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2018 Projects

I have two exciting projects that I’ve already started and am excited to continue this year. Here’s a video about my rough plan for the year.

Tutoring at Children’s Home

One is tutoring the kids who are struggling in school, who live at the children’s home. I’m starting with the kids who are actually schooled at the children’s home, which is 2 levels of preschool and kindergarten. The kids never get any one on one time educationally, so if they fall behind, they’re screwed. And really the classes are really bad. In 2017 I had been helping the kids with colors, letters, numbers and reading in an informal way. Now I’m actually taking the kids, one at a time, to a separate room so we can actually work on learning what the individual kid needs to learn.

2018 is here already! I apologize for doing a bad job of communicating what I was doing in 2017. I was just trying to get a feel for everything around me. But I’ve written up a good 2017 summary and I’m ready to share it with you! If you donated 50$ or more in 2017, you are welcome to request the 2017 FULL/serious report of the year. It’s a PDF with lots of nitty-gritty details. Just ask! But, below is a brief overview about what I did in 2017.

I’m Coming…

In 2016 my friend Joelle and I were to go hiking up Wanale Hill in Mbale Uganda and camp for the night at the top with two local guides (read that story here), who I was also friends with. We were to meet at 1 pm at a local cafe/bar and we’d start the hike. Joelle and I got there around 1 pm. I called one of the guys around 1:10 pm telling him “we’re here and ready”, he said he’d be there soon. The gentlemen finally arrived at 4 pm. 3 hours after we were to meet, and all the while, the guy was telling me he was “coming”. read more

First, What I’ve Been Up To:

Teaching Reading to Struggling Readers at an Elementary School

I’ve been teaching reading to some struggling readers at an elementary school, grades 4-7. I did this for one week before they had a 3 week break. This last week it started up again. I’m excited to get it going again. There’s a boy in 7th grade who doesn’t know the alphabet. I’m working with him one on one. He is making progress and I’m hopeful for him.

Another interesting thing is Grades 4 and 5 don’t speak English well enough for me to teach them in English. So… I’m trying to do the class mostly in Swahili! So that has been interesting and fun.

The adventure has officially begun! I arrived in Kenya on March 1st and arrived in Kisii on March 2nd. It’s so nice to be back here. It feels very right.

I learned a whole lot about courage and fear in 2016. In 2016 I was in my early 30s and for the first time really pushing myself past fear.

Why does that matter? Why push past fear? Why not just live a simple life and do simple things? It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I really started to do courageous things. Sure I had moved around and got far from home and moved to Boston with no job, but none of that scared me. I once had a friend who told me he loved doing scary stuff. He loved the feeling in his stomach when he was nervous. I didn’t get that at the time. I’m still not sure I get that. read more

Lately, I’ve been getting some slack about my messy hair. After 6 months adventuring around the world, doing and experiencing things you never could have imagined, your priorities and beliefs change! How I feel about my physical appearance and how to present it has been one of those things. I don’t want to look like a slob, I want to look pretty (I’m still single!) but I’m choosing an unconventional hairstyle. I actually feel prettier when my hair is messy. When my hair is brushed, blow dried and polished, I feel like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. read more

Well I felt that my blog needed a little update. A little something to tie people over for several more months until something exciting happens. I’d love to write more about life lessons that I’m learning from the whole career change, but I’m still learning them. And…. I’m not digging writing at the moment and I’m not liking my writing as well. Another thing is, I’m kind of a private person so I debate what I should say or not say and then the articles are just half finished for months. read more

I spent 6 months in Liberia, Uganda and Kenya and learned some things about what is helpful to bring to a tropic, hot, developing world location from the Western world. If you’re going to stay for 1 week or 2 years, take a look at this list. If you’re going for just a week or two and staying at fancy, civilized places, than you might not need all of this, but you can use your judgement.

Water Filter
In most places that I visited you can buy bottled water. But I had a couple times when I couldn’t and I was very thankful I had my Sawyer Water Filter. I will also say that all the bottled water had outside seals on them so you know they’re good. And they were good. Except one in Kenya, Tiji. Even though they were sealed they had floating crap in them. Yuck. I whipped out my Sawyer filter for those! read more

In Western Kenya I taught Life Skills Education to 500 high school students. I think that was the most difficult month of my life.

Life Skills

I never heard of Life Skills Education until I came to Otaro. I’m a huge fan now and very interested in exploring this path more with Laurie Goes to Africa.

Below are the Life Skills as laid out by the Kenyan Ministry of Education: