Tuesday 7/14/2009 7:00pm

Every day after school the kids have an organized activity. Monday/Guidance Counseling & Drama club, Tuesday/Science or Math Discussion, Wednesday/Games & Sports, Thursday/Group worship, Friday/Debate. I've already described the debate. On Monday, the teacher who leads drama asked me to join the club. It includes about 10 girls and one boy, all aged 14-19. I ended up leading the class in a game of Freeze Tag. They were slow to catch on, and the scenes were pretty much the same for about 10 minutes. Either the 2 characters were sweeping, or gossiping. But soon the scene work began to expand to include a few relationships, and more imaginative topics. My favorite was someone who started a scene by asking "What are you thinking about?" The other girl had her hands up in the air and immediately answered, "I was just dreaming about what it would be like in a parachute."

We played for a half hour and did about 25 scenes. What struck me most was how much the scenes revolved around rape, teen pregnancy, swine flu, boyfriends, and death. All these topics were dealt with very casually. "What is wrong?" "Oh, don't you know that I am pregnant?" "No! Tell me - who is the father?" "My mother's husband. He raped me." "Oh that is terrible. Would you like to play basketball now?" Another one was: "Why are you crying?" "My mother has died." "Ah. You know she is never coming back." "Why would you say that?? I thought you were my friend!!" "Well I thought you should know now so that you don't have to spend any time hoping she will come back."

None of these kids have parents (most have lost their parents to AIDS, some have even watched as their parents were murdered in front of them). Rather than birth control, everything here (the pill, condom) is advertised as family planning, because of the overwhelming Christianity of the region (birth control implies teens having casual sex; family planning implies married couples who can't afford more children at the time). The "peace" sign we recognize means "chill" here because there is a campaign against pre-marital sex called "Chill." Basically, teen pregnancy is a huge deal, as is abortion.

When I first started improv, I would initiate scenes that involved actual situations from my life. I was able to explore the reactions and consequences I might face if I really told my roommates how much their coke addiction bugged me, or how nervous I was at the beginning of the day before going to work - things I couldn't talk to my friends about; things that were plausibly made up for dramatic effect during improv rehearsals. Even everyone on Gertrude started out using actual events from life, and it was only later that we learned to work with more imaginative situations.

Anyway the point is, all the topics that came up that I found totally disturbing were completely normal to these girls.

Today I spent most of the day playing Kenyan poker, which is an addictive game, and is nothing (at all, in any way shape or form) like US poker. Its played by dealing 4 cards initially and just following suit (kind of like Uno), but then many rules are involved. 2 is pick up 2, unless another 2 is played in which case its pick up 4, etc. J skips a person, K reverses direction, and Qs and 8s must be covered. A's are somewhat wild - you can deny picking up cards, or change the suit, or just play them regularly. You can only go out on 4-7 or 9-10. You must play all your cards of one number, lest someone notices you've broken a group up and calls out "poker," in which case you must take half the remaining pile. There is actually a little strategy involved and its super duper fun.

Now my Swahili vocabulary has expanded from 3 year old language to card-playing language.

Grace and I eating oranges: