five weeks in....

I cannot believe I am at the end of my 5th week already!! Time is flying by, and in a way, I am kind of glad it is. Means there's less time to dwell on things..
It's strange, I spoke to a friend this week and was telling her the story of a little boy I had seen that day. Normally, I just deal with the immense poverty I see here and the fact that it's just 'not fair' for the children I meet, but telling someone about it, that's not experiencing it too, made me cry about what I am seeing for the first time.
It's been a busy week this week (although not today, because Wellington and David have disappeared on respective holidays, so it's just me... and because my Swahili has not reached beyond basics yet, I decided to have some of today off too!!!) Thankfully we've finished all the sorting of the grants, so now we can focus properly on meeting people and introducing ourselves to everyone.
Last Friday was meant to be the day of handing out school uniforms to children and teachers from across the county. The chair of the company, Safaricom, who was meant to distribute the uniforms didn't turn up. This meant nothing could be given out!!! SO frustrating!! However, a man from the Red Cross came and discussed with all the teachers opportunities for them to apply for grants from the Red Cross. This is a new thing from the Red Cross to donate to people with disabilties... Hopefully lots of children and schools will benefit from this proposal..

I visited 3 new schools this week. Madzu, Moki and Inyanza.
Moki is an inclusive school which means the children with special educational needs are integrated into the mainstream school. We had a meeting with the headteacher and the SEN teachers, I tried to find out how they supported the children's learning needs within their teaching, and it is clear that they don't. However, they were all genuinely very keen to attend our training and were fine when we told them we wouldn't be paying anyone to attend the course. The headteacher called into the office a group of children with actual speech problems. When I say actual I mean children with dysfluency, lisps, phonological delays... I have never been so excited to meet a child with a phonological delay!! Normally the teachers aren't aware that as an SLT I work with children/adults with speech difficulties, who are cognitively able, rather than just introducing the children with CP and learning disabilities to me!! A novelty!!
It was quite cute when we were taken around to be introduced to all the classes - the children all welcomed me by standing up and clapping. A couple of the classes sang to me.... I was also introduced as Rachael, from England. Not the 'mzungu' Rachael... If only that happened everywhere...

Inyanza school has a very new unit attached to it. There are 2 teachers for the unit, which is amazing in itself!! However, due to the school being in the interior (really remote) the teachers have had to fight to set up the school. The discrimination against children with disabilities is rife here, there are meant to be 7 attending the unit, however only 3 come. The other 4 children's parent's don't bring them to school because they don't want their communities to know they have children with disabilities, as they all believe the children are cursed. This is the first time I've heard someone properly say the word 'cursed'.. I was shocked! The 3 children who attend have to be escorted home, this is because they are at a high risk of being raped or attacked. They leave before lunchtime incase any parents of the 'normal' children come to shout abuse at them and their teachers. It's just horrendus to hear about. Thankfully the teachers are AMAZING!!! So dedicated to the children and to teaching them. I will be working a lot with them as of September and I can't wait..

I observed an end of term assessment in a CP class as part of Joylands Special School which is where the EARC in Kisumu is based. The child I observed being assessed was called Brian. He's 8 years old, very bright with very severe CP. Brian looks like one of the children you're seeing on the news at the moment. His thighs are thinner than my wrists, he is so malnourished, has a nasty chest infection due to aspirating on most of the food/drink he is given, he had wet himself and none of the teachers were cleaning him up (I was there for almost an hour, and no one cleaned him up, in the end, I had to tell the teachers to do it! - in fact, most of the children were sitting in their own urine..), his face was covered in dried dibble and snot and flies were all over him. Crawling on his lips, his eyes, ears and up his nose... No amount of waving them off would get rid of them..!! Due to the way he was being assessed: by getting him to say the answers, he was getting most of them incorrect. Mainly because he couldn't say them... So, I told the teacher to get him to point to the target picture. He then got them all correct!!
Thankfully there will be a full time SLT in Kisumu as of September and I know that having a constant presence there will make all the difference...

As much as there are difficulties here, I am loving the work I am getting to do... It's the biggest challenge of my working life, but I am learning lots. September will be a good month because that's when we'll be able to do a ton of training of teachers and hospital staff.. Plus, people are aware we exist now. We even had a direct SLT referral the other day from a health centre!! breakthrough....