Day 4 - Our First Day of School

When Antonia woke up the next morning Joelle informed her that the bed she had chosen had bugs living in the frame of it. It was the only wood bed in our room so we invited her to take a top bunk on one of our metal beds. We got to know Antonia (33 yrs old) a bit as we were preparing for school in the morning.  She is a holistic chef from Toronto who most recently worked as a chef at a 4 star restaurant in New York.  She arrived with a suitcase full of herbs, spices and different foods.  All 3 of my roommates eat mainly vegetables, fruits and super foods. They also prepare their own body lotions so living in this environment is a real assault to their bodies. The only food provided to us – starch – is something that they would not normally eat.

We attended our first day of school in an old barn that had been transformed into our classroom. The floor of our classroom is concrete and the walls are a combination of plastic, linoleum and cardboard filling the holes in the old weathered wood boards. The building is very adequate and I kind of enjoy being so close to nature while in school. All the doors and windows are open during class and the shutters and doors creek and bang as the wind blows them back and forth.  Cows and cats are our close companions and we can hear the birds chirping away throughout our class time. There are about 15 of us attending the school - 5 Canadians and 10 others from different parts of Africa like Uganda,  Tanzania, Ethiopia and of course Kenya. So far the program seems a little disorganized but it is only the second year that they are offering it so it is still in the developmental stage.

At the end of our first day of class we were divided into 5 teams with 3 students in each and taken out to the fields where we were assigned plots to start farming on. You can imagine my surprise at receiving this assignment without even 1 day of teaching on the topic!  Our instructor told us to interview different people on the base with farming knowledge and figure out how we wanted to plant our crops. The other surprising fact is that they have not received rain since last August and he wants us to figure out how to make things grow in these drought conditions – an extreme challenge for even the most seasoned farmers!  Interesting way of teaching isn’t it?

We headed for bed around 9:00 P.M. but during the night I had to get up and visit the outhouse. As I came out of my room I noticed 2 very large, dark figures in the corridor opposite me where the men’s dorms are. I was a bit startled and embarrassed as I was only in my old granny PJs and did not feel appropriately dressed.  I realized I had run into the security guards. They pretty much ignored me though and continued walking the property with their 6 guard dogs.