Conversations with Barnabas: Seth; and Viola Davis reads to the kids.

I thought it was time to bring back this segment of the blog now that I have been able to develop some background on many of our kids.  So I thought I would introduce you to one of the students at our school.  Seth is a young Maasai boy living near our school who most everyone who has visited our site has come into contact with. 

Before I get into Barnabas' introduction of Seth, I wanted to brag a little again on the students and school in general.  We took the end of August tests during the first week of September because the school is closing for two weeks.  The school overall increased their average score by two points to 83.  It is also worth noting the Girls ruled this month with all three girls in standard 1 placing in the top three.  Pre-Unity also had girls in all of the top three spots this month.  Baby class had a girl in the top position followed by two of the boys.  So big congratulations to the girls at the school. 

 

Standard 1 From left:  Terasia (2nd place), Grace (3rd place) and Gladness (1st place)

Pre-Unity from left:  Mery (3rd place), Nice (1st place tie), Clara (1st place tie)

Baby from Left:  Gertrude (1st place) John (2nd place) and Walter (3rd place)

Also of note is the fact that the scores for  Reading (10 points) and Writing (8 points) increased significantly over the last two months.  While two months is not enough data points to say our Reading with Barnabas program is the cause for this increase, I can't help but notice that we have only been doing the program for two months and the kids are much more into reading.  This week our story was Rent Party Jazz written by William Miller, Illustrated by Charlotte Riley-Webb, and read by Viola Davis using the Storyline Online videos.

Now onto Seth.  As I mentioned Seth is a young Maasai boy living near the school.  He is currently in our Pre-Unity class.  Whenever I walk from the school to the main road or village, there is Seth.  Normally with his younger brother Yusef playing in the dirt along the "road" between the main road and the school.  I would like to think of it more as a motorcycle path, but the school bus does travel it as well. 

Because Seth lives so close to the school, he walks everyday. When he arrives it is normally about half way through the morning devotion time and the teacher is reading the Bible story for the kids.  Like all the kids that walk to school, he normally stops at the first desk with some of his fellow students sharing a book.  They normally all do this until a teacher goes and breaks them up to disperse to other desks with students sharing a book to even it all out.

He is well liked by his other students and normally is engaged in some type of activity with other kids, though is not normally in the football matches (European football) that take place any time the kids have a couple of minutes break on the playground.  He seems more drawn to imaginative play with some of the younger kids than himself. 

Whenever I walk past him on my way to the village or to go on a long walk, we speak and he has really been working hard on his English.  He always asks if I am headed to the village to go shopping at the store.  If I say yes, he and his little brother are up and walking with me.  Interestingly here, they don't ever go ask a parent's permission.  We walk into the village area, with Seth always telling me which way he thinks we should go on the little dirt paths.  Once we get to the store, he pulls out a coin for somewhere between 100 and 500 shillings (between a nickel and a quarter).  They give him candy in a little plastic bag.  500 shillings normally gets about 20 pieces of candy in the little bag.  I normally buy a couple of items and a large water bottle.  I normally drink the water at our site, but I get one slightly refrigerated at the store and I will drink about half before we get back to where I first met them.  So I give them the remaining water in the bottle.

As a student Seth, is right in the middle of the pre-unity ranking, however his overall scores have increased this year 17.2 points.  He loves to sing during the Friday religion class.  I wish he would get there a little earlier in the morning so he could get there while they are still doing praise and worship singing.  He also is enjoying learning to play "Simon Says" which I have been teaching them recently.