Life Maps

On Thursday and Friday, I attempted to do Life Maps with my students. This is an art project where you draw a line on a piece of paper and then write chronologically the important events that have happened to you and then a few goals for the future. I was really excited about this project because I wanted to get to know my students a bit better. They all have such varying circumstances I thought that this would be an insightful activity. I made an example of my life, including pretty generic things that they could relate to like starting and finishing schools, visiting my grandparents, and the death of my Grandpa. But once again, the kids were completely unable to come up with their own answers, even though the activity was supposed to be a record of their own lives! Apparently, most of my students also attended Happy Valley Elementary in 1990, visited their Grandparents in 2005 and want to become president. A few got the gist of it and changed some dates and names but most looked remarkably like mine. The next day I made them present their life maps, which was a bit humorous. This was a good lead in to talking about things we would like to do though so Friday we did goals. Most want to either be politicians or tour guides, which isn't surprising because everyone who is wealthy here is associated with those two trades. One girl wanted to be a pilot and another a teacher. I try to be really amped up about the goals of my students but in the back of my mind I realize that most likely these kids are not leaving the Majengo neighborhood. But that doesn't stop me from being overly encouraging.

On a side note, on Friday we arrived to find a GIANT hole in the front yard where I teach. I asked what was going on and was told that they are building a cellphone tower in the yard, about 15 feet from the houses. I guess that the cell phone company had approached Mama Zenebu (the woman whose house we teach at) three years ago and paid her (probably a nominal fee) to put the tower in her yard and just showed up now and started digging. I can't imagine how this is going to affect the neighborhood. I was blown away at the whole situation. Obviously the cell phone company had taken advantage of Mama Zenebu and she wasn't in a situation, financial or otherwise, to make a statement about it. It was pretty shocking.