Thursday, Mar. 15

This morning started with Bible study, as usual, during which the man who cares for the animals announced that the baby goat, a female, had been born the previous afternoon. Afterwards, Kate took me on a tour of the Hekima Place compound. It is surrounded on three sides by a solid wall and on the third by a fence between Hekima Place and the neighboring farm. It is really a pretty amazing operation, particularly because it’s the creation of one small 74 year old woman. There are, of course, the four residential houses for the girls, Amani building with Kate’s room and the offices, the Dominica dining hall, and the Karibu (welcome in swahili) guest house.

But the property covers several acres. A good part of it is taken up with the shamba (garden in swahili) - latest reports are that, except for potatoes, it provides all the veggies needed in the kitchen. There’s a greenhouse, the cost of which was borne by the local Rotary Club. Besides the shamba and greenhouse, there’s a simple structure for the cows (two adults, a heifer and a calf), the billy goat and the she-goat and her day-old baby. The tiny wobbly-legged kid goat was so cute, and white like her mom. The plan is to ultimately have enough goats to provide meat for the table. The cows give a substantial percentage of the milk for the girls. The whole operation is quite “green”, but more of that later.

In the evening, I again met with my little math group. This evening they brought along an old standardized test they said twenty problems of which had been assigned for homework. We slogged our way through the test until 10:30 pm. I try to get them to think their way through the problems, but it’s a struggle. The do fine when they have a formula and can plug numbers into it, but variations seems to throw them. For example, they can do calculations on right triangles in their sleep, but one of the problems gave them the length of the sides of a rectangle and asked them to calculate the length of a line drawn diagonally across the rectangle. My tutees did not seem to have a clue how to start. Perhaps they would have done better had we gotten to it earlier in the evening. I was certainly tired at that point. But I think the problem is the pedagogy at Kenyan schools where the emphasis is on rote learning, not independent thinking.