Community

This week we started the Community section as part of the GVI Internship Program. We began with an introduction to TEFAL and went over various scenarios and teaching techniques before starting to work on teaching plans. GVI works with several schools in Shimoni but this week I'd be working with Matunda Bora and Base Academy, teaching English Classes to Standards 5 and 6. We worked with small classes with varying age groups (about 10-14 years old), Kenyan classes don't progress with age but with the completion and passing of exams. The lesson plans focusing on Present Continuous with one teacher and 2 volunteers in support.

On Tuesday I led Wildlife Club at Matunda Bora were we taught the students about the importance of Waste Management and Mike and Abdul from the Health Committee came along to talk about their roles in the community. We also got 4 kids to be members of the Green Team, who'll look after the compost heaps, monitor the burning pits and help clean up the school and surrounding area.

In the evening Bertie and I took the Adult Beginners English Class at Base Academy. There are only 3 members students and we concentrated on the Future Tense using the Present Continuous. This is turned out to be a bit of a challenge, not for the students they were great but more for me as it has been a long time since I had even thought about the concepts underpinning the English Language.

On Wednesday evening it was Adult Reading Class, Pandu one of the students in the class is slightly more advanced than the rest so we headed into the classroom next door and worked together to go through the papers. He has quite an interest in Politics and I found it quite interesting as I learnt a lot about Kenyan politics, I think I got more from the class than he did.

On Thursday morning we started filming an Infomercial on waste management in Shimoni, to be shown to the Elders and the rest of the community at a later date. I got the chance to put my Directing and Editorial skills to the test, my apologies in advance to anyone who gets to watch it.

This is my only week on community an I'll be sad to go.

My Final Week on Forest and I was Survey Leader!!!!

After I got out of the hospital I had the weekend to recover and then on Tue and Wed i was Survey Leader. This basically involves me ordering the Forest Survey Groups about for two days. I had to plan out who was doing what, where, when and with what. Not quite as complicated as it sounds but still a fair bit of work.

The first day I worked everyone pretty hard sending groups out to Shimoni Forest East and West to set Small Mammal Traps, Pitfall Traps, Butterfly Traps and do Butterfly Sweep Netting, Primate Behavior, Bird Surveys and Canopy Survey. Everyone did really well but was incredibly tiered by the time they got back. After a few tweaks an adjustments here an there, I had planned out the following days Surveys. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the second day and we manage to get loads of data.

All in all it went pretty well, a few bumps along the way but definitely a positive experience.