We Are All Patriots: Strive to Excel

Habari and Happy Fourth of July!

Today we were lucky enough to have a 30 minute sleep in after our long day yesterday. We've all reached the point in our trip that the reality of Kenya has started to set in. As Zach said so well last night during vespers, "it seems that everything here is a lot more in your face. there seems like there is more death, more cripple, more hungry right in your face than in America." It's safe to say we all realize how nice we have it back in the good ol' USA.

We headed up to Moding with our USA-inspired tunes, pulling into the school blasting "Born in the USA." We filed out and waited for some direction on how to continue our "Keep Moding Clean" Litter Bin Project. Caroline and Leo began touching up the green paint on the bins while DAD and I headed inside to figure out the lettering for the bins and practice our lettering with paint. Everyone else headed out the Moding students to gather litter around town. They made a game out of it and, I have been told, were quite successful with their trash collection effort!

Today was quite a "Kenyan" day with a lot of hurry up and wait. Once the big group returned from the first half of trash collecting, we took tea and mingled with the students. Caroline, DAD, Anne, and I tried to figure out a good way of lettering the bins and decided enlisting our Moding peers to make letter stencils (which they are veryyy good at doing) was the best option. After tea (sadly not milk tea, our fav) the trash warriors headed back out to the town of Moding to keep collecting. Meanwhile, the painting crew began stenciling "DUMP LITTER HERE" on the front of the bins while Caroline and I free handed "Sponsered by: The Elewana Project, Episcopal High School, Moding High School, 2012" on the two bins at the High School.

We all recollected ourselves for lunch, yet there was no lunch to be found! We wandered around waiting, and decided to sit in on classes, play with our new friend, Mom, who is a sweet toddler who lives next to Moding High School. Finally lunch arrived and we dinned on fine kale, mystery meat stew, and classic ugali. There was one special perk for our Fourth of July lunch: Will and Annette brought us sodas from town!

Our nerves were begining to build around this time since our afternoon consisted of a formal debate. The whole school was turning out for mock-parliment and mock- debate. The pressing question was: Should the candidates (Ruto and Kenyatta) runnning for president for the upcoming Kenyan election be allowed to vie for office after the terrible post-election violence from 2007-2008 that they caused? (Keep in mind that these two men, along with two other men, are soon to be tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.)

Last night the eight of us split in half and picked sides (Zach flipped a coin since the majority wanted to oppose and say Ruto and Kenyatta could not run.) Stuart, Edward, Ryoan, and Caroline landed on the proposing side that agreed that the two men could run while Somer, Mary Robert, Leo, and I opposed.

The big event started out with the "president" giving an address followed by many questions from the audience that were directed at various ministers. From our group, Caroline was Minister of Tourism, Leo was Minister of Transportation and Will was Minister of Defense. They handled their questions well! Leo was, fittingly, asked about a loan from China and how it was being used while Caroline got to grabble with the issue of what to do with the lions that were roaming free.

Once the question session ended, the debate began. We took turns detailing our arguements while overcoming our fears of public speaking. When we, the formal team, had exhusted our ideas the floor was open to everyone. Each side (the room was literally divided down the middle into opposers and proposers) kept going back and forth with students, EHS teachers, Moding teachers, and even Moding's principal speaking.

I will have to admit, that I was quite nervous heading into the debate. My fears were calmed when I found a friend in the debate's president, Timothy. He was in Form 4 (a senior) and we exchanged life stories in whispers and passed notes as the debate went on. Yes, I know, I should have been paying attention to the whole issue at hand. Yet, as Timothy reassured me, this debate was not really that big of a deal. Just for fun. We talked about 3D movies (the Avengers was his favorite), new technology (he was a huge apple fan, as am I) and our dreams and ambitions. He wants to be a computer programmer and is well versed in several programing languages. I was absolutely amazed that this bright student not only had time to be president of the debate parilement, excel in all his studies at Moding, and learn all about programming on his own free time, while also being so well-versed in multicultural and technological topics. He was a huge Obama fan and we had a solid conversation on the pros and cons of his economic strategy during his term. This was one bright and driven kid that reminded me so much of my driven friends at EHS.

Now you might be wondering why I'm including this in our blog. As much as I love retelling our daily schedule, the real thing that has embodied my experience at Moding is conversations like these. The strong similarities that tie us all together are amazing to discover, yet at the same time we are from such different worlds. Exchanging and dreaming together has been, by far, my favorite aspect of getting to know Moding High School.

Well, I'm sure you are curious how we celebrated the fourth. Oh, and the propossers won the debate, by the way (even though our proposser's leader, Stu, admitted she was tempted to take her chair up and join the opposing side at a point in time...). Once we got back to the Mission House, the interns (Will, Dorcas, and mostly Cameron) grilled out hot dogs and hamburgers (which were both quite hard to find around here!) and Mama B made us some coleslaw. We happily chowed down on our Kenyan-American Fourth of July cook out!

We hope all is well at home, especially to anyone who has had to deal with the extreme heat and the power outages. Somer and Gideon are especially happy to note that not only is the EHS pool now open, it had some extended 4th of July hours today!

- Tyler

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