Stateside.

After a LONG and painstaking 31 hours of travel, I finally made it home last weekend in one piece. Well, mostly. My bags decided they liked their 8 1/2 layover in Amsterdam so much that they wanted to spend an extra night there. So they did, and thankfully arrived on my doorstep the following evening. Not quite sure what I would have done if all my Christmas presents for everyone never got to the States. Oh well, I'm here now and so are all my things.

So I don't know if you guys have noticed, but America is like, REALLY cold. ALSO (don't be alarmed), there are A LOT of white people in this country. I know, crazy huh?

Remember how I was planning that giant Thanksgiving dinner? Well it all went very smoothly and I successfully (with help) cooked for about 18 people. We went to a friend's place on the plantation where he has an oven and lots of alcohol. That's about all I need to cook so it worked out well. He got me a turkey somehow, and when I asked where it came from he said "Don't ask; it's not, strictly speaking, legal." So I said, alright whatever, as long as I have a bird! It ended up being about 15 lbs and as delicious as I remember turkey should be. I also made sweet potato casserole, apple sausage stuffing, and sauteed veggies. Plus we had a huge salad, copious amounts of rolls and mashed potatoes, and even a dutch dish from a friend from Holland. AND we had ice cream galore, two cheesecakes, and two mango-apple crumbles for dessert. And of course there was ton of wine and beer to go around. It was wonderful, to say the least. The majority of the people there were not even from the States (Germany, Holland, the UK, Scotland, and probably other small European countries were represented). So since Thanksgiving has never been a tradition with most of them, they all (after eating my meal) decided that it was definitely worth having again :) Here's the proof:

Even though I've only been in the States since Friday, I've actually been away from home in Kilifi since the end of November. I left Kilifi on the 27th, got a wonderful free and air-conditioned ride to Machakos, just outside Nairobi, where we ran Model School for the new group of Education Trainees in country. They are actually supposed to swear-in as real volunteers tomorrow. Congratulations guys!

Model School went relatively well. Machakos, which has had a primary deaf school for a number of years now, just opened a secondary deaf school at the beginning of this year. So about 11 of the new Form 1 students stayed behind to be students in our Model School. And what was super cool was that one of my kids from Kilifi, Dennis Mwanzia, who left school at the end of the first term to move to Machakos, was one of the ones who stayed behind. It was fabulous to see him again and catch up. I had forgotten what an awesome dancer he is, but the Thursday night Talent show quickly reminded me. We also had game night, movie night, and a bonfire at the end of the week.

After a busy week of the trainees figuring out how tough and wonderful teaching at a Kenyan school for the deaf is going to be, I packed my bags again and headed the short two hours to Nairobi. Our mid-service medical exams started bright and early on Monday morning and ended on Wednesday. Thankfully, I don't have TB, my eyesight hasn't really gotten any worse, and I don't think I have schistosomiasis. Unfortunately however, the stresses of working at my school have caused me to stop sleeping normally, and apparently to grind my teeth like one of those automatic pepper shaker things. I've never in my life had problems sleeping, but that's only because I've before had to deal with the level of stress that I deal with at my school. Thankfully, some heavy antihistamines will help the sleeping problem, and the dentist's advice for grinding my teeth was "take a long holiday." Well, long holiday or not I'm still going to have to go back to school, so we'll see what my American dentist says when I see him.

Medical ended on Wednesday and I hung around Nairobi until Thursday evening when I went to the airport so catch my plane to Amsterdam, which, let me tell you, my luggage was SUPER excited about because apparently they love it there. The scheduled 7-hour layover turned into 8 1/2 and by the time I actually got through customs and through figuring out where my bags were, it was about 7 pm Friday when we finally made it home. Driving home in that lovely DC rush hour traffic, I realize that's definitely not one of the things I miss about America. And spending the last few days in luxurious comfort at home, with squishy beds and fluffy towels and water pressure that could kill you, I also realize that even though I miss these American comforts, living without them is not only simple, but also way more fun. Life in the US is just so darn easy. It's much more interesting when you have to work at things a little, believe me. And sitting down to sweet and sour meatballs and asparagus with Mom and Dad last night, I also realize how much I miss ugali (but don't tell anyone).

After getting home and waiting for my luggage, I spent the next few days going back and forth from church, helping my mother set up for her huge Christmas dinner, and prepping my own stuff for the big presentation I had on Sunday morning. Saturday night at the dinner everyone was saying how excited they were for my talk on Sunday morning, which only added to the nervousness I was already feeling of having to actually speak in front of a large group of people, rather than just sign. Thankfully, though, one minute into talking it felt like I was giving a tour again, just a tour of my school and students in Kenya instead of Maryland. I showed some videos of me teaching, and some of my kids being themselves, which everyone loved, and tons of pictures as well. I got numerous compliments about everything and multiple secretly-slip-the-money-in-the-handshake-s, which actually ended up being just about enough to buy that projector I've been wanting for my school. I also might have enough to get some more textbooks and calculators when I get back as well.

        (Side note - If you are feeling generous this holiday season and want an outlet for it, I am still desperately in need of funds to do things at my school. I have all kinds of crap I would still like to get for my kids, but not the financial resources to get it. My email is sarahchubbard@gmail.com, and getting in touch with me that way would be the easiest way to get the ball rolling if you feel the urge to donate. Coming home to my childhood bedroom this season and seeing all the loads of crap I've acquired over the years, I realize I don't need anything material for Christmas, I just need money for my kids. Please let me know if you want to help and my kids and I will be eternally grateful. Thanks in advance!)

So I'm spending my time in America going to Target and Old Navy as often as humanly possible, and seeing as many people as I can. My one and only AngiePants comes in to Maryland next week, as does my redonkulous brother, and I couldn't ask for a better Christmas present, before I fly back to Kenya on the 27th.

I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas/holiday season, and a glorious new year. Keep on keepin' on and don't forget to be thankful for what you do have this year.

Happy Holidays from Maryland and from Kenya!

<3 Shub :)

Mwaka mmoja imeisha.

Can you believe I just spent the last year of my life teaching at a deaf high school in Kenya?? Can you? Can ya? Kenya? Well I sure can't! Ok, corniness aside, it seriously is a crazy thought that I've been in Kenya for over a year, and in Kilifi for almost that. I keep saying that I'm "coming home" for Christmas, and that is certainly true, but when I return to Kilifi after the holidays, I will also be "coming home." Kilifi is my home now and I couldn't love it any more. When I'm not here, I miss it. I miss Kilifi town and the beach and the bridge and creek and the million people who I don't recognize but know that I teach the deaf kids. I miss my grungy old house and my pakas, and the little rocky path I walk to school every morning. There are a lot of things about Kenya that I won't miss while I'm away, but there are a lot of things I will. Can you guess what I'll miss the most? (Hint: They're deaf.) That's right, my kids. I call them my kids, but many of them are my age. Even so, I still feel VERY protective of them and very responsible for their happiness. What's funny though, is that they've been the exact same thing for me, all throughout this entire year. We keep each other happy and we've all gotten quite good at it. We communicate so well, and understand each other so well, it blows my mind that I've only known them for a year. Some days it feels like yesterday I was sitting on that plane thinking "what the hell am I doing," and some days it feels like I've been here and known these kids forever. I think today is one of those forever days.

The school year is ending alright. It's Monday and the kids are slowly figuring out how they are going to get the money to travel home. Most of them have their parents send me money on my phone through m-pesa. They ask me to call home for them, which I gladly do, except when no one in their household speaks English. So my three half-hearing boys use their one good ear, and my phone, to speak Kiswahili to the parents and get things straightened out. The fares for the kids' travel varies a lot because they are from so many different places. Some are from right here in Kilifi, and luckily enough for them, they just need their two legs to get home, but some live really far inland into the heart of the Kenyan village, and some even live as far as Nairobi. What happens often is that since their actual parents live really far away, they stay with aunts or uncles or other family in Mombasa, or other places on the coast. Wherever they go I miss them just the same.

Last week for some reason there was a change in some of the kids' moral code, and a lot of them said they had things stolen; money, clothes, things like that. Then during exams a bunch of my Form 3's decided not to follow my instructions of not using a calculator and used one anyways. I caught them and got really pissed. I took all my Form 3's aside and had a really serious talk about following rules and respecting people, whether you like them or not. I was upset because this was the first time they blatantly ignored something I told them. They normally always listen to me because they know I care about them and they know I don't treat them like dogs, so they respect me in return. But this instance sort of felt like I was just cheated on by my significant other. I gave them a chance to explain themselves but they didn't really have much excuse. Some of them said, "well I saw everyone else doing it, so I just assumed it was ok." I asked them if everyone else in Form 3 went and jumped off Kilifi bridge would you follow them? Again, not much excuse. I'm usually always the teacher that plays around and is happy and goofy most of the time, so seeing me really serious and disappointed hopefully made them think a bit. They apologized profusely and said it would never happen again. Lessons to be learned right?

Anyways, so there were also those cases of them stealing from each other. It's really hard to pinpoint or accuse anyone, especially since they live in such close quarters, and all share stuff all the time anyways. Maybe it was stolen, or maybe it was just lost... it's always hard to say. But last week, one of my Form 3's, Thomas, told me that his box was broken open from the back end, and his 400/- fare for travel home was stolen. This was at the beginning of the week so I made every single one of them promise me they would come to my impromptu Life Skills lesson on Thursday afternoon. I spent a few days trying to figure out how to explain to them the concept of morals and right and wrong. But as soon as I started thinking about it, I realize that so much of it is cultural. It's just ingrained me that stealing is wrong, like I know the sky is up and the ground is down. I don't really know why, it just is. So if no one ever finds out who stole the money, and no one is every punished, and someone actually benefits from it, why is it wrong? You have to get money somehow right? So I started off my Life Skills session with a little story. Imagine Sarah went to America for the holidays and got some money from some very generous friends to help out her students in Kenya. When she brings it back to Kenya it ends up equating to about 10,000/-. She decides that this is kind of a lot and the students don't really need all of that, so she pockets 2,000/- and uses the remaining 8,000/- to buy books and calculators for her kids. (When somebody pockets money the sign the kids use is slightly reminiscent of eating, or swallowing, so that's how I now think of it.) No records were kept on this money, and no one ever asks where every shilling went, so no one ever finds out that Sarah kept that 2,000/- for herself, or "ate it" as the sign suggests. Life goes on as always and the worlds never knows what happened. I finished the story with the big question: "Is this right or wrong?"

The answers were all over the place and immediately there was disagreement. I let them fight it out for a minute or two, just to see what they thought about everything. Then I asked who thought it was wrong, and who thought it was right. It was literally about 50/50. I then asked each of the groups why it was right or wrong. It's right because you don't get caught and it's wrong because it's wrong. Then the concept of conscience comes into play. If I steal something, my conscience will kill me, and tell me that it's absolutely immoral. But how do you describe conscience to a bunch of deaf kids who need as much visual aid as possible in their language, and in a country where conscience is so vastly different from the way that I grew up? It's like trying to explain how the internet works. It's just there because it's there. So I took a different angle. A lot of the kids have asked me in the past if there is a Kenyan equivalent of the Peace Corps. "We know Americans can come to Kenya and help and teach and work, but why can't Kenyans go to America and do the same thing?" So I asked this question again to all of them and the answers got really specific really fast: Because there's more money in America, there's more technology, students study harder, etc. But why is that? So I asked them which country is more developed, why did I come to Kenya to help? That first part is easy to answer; obviously America, it's essentially paradise over there. But the second part was a little tougher. I came to Kenya because Kenya needs help. Sure, America is not perfect, but other than cell phone and Facebook, Kenya (along with many other African countries I think) is pretty far behind. But why does Kenya need help? Well, one of the reasons is because corruption and self-service and tribalism is so rampant in so many aspects of life here. Then I drew my family tree on the board and gave them another little scenario, making sure they know it's just an example. What if my grandparents grew up learning that 'skimming off the top' is one of the only ways to survive? Then when my dad is growing up, will he learn something different? Probably not. Then when Sarah comes into the world and grows up seeing her parents and her teachers skimming off the top and taking their personal share wherever they think it's right, and not getting punished or disciplined for it, is Sarah going to learn anything different? No, she's going to grow up thinking it's no big deal, and just how life works. But if this continues, and no one disrupts this constant generational flow of skimming off the top and helping yourself, then Kenya will forever stay the "nchi ya kitu kidogo" (land of a little something) that it's been for so long.

By the end of this they were dying to know whether me taking that 2,000/- actually was right or wrong, like it's answer on a test or something. I told them that it's wrong, but the truth is it just depends on who you talk to. But i figure I didn't come here to abandon my morals and forget what I stand for, so telling them it's wrong seemed right. I finished by asking them if it's possible for Kenya to change, if it's possible for Kenya to become more developed. About 90% of them said "no way," which was a little disheartening. I corrected them again and told them of course it's possible for things to change, but it won't happen fast. A very wise person once told me that change in Kenya is so slow it's painful. So I told them big things won't necessarily happen in their lifetime, but if they start now, by not copying everyone else just for the sake of conformity and culture, then it's a start. Similarly, when they grow up and finish school, some of them might become teachers, and though it might be a generation later, sort of, the idea of getting more sign-fluent teachers into deaf schools will start to become a reality. So many of them are completely hopeless about the future, because they're deaf and don't know English and it's just much easier to leave school and stay home to give birth and work in the shamba. This outlook on their future kills me, so I tried to explain to them the concept of hope, which, mind you, is just as hard to explain as conscience and the internet. I told them I believe in them and they are some of the most incredible people I know. All the people that make them mad because they treat them poorly or steal their money, those are the people they can choose not to become. It was an interesting Life Skills session, to say the least.

I also realized while I was teaching this lesson that I would never have been able to properly explain most of this stuff at the beginning of the year, because I didn't know most of their signs. I still learn new signs every day, but a year into teaching here I feel like I have a definite grasp on their language and a definite fluency with all of them. I've explained before about how KSL varies greatly depending on where you are in the country. It can depend on which province you're in, which school you're at, or in my case in Kilifi, which classroom you've just walked into. My Form 3's have a really well developed vocabulary, albeit some of it is really only understood by the Form 3's themselves. When the students come to secondary school, they're usually coming from lots of different primary schools. Which means that their signs will be different; not so different that they can't communicate, but definitely different. So the longer they spend in school together, the  more streamlined their language becomes. So my Form 3's, being the oldest at the school right now, have had three years to unify their signs. I learn new signs every day, and it's usually the Form 3's who teach them to me.

But sadly everyone has to go home now that school is out. It's not really appropriate in Kenyan culture for students and teachers to actually enjoy each other, but I miss those kids so much when school is closed, Kenyan cultural appropriateness or not. Thankfully this month and next I have a lot of traveling to keep me busy, and a wonderful visit home to look forward to. But as soon as I get back to Kenya I'll be anxiously awaiting the day when my kids come back. My Form 1's will no longer be the babies, my Form 2's will become Form 3, and my Form 3's will be the big bad Form 4's. That also means that a wonderful new group of Form 1's will be coming in. Yay! More deaf kids!

SO. I'm spending this week trying to relax and get ready for Friday, when I'm cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner (hopefully with some help) for a bunch of ex-pat friends in the area. This will be the third year in a row that I'm not home for Thanksgiving, and since my cooking partner Kate went back to the States, I'm gonna have to really cook up a storm. We've got a turkey ordered from Mombasa, plenty of wine and beer, and as many Thanksgiving-y dishes as I can possibly think of. I'll try to take pictures and keep you posted. Then on Sunday I have to catch a Nairobi bound bus to head into Machakos for Model School. Remember last year at this time I was prepping for the first time I would ever teach, at my Model School in Loitokitok? Well this year the Secondary Deaf Eds are in Machakos, and Amanda and I, being the big bad veteran volunteers, get to run Model School. They just opened a secondary deaf school in Machakos, right on the same compound as the primary school, and some of the new Form 1's will be staying behind to be students in our Model School. The new trainees will practice teaching, we'll have a talent show, and a bonfire, a movie night, and every type of condom-related relay game you can think of. I'll keep you all posted on that too.

Then when Model School is finished myself and the other PCVs there with me will head into Nairobi (carefully of course because of all our new travel restrictions) for our mid-service medical exams, where they will see whether or not I actually acquired shistosomiasis from the Nile in Uganda. THEN, on the night of the 8th, I jump on a plane back to the good 'ol U S of A. My schedule is rapidly filling up for my two and a half weeks in the States so if you want some Shub time you better move fast! Just kidding, I want to see everyone and I will def make time for it :)

Alright, I suppose I better attach some pictures to this novel. I always think 'I can't do a blog post now, I don't have enough to say!' But as soon as I start typing, I can't stop. Oh well.

Here's some of my boys on a random Saturday - David, Paul, Mwavu, and Mbaraka

The kids do their own church on Sunday morning:

I love them:

Me with my Form 1's 

And my Form 2's 

 And my Form 3's

So one year is finished, or mwaka mmoja umeisha, as they say in Kiswahili. Can't believe I'm halfway done.  Sometimes I'm really not sure I can take it a whole 'nother year, but looking at pics of these kids makes me realize I have no choice. I've said it before and I'll say it again: no one said Peace Corps would be easy, but it seems it's hard for all the wrong reasons. But I could never forgive myself if I lied to these kids about coming back after Christmas. So I'll be back guys! I promise.

Ok, had enough of the novel yet? Signing off and wishing everyone the happiest of Thanksgivings! Enjoy the family, friends, food, football, and general American-ness of everything for me.

Tutaonana very soon!

Miss you all bunches,

~ Shub :)

Almost a real school!

Pole (sorry) that I haven't written in a while. Things have been only mildly exciting in Kenya. School is still school (take that to mean whatever you want), Kilifi is still wonderful (but getting hotter by the day), and my kids still mean the world to me. Sometimes they ask me so many non-stop questions that seem so silly and minute that I get frustrated and forget how much I love them, and why. Last week my Form 3 girls told me not to wear light-colored nail polish because gosh-darnit Sarah you're already white. Today I spent most of math lesson reminding Emmanuel that this is a deaf school and he can teach me Kiswahili later. And every morning, no matter how many times I tell them I don't like it, they offer me uji anyways. Those are just a few of the many reasons why I love them.

Wait, what's uji, you say? Why, it's porridge! I've told you about ugali right? - maize flour boiled with water until it forms a sticky cake-y consistency and tastes like nothing. But ugali is palatable, especially with beans or sukuma (bloiled kale), and I actually crave it now. Uji on the other hand, for some reason, is just horrible. Uji is ugali with -- wait for it -- more water. It's liguid ugali. Maybe it's because it doesn't come with beans or sukuma or green grahams, but it smells like nothing and tastes like even less. Kenyans love it though, and my kids scarf it down like it's a bowl full of chocolate ice cream. It is the only thing they get in the morning, and besides half a cup of tea at 10am, it's the only thing from 6am to 12:30pm. So I guess a little uji is better than nothing. Maybe.

What's cool though is that we actually have our own kitchen now, up at the secondary school, and my kids no longer have to eat with the primary kids, and get served primary-sized portions. Due to some miscommunication at the beginning of the term between the head of my school and the head of the primary school, we had to construct a kitchen really fast and get ourselves cooking our own food super quick. The basics went up in a day or two, and the rest followed shortly after. Here's what it looked like when it first went up:

We all were pretty excited when we were first able to cook for ourselves. So I took a bunch of pictures of that too. Including one that my kids think is infinitely hilarious: the mzungu stirring (or rather attempting to stir) ugali:

(can you see the giggle on Francis' face?)

Anyhoodles, this is what it looks like now (minus some doors that they just put on yesterday):

Another thing I always think about Kenya and how we do things here, is the difference in things like building houses and food preparation. In America, when you want beef you go to the grocery store and pick from multitudes of different cuts, weights, fat content, prices, everything. If you want beef in Kenya you either kill the cow yourself or go to the butcher who just killed the cow 5 minutes ago. I think cows are harder to kill than goats, so we eat a lot of goat here. Also, our ugali is straight from the land outside. The maize was grown right on our school grounds, the kernels were picked off the cob by every single one of my kids and I, and it was ground into flour at another teacher's house. The beans come from a neighboring farmer and the sukuma comes right from our own school shamba (garden). The kitchen is made of mud and sticks and food is always cooked over a wood fire. We sit in the sun and eat with our hands and for me, everything tastes good because it's organic and unprocessed and real and seems exactly the way it should be. No plastic packaging, no expiration dates, and definitely no factory processing. It's pretty great. 

So we're up and running with food, and save for a girls dormitory, we're almost a real school! Huzzah! The boys have also been doing a good job clearing a nearby field for football. After an afternoon of slashing and moving rocks they all celebrated with a giant football game before dinner. The field is a little rough and not level but I'm sure continuous afternoons of playing on it will totally do the trick. Also, a while back, the boys decided the wanted a new football, since the ones they had were old and weak and fell apart pretty easily. So they pooled their money and had me go to Tusky's to get one. They gave me 800 shillings and I found a ball for 750/-. I was pretty proud of myself for finding it and the boys were super excited when I brought it home. Unfortunately though, it broke within the next week and we were back at square one. So for some reason (maybe because I can't resist their endless begging, big brown puppy dog eyes, and beautiful smiles) I told them I would buy them a new ball, and a good one this time. I figured my judgement on the right one last time didn't work so I would go by price instead; the more money it is, the better the quality, right? Well this time I spent 2,000/- and thankfully the ball hasn't died yet. Fingers crossed it stays solid or I'm out another few thousand shillingis. 

Last week, and for about 8 consecutive days into last week, it rained non-stop. This is obviously good for crops and water tanks and stuff like that, but not good for walking or playing football, or cooking in a roofless mud hut. The rain ended a few days ago and hasn't been back since, and has been rapidly replaced with scorching heat, which is what I'm a little more familiar with here. BUT the rains left a giant lake in a valley next to school which, to my surprise and no one else's, has proven really resourceful for Kilifi residents. All manner of livestock come to drink from it. Every form of transportation vehicle has been driven in it to be washed. People come to wash clothes, to drink, and bathe, and you wouldn't believe the number of little naked Kenyan children that spend all day in it just playing. My kids and I can sit on the front porch of the boys dorm and have a really great view of our new Lake Victoria/local watering hole. 

Since the rains have stopped, I can see the water level getting low, and before too long it'll just be a big pile of dust again, but for now it's pretty cool. 

Here's another pic I took of the boys dorm (uber clean for the weekend):

I remember when I first ever walked into the dorm, I looked around and thought, man this is like workcamp, but for life. Everything seemed so similar to those weeks in the summer I would spend at church workcamp rebuilding houses and sleeping on gym floors. I couldn't believe the condition of things here at the beginning of the year - those "mattresses" as they call them are just pieces of 2-inch high foam, and underneath is just metal rods. I mean, talk about uncomfortable. But a year later I realize now I only thought that because I've seen something different. It might not always be better in everyone's eyes, but it's definitely different. So it's all about perspective. My boys haven't really known much else in life, so for them, it's totally and completely normal; and in fact kinda nice because it's brand new. The mattresses are clean and they're used to them. And now for me, nothing here really shocks me anymore. All that crazy cultural crap we had to adjust to is just life. Look at me! I'm adjusted! Well, mostly. I'm still learning how to play the get-things-done-but-be-really-indirect-about-it game. That could take a lifetime to master. 

The new group of Education volunteers (trainees) got here on the 5th of this month and are currently in training right now. Hooray! Like my group, some of them are in Machakos (the deaf ed-ers) and some are in Loitokitok (the hearing ed-ers). There are two new Secondary Deaf Ed trainees too, one of which will be coming to Kilifi next week to shadow me at school. Eek! It will be so fun, and the kids can't wait. ALSO, for this new group's Model School, Amanda and I will be going to Machakos to run things. That will be the last week in November, shortly after which I'll head to Nairobi for my mid-service medical exam, and then (hopefully healthy) I'll jump on a plane back to the States :)

So other than that, nothing else is new! I hope America is good :) My itinerary for the trip home is still taped to my living room wall and constantly reminding me how awesome Christmas is gonna be. 

And what better to end with than pics of the monsters. Don't be fooled by the innocent faces and cute sleeping positions.

Aight peeps, cheers and I miss you!

~ Shub out :)

PS I got yelled at by a Kenyan today for feeding my cats because there are starving people in Africa. Wait. What? 

I just can't win.

Dear My Deaf Kids,

You guys are the best thing to ever happen to me. Thank you for always being patient with me, with each other, and with life in general. You have no idea how much I admire your constant strength and unfailing happiness. I hope one day you can realize how much you all have come to mean to me in so short a time. Two years is truly not enough. I will never forget the way you guys sign, the way you all say my name differently, and the way I have so little privacy and personal space around you. I love it and I wouldn't have it any other way. I adore your perpetual hunger for knowledge and learning new things, and I admire your heart and humility in learning them. I respect how brutally honest and utterly unreserved you can be; you have stripped me of any vanity and conceit and unknowingly forced incredible amounts of personal acceptance on me. I can never thank you enough for that. Please try to remember some of the things I taught you, and know that I strive every day to teach you guys as much as you teach me. Thank you for your openness, your perseverance, your stories, and your overall ability to spread unbelievable happiness. But above all, know that I hope you always stay your open, kind, cheerful, curious, patient selves.

                                   Love always,

Sarah, Sthedla, Thera, Aras, Chana, Madam, and always and forever *insert sign name here*

Month 8 and my watoto wasiosikia

School is FINALLY back in session. Sort of. By that I mean my kids have slowly started to arrive. Thank goodness though.

After Camp GLOW at the beginning of month 8 (which is how we refer to August in sign and how I now think of it in my head) I came back to Kilifi for a little bit before I headed for Nairobi again to help work out the plans for the training of the new Education group coming next month. Eeek! Nairobi is nice because I always seem to get a lot of work done at the Peace Corps office, but also because the Ethiopian food is phenomenal. Also I can find Herbal Essences hair products. So other than shopping and eating way too much ethnic chakula, we did end up hashing out the up-coming PST, after and amidst what seemed like a lot of unfortunate arguing. Turns out the effects of all the financial crises in the US are also felt all the way over in East Africa. But I think that's mostly because I'm technically employed but the US government. Or something. Anyways, with budget cuts abounding we had to do a lot of finagling with a lot of different things for PST, but awesome as we are here in Kenya, we made it work. Tim Gunn would be proud. A lot of things will be different from my PST a year ago, but I'm sure it will still be fine (fingers crossed). It's just hard to do stuff when you don't have any money to do it with. Below is a view of the conference room at the office where we pasted calendar after calendar onto the walls to get everything in order. Fun huh?

So we are getting a group that I think will be a little smaller than mine was when we started, AND we're getting two new Secondary Deaf Ed Volunteers! Hooray! Let's just hope they're as cool and Amanda and I (*cough cough*). And with the new budget cuts I won't be able to help out with as much of the PST as I had hoped, but Amanda and I signed up to work Model School, the culminating second-to-last week of PST when all the trainees practice teaching in Kenya for the first time. This time the Sec. Deaf Ed's will be in Machakos for the majority of PST, instead of Loitokitok, so that's where their Model School will be. The new group gets to country on October 5th, and they swear in as PCVs on December 14th. Karibu Kenya new dudes!

After Nairobi I took the night train back with some other PCVs on their way to holiday in Lamu and spent a little more time in Kilifi before I left again for Bamburi, and town just north of Mombasa that's basically only on the map for the multitudes of fancy beach-side resorts. Lucky enough for me, I got to stay at one! August was the month for a workshop called Cross-Sector. Here in PC-Kenya we spend a lot of time with our own sector. Education with education, public health with public health, and business with business. This is for obvious reasons since our job descriptions are so vastly different a lot of the time. Cross-Sector was cool though because I got to spend the week with lots of Public Health and Business PCVs I'd never met before, who, by the way, are pretty fun. Cross-Sector is sponsored by PEPFAR, the same peeps who also funded Camp GLOW. Since they're whole thing is about Aids Relief that's what we spent the week talking about. But relief can't just come from mzungus who are in country for a brief two years, it's gotta come from within! (Does that sound corny?) Anywho, the point is each attending PCV had to bring two Kenyan counterparts for the week. I brought two teachers from my school: Mr Mwamuye, who I think has been teaching for a while and is really funny when you sit down and talk to him, and Jamal, who is not quite 22, completely deaf, fresh out of secondary school, and other than the title of "teacher" is essentially one of my kids. Now the hotel we stayed was called Severin Sea Lodge, and I'm sure there's a big fancy website if you google it. The rooms were beautiful, there were two pools with slides and stuff, ample hanging-around space, and unlimited gourmet food you wouldn't believe. The salad bar was obvi my favorite part, and as long as I read the labels on the other things, I knew what everything was. Jamal on the other hand, had never seen most of that kind of food before. He spent the first few days wondering where all the ugali was. He also made some fast friends with some German boys who were there on holiday. Ages 10 and 12, Patrick and Max go to a special school in Germany and ended up teaching us the German Sign Language alphabet and a couple other words in German. Talk about cross-cultural huh? Here's Jamal with Patrick:

Cross-Sector ended and I happily came back to Kilifi anxiously awaiting the start of school. Break months are ok, as long as I'm busy and traveling and stuff. If I'm stuck at home with no where to be and nothing to do, I might as well be dead. It sucks. The compound here does not seem right without my kids, and I don't feel right without them either. It's like 68 different parts of me are missing. I hate saying goodbye to them, because I know at some point the goodbye will be for real, but for now I know they'll come back when school opens. So when I got back to Kilifi, school was supposed to open, my 68 missing pieces were supposed to fall back into place, and the world was supposed to be set right again. BUT thanks to the Kenyan government, all the teachers in Kenya went on strike - something about the current teachers wanting 28,000 new teachers to be hired, but the Ministry of Education not being able to because the money was given to the Department of Defense to raise the salaries of the military. So teachers refused to teach, which means schools refused to open. Including mine. So I had a really long week of waiting, walking around town, and watching WAY too much How I Met Your Mother. Even though they said the strike might last a month or more, it was over in a week, and finally FINALLY my kids have started coming back. Whew. I'm whole again.

I always assume the start of the term will be relatively uneventful, and though that's how it is for Kenyans, it's totally not for me. Tuesday was when the kids started coming, and they had a meeting with the parents who came that day as well. Thankfully I've been exempt from this start-of-term meeting from here on out since it HAS to be in Kiswahili and sometimes even Giriama. Fine by me! So Tuesday was a hang-out day and was filled with catching up with my kids. One of the things we caught up on was our ongoing fight about whether witchcraft is real or not. The kids have this sign that for the longest time I could not put a word to. You rub the palm of one hand with the index finger of another, and blow on it. A couple context clues into me first seeing it I was telling the kids it's called "mojo." Someone finally spelled for me "witchcraft" but I still see the sign and "mojo" is what runs through my head. Anyways, just like it's hard to find a non-religious Kenyan, it's also hard to find one that does not believe in witchcraft. My kids will give me example after example after example of how witchcraft/magic/mojo/karma is totally real, and then finish with, "NOW do you believe in it?" And I've tried to explain to them over and over again that I can always ration it out with science or coincidence or something, but they won't have it. Coincidence is not a concept they can/want to grasp, especially with the belief in witchcraft so deeply rooted. Then I try to play the "I'm your teacher and I've been to university" card but that doesn't work either. Nothing does. Then, just to mess with them even more, I ran and got my deck of cards and showed them some very simple, reasonable, easy-to-learn card tricks. This blew them away so much that some of them had to even leave the room. I then proceeded to show them how the trick was done, hoping that would negate some of the witchcraft logic. It didn't. *Sigh*. I tried.

So Tuesday was dedicated to mojo, and today was dedicated to maize. Yay Kenya! The rainy season is coming to a close, and with that, so is the growing of the maize. One entire side of the boys dorms was filled with ears of maize, hundreds and hundreds of them, all that needed to be picked so that the kernels can be ground up for ugali. About half my kids had come by the end of today, and every single one of us spent the entire day picking kernels off the cob. We obviously had numerous kernel-throwing battles, and there was so much of it that I kind of felt like I was sitting in a really lumpy ball pit, but 8 hours later just about every kernel was separated. This gave me another day to sit and chat with my kids, my new favorite Kenyan pastime, and another day to just soak up how wonderful they all are. Not sure how I got so lucky. Osman spent most of today telling me he's absolutely certain he'll make it to America someday. Rock on kid! I still don't have all of them back yet, but hopefully I won't have to wait much longer. The pics below are mid-afternoon, with about half done.

Tomorrow I think we all have a lot of slashing in store. Bring on the blisters! I wonder what Friday will be...

So as always, my life here is revolving around my watoto wasiosikia, my kids who cannot hear. There's no equivalent for the word 'deaf' in Kiswahili so most of the time people call them "mbubu," which means something along the lines of dumb and is very derogatory, or "viziwi" which I don't know the literal translation for but I think is also derogatory. So I have learned how to say "Hawaitwi mbubu au viziwi. Wanaitwa watoto wasiosikia!" which means "Don't call them those stupid ignorant words, ya moron, just called them kids who can't hear." I may or may not have added the 'ya moron' part, but you get the idea.

AAAANNNNNNDD I almost forgot to say that I bought my ticket home for Christmas! YES! I leave Kenya on the 8th of December and get into Dulles mid-afternoon on the 9th. And I think I might need to go straight to Target before actually going home. We'll see. Then I fly out again on the 27th. I wish I could stay through New Year's but I have a limited amount of leave days and I need to save up for when Mom (and maybe Bro!?) comes to visit next April.

I'll leave you with a photo of what the monsters I live with did to some toilet paper while I was out one day. Same thing happened the next day too. Thanks monsters. You're great.

Ok, cheers everyone! Miss you like crazy and can't friggin' WAIT to see you all in December!

~ Shub :)

Camp GLOW and August

So I actually got to sleep past 6:00 this morning, because the neighbor kids weren't screaming as loud as usual. *Sigh*. It's now mid-August, and as much as I need break months to catch up on sleep and get things done around my house, I miss my kids like never before. The school compound gets full of hearing children come home from boarding school, and is completely void of Deaf kids. It just feels like something (a lot of things) is missing. But I know that in a few short weeks they will all start trickling back into school, and things will be back to the way they should. I can't even fathom how much it's going to hurt to leave these kids for good. They are my life here, and without them, I don't feel right.

Maybe it was a mistake from the beginning to get so attached, knowing that I can't be with them forever. That's one of the caveats of teaching right? Students continuously come and go. Except in this case seeing them after school, sometime in the future, seems almost impossible. Hmph.

Anywho, I just got back from Kisumu last week, with 4 of my girls, one teacher, 4 girls from Lamu and another teacher, a couple girls from Malindi and south coast, and a BUNCH from Western and Nyanza province. Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Kisumu had about 86 girls total, half of which were hearing, and half of which were deaf. It's a two day trip to Kisumu for us coasties, since it's literally the opposite end of the country, but we survived, and yours truly ended up being in charge of A LOT of money to get A LOT of people fed and transported. It was uber stressful but also tons of fun, mainly because I had 4 of my own awesome girls with me. I took Mercy and Monica, both Form 3, and Teresia and Amina, both Form 2. All four are great students, but most importantly, girls that a lot of other kids look up to. Plus they are hilarious, and just fun to be around, so that was a bonus for me :) What was also cool was that since the majority of the other deaf girls at camp were from primary schools, my girls were forced into being role models right from the get-go. But they had no problem with that. Even on the first night of travel, one of the other volunteers commented to me about how responsible and grown-up my girls are. Even though that has nothing to do with me, I blushed anyways and went to tell them. The girls were just as flattered as I was, and I told them it was a great start and to keep it up for the rest of the week.

Mercy and Teresia were SUPER excited for PB&J and

potato chips. What a treat!

So Monday was all about communication and confidence and goals for the future. We started with the deaf girls teaching the hearing girls a little sign language, and giving them sign names. I then did the introduction for just the deaf girls, and later taught a lesson on saying 'no' and being assertive (something I keep going back and forth with in Kenya; should I abide by the silly rules of this perpetually indirect culture, or should I just be rude and confront people and say no?). Tuesday was women's health: I taught the lesson on pregnancy and already exhausted from all the hassle of traveling I took the afternoon off for a much-needed nap. Wednesday was HIV/AIDS day and I and another volunteer did the lesson on prevention. ::Enter dozens of penis and vagina models, and more condoms than anyone could ever ask for:: I showed the girls the proper way to put on a male condom then everyone got a chance to do it themselves. Shyness and embarrassment had to be thrown out the window for this part, but since they're all girls anyways, it wasn't too tough. I also told a really fun story to the girls about condoms, and deaf people, and communication. It doesn't translate well into English, and is much better in sign. I posted it here, with a brief intro. See if you can get any of it :) Thursday morning was about decision-making, and Thursday afternoon we did field trips to some NGOs in Kisumu town, and to the LVCT, the Deaf VCT in Kenya. Friday I taught a lesson on rape, just before the girls learned all about self-defense. Then Friday afternoon we went to an Impala park; saw a couple zebras, had a nice little boat ride on Lake Victoria, and came home for the closing ceremony and the disco. At the ceremony, each girl got called up individually and got a certificate and photo of the whole camp. The disco followed shortly after and lasted an hour or so before all of us counselors decided it was much more worthwhile to sleep. All in all, it was a good week. Exhausting, but good.

Mercy and Monica teach their new hearing friends how to fingerspell

My girls and I at the bonfire :)

Me teaching pregnancy

or something Yay condoms!

At the end of the week at the Deaf VCT. Love them!

Remember I said I did the introduction for my group? Well what I thought would be cool, since we had deaf girls from all over the country, would be to compare signs. So I held up a bunch of cards with words on them, and had everyone show their specific sign for it. Some words had virtually all the same sign, with a little variation in hand-shape or movement, but some had 4 or 5 different signs that were not even close to similar. Examples were "coast," "mzungu," "mango," "rice," "sex," "bus," and "pregnant." What's interesting though, is that even though the girls have different signs for the same word or concept, 98% of the time they still fully understand each other. It's actually pretty cool. Once you have a general idea of what a word might look like in sign, seeing it in lots of different ways is pretty intuitive. And on that note, I remember being super nervous that my girls from Kilifi would be the only ones at camp that understood me. Thankfully though, because of that whole intuitive sign stuff, that wasn't the case. I adjusted some signs here and there, or repeated myself with different signs, but all in all, it seemed to work ok.

Another funny thing was that a lot of people at camp thought I was deaf when they first met me. Some of the other deaf ed. volunteers brought counterparts with them, teachers at their schools who are also deaf. And apparently, for some reason, upon first meeting me, they assumed I was deaf as well, because of the way I sign. I took it as a compliment every time, and reiterated that my students are the best teachers in the world. I think I'm actually learning more from them than they are from me. Another flattery moment came when volunteers who teach in primary deaf schools told me they wished they taught my kids in secondary. My girls LOVED this and I told them once again how happy I am to be where I am, and how lucky I am to have them as my kids. Peace Corps is tough, but there's a lot I have to be truly thankful for.

SO. This week I have been sleeping and washing clothes and baking a lot. Those three activities usually take up most of a day, but I've also been catching up with my friends in Kilifi. Before I forget, I want to give a big shout-out to Ellen Jennings, who is moving back to the UK next week to go to grad school, and who has been an awesome friend and integral part of my sanity here. Thanks for all the Thai pork curries and the showers and letting me use your oven to my heart's content:) I miss you already!

Right now there are a bunch of volunteers in Mombasa (Bamburi, actually) at a week-long Peace Corps workshop, and when they finish there, a few of them are make the oh-so-long 45 minute trek north to Kilifi. Most of them have never seen the coast before, and since I practically live in a vacation spot, I plan on taking them on all the vacation-type adventures I can. I want to go to snorkeling, spend a day at a resort, and just relax on the beach. Yay Beach Corps! Then next weekend on the 21st I make the day-long trip to Nairobi once again for PST planning. We'll have 3 full days of meetings, I am DEFINITELY going to fit in time to see Harry Potter, and I'm coast-bound again on the 25th. Then the week after that I have to go to Bamburi for the same workshop half my group is at now. That will end the first week of September, and then my kids start coming back to school :) As long as I stay busy break months aren't that bad.

The pakas are doing good. We've been working on letting them outside, which is much harder for me, actually. It's like letting your kids go off to college: you just have to trust they'll come back at some point. I have recently seen one of the neighbor kids trying to beat them with sticks though, so I've kinda regressed and become even more hesitant than I was before. Oh well. Karibu Kenya. Currently, Marie is sleeping above me, on top of my mosquito net (she likes the hammock feel) and Toulouse is sprawled out on my Spongebob blanket, which he also enjoys peeing on now and then. Marie has no boundaries whatsoever and will go anywhere and everywhere she pleases, and Toulouse's new favorite thing is to eat everything in sight, whether it's edible or not, throw it up a few hours later, then eat what he just threw up. Cute.

So everyone is good, I'm still alive and kickin', and I hope you guys are all great back home. Summer is almost over right? Hooray for school again! Ok, love you all bunches and bunches. Check out facebook for the full reel of Camp GLOW pics, and have an awesome rest of August :)

Miss you!

~ Shub :)

Two down, four to go.

Sittin' here eating some cold leftover stir fry and wondering how on earth I just made it through the longest and hardest 9 months of my life, and why on earth those long months went by so fast. Hmm.

My school is officially closed. We were informed a few days ago that Kibarani (the primary school where I live, and where the kids eat and spend all other time outside the classroom) doesn't have enough money to keep feeding my secondary kids for the rest of the week. Luckily, exams are finished, so closing early is not a big deal. I spent yesterday finishing my marking and compiling grades, and attempting to talk to a BUNCH of my kids parents.

Since my kids (all but 3) can't hear a darn thing, they have to have to have someone else talk with their parents. Round about the time school is closing the kids all start realizing they have no money to get home. Kenya has this wonderful thing called m-pesa, which is essentially banking through your phone; you can send money back and forth, buy airtime for your phone or for internet, and even do all that stuff to someone else's phone from yours, and it's totally free to use. It's pretty genius. I just got an m-pesa account this term, and I'm not sure why I didn't get one sooner. BUT now that I have it, my phone gets passed around school like it's its job. First the kids will come up to me and ask me to call their parents. The first question I ask is whether or not they need money. If the answer is yes, the next question I ask is whether or not their parents know English. Some of the parents I know have decent enough English because I've spoken to them before, but most I have no idea. My kids say "Yeah! They know English!" Fine. So I call. Annnnnnd I get nowhere, because all I hear on the other line is Kiswahili. If I greet them in Kisawhili (which I've totally got down after 9 months), they start rambling. The conversation usually goes nowhere, because they don't know English, and my Kiswahili is so limited (kidogo sana!), so we hang up and I realize I probably shouldn't have believed the DEAF kid about which languages their parents speak. How would they know? The next thing I do is get one of my half-ers. I have three boys who are fluent in Kiswahili and their mothertongue and all that stuff, and can hear fairly well out of at least one ear. Emmanuel is Form 2, and Alii and Francis are Form 3. Francis is my fellow interpreter when we have outside people come in for Guidance and Counseling sessions, Alii is my head boy, and Emmanuel is my at-site Kiswahili teacher. They're wonderful. So they begrudgingly use my phone to call other kids' parents and ask for money. The money is sent to my phone through m-pesa, I use it for internet, and I give my kids cash out of my pocket. It's a pretty hilarious process, but it works.

So Saturday I head to Nairobi with four of my girls, one of my teachers, and 10 other people (deaf girls, teachers, and other PCV's) from the coast. We'll spend Saturday night in Nairobes and then we have private shuttles from our hotel in NRB to the center outside Kisumu where we'll have camp for the week. Camp GLOW is going to be jam-packed with life lessons and meeting new people, and I'm pretty sure my girls have NO idea how much they are going to enjoy themselves. Only a fraction of my kids have even been off the coast before, so this will be an awesome experience for them.

I, on the other hand, am quite nervous. As a camp counselor (which is no big deal) I have to teach a couple lessons during camp (also no big deal). BUT I realize more and more that 85 - 90% of the signs I use in normal conversation now I learned here, in Kilifi, at school. There was so much I didn't know when I get here, because the signing I learned in training was not the signing that exists on the coast. Seven months into it, talking to my kids and teaching them is not an issue, but that's with MY kids. I'm only going to have four of my kids there; the rest will be Deaf from all over Kenya, and probably won't understand a thing I say. Sadly, though, these kids are taught from an early age (especially the deaf ones) to never speak up if they don't understand, to just sit quietly and take it. Rote memorization is the name of the game, and participatory interactive activities are far and few between.

(Side note: One of my girls in Form 2, who I'm coincidentally taking to camp, asked me the other day if I had ever seen a Deaf teacher walk into a hearing classroom and starting teaching in sign language to a bunch of hearing kids who don't understand sign language. That's absurd right? She phrased it differently and I wasn't quite sure where she was going with it at first, but she asked again and I figured it out. These kids want so bad to understand and are so hungry for information. There is so much they don't know, because it has never been properly explained to them. And in a few short years time they have to take the most important exam of their lives. But how are they supposed to do that when all their teachers do is talk at them?)

OK, back to the story. The point is even if the girls don't understand me, because they come from a different part of Kenya, they will probably still tell me they understand. It's taken most of my kids the better part of two terms to realize if they ask me questions and tell me they don't get it, that I won't get mad. No problem! So I try to explain it a different way. Sometimes it takes twice as long, and I always walk out of the classroom thinking I would need 15 years to teach these kids everything they need to know for that exam, but at least they're understanding something.

What elseee..... Oh! I just got a call from my Peace Corps peeps in Nairobi to ask if I want to be a part of planning the up-coming Pre-Service Training for the new Education group coming to Kenya in October. Hooray! I am thrilled and thoroughly honored that they asked. Right now, out of around 150-ish volunteers in Kenya, three of us are Secondary Deaf-Ed volunteers. The rest of the Education volunteers teach at either secondary hearing schools, or primary deaf schools. BUT we are supposed to have 2 new Secondary Deaf Ed-ers coming in with the next group (YES!). I've also heard, from Peace Corps and even from some of my kids, that there are a bunch of new Secondary Deaf Schools cropping up all over the country. How cool is that? So I head back to Nairobi on the 21st of August to meet up with my awesome Peace Corps staff, and a couple other PCVs to hash out the plans for the upcoming PST. I can't wait. This also means I will once again have access to really good Ethiopian and Thai food, I can buy contact solution, and I can go see Harry Potter :)

On a creepier note, I recently discovered something (or a lot of things) that reminded me once again that I live in Africa. I came home one evening from dinner, and thank GOODNESS I left my outside light on, or I would have walked right into a swarm of thousands and thousands of ants at the base of my front door. My house is essentially just a big cement block and in no way sealed from the outside, and there's only one door, so I felt a little stuck for a minute. They were all different sizes, brown and reddish, and very shiny. There were also these HUGE ones being carried by the smaller one that I later learned are called sausage flies, because their abdomens are giant and wriggling and gross. They were everywhere, and blocking everything just well enough that I had to get close to them to open the door. So I did, terrified. Maybe these are those ants that can eat people or something! So I finally got inside, shut the kittens in my bedroom, put on my rainboots, grabbed the broom, the bottle of insect killer, and got into attack mode. I sprayed and swept for about 10 minutes, because they just kept coming out of the walls. Thankfully it was after dark, and late enough that all my kids had gone to preps, so no one could see how ridiculous I looked. I bet it was pretty ridiculous though. So I finished my killing spree and quickly got on google to figure out what these guys were. I think I typed in "swarm of ants in Africa" or something and the second hit down was an exact picture of my new found friends. Turns out they are called safari ants, driver ants, or siafu in Kiswahili. Check it out here. Apparently, during the rainy season, they leave their hill and migrate to a place where they can find food. They form these giant marching columns, which are easily avoided, if you can move, and if the column doesn't pass through your house. AWESOME. If something does get in their path, they will do everything they can to defend themselves, which really just means they'll eat you. I read other stories online about how people in villages in the Congo actually have to evacuate their homes, or be eaten alive. Any animals inside the house will surely be eaten. So as you can imagine, this made me feel really comfortable. It's not over. The next night I had to go out again, and when I came home, they were back, but this time they had doubled in number. For a split second I thought 'I have GOT to take a picture of this, no one is going to believe me,' then the realization that they were swarming inside the house hit me, and I started panicking; maybe they had eaten the kittens? So I got inside, saw the kittens were still alive, and sprayed and swept all over again, this time for even longer. Two nights was enough for me. The next day I went to town and bought this vermin powder stuff they have and threw a whole bunch in the holes where they were coming from. Thankfully I haven't seen them since, and hopefully never will again. The rainy season is nice because everything cools down, but there certainly are more bugs than I expected.

So two terms down, and four to go. Peace Corps spent a lot of training telling us our first three months at site would be the hardest, and everything else after that is a piece of cake. Strangely, I seem to be doing things backwards. My first term teaching was amazing. This past second term though was a LOT tougher than I expected, but for the weirdest reasons. I definitely cried a lot more in Term 2, and definitely had more thoughts about going home in Term 2, but I promised these kids two years, and I have to deliver. No one said this would be easy right? It just seems so often that it's hard for all the wrong reasons. I know now it's not the material things from America that I miss, it's the aspects of peoples' personalities, and things like a sense of priority, work ethic, and accountability. I'm learning more and more about how to 'play the game' here and how essential it is to my success as a volunteer. Hopefully this term was and will be the hardest, and hopefully things will only get easier. Time will tell right?

Ok, I'm exhausted and need some sleep. Miss you all like never before. Did I tell you I'm coming home for Christmas?

:)

Cheers!

~ Shub :)

Sarah: Camp counselor, committee member, and raw chicken.

It was Tuesday and almost midnight when I started writing this post. I was doing this while simultaneously wasting precious megabytes and doing everything I possibly could to find the season 2 finale of Glee. I just got back from Nairobi, where I met up with a bunch of other volunteers to plan for a huge event we have in August, and aside from just being generally awesome, the other PCVs also bring me stuff like Glee. I was THRILLED until I realized the last episode, that oh-so-exciting season finale, is only half there. I might as well ET and come back to America. I mean, this is just absurd. I can't live like this. Well, if Peace Corps is teaching me one thing, it's patience. Humph.

Anyways, as horrible as the 12 hour trip to Nairobi was, it's always refreshing to see other volunteers again, and have meetings on time, and actually get things done. The event we have going on in August is called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). Peace Corps Washington has different committees that they fund in each Peace Corps country, and I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but the three committees we have in Kenya are DPS (Diversity and Peer Support), VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee), and GAD (Gender and Development). GAD is primarily funded by PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), and one of the things that Peace Corps/PEPFAR puts on is Camp GLOW. It's essentially a girls' empowerment camp, no boys allowed (except for PCV counselors and staff), and we cover everything from job opportunities and self-confidence to sex, pregnancy, abortion, family planning, poverty, self-defense and everything anyone would ever want to know about HIV and AIDS. We'll take the girls on a field trip, we'll have a disco night, a movie night, a bonfire, talent show, and all the games they can possibly handle. It's gonna be awesome.

In April, this past school break, there was a Camp GLOW that was actually here in Kilifi! BUT due to some unfortunate circumstances with the Embassy or something, interpreters couldn't be hired, so deaf girls were not allowed to go. This time however, Peace Corps is def making up for it, and half of August's camp is going to be deaf. Hooray! I applied earlier this term to be a camp counselor for August, and Peace Corps apparently likes me enough so I get to go too :) I'm bringing four of my girls from Kilifi, two from Form 2 and two from Form 3, and also shepherding a bunch of other deaf girls from up and down the coast. It's going to be a two day trip to the camp's new location, Kisumu, which is all the way out in Nyanza province on Lake Victoria, close to Uganda, but I definitely won't be alone. When all of us counselors met in Nairobi to plan logistics we found out that Alli (another PCV on the coast) and I will be taking 13 deaf to Kisumu with us. We ended up joking about my numerous baby ducklings that will be following me west. Oh well. The more the merrier :)

So Camp GLOW meetings finished and I thought I'd go home on Sunday. Not quite. Remember how I said Peace Corps Kenya has three different committees funded by Washington? Well Kenya is also the only Peace Corps country in the whole world that has a Deaf Education program. Sometimes us Deaf Ed-ers feel a little bit pushed to the wayside in all the craziness that is the Education sector, and I won't even go into how forgotten the Secondary Deaf Ed-ers are. I love Peace Corps, and I love Peace Corps Kenya, but we decided back in April at IST that we needed to help them out a bit. So we've started another committee just for Deaf Ed. There's 5 people on this new committee, including yours truly, so that I can make sure they don't forget about Secondary Deaf Ed. We're still working on a name for the committee and on making everything official so we can get funding and start doing stuff. We want to make a centralized location, whether online or in an office somewhere, where all the Deaf Ed volunteers can go for classroom resources. These resources might have come from Peace Corps itself, or from past volunteers. There's a wealth of information and ideas on how to best teach our wonderful deaf kids, we just need a way to access it. We also want to get in contact with different deaf/education-related organizations, either Kenyan or international, and see what they can help us with, e.g. KNAD (Kenya National Association of the Deaf), KIE (Kenya Institute of Education), DeafAid (from Sweden), and Deaf Child WorldWide. And we also want to just be a support network for Deaf Ed PCVs. We get a lot of support from PC Kenya, for sure, but we are a unique sub-sector, and because of that, very close-knit. It will be nice to have an official, centralized group that everyone can turn to if we need anything. So, wish us luck in getting things off the ground! We know we can only do so much in two years, but this will hopefully be a very good jumping-off point for future generations of volunteers to take over and continue working on. Yay Deaf Ed!

So things are going ok in Kilifi. It's getting cold since the rains have come, and by cold I mean 72. Anything below 80 and my kids have to wear 3 sweaters. It's pretty funny. I'm actually getting so adjusted to the weather here that I have to heat my bath water in the morning. 72 is chilly. I'm gonna die when I come home at Christmastime. Things are perpetually busy as well. I've realized that I stand so much during the day that when I go home for good in the evening, the muscles in the back of my knees actually hurt to sit down. Heh. And I'm always so exhausted and go to bed so late that I'm usually asleep before I can even finish tucking my mosquito net in. This recently may have been because I was watching Glee till all hours of the night, but hey, I HAVE to watch it right? And speaking of my mental health, some days I just get so frustrated I want to punch walls, and possibly people, and just go back to America. Things are SO much easier there. But then I look at my kids and realize I could never do that to them. I told them I'd be here for two years and I could never let them down. They mean way too much to me. I mean, who would they laugh at if I left?

Exhibit A:

Yesterday my Form 3's interrupted Math lesson to tell me that I looked like a chicken that's been plucked but not cooked. Cute. Not only are these kids teaching me unbelievable amounts of patience because of what they have to go through on a daily basis, they're also teaching me a lot more personal acceptance, and to not be easily offended. They don't mean any harm when they tell me I was much prettier in America, or that I looked fatter when I got back from Nairobi, they're simply making observations. Osman was the one who brought up the chicken thing. He is so goofy and he never tries to be, but he also knows exactly how to pull my chain, and he tries that all the time. Sometimes he'll get in fights with me about gender equality or about corruption and stuff. When he noticed that I was the slightest bit miffed by the chicken statement, he played on it as much as he could, and pretended to drool when he saw me, and take bites out of my arm. "We can't focus in class Sarah because looking at you just makes us hungry," he says. So to keep the play-fight going I proceeded to pack up my bag and walk out. Gona saw I was about to leave and ran to the door to lock me in. I tried to counter the argument by telling them it's hard to teach them because all I think about when I look at them is chocolate. I ended up sitting in a corner and laughing so hard I cried. Everyone got a giant kick out of it, and math had to resume later on. Normal day :)

Alright, hope everything is good back stateside. Miss you all bunches and bunches. As always, here's some random pictures from the recent weeks in Kenya.

Here’s two of my boys with two of my other babies. The one on the right is that lovable trouble-maker Osman. He's also holding a pretty lovable trouble-maker.

Bow of the dhow I went on with Ellen and her parents a few weeks back.

Boys enjoying themselves at a little birthday party they had for one of the girls.

Catherine is saying "I love you Sarah."

Here's me with Reily, another volunteer from my group, when we met up in Nairobi. We were wearing the same thing and def lookin' pretty gangster.

Here's some of my girls doing a hilarious drama at the big

tree-planting ceremony we had a couple weeks ago.

Aaaaaand this is what happens when I try to plan lessons and stuff.

Okie doke. Give my best to America. Kenya says "whatup." Keep reading! Stay awesome. And Happy Belated 4th of July!

~ Love Shub :)