Graduation Day and My Last Trip to Mulimani

Friday was graduation day for my last Empower class and it definitely was an emotional one. It has been such a wonderful experience to be here and so it was sad to know that I wouldn't be teaching another class. All six of us volunteers made the trip since there were no other programs scheduled for the day. We had to stop in town to pick up the graduation cake for the class.

I'm happy to say that all of the students passed the exam with very good scores. Most of the people were in the 80's or 90's. I think that we spent so much question and answer time at the beginning of each class that they really understood the material.

I got a little emotional at the end of handing out certificates. In Kenyan culture, if you want to show respect in a handshake, you place your left hand on the bend in you elbow as you are shaking the person's hand. Every student did that as I gave them their certificates. It is very humbling to have that done. I didn't realize until Mary (my translator), the class coordinator, and Reuben all expressed how much my disclosing my status meant to the community and the students. It just isn't something that is done forthrightly.

Like the last graduation class, they sang songs for us as we cut the cake. There was definitely a lot more picture taking this time. First, the other volunteers were taking a lot of pictures and then the class had someone that had a digital camera taking pictures. Graduations are a very big deal.

One of the best things was that I got to take pictures with the little boy that ALWAYS stood by the road to wave at me both going and coming to class. We had stopped the day before so Mary could speak to his mother and invite hime to the graduation. I always knew that it would be a good day when I saw him. He is only about 3 or 4 and I'm not sure that he knew for sure what was going on.

As usual, we had car problems going home. One of the back tires had a large crack/tear on the sidewall so we had to stop and get that changed. I think I've written before that the tires here all have inner tubes, so changing tires is not always necessary if you think the tube is okay. But, when I'm hauling all the people, it got changed. Labor is a strange thing here as it only cost 50 shillings, or about 75 cents.