Classical music playing in a matatu. It tends to be rap, reggae or the occasional random western pop song (Gym Class Heroes, JLS and weirdly enough Phil Collins are big players at the moment)
Me: “Jim, why aren’t you dressed for football?”
Jim: “I’ve got typhoid”
Me: “Oh”
Head of a school: “This is X (he looked about 14 years old), best coffin maker in the school”
The different relationship titles I’ve been called since being here: Son, Son-In-Law, Brother, Husband, Boyfriend. Just to clarify to friends and family alike, none of these are correct in the true sense of the words and I have not become attached to anyone through dating, marriage or adoption.
Monday - Feeling unwell L!
For the first time since arriving I’ve been feeling a little off kilter. Not sure if it’s the malaria tablets side effects, the increasing hotness, something I ate or other but hot and cold sweats, feeling tired 24/7 and generally not feeling my normal (if that’s what you can call it) self… Writing this as of the weekend and I’m still having the weird sweats and having funky dreams but feeling right as rain on the whole J
Tuesday - Disciples of Mercy (not a horror movie viewing but a lovely private school)
Disciples of Mercy is a mainstream private school a little bit out into the rural countryside, it has a special unit of almost 70 children. It is beautifully kept and is essentially a little town within itself with an attached vocational training centre, chemist, hospital and church. These children are split into specific classes (sensory/attentional difficulties, Cerebral Palsy, Autism and 3 classes of general special needs according to age/ability of those without severe enough difficulties to be placed in one of the aforementioned specific). All the children have been assessed at the Education and Resource Centre to be placed here (unlike Pandpiri) and all the staff I met were really enthusiastic and passionate about the work they do which is fantastic. The headmistress is really keen for me to do as much work as I can here and unlike other head s who welcome me and let me do what I want, she showed me around explaining some of the potential things I could do, difficulties they have, asked me what would be best for the kids and my timeframe - e.g. training or 1:1 etc… Really great to have someone so gung-ho and interested/enthusiastic in having special needs work be done. The plan is to go in next week to look through all the children’s records, observe some classes and then plan a training workshop for the staff members that is as relevant as possible to the clients at school. The headmistress has already asked if I would dish out a few full day training sessions at the end of November when school breaks up for December. Ideally she would like me to do this for all the staff (not just the special educators) and also some of the staff from the attached small hospital and church who may work with relevant clients.
Wednesday - CP feeding and a particularly interesting client at clinic
Managed after an age to see the CP class at Joylands Special School at Lunchtime for a feeding observation. Much to my delight when I got there half the class had beans and the other had veg and ugali (consistency a bit like a harder stodgy mash) and when I asked why this was it was because “those that can’t chew don’t eat beans”. Starting off on a positive note yippee. During observation all but one of the 14 kids could self feed (which is great as self-feeding compared to another person feeding reduces risk of coughing/choking/chest infection due to the child being able to control pace and size of food etc… but also I imagine it’s a lot more enjoyable to be independent as well!) with two having some difficulties through poor posture and/or eating too much food at too quick a pace. I pointed this out to the staff and that if possible could the person who feeds the one child who cannot self-feed keep an eye on and remind these 2 children to take small, slow mouthfuls and be sat upright. With the child being fed, he does not possess the fine motor or gross motor control to grip or feed himself and additionally has very reduced neck and head strength/control meaning he can only hold his head upright for a few seconds at a time. The lady feeding him started off with fairly large sized mouthfuls and putting more food into the clients mouth on request - when he opened his mouth, even when there was still food remaining that had yet to be swallowed. Within the first few mouthfuls he began aspirating (coughing due to food/drink going down the “wrong way” towards the lungs rather than the stomach) at which point I asked if I could interrupt and give a little advice. After giving my two cents, to which I’m very grateful the staff member was very receptive to, the child did not aspirate for the remainder of lunch J It is very difficult to attempt to totally change a lunch menu etc.. but many of the children struggle with certain types of consistency (one girl had huge problems with the strighy veg but no problems with the ugali) so I’m planning to ask the school if they may purchase a blender to be used for the certain children which hopefully wouldn’t take too much extra time/effort but yet would ensure safety and enjoyment of eating for the kids.
The aforementioned interesting client was a 3 year old who has excellent social skills (eye contact, appropriate smile, handshake etc..) but who from the single assessment session I did with him does not seem to have a concrete understanding of basic words (nouns) but the interesting thing about him is that his spoken language is complete jargon. Unlike babbling, he looks directly at you and has a conversation with you, complete with prosody, tone, different length “words” but all totally jumbled up word sounds, none of which make sense. Additionally he presents with echolalia - the process of hearing a sound and repeating it without processing meaning - however he copies the syllable structure/prosody/tone of the word but as with his natural spoken output the sounds are completely different to what was originally said. For example I said “aaahhh”, he said “mmmmm”, I said “baaaa”, he said “tuhhhh”, I said “mmmm”, he said “aaaahh”, I thought I’d repeat the sound “mmmm” to see if his output was the same again; he said “puuhhhh”. Positively, he uses basic gestures to communicate needs such as hunger/toilet and can understand through use of basic gestures also. As the family live directly in between Kisumu and Vihiga I have passed the case on to Racheal as she has 4 years experience over my next to none and makes sense!
Thursday - School visit and the first ever Stammering group in Western Kenya!
My plan for the day was to visit 2 schools - the first was Pandpiri a large school (1600 pupils) with a recently attached special unit. I visited a few weeks ago and the two biggest issues of the unit was that half the children shouldn’t be there - they should be in their normal mainstream class with extra support from teachers during or after class in the areas they are struggling in and that the person in charge of the unit was the deputy head who is not trained as a teacher, only 3 months into special education training and has other jobs to do as deputy and thus the kids do not really have much structure/learning in the class with long periods of time left alone. On my arrival I was delighted to see that the children I mentioned that I felt would benefit more being in mainstream had been moved out of the special unit :) ! Working with the Department of Education we are trying to get funding for a professional and appropriate full-time teacher to take the special unit rather than the situation in which the school currently finds itself in. The rest of the time there I wrote up an individual advice sheets for 3 children who would benefit most from specific strategies and support when the teacher is giving instructions (e.g: always show objects or gestures together with instructions, use slow simple language etc..) or when the children are attempting to answer questions (e.g: give time, choices, use phonological prompts) aswell as the level at which these particularly children have solid understanding and the level at which work should be done, that they are developing into.
The second school was where I had planned to hold a stammering training/group as I saw 14 children 2 weeks ago with stammers. This was the first ever meeting of it's kind in Western Kenya and I can die a happy man thinking I've actually achieved something pretty decent(!), the key is to carry it over month after month including after I leave! After getting all my resources printed I rushed across town on the back of a bike in the scorching hot sun, adding to the sweat already building from the nerves! When I arrived there were maybe 4 parents which I thought better than none but there were no teachers to be seen. This really worried me as the main crux of the training/meeting was support strategies for the children in class and for the kids, parents and teachers to discuss difficulties,.. After almost 45 minutes of rounding troops up we ended up with 15 pupils (of the reported 17 who stammer), 9 parents (7 of which were fathers which was a total surprise as 95% of the people I see are brought by mothers and mothers alone) and 6 teachers (all the form teachers of the stammers bar one child). I thought the session went quite well with some hands up points to show the teachers/parents things that could really help. There is a well-used model within the Speech and language profession of an iceberg to describe overt issues with stammering (those we can all see and hear - above the water) and those covert (the feelings of the people we cannot know - underneath the water). It is widely thought that the covert feelings as those that need working on to reduce the overt features (e.g: If the environment is accepting and knowledgeable of stammering and the student is supported in class they will feel less worried/fearful etc.. and will potentially speak more/stammer less. As icebergs aren’t exactly common in Africa I switched the model to a crocodile which one od the kids thankfully drew for me - whilst asking the students on a word to describe the feeling they have surrounding their stammer these are what came out: Ashamed, strangled/constricted, why am I different?, afraid of what others thing/teasing. Another quite powerful moment I thought was when I asked everyone to take a few minutes to read some poems written by some Kenyan stammerers - the information was provided by the Nairobi stammering group. Below is the one that I think holds the best impact/feeling -
I’ve not been me.
My heart beats faster,
My chest pounds with terror and worry,
As I hold up the phone,
To dial and stir up a conversation,
My lips swell, eyes close,
As I struggle through “Hallo”
Oh what a frustration!
My tummy fills with anxiety,
My name stuck in my throat again,
A flutter of desperation,
How do I introduce myself?
Switch words, avoid others, hand signals,
I silently whisper to self,
Wishing I didn’t have to do this.
Oh, I despise this thing!
This thing inside me,
That’s bound me with tight grips,
That’s made me its prisoner,
Silently, I wish it was easier,
To say my name, to say “Hallo”,
To speak my mind, to raise my voice.
Time alone, I spend,
Wishing I could control my speech,
To hold discussions in class,
To read aloud without panic,
To express my interests,
Without a sunken heart,
Without a desire to run,
By Everline Muthoni, 24
To finish off with each of the students got to sit down with their teacher and fill out a form which had different circumstances in class e.g: reading aloud, answering the register, answering questions and they could tell their teacher how best to support them, below are some pics of them filling out the information which will be shared across the whole schools staff hopefully:
As we were taking a photo for the record, I asked everyone to hold up a poster for “International Stammering Awareness Day” and an event held in Nairobi. Out of nowhere one of the teachers, in fact the teacher who was the original reason for me visiting the school exclaimed “we should have our own”… and thus next Saturday will be an informal picnic type affair and I’ll be doing my best to spread the news to schools in Kisumu where kids, parents and teachers who are affected or interested in stammering may come along. I’m even getting a shoutout on Kenya’s no.1 radio station on Wednesday courtesy of the Nairobi group who are being interviewed!
Friday - Kakemega training
Went to a lovely place a few hours away to watch the 2 SLT’s from just north of me do a training session to around 30 teachers from different schools. Was really helpful to see a full-day training session, different ways of presenting, giving examples etc.. which will all really help contribute to the training sessions and information I give our across the district.
In other news, I’ve been venturing out at night-time quite a lot with my little mobile phone torch to meet friends nearby… I feel much safer and comfortable after having done it a few times but I still make sure I’m in by 10 which I’ve been told is kinda the deadline for safety in the neighbourhood! Also it is just getting hotter and hotter. Got sunburnt today for the first time (which is a miracle considering how pasty I am) and it will get worse through til February. Hot hot hot.
Loads of love and hugs
J xxx
For more information on the teeny speech and language charity I’m working under please check out: http://www.yellowhousechildrens.org/
Top 3 Itunes songs on shuffle whilst writing this:
1. Fine - Alkaline Trio
2. If you got the money - Jamie T
3. The horizon is a beltway - The Low Anthem
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