My last two weeks were the most bittersweet weeks I’ve ever experienced, because with every day that tightened the bond between myself and a student, meant an increasingly painful goodbye. I’m so grateful for every single memory I was able to make during my time in Kenya. Every detail of my trip will replay in my head until I can visit again. I can go and get sugar cane juice with Wanja or watch the sunrise over the mountains as I wake up. I can greet the students with our handshakes that we spent time practicing so we wouldn’t forget. So much happened in my last two weeks, but leaving remains as the most poignant memory of my trip. As time passes the memories I made during each week are becoming stronger, and soon they’ll eventually replace the grief of leaving. I’ll leave some pictures at the end of this post to illustrate the wonderful time I had and express the bonds that I formed with the students. The rest of the blog will detail my more practical achievements I made during my last two weeks.

I have been a longstanding fan of tennis thanks to my father who has been watching and playing it long before I was born. It’s a piece of home to me, but also a piece of my life that I wanted to share with the students and staff at FISA so that they could enjoy something that I also do. The school had some old rackets that just needed new grip tape, and I found a nice store in town that stocked tennis nets and balls. The only logistical issue was suspending the net, but Kenyans are extremely resourceful. I sometimes I think that this project wouldn’t have been possible if I weren’t in Kenya. I asked the gardener and the coach at the school to help me, and we managed to make supports for the net made from old tires, metal pipes and concrete. It was really fun for me to get involved because I love working with my hands and making things, but I've never had access to the necessary equipment to bring an idea to life in just a of couple days. Kingori (the gardener) helped me source all the equipment from what was already lying around at the school, and welded pieces of wire to the pipe to use to fasten the net onto.

We painted the supports after they had dried, but the white paint that was used on the metal pipe was water based. I would have loved to buy white paint that was suitable for metal, but unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time. There are actually a number of small failures with this project. The paved space at the school isn’t large enough for long tennis and the surface of the school field isn’t even enough to play on. The rackets are also not up to standard as the grip tape that I was able to source was of a low quality. But sadly I can’t enlarge the space, or even out a whole school field. The goal of having the students play tennis at school was met, and the kids and staff had great fun playing a new sport that had never been played at the school before. I hope I can visit the school again in the future, and I will definitely be bringing some new rackets and grip tapes and teach the students and staff how to maintain the rackets and so on. Before I began my LiA I would have deemed this project as a failure, but now my measure of success uses a completely different metric. If it made just one student happy and helped them to relax or enjoy their day; then it’s a success, and I can happily say that I found that to be the case for quite a few students.

I loved teaching my classes science, and I was able to have some really amazing lessons with the students. My favourite lesson that I taught was probably when I taught safety symbols to MYP1. I had prepared a matchup game for them where they matched the safety symbol with its respective label, I had printed out the sheets in preparation and just needed to cut them before my class. I would usually do my lesson prep whilst sitting in on other lessons to try and spend as much time as possible with all of the wonderful students. On this day, I was in MYP3 and I asked them to help me and cut out the symbols and group them into 4 piles for the 4 groups. They did help which was kind of them, but I ended up with one huge messy pile of pieces of paper before I had to go and teach.

So, when I arrived for my class with MYP1, I wasn’t ready to start the task with the students and I needed to buy some time so that I could organise it for them. I always lead all my lessons with curiosity for the subject, it’s the single thing that keeps me forever fascinated with physics, even though I’m 2 years into my brutal degree. I wanted to encourage that same thinking with the learners so that they would approach their learning with the same curiosity. I thought about the last time I was really inspired, and I remembered a session by Daniela Bortoletto that I attended at a conference in April (Cuwip+). Daneila is the Head of Particle Physics at the University of Oxford and her research in experimental particle physics has taken her from the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab to the identification of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. She said and I quote:

⋆.˚✮ ‘Science is a universal component of the human spirit’ ✮˚.⋆

I thought that was such a beautiful statement to make, and I scribbled it down in my notebook surrounded by stars and swirls. I had looked back on it so many times that I had memorised it without realising. When I came into class, I wrote that quote on the board and told them about Daniela, and that I had met hear in April. They asked to see the picture that I said I had with her, but in the moment I couldn’t find it and then I forgot to show them the following day. I’ll put it below in the hopes that one of them reads this and can see the picture I promised to show them.

We discussed what this quote means to them, and what it means to me. The conversation we had was one I had always hoped to have with such wonderfully bright young minds. I loved seeing their eyes light up as they shared their ideas with me. I then gave them sticky notes and asked them to write one thing that they’re curious about the world, I was flexible with what that exactly meant because not everyone thinks the same way. One person may sit and wonder about the stars, and another will sit and think about a particular invention that would revolutionise transport, or some think about how Messi was awarded the Ballon d’Or eight times. As they were busy writing, I was able to slip to the back of the class and organise their task. They then shared their ideas with the everyone, I enjoyed every single thought from each learner in my class. There’s something so wonderful about understanding the way an individual views the world, and this task was perfect in this regard. This filler task is genuinely my favourite moment across all the lessons I taught, and I’ve kept each of the sticky notes from the students that I’ll keep when I need some inspiration to keep going.

I also did an art class with MYP1 where they created artwork for the lab. I was so proud of each painting, I felt as though each of them really understood the core of all my lessons; that science is just a way of exploring the world around you. But the first step in doing so is to observe the world around you, and marvel at its beauty.

For all the FISA students and staff reading this, thank you so much for making each day so memorable. I can't wait to see you all again <3

A gallery of some of my favourite pictures from my trip:

Nawapenda sana nyote ❤︎