My new career:

I had a wonderful trip to Rome for Christmas and New years. I haven’t been ready to write anything yet, because I was waiting for something inspiring to write about. I have been in Kenya for almost 8 months and I feel like I have finally found my stride. I have started teaching life skills at the nearby high school and it’s amazing how much I love being a teacher.  I teach three days a week to the form 2, 3 and 4 students (the equivalent of sophomore, juniors, and senior high school students).  The principal has yet to give me the required curriculum, so I just kind of make things up as I go along. I walk 45 minutes each way through cornfields along a small dirt path to get back and forth from the school. I am certain some of the Kenyans think I am going to die of heatstroke on my walk because they tend to avoid sun and rain like the plague, but I happen to quite enjoy it.

These past few weeks I have been talking about HIV/Aids with my classes. The students can regurgitate information like what the letters in HIV and AIDs stand for, or what the “ABC’s of Prevention” are (Abstinence, Be faithful, Condom). But as soon as I start talking about CD4 cells or ask them to tell me HOW the virus enters the body, I get a lot of blank faces and a million questions. I got permission from the school principal to demonstrate the correct way to use a condom to my classes and they were so excited. Not only because they are all curious, but I think because they finally have a knowledgeable person they can ask sensitive questions to. They would most likely be caned (beat) if they asked any of these questions, like where to get a condom, to any of the other teachers. The clinic where I work is a catholic mission and does not offer any form of family planning. This is incredibly unfortunate because the HIV rate in my area is 19% and a Kenya study in 2000 shows 80.6% of 17 year olds and 89.5% of 18 year olds are sexually active. You do the math. Not to mention the two nearest government hospitals where condoms are available are a 45 minute motorcycle ride away. Not only is this inaccessible to most of these young people, but the ride is also not affordable.

In one of my classes, a young man asked me about HIV prevention and how I can help women because “women are emotionally weak.” I told him I didn’t understand what he was talking about and he went on to explain to me that women are second class citizens. I stopped him to clarify that there is no major genetic difference between the women in my country and the women here in Kenya, so the only thing making a woman a “second class citizen” was a cultural oppression. He says very well, then “the women in our culture feel inferior.” Men like this, and their cultural attitude are exactly why women are treated so poorly.  It blows my mind to say that it is the woman’s fault for feeling inferior and not identify that maybe it is related to a man’s actions that they are treating women as inferior as the cause.

I asked students to write down anonymous questions if they did not want to ask them openly and I would answer them at the end of class. One tiny crumpled piece of paper read:

“I’m HIV positive. I have a girlfriend who is HIV negative. We have not spent yet but she insists that we have and do it without condom. How can you address this situation because I feel sorry to infect her for the same.”

I feel really lucky for the chance to work with these students. I started an afterschool health club and I really hope that each little thing I can do means as much to them as I am getting from the experience.

My walk home from school