Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Hello again!

    The internet is much faster now so I can load pictures in under an hour......which is nice.  The water is running again too!  I think I should start by going over the beginning of the week first.  On Sunday, the four of us from Providence College went with Fr. Lumala to Maseno University, where he is the chaplain.  He said mass there and it was about 2 hours long.  I like going to mass, but I thought it was a little long.  Afterwards there was a Eucharistic procession for 2 and a half hours.  It was very nicely done, but again it was really long.  After that we sat down with the leaders of the Campus ministry there, which was nice.  They told us about what they do on campus and in the local community.  They have "households" made up of 15-20 Catholic families, and each one has a different theme, such as peace and justice, etc..  We then came back to the Dominican Compound and Fr. Lumala gave us ice cream, which was very nice of him. I half expected to see other American Missionaries at the mass, but we didn't run into any.

      The students took exams on Monday and Tuesday, and so there was not too much for us to do around the school.  On Monday morning, I organized the building of a ping pong table for the students to use.  It was pretty cool.  We took an old chalkboard with plywood on the back of it and had a frame built for it so that it would sit at the right height for the kids to play ping pong on it.  The 2x4 timbers that we used to make the frame were cut out of a tree that had been cut down on the school property, which was neat.  On Tuesday afternoon, I taught some students American Liturgical music and started teaching them how to play the guitar.  One girl in particular really seems to have a knack for the guitar, which is good.  Fr. Chris told us that we would be in charge of organizing the annual semester retreat for the students, which will take place a few days before we leave.  I think that I will be able to teach enough students how to sing the liturgical music to have a small choir singing during adoration, which will be nice.  I think that one or two of them will have the guitar down pretty well by the time I leave.

      Today i only have one class, Phys Ed, at 11:35, and so I got up and went to mass and the rosary this morning at 6 and now I am back in the house blogging.  I am thinking of finishing up some laundry now that the water is running again.  After school I will be teaching music again.  I feel bad that I miss soccer, but there is no time during the day for me to teach them that, so it has to be after school.
     
      Tommorow afternoon I am meeting with the school sacristan about playing guitar at mass, and hopefully being able to learn some of their music.  Their music is very different from ours.  There is a lot of clapping and singing certain lines repeatedly but with different intonations, so I'm not so sure how it is going to work, but I am going to try.  It would be great if I could teach just one student some chords to go along with their mass music, so that they could continue with it when I am gone.

Anyway, here are some pictures......I hope they load faster than the one did last night.....


     That picture again, took a really long time to load, so I think that I am going to simply post a link to a facebook album of photos when I want to share photos with you all.  For some reason, that loads photos a lot faster.  You shouldn't need a facebook account to see them, but email me if you have any problems seeing them.  You might have to copy and paste the link into your URL bar.....

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150686269325089.697788.774375088&l=fb4f1ab9ce


Thanks again for Reading!  

God Bless,

     Kevin

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Pictures! - well that was an easy title......

Hello all!

   I have some pictures to share with you!  Below is a picture of the front gate of Our Lady of Grace School!

A storm came through earlier and knocked out our power.  The internet has been having issues now that our power is back on.  This one picture took an hour to load so I am going to try again tomorrow to put more up and write more.

Thanks for reading!

God Bless,

       Kevin

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Running Out of Titles........already....

Jambo!  (Hello in Kiswahili)

       The last few days have been very quite eventful.  I taught my first music class to the seventh graders in the primary school, and I liked it a lot.  It made me realize just how much preparation actually goes into a lecture.  I started by teaching them the parts of the guitar...body, neck, strings, etc.  I then proceeded to tell them the names of the strings, when I realized that I had not yet explained the musical alphabet.  I stopped and wrote the seven letters of the musical alphabet on the board, and proceeded to teach them about sharps and flats, and how there aren't any between B and C and between E and F.  They picked that up quickly and so I moved on to teach them how the notes in the musical alphabet correspond to the frets on the guitar.  It was quite interesting.  Up to that point, they had picked up on everything very quickly, but transitioning from the drawing of the neck of the guitar on the board (complete with labels of notes and corresponding frets) to the actual neck of the guitar, and applying the musical alphabet to it was hard for them to do.  It's very understandable, as it was also hard for me when I was learning.  However, I had fun trying to explain it to them, and a few students were very intrigued.

      I taught another Physical Education class as well.  Continued the kickball game.  A few of them really love it.  However, the head teacher informed us that we will actually have to teach them skills that are applicable to sports.  I did not know this until a few days ago, but I will actually have to give out grades to the students in the classes I teach.  I honestly though that I was simply rotating out for a professor during a few classes, but I guess I actually AM the professor for a a few of these classes, which is awesome.

     I only teach one or two classes a day, usually in the afternoon, and so the rest of the day is filled with other tasks.  Laundry here is done by hand, with a bar of soap, in a basin, and then hung out to dry.  You have to do a little each day, otherwise it will take you forever to catch up.  It feels good to wear clothes that I washed by hand.  The only exception is when you are wearing it and you notice a spot that you missed.  That stinks.

      There are other jobs that were mentioned in passing and need to be completed as well.  I have to find out more about them and see if they are possible.  For instance, the school's motto, vision, and mission need to be painted on the outside of the school.  I'm going to find out if I can do that.  Also, the school has an area when you walk in that has it's motto (Sow a Character, Reap a Destiny) painted on it.  It could use a good washing and perhaps a new coat of paint, so I am going to ask about that as well.  Furthermore, the building of a ping pong table was brought up, so this week, I am going to go down to the shop to see if they have a decent size piece of plywood and some timber to see if I might be able to assemble one.

    On another note, Jeff, the school social worker, and Maria, the administrator for Fr. Tom's Kids, took us out into Kisumu today.  We went to the Kiboko Bay Resort for lunch.  Kiboko is Kiswahili for Hippo, so Hippo Bay.  It was on lake Victoria, which looks like an ocean.  It's up in the mountains and the scenery is just beautiful.  The only thing is that all of the waste from the area is pumped into the lake, so it's rather dirty.  Back to lunch.  I had steak, chips, and a coke.  I needed some American food, and it hit the spot.  We usually eat breakfast and lunch at the school, and those meals are very Kenyan, which is not to say that they aren't good.  Usually noodles or rice with some sort of steamed vegetable, or sometimes meat.  We have eaten an egg dish with vegetables in it over noodles a few times, and it is very good.  Dinner is cooked by the chef in the Dominican house, and it is also tasty.  Usually a meat dish with either rice or noodles, and ugali.  Ugali is flour made from corn, mixed with water.  It is interesting.  I lucked out today.  I went to pick up dinner from the Dominican kitchen (we pick it up there and eat together here in the Postulant house) and one of the priests was scooping ice cream into a blender.  He first asked me if I wanted some ice cream.

      Now if anyone knows the Brawley Family, they know that we love our ice cream.  I haven't had any since I left home, and so I was very happy.  And it only got better.  He put blueberries, vanilla ice cream, bananas, hot chocolate mix and milk into a blender and mixed it as I was eating my strawberry ice cream, and then proceeded to pour out six glasses of it.  When I realized that there were only five dominicans in the kitchen I was smiling again.  It was delicious.  A dark purple concoction from heaven.  To top it off, they offered me a piece of what tasted like peanut butter cinnamon bread.  Needless to say, I was full before dinner began.  I think I am going to volunteer to pick up dinner more often.

Back to our outing.  After lunch, we went to the Kisumu Impala Sanctuary.  It was amazing.  There were impalas grazing just ten feet away from us, and there were a lot of them.  We walked further into the sanctuary and saw a leopard, monkeys, baboons, a cheetah, lionesses, water buffalo, and a lion.  Some of the monkeys were roaming free in the sanctuary, and teasing the caged leopard, who appeared to be hungry.  One of the monkeys jumped onto the top of the leopards cage. The cage was a tall fence with a lip on the top to prevent the leopard from getting out.  The leopard climbed the fence all the way up to the lip, trying to get a at the monkey, and then deduced that it was out of reach, and came back down.  The money sat on a tree branch that hung over the fence and appeared to be taunting the leopard.  It was quite a show.

I am getting to know more and more of the students, which is nice.  Hanging out after breakfast, lunch, and after school.  I will write more about that as more occurs.  They have an interesting view of America.  They think that we are all fabulously wealthy, and don't have to work for anything.  They envision a place like heaven, and while I consider myself very blessed to have been born in such a great country, it certainly isn't heaven.

I think I am going to get going now, but  I will upload photos to my computer tonight, and post them up here tomorrow.

Thank you very much for reading!

God Bless,

              Kevin

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

First Class!

Hello all!

    I taught my first class at the Primary School today.  It was Physical Education.  We took the first three classes of the school (grades 1-3) outside for their thirty-five minute class and taught them how to play kickball!  They picked it up quickly, and loved it!  We used one of the new kick balls that was donated!


In this picture, I was explaining to them that if the ball was kicked in the air, and caught, then the runners had to go back to their bases before the ball got there.  Teaching is quite an awesome experience.  In the background is the primary school.

Below are pictures of Mt. Kenya and the sunrise from the Summit of Mt. Kenya!


Mt. Kenya is the second peak in from the left.  It was a rather hard climb, and it was in total over 40km.  This picture was taken at almost 12,000 ft.  We had already hiked quite a ways just to get there.  


This is the sun coming over the horizon from the summit of Mt. Kenya.  It was a beautiful sight.  It was definitely worth pushing the extra meters to get to the top.

I will write more soon, and thanks again for reading!

God Bless,

        Kevin

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Hello from Kisumu!

Hello!

      It’s been quite a few days.  Mt. Kenya was beautiful and the hike was hard.  Without our guide Richard I would not have made it to the top.  I did not know that taking malarone at altitude makes you sick.  Richard is from the Kikuyu tribe, and when he isn’t climbing the mountain, he is growing carrots, kale, and cabbage on his plot of land.

We arrived in Kisumu last night, and Anna and Fr. Chris were there to pick us up.  We learned a lot about the culture in the area.  There are still tribal factions here, and while I thought Nairobi was poor, Kisumu is extremely poor, and the students at Our Lady of Grace come from hard backgrounds.  The school is divided into a secondary school and a primary school.  Secondary is the equivalent of our high school and primary is the equivalent of our K-8.  The school day starts at 6 AM with the rosary and mass, and then proceeds to classes.

We received our assignments today, and for the remainder of this week, I will be teaching Class 4, or the fourth grade, in the primary school. I will also be teaching physical education and Creative Arts, or music!  We are cataloging the donations tomorrow and might be giving some of it to the students tomorrow as well.  All of the equipment will reach the students, but the school wants to give it out on an immediate need basis, and not just hand it all to them all at once.  In addition to teaching and working with the equipment, I am scheduled to go to the market and pick out food with the cooks. 

On a separate note, the number of churches here amazes me, as well as the number of people who display their faith so proudly.  I saw a motorcycle with a sign under the number plate that read something along the lines of “I thank the Lord for all He has done for me.”  There were numerous signs up all over Nanyuko declaring that With God, all things are possible, and many taxi cabs had signs on them that said “Glory to God” among many other things.  It amazes me that a people that has so little can have such great faith. 

I will put pictures up tomorrow when I get a chance. Thanks again for reading!

God Bless,
            Kevin

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Made it to Nairobi!

Hi!

      I don't have too much time to write, but we have made it to Nairobi!  It is kind of chilly here which is not what I expected but that's ok.  We leave to hike Mt. Kenya in the morning and will be arriving in Kisumu on Monday! We all made it safely and all of the suitcases full of equipment made it as well thanks be to God.  As soon as I get to Kisumu I will put up pictures from the hike and of Our Lady of Grace School!  Thanks for reading!  Sorry about the brevity.


God Bless,
                    Kevin

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Welcome to Kevin's Blog

Greetings!


        This past semester I was granted a Fr. Smith Fellowship for Service and Study abroad through the generosity of donors such as Katherine and Thomas Murray and Providence College.  The Fr. Smith Fellowships are given in memory of Fr. Philip Smith, O.P., past President of Providence College, and allow students to propose their own period of service or study abroad that encompasses Catholic and Dominican ideals.  I am very grateful to the donors who made these fellowships possible, and the the selection committee for allowing me to take part in this great initiative.


             I will be teaching music, specifically guitar, and other subjects at Our Lady of Grace School in Kisumu, Kenya.  I was also asked to organize a school concert.  There is a link below that will take you to the school's website.


https://sites.google.com/site/ourladyofgraceschooltemporary/welcome


           I am greatly appreciative of this opportunity, and wish to share my experiences with you all while there.  This opportunity is quite a blessing and I hope to be able to bring the love of Christ to everyone that I come into contact with on this mission.


         I will do my best to keep you updated on what I am doing, provided there is internet access. 


       We have been asked to bring sports equipment for the students, as they are very short on certain things.  The students play soccer barefoot, and often their opponents are wearing cleats, risking serious injury.  We will be bringing them 52 pairs of new soccer cleats, as well as other pieces of equipment.   


         The Knights of Columbus council 5108 very generously donated $1000 for us to do this.  Many, many thanks goes out to them, and all of the other donors who are making it possible for us to be able to bring sporting goods to the students.  Special thanks also go out to Tony Luongo, Nova Premier Soccer Club, Norm Bowlin, Fr. Brian Harrington, The Zobbi Family, The Brawley Family, Mrs. Joanna Hanson, Dave Cogliandro, Puma, Dave Arcese, Attleboro Youth Soccer, Elizabeth Day, The Serra Club, John Carty, Andrew Downing, owner of DB Sports, and many others.


      Below is a picture of most of the sports equipment that we have collected.  More is still coming in!  There will be enough for students to bring some next year as well.





God Bless,

    Kevin