PCV Baby!

What I wrote a couple day ago:

No longer a PCT. It has been such a long time coming, but I am FINALLY an official Peace Corps Volunteer! And I am so proud to be a part of the Peace Corps. After the craziest 9 weeks of my life to date, we made it to Nairobi for a few days and eagerly awaited our swearing in ceremony on Wednesday. We were sworn in at the Deputy Chief of Mission’s house, the second in command at the embassy. The home made me feel like I was walking through the Breakers mansions in New England, and the food was even better. My stomach yelled at me that night for downing so many cookies, but I couldn’t help myself.

Nairobi gave us access to SO many things that we had not seen for 9 weeks; namely cheese, free wireless, and western toilets. It’s practically paradise. Tuesday night before the big day (as if the vacay in Nairobi couldn’t get any better) we even went to town and saw Harry Potter. I got a movie, a hot dog (with real mustard!), popcorn (with real butter!), a coke, and a chocolate milkshake, all for the equivalent of about 7 bucks. Awesome.

We also had a chance to meet our supervisors in Nairobi. They came from all over the country to attend our swearing in ceremony, and then take us back to site. The headmistress of my school in Kilifi came to get me, and she is super nice. She seems very progressive and eager to start up lots of clubs with the students. Count me in! Looks like I will also be teaching 1 or 2 computer classes, and possibly English. I want to start my Life Skills class as well, but not sure if I’m allowed to until 2^nd term. We’ll see. The other volunteer that was at my site in Kilifi has gone home, so I am now on my own at the school. Part of me thinks it’s better this way though. I can’t wait to be settled, to be comfortable teaching, and to just feel like I belong.

Overall training was wonderful, stressful, educational, frustrating, and the best thing ever. Here’s some things that I learned in my pre-service training for Peace Corps Kenya, in no particular order.

1. PB& J is a life saver. As is American candy.
2. I have to adjust the way I speak in order for most Kenyans to understand me. Annunciate everything and don’t use contractions. If you’ve talked to me on the phone here you’ve witnessed this.
3. I feel so lucky to be in deaf education. I can’t wait to start teaching.
4. Taking things one day at a time is just about the only way to go.
5. My group here is pretty much the best group I could have ever asked for.
6. I now know exactly how animals in zoos and celebrities feel on a daily basis.
7. National exams are just about the worst thing ever.
8. I feel even luckier to have received the education I did in the States. Being here has taught me how much I appreciate the American education system.
9. They have plows in Africa too, though not for snow… for mud.
10. “Mzungu” and “’Ow ah you!” are probably the most obnoxious things in the world.
11. It is totally possible and actually quite easy to live without running water or electricity.
12. Kenyan families are not that much different from American families; they laugh and miss and cry and love, and just like mine back home, have a great way of showing me what’s really important.

What I wrote today:

So this post has been mulling over in a word document for the longest time, and I finally now have time to post. Swearing in was an absolute party, I drank a little too much afterwards, and though I didn’t feel so hot traveling the next day, it was the perfect way to end PST. We got up early early on Thursday morning because the trip to Kilifi is not short. Took a taxi to the bus station, took about a 9 hour bus ride to Mombasa, took another hour bus ride into Kilifi town, and a couple tuk tuks to my headmistresses house. Another volunteer, Alli (also in Deaf Ed.), has a supervisor who is out of town for the next week. So she is staying with me for the time being. It’s absolutely wonderful not being alone right away. So since my house was a shambles when we got to Kilifi on Thursday night, we stayed at my headmistress’s house. Kenyan’s are so hospitable it’s redonkulous. We had a full dinner, a nice cold bath, and a comfortable bed. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Friday we made our way over to my house at Kibarani, the primary school for the deaf compound. I think I am really going to like it here. There are always people to say hi to, there are people to take me to town to pick up furniture, there’s a couple small kids who think I’m deaf, and there’s always some very crazy cows trying to eat my laundry. My house is SUPER old, but definitely better than what some of the other volunteers have. It’s got 2 bedrooms, a spacious sitting room, kitchen, walk-in pantry, bathroom, and electricity and running water that are present but very fickle. I have headlamps and water storage tanks for when they decide to go out, so life could be a lot worse. The house, however, was dirtier than all get-out when I moved in, and if you know me at all, you know I hate dirt and I love to clean. Kenyan’s are also not big on aesthetics, so I’ve taken the liberty of repainting the whole inside of the house too. We are well into the throws of priming everything, and I’m still not sure what color will be the finish coat, but anything is better than the satanic blood red that it was before. It’s going to take a few more weeks to get everything finished, but if this is home for the next two years, it needs to be HOME, and not just a dirty cement shack. So aside from the extremely abundant ants, termites, spiders, lizards, cockroaches, giant millipedes, mice, and frogs that find their way into every corner of the house, this place isn’t bad, and it’s gonna be a lot better when I’m done with it.

My house is about a half hour walk from town, and a little bit longer to the new supermarket they just put in! Hooray for living in a tourist town! Tusky’s is fantastic; it’s got fresh bread, and apples, and cleaning supplies, and furniture and clothes and almost everything else. I love it. I feel so lucky to be in Kilifi. Another good thing about this town is that there is already a group of mzungus from all over the place that live here too and hang out all the time. Some from the states, Ireland, the UK and plenty of other PCVs on the coast as well that will hopefully come visit me at some point. I’m pretty sure these white people are going to be crucial to my sanity out here. They do dinner about once a week and drinks even more often. It’s wonderful.

Also, I am SO excited to start teaching. Model School really helped my confidence in the front of a classroom and since I already know a lot of the kids, it will hopefully be an easier transition than I thought. It still scares me that I’m going to be here for two whole years, but hopefully I’ll get over that.

So I know it’s almost Christmas or something, and apparently there’s been snow back home, but that’s all I want to hear about it. I sweat in unbelievable amounts here, and I’m pretty sure I won’t see rain for a few more months. When I think too hard about the holiday season back home I get a little sad, so I don’t like doing that.

I hope everyone is happy and healthy and enjoying winter! I miss you all like nobody’s business, and really hope I get to come home next Christmas. Love you all and Happy Holidays from East Africa!

~ Shub :)

Swearing in, hallucinations, and condom relay races!

It's officially been a little over 7 seven weeks that I've been in Kenya, but it feels like 7 months. We have one more week of training left and then we head to Nairobi to become real volunteers! And even though I'm extremely excited about the prospect of swearing in, I have recently been scared silly about the fact that it's not a given. Apparently people have taken the whole swearing in thing for granted and it came back and bit them in the ass, AKA they were sent home. I have already passed my language exam, and I think I've done everything else ok throughout training, but I am now fully aware of the fact that this is a privilege and swearing in is not something that's owed to me. As anxious as I am to get going, I'm still going to work as hard as I can this last week, and just hope for the best. The thought of being sent home after the past 7 weeks is absolutely unthinkable. So I won't think about it. One week till swearing in!

On a funnier (maybe scarier?) note, I forgot to post about my first meph hallucination a few weeks ago. Mephaquine is the malaria phrophylaxis drug they have a lot of us on, and it's super super strong. It can really screw with your emotional well-being and also can cause very vivid, sometimes lucid dreams. And if you're REALLY lucky, you get hallucinations too :) So a few weeks ago I woke up standing on my pillow. I don't remember getting up to stand on my pillow. But I also was spinning in circles. What's funnier is if you picture it because the mosquito net is only so high, so I was hunched over, standing on my pillow, spinning in circles, and that's the position I woke up in. I was doing this, of course, because there were thousands and thousands of those giant scarab beetles from The Mummy Returns inside my mosquito net with me. I'm not sure why spinning in circles would have helped this situation at all, but whatever. It took me a couple seconds to fully come to, and realize this was the meph talking, and the beetles slowly disappeared. It was uber scary for just those few seconds, and from then until now it's just been really funny. Hope you enjoyed the story! I will definitely continue posting about the hallucinations, as long as they're not too crazy.

So this is unrelated, but still very funny. My 5 year high school reunion just took place over Thanksgiving and I was given a little reminder here in Loitokitok, Kenya. There are these things here called piki pikis, which are essentially a motorbike-taxi type situation. They drive WAY too fast and scare the jibblies out of the mzungus on a frequent basis. Anyways, I was walking through town the other day and saw a piki piki driver (old Kenyan man probably around 50) wearing a QOHS Cheer jacket. This was an old cheerleading jacket from Quince Orchard, my high school in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and since no one else in Peace Corps Kenya went to QO, I was the only one blown away by this. Once I told my friends that the piki piki driver was wearing a cheerleading jacket from my high school, they recognized the craziness of it too. Ahhh!! Feels like home! (Just kidding).

I said before that I would update on the whole Model School situation. The week actually went just as fast as I was hoping and I am much more confident about teaching now. Though Amanda and I only had 6 students for the week, we both taught about 8 lessons, and even gave exams at the end of the week. The students did way better than I expected, considering 25% is passing in Kenya. I got better at organizing my lessons, at explaining things in sign, and also at understanding the kids when they sign to me. Just being around them all week helped my signing improve. Lord knows what two years will do! All in all, I think Model School was a success, and it definitely would not have been without the help of the current PCVs. I could not be more grateful for them. I'm even more excited now to start actually teaching, the way I want to, not the way the Kenyan teachers want me to. I'm thrilled to start up a Life Skills class in Kilifi, and I just can't wait to be teaching the deaf kids. I may just be a little partial, but I am so happy to not be teaching in a hearing classroom. Deaf kids just seem more well-behaved, more attentive, and they definitely participate more, which is key. I did only have 6 kids all week though. Oh well! We'll see how it goes :)

Model School consisted of teaching in the morning, and playing Life Skills games and doing things like Science Fair in the evening and afternoon. Wednesday afternoon was a Life Skills day. It was dedicated entirely to the proper care and use of condoms. Hooray! It's a great thing for these kids to learn, since it can mean the difference between HIV positive and negative. The Peace Corps in their infinite wisdom supplied us with about 50 wooden penises, and TONS of condoms. We had students volunteer to put a condom on in front of the rest of the class, making sure to check the expiration date, check for an air bubble, not open with their teeth, and so on. Guess who volunteered? The deaf kids! After that we had condom water balloon toss, blow-up condom hot potato, and condom relay races. By the end of the day everyone had put a condom on a wooden penis at least once. It was fantastic. It also teaches these kids to not be afraid to talk about things like sex and HIV. It helps them understand more about themselves, about what they're allowed to say no to, and just about being smart. Peace Corps LOVES condoms, so this was a great day.

I think that's about it for now. I spent the day at the market with Mama, so now I'm gonna go make some guacamole for dinner and dream about having it with some fish tacos and a couple gin n' tonics. Again, soak up the holiday season for me! I miss it like whoa.

Happy December!

~ Shub :)