A Day to Celebrate

Tomorrow is a day to be celebrated. HOCET Secondary School’s first Form 4 graduation ceremony. We have 11 students who have completed the four years of secondary school (O Level) and sat for their national Form 4 exams and now are graduating. I am heading out to the school today and I feel very privileged to witness this exciting event.

I met Furaha, Augustino, David, Yose, Shabani, Fadhili, Yusuf, Valence, Isaac, Cornell, and Selemani (our graduating students) back in 2008. I am proud of all that they have each accomplished and all of the hard work they have put forth to reach this point in their lives and education. They have studied so hard, worked so hard and overcome so many challenges in their lives. I really love these students and they truly inspire me. They also often make me smile and laugh.

Over the past few weeks all of our from 4 students have been coming to the house where i live in the city for a program we call “Maendeleo”, which is the Swahili word for development. They students selected the name themselves. Kate, another volunteer here, is heading up the program and the purpose is to help our students transition from HOCET to what they do next in life. This program includes life skill development, computer training, leadership development and even entrepreneurship training for those interested in business. I teach computer lessons 3-4 afternoons a week. Some of our students had never used a computer before and they are all very excited to be learning.

The first day of my computer lessons was interesting considering the fact that the electricity was out. The six desktop computers set up in our living room were not of great use. I managed to teach a computer lesson on the porch. We brought out keyboards for everyone and a CPU to point to. We talked about the keyboard itself and about the different devices that can be connected to a CPU and how to connect them. I think they all enjoyed the lesson, but were also excited that the power was back on the next day and they got to use their computers. We have enough computers where each computer is shared by 2 students. I have already seen improvement in their computer and typing skills. It is really fun to be apart of teaching something they are so excited about.

The pictures below of of my computer lesson with no electricity.