Seth Lamble

Well I have now added a HIV/AIDs class to my curriculum, along with the Junior level Math class. Beyond that nothing much happening.

So Peace Corps Staff only works till 11:30 on Fridays. The USA embassy releases there Foreign Nationals at that time every Friday, and though the PC office is not directly run by the US Embassy, many of the Kenyans that work for PC got their jobs because of friends in the Embassy, or vice versa. So naturally they want to be off at the same time as their friends. That I have no issue with, it is the alleged response from the Country Director, when the Volunteers asked for the Friday Schedule to be extended. Many volunteers do not live near either of the PC offices. There are currently offices in Nairobi and Kisumu, the Mombasa Office was shut down due to Funding Cuts. So for some people to make it into the office, it requires them to spend a night or so in the cities where the offices are located. Now even some of the volunteers who like their sites the lease will at least put some effort into making it to the office on say Friday, so that they don’t miss all that much of their weekly volunteering stuff, especially teachers. Now apparently when the Volunteers brought their desire before the Peace Corps Country Director of Kenya, lets call him the Bobster, he said that it was too much of a moral issue for the time to extend the time that the office is open. Okay fine, moral issue, I understand that a happy office is a productive office. But wait, the PC office exists solely to support the activities and actions of the Peace Corps Volunteers. So the concern shown towards Staff is admirable, but their entire reason for existence is to help us, and they have been told that their scheduling makes it harder for their help to be acquired by Volunteers, it irks me. On top of that apparently the Bobster suggested that if it affects the Volunteers so much that we should all write letters to him to that affect, fine, except for the fact that Volunteers have trouble filling out the forms that will increase our living allowances, let alone writing intelligible letters to the Office. Apparently after suggestin the writing campaign, he stated that it won’t matter, the timing will not change. I guess my point is, THE ONLY REASON WHY ANY OF THEM HAVE JOBS IS BECAUSE OF THE VOLUNTEERS, and they don’t give a crap about our moral(e?).

Alright another issue to gripe about. A Math/Science Manual is being created to assist Volunteers in their teaching. I have nothing really to contribute. I am just not the fun project kind of teacher. What I do is show up every day, I arrive early, and leave late. I attend all of my classes, and I teach. When another teacher is not in school, and they left nothing for the students to do, I take their time and teach. If I don’t think students are getting a concept I try wording it a different way, and I keep doing example problems for Mathematics. I try to think of things that are common here in Rural Kenya to describe the Physics concepts. For those students that I think could do better I take them aside and talk to them about their issues with my subjects, sometimes I give them additional problems in areas that they have problems, yeah, yeah, they have plenty of time so I am not overloading them, shaddup. Unfortunately this apparently makes me a bad teacher, since I have no fun, and creative super duper activities to submit to the Math/Science Manual, I guess I am a horrible teacher, or at least that is the rubric that it appears my Overlords in Nairobi seem to feel.