One Month In

And what a busy month it has been. I apologize that I haven’t been updating as frequently as I had promised – I’ve had a lot to do with schoolwork, and now with my internship at Al-Taawon Trust.

I guess I’ll talk about that first, since it’s the most exciting! Al-Taawon is a community development organization that is doing a lot of awesome work in Korgocho, a slum in Eastern Nairobi. Right now, I’m only working there one day a week, but starting in three weeks (after our AU Abroad class ends and we have two more free days) I’ll be there three times a week, which will be awesome. We’re working on two major projects: one is setting up a computer center in the local government school (but first we have to figure out how to get them some electricity). That includes teacher and student training programs, which hopefully I’ll be able to help out with a bit. The second one is a reproductive health awareness project that’s geared toward Korogochoians around the ages of 12 and 15. This week, I’m supposed to be writing a script that will be performed by some actors in another of Korogocho’s community groups. I’ve only been there three days so far, and things are pretty unorganized, but hopefully things will start rolling soon – I’m excited!

Classes are still going along – I’m loving my Swahili class (even though it starts at 8 am and is a half hour walk away). Swahili’s an awesome (and pretty easy) language, and it’s just the AU Abroad group, which is fun. Also, Fred, the professor, is wonderful, and class is just really fun and relaxed. We have our first quiz tomorrow though, and I’m sitting here looking at my stack of 200 notecards (and that’s just the beginning… I had to send my roommate out on an index card run, so I’m waiting for her to return to add some more…) wondering how I will ever remember the difference between nimelewa (I’m drunk), ninaelewa (I understand), and nimeolewa (I am married). We’ll see how that goes. Politics of Culture in Kenya, our other AU Abroad only class – the one that is ending at the end of the month – is interesting, but I’m pretty much over the three hour classes twice a week. Also, did you know that Nairobi was originally divided into three residential zones, based on race? I didn’t upon my arrival here, but since then, I must have read about it in every single thing we read in that class. Then there are the USIU classes. Don’t get me wrong. I was warned about these classes by previous Kenya participants before I left, but the United States International University is just not a place I want to be on Mondays and Wednesdays. First of all, it’s such a trek to get there… first there’s a matatu to town, which usually takes about 20 minutes on a decent traffic day, and then there is the USIU bus, which leaves from town at 10:30 and occasionally reaches the university just in time for the 11:00 class. Once, we arrived at 11:40, because of some traffic jam. No one really seemed to mind. And on top of the trip, the classes themselves are just… not my favorite part of the semester. My International Humanitarian Law professor explained the structure of a research paper to us last week: Introduction, Body, Conclusion! Some of my friends in a literature class have to write a book report, complete with a paragraph on whether they would recommend the book to a friend. I’m pretty stressed about my law midterm coming up, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know anything about humanitarian law. We’ll see how it goes. My French class is a lot better, mostly because the professor loves tangents, being side-tracked and storytelling with a lot of mimed actions. Classes are certainly never dry, and I do feel like I’m learning some French (even though I still don’t understand why half the word is silent…).