lying on her tummy on a larger mat that the girls shared. I lay down next to her to help her trace and copy the letters. A group of little girls near me covered their mouths and burst into giggles. The teacher looked up and I asked her why they were laughing at me. She replied with a smile, “You are lying on the floor. They are lying on the mat. Only poor people lie on the floor.”

Monday and Tuesday at the school were a wonderful experience. The girls are tremendously motivated to learn, and approach all their work with respect and enthusiasm. The school currently goes from Pre-K to grade 2. I’ve spent time in each classroom, observing and helping, ready to discuss curriculum with the teachers and other volunteers. I’m the only qualified Western teacher they’ve had since the inception of the school, and already I can see a few simple things that can change for the better. While there is an extensive curriculum already designed, the introduction of a scope and sequence for maths or social studies, for example, would mean that each teacher would know exactly what to teach in which week, each month – currently the teachers seem to just pull the day’s lesson out of thin air, and lessons don’t necessarily follow each other in a logical order.  (For those teachers out there, consider this: Grade 1 doing column addition one day, then multiplication and division word problems the next!)

As many of you know, I went to Nairobi with more than 50kg of school supplies donated by students and colleagues at Chapin. Second grade Chapin girls and teachers lovingly packed bags for each Kibera student containing items necessary for learning (books, pencils, erasers… even a homemade bookmark!) and third grade girls donated money to buy coloured pencils, crayons and exercise/composition books. First grade and kinder colleagues donated gently used pencils, crayons, markers and glue. The head of Lower School math prepared a “Math Backpack” with some items for classroom use. To make matters even more perfect, I contacted Virgin Atlantic’s charity team, who were more than happy to give me extra baggage allowance to carry these much-needed items to Nairobi from NYC!

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Another week of school has passed, and I am reminded of how little time I have here really. With some more time spent in the classroom, I can see clearly how much I can share, how much I have to learn about the culture of school here and how much need these children really have.

The teachers are all qualified, of course, but have all been taught the “Kenyan Way” (as it’s colloquially known). This involves passive students – ones who listen to the teacher and repeat verbatim. Not a whole lot of educational discovery going on, which is what the founders of the school are trying to achieve. Coupled with that is the fact that the students are taught exclusively in English and that this is a school only a year old – so all the students from Pre-K to 2nd grade are in their first year of learning English.

My task is to run workshops for the teachers and teach the odd lesson in the classes, demonstrating “American style” (and I daresay, “Australian style” too!) teaching – with more emphasis on experiential learning. I have decided that my greatest impact can be on their Maths curriculum and the students’ language development – both reading and writing. If anyone has any great tips on teaching kids not yet proficient in English I’d love the input – my classes at Croydon in Sydney had plenty of English language learners but always with native English speakers as friends and mentors so a whole different ball game…

Last week I was able to take the teachers for a 2-hour workshop on engaging kids in math through discovery, experience and games. I was really nervous about it – I felt a little uncomfortable shaking up the teachers’ methods and was concerned about presenting it with an “our way is the best way” kind of mentality. My fears were all unfounded – we had a ball!! It was so nice to have the 5 teachers and two mzungu volunteers playing, discovering, cheering and giggling at each other’s successes and mistakes.

The following day when I arrived at school, I found two of the teachers pouring over the math texts from the teacher resources section of the tiny library. They greeted me with smiles and said, “We have never looked at these books before but we have so many ideas of what we want to teach! We thought we could find some more ideas in here!” My heart sang! Then, the cherry on the cake, they asked, “Do you have ideas on literacy and science and social studies too?”

Clearly, these are teachers who are just like all of us out there: excited, enthusiastic, always willing to expand on their professional knowledge. Sadly, I simply don’t have the time here to tackle everything – but I’ll do my best!!

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The friendliness of the Kenyans continues to be a highlight of this trip. I regularly adopt curious people for portions of my walk to and from school, who introduce themselves with a handshake, ask me where I’m from, and how I’m liking Kenya. Then they continue on their way, leaving me smiling that in a country with so many mzungu, they’re still excited to talk to me.

I am never alone. There is a constant progression of people into and out of Kibera’s streets: children on their way to school or to collect water, or just hanging around (many kids are not lucky enough to attend school and therefore spend their days doing nothing much), people on their way to work or to look for work, traders buying and selling wares.

As I walk, the chorus of children begins – as soon as they see wazungu (plural of mzungu) they chant “how are you? how are you?” This starts to sound more like “ha-wa-yu! ha-wa-yu!” and the smallest kids copy with “wa-wa-yu! wa-wa-yu!” It’s very endearing! The kids all want to touch our hands and arms, and we’ve learnt that if you say “Gota!” (which means fist) you can bump fists with them instead which means picking up slightly fewer childish germs first thing in the morning.

We have often discussed among the volunteers that it is impossible to enter Kibera in a bad mood – you need to be able to smile and say hello to everyone you pass! We are also quite well-known in the area now – I certainly see the same people every day, in their shops or outside their houses. On our walk through Kibera, people are looking out for us; they know why we’re in their part of the slum, and that we’re working for the girls in their community. We have so many people watching out for us! Just the other day, I was buying vegetables for dinner from one of the stalls in Kibera when a drunk man came up to me and another volunteer and asked us to buy him an orange. A simple enough request, but we simply can’t support beggars because it sets the wrong standard for mzungu in the community. Another man overheard him repeatedly requesting the orange, and took him by the elbow, saying, “Leave them alone. They’re not here to help you, they’re here to help the girls. Give them peace.”

The dwellings in Kibera are tiny. Each has four walls and a corrugated-iron roof, some have doors and some have curtains for doors. Running along the ‘road’ (no space for cars) on both sides, outside the homes and shops are 15cm-deep trenches for rubbish and sewerage. Many of the homes have small frontages onto the trenches, from which children play and people sell their wares; where people sit to eat and women braid each other’s hair.

The school is located on the side of a hill. It has 5 classrooms (four of which are currently being used for classes, the fifth will be filled next year and right now is holding all the musical instruments), a teachers’ lounge, an office and a library. The school is tiny: each of the classrooms so small that there is room for a just few bookshelves and a mat in the middle of the floor. The students do all of their learning sitting on the floor.

The aim for the school is to provide an education for the neediest girls in Kibera. The directors select girls who not only show academic potential, but whose parents would never be able to afford school for their sons, let alone their daughter. In a place where only 8% of girls ever have the chance to attend school, these girls would never have this chance. What a mission!

The girls are truly inspirational. Some of their background stories make us, as adults, want to curl up in a ball and think happy thoughts. And yet, they are motivated and eager to learn, appreciating everything school has to offer them.

Apart from education and a purpose in life, the school also offers the girls the chance to two guaranteed meals in a day. At 10am they have porridge (it’s a fermented maize porridge that I’m trying hard to like) and at 1pm they have lunch, which is sukuma and ugali (kale and a white polenta-like grain) on Mondays, and variations on beans every other day.

The after-school program for Grades 1 & 2, currently the oldest in the school, also distribute some fruit because they stay an extra hour and a half later than the younger ones. This created a funny circumstance when a Kindergarten child, Movin (this kid is one to watch) led a sit-in, arguing that it was unfair that the older children got extra to eat. She rallied her 14 classmates to refuse to leave their classroom after school until their demands were met – they wanted fruit too. She was successful, however it has been decided that fruit should be provided to all kids at the beginning of the day as many of them arrive at school with empty bellies and therefore can’t do their best learning. And that Movin and friends will have to wait until next year to get their after school snack!

Hunger is truly a problem for these girls. For many of them, school is the only place they get a guaranteed meal, which is why school runs year-round except for two weeks at Christmas/New Year. The students are also expected to come to school when they are sick – at least that way they can have clean water, good food and be taken to a clinic or hospital if necessary.

School is free. As I said before, these are girls who show academic promise, who would definitely not attend school if not for this one. Uniforms, food and supplies are all included – the payment is 5 weeks of work by one parent, split over the course of the year, in cooking and cleaning at the school. The vast majority of the parents are more than willing, in fact excited, to be involved with their daughter’s school, but of course, there are some that shirk their responsibilities. The big question is what to do about that, as kicking the girl out for her parents’ transgressions is not an option.

Shining Hope for Communities is the organization which built and runs the school. SHoFCo (as it’s known) also has a community centre in the area, which runs Sex Ed classes for teenage girls, a sewing project for women, meetings of the local soccer club and is in the process of setting up a cyber cafe (the first in the area) and library (also the first in the area). The bio-latrine block by the school is having its official opening today (I’m not quite sure of the exact science involved, but as far as I can gather, within the block, the gases created get channeled into creating energy for the school). Right now, there is a health clinic being built behind the school and emergency housing for 12 girls is almost furnished and ready to go for those girls who are at immediate risk of abuse in their homes.

This week, the teachers and I are developing a plan for their social studies and science curriculums, and we’re going to look at their reading and writing programs. At the moment, the girls don’t spend a great deal of time reading OR writing – many of the writing activities for 1st and 2nd grade are things like copying sentences from a book or the blackboard and reading is just a time when the girls look at books and are not held accountable for actually reading. In the Pre-K classroom (many of the girls are still 3 years old, and are in the first 5 weeks of school) they are doing “sound recognition” of about 6 sounds at the same time, by copying from the blackboard a letter and a picture to go with it.

Given that the teachers have actually asked for the help, and I do have some ideas to share with them, I am greatly looking forward to this week!

I have just four more days in Kenya. So much to do, so little time! As rewarding as it has been here, and despite the fact that I could happily spend years here, I feel ready to return home – to see my beloved husband, to move into our great new apartment, to return to my wonderful job, to have a hot shower with decent water pressure (oh, the simple things in life we take for granted).

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September 2010 – What a life-changing experience. I’m so incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to work with the inspirational teachers of the Kibera School for Girls, the learners and future leaders that are the students there and the talented, young volunteers of Shining Hope for Communities. Thank you for all your friendship and advice while I was with you.

Thank you to The Chapin School, who supported my trip. The donations in kind from the staff, students and parents in the Lower School were so appreciated by girls in dire need.

Finally, thank you to you, the reader. I hope that my stories remind you of the work you do every day in your own classrooms and communities and perhaps inspire you to further your impact on the world’s children.