Kittens, kids, and school supplies.

I think I've said this before, but sometimes it still blows me away that I live on the coast of East Africa, and teach the best kids in the world, in another language, by myself; and sometimes, all the ridiculous crap that can happen on a daily basis seems SO absolutely normal.

It's about Week 5 of Term 2, and things are busy as ever. I'm now teaching Physics to Forms 1 and 2, along with Math to Forms 2 and 3, Computers to all three Forms, and Life Skills to everyone altogether on the weekends. That comes to about 30 lessons per week. I think most education volunteers end up teaching close to 25. For me it's hard to count though. The timetable is changed all the time and there are SO many classes where the other teachers just don't teach, so I'll go in instead. It's probably more like a million classes per week, but whatevs; the more time I get with the kids the better.

Speaking of which, they're still awesome. I wrote before about how they always ask me about English words and what they mean. There's no signs for most of them so I do a lot of acting and charades and stuff. The only problem is they understand when I explain it, but promptly forget when I move on to the next word. So I've been doing a little incentive situation. All the words they ask me throughout the week I keep track of, and on Friday if they can accurately explain the words back to me, they get candy. If the word has two meanings, I give them TWO pieces of candy. MAN does it work well. Those kids will do anything for a little bit of sugar. They deserve it though. Uji (porridge), ugali, and bone stew can get pretty tiresome after a while.

One of the words they asked me a few weeks ago was 'engage.' I told them that word had three meanings (that they needed to worry about at least). The first was to start a car, or a piki piki, or a tuk tuk or something. The second is when a teacher is engaging to the students. And the third meaning just killed them. I prefaced it by asking what happens in Kenya when a man wants to marry a woman. They said it either depends on some sort of money or livestock. Fair enough. So I went on to do this whole play/scenario thing about what happens in America when a man wants to marry a woman. The concept of dating and knowing someone for years before marriage is so foreign to them, but I think I sort of got my point across. When I pretended to be the girl getting proposed to they totally flipped. They thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Which maybe it is, I guess.

So me explaining English words takes up a lot of time at school. Sometimes I have trouble keeping to my actual lesson because the questions they ask seem so fundamentally important that I need to explain them. I always have to make fast decisions about what's more important in the long run: logarithms, or whether dinosaurs are alive or not. Last week one of my Form 1's pointed to one of my posters of the solar system and said "Which planet is America on?" In total shock I replied "America?!" "Yeah," he said. "When you fly home to America which planet do you fly to?" This led to Physics being changed to an interplanetary geography lesson, including rockets and astronauts and walking on the moon. They also always ask me if things they see on TV or in books are true or false, e.g. Spiderman, Karate Kid, and Cinderella. It's hard for them to process that not everything on the television is real life. Last week two of my Form 2 boys who sit next to each other got in a big fight. This led to a life lesson on 'being civil' to one another, even if you don't like a person (something that I'm getting better and better at in Kenya). Moral of the story is I usually feel that, in the grand scheme of things, the life lessons are more important than the other lessons, and I'm sticking to that.

And speaking of life lessons, I normally teach Life Skills on Saturday mornings after tea break, which usually works pretty well because the kids are just supposed to have "preps" which means they sit around and recopy the notes they've never understood from the beginning. I figured this time would be better spent learning about HIV and stuff. So for various reasons we haven't actually gotten to do Life Skills yet. It takes a few weeks for all the kids to get back to school and then two weeks ago I had other important stuff to take care of on Saturday. So this past weekend I was really looking forward to Life Skills, and so were the kids. Just before tea break on Saturday some of them stopped at my door and said there was a problem and we'd have to postpone again. I did some investigating and for reasons I don't need to get into I was pretty fuming for most of the morning. Long story short it turns out manual labor on the school grounds is MUCH more important than Life Skills. So be it. I tried to reschedule for Sunday but the kids like to relax and watch TV, which I can totally understand because it's like the only time during the week they get to relax. Hopefully we can do it this Thursday. Such is life in Kenya.

On a different note, I've still been getting some awesome donations from wonderfully generous people back at Christ Episcopal Church in Rockville, MD. Thank you thank you THANK YOU. I've now purchased 47 Math books, 13 English books, 30 scientific calculators, 9 Physics books and 3 big classroom meter rulers. Unfortunately for my kids, my parents are leaving for a 4-month long cruise on their boat soon, so I won't be able to get any deposits into my account till they get back, but we're definitely better off than we were before. Because of this, my kids are slowly learning that not everyone is rich, but if people do have money, they can be unbelievably generous with it. :)

Here's some happy kids with some brand new school supplies!

(Form 3's)

Form 2's

and Form 1's

They all send BIG thank you's to their donors in America; namely Laurie Hoffman, Kathy Mottla, Barbara Cano, Bobbie Power and Christ Church Outreach Committee. You guys are AWESOME.

In other news, last weekend I went with 6 of my kids to Mombasa, where there's an awesome church that accommodates the deaf. Mombasa has a fairly substantial deaf community and it was really cool to interact with a lot of them. There are a couple preachers at this church who are deaf as well. My kids had practiced signing some gospel songs to do at the service and after insisting a lot that I didn't want to stand at the podium and interpret for the entire congregation (I was already stared at enough for being the only white person within a 5km radius), I quite enjoyed myself. Also, there were like 6 other interpreter-type people there anyways, so I wasn't being a total jerk, I promise. Anyways, the service lasted numerous hours, as church services in Africa do, and afterwards we all headed upstairs to get lunch. They fed us beans and pilau and cabbage, and my boys ate their little hearts out. I met some awesome deaf people, some that live in Mombasa, and some in Kilifi. All in all, it was a good day and a pretty neat experience. Here's some photographic evidence:

(A little blurry cuz obvi they're dancing and stuff)

Sometimes I just wish I blended in.

From left to right: Gona, Osman, Apolinary, Tabitha, Monica,

Lucy, and some random kid I don't know. Lucy is doing my

sign name and "I love you."

Ok, switching gears. Remember how I got a kitten as soon as I got back to Kilifi a few weeks ago? Well one of my girls Joyce had mentioned before that she would maybe bring me a cat from home when we all got back from break. I promptly forgot about this and Joyce took a few weeks to get back to school. When she did come, she showed up holding a box with a little hole on top. "What's in there?" I said. "It's your kitten you wanted!" OH MAN. So now I have two. My new one is a little orange marmalade and much more of a street kitty than the first. He had tons of fleas and ticks and scars when he first showed up, and he's got this funny broken tail, but he's a total sweetheart. I've named them Marie and Toulouse and though I would love to add a Berlioz to the family, I don't think my Peace Corps stipend can support 3 kittens. Anywho, the two of them are totally crazy, they have the run of the house, and they love my kids. Here's some very atypical cute time (most of the time they're screaming for food and scaling my mosquito net and trying to bite each other's ears off):

Life is moving along, tough as it can be sometimes. I can get so unbelievably frustrated with people, to the point where I actually have to go and cool down somewhere, but then I spend one class with my kids and they make me forget why I was even mad in the first place. I don't think they realize how much they mean to me. So I'm good; Kenyans drive me crazy more often than I'd like but I'm happy and healthy don't have much reason to complain :) More proof:

Mwavu was trying to make me giggle during assembly.

Lucy and Amina: Happy girls with a new calculator

Boys practicing their march thing for morning assembly.

I'll leave you with an awesome sunset I saw over the dining hall at school the other night.

Hope America is well; Kenya is sure hangin' in there. Miss you all like nobody's business.

~ Shub :)

My wonderful deaf kids.

Normally I don't feel like I have anything exciting to blog about, but whether KSL and deaf kids is an interesting topic or not, I want to write about it. My life here revolves around my kids, hopefully for obvious reasons. My daily routine is planned around the first knock on my door in the morning, and the last knock at night. I enjoy every single second I spend with them and I wouldn't have it any other way. Many times I find it hard to actually teach because I have too much fun just chatting with them. Luckily, they are so fantastic that they keep me on track and tell me stop getting distracted and keep teaching.

I was nervous about leaving Kilifi for a month in April - thought maybe being gone for so long I'd forget how to sign or something. Fortunately that wasn't the case, and in fact, I feel like I understand them better than I did before. Obviously the only sure-fire way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it, and thankfully, I love doing that here. I knew throughout my training that there would be a lot of signs at my site that I wouldn't know, because they're specific to just the coast, or just Kilifi, or even just my school. Signs are extremely different depending on where you are in Kenya and there was A LOT that I had to pick up when I first got here. In fact, I'm still picking up new stuff, and probably will till the day I leave. In America if you're deaf and you want to talk to someone, you send them an email, or shoot them a text, or drive to their house, or even fly to them if need be. Communication is easy and affordable (most of the time) and makes it much simpler to develop a standardized, nation-wide sign language. However in the third world (which I think Kenya is definitely on the more developed end of third world) communication is much harder. You can't just hop in your car and head to the next town. It takes a lot of money and effort to get around, and though most Kenyans I've met have cell phones, the deaf schools here have such an issue with language that phones wouldn't do much good for them anyways. So the deaf will find each other, and then stay where they are, completely isolated from the other deaf communities around the country. This means that they develop their own signs for different concepts, but because the English is so poor, have no way of explaining it other than with that sign. Signs are even different from Kilifi to a special school in Mtwapa, which is about a 20 minute drive south. At the primary level, this means too that many kids will come to school with what's called "home signs" meaning they and only they know what that sign means. This is why I'm thankful to be teaching secondary. At least there is some sort of streamline with my kids.

Another thing is that ASL is much more connected to English, an actual spoken language. KSL, at least at my school, is so far removed from any spoken language it can make that language barrier all the more difficult to break down. A lot of signs have an English word that will go along with them, and a lot don't. And the chances of the kids even knowing that English word that they're signing are very slim. Luckily my kids have learned enough that sometimes they can explain to me the concepts behind their signs. So many times though they will be chatting with me and I won't know a sign so I'll ask "that means what?" They have NO idea what it would translate to in English, and are so used to just knowing that that sign means this concept, that they can't explain it to me. They'll just repeat it over and over again. Most of them are learning though that straight repetition doesn't help me understand the sign so they're figuring out examples to use and I can pick up on context clues too. Many times too they'll spell a word that when put with the sign, doesn't seem quite right. So I inquire more and try to give them the right word when I finally understand their concept. For example what was originally spelled "mercy" to me actually means something more like patience and tolerance and chilling out. What was first spelled as "doubt" or "between" I understand now as complete indecision. What's funny though is that as my sign vocabulary is expanding, so too are the signs I completely and totally understand in context, but still can't figure out how to accurately express in English. When people come to visit me I obviously act as interpreter for my kids, and when visitors ask "What did he just say?" it's sometimes really hard for me to verbalize, even though I understood exactly what was signed. That still blows my mind.

On the same token, half my time spent with them is basically charades for me. They ask me so many different English words that I would have no idea in hell what they're signs are so I just act it out. Many times too they'll ask me a word and the first meaning I think of is what I explain. But then I think, wait what's the context? So I ask them where they saw it. If they can show me the book or explain it a little then I get a better idea of the context. Today Baraka asked me what "tipping" meant. The first thing that popped into my head was the physical tipping, so I slowly knocked over a water bottle. But then when I read it in the book he had, it was actually talking about tipping at a restaurant or something. This happens ALL the time. They're still figuring out the concept of "context" itself, but they're definitely getting better. Also, I had an inkling of this before, but they just informed me today that when I first started teaching in January they only understood a fraction of what I was signing. Thus it's totally a two-way street to that whole "mutual understanding" stuff.

Another thing I think I'm getting better at, on the receptive end of sign language, is actually understanding their stories as a whole. When I initially got to site and was first getting to know them, I was constantly thinking about the fact that they were signing to me, and like I've mentioned before, I would just get caught up in the beauty of it. But now that I mostly know how each and every one of them signs, it's much easier for me to focus on their story, rather than the physical act of sign language. I've also found that it's way easier to not try and translate their signing into English in my head. If I try to put a word with every sign, nothing will make sense. So if I just focus on the story itself rather than the individual signs, my understanding goes through the roof.

Like I said, I enjoy every moment I'm with them and want more than anything to see them not get HIV and not become matatu drivers and not feel like they are any lesser just because they are deaf. Some of them are so bright and so motivated, some are just fun to talk to, and every single one of them is goofy beyond measure. Solomon loves pretending I understand his Kiswahili when he mumbles to me. Sabastian has a different noise with every sign he does. Sofia and Rehema loooove math and are super smart, and Boni wants to trades me 10 cows for my computer. Emmanuel teaches me Kiswahili and Giriama, Jumaa giggles at everything, and Amir tells me he definitely wants to marry a mzungu like me. Amina has the most infectious laugh, Paul has one incredibly beautiful blue eye and a ridiculous amount of patience, and Catherine just thinks I'm nuts and tells me all the time. Gona and Osman are two peas in a pod and love letting me in on their stories. Stephen has the biggest brightest smile you'll ever see, Shukurani is just gorgeous all around, and Francis does a fantastic Mr. Bean impression. Can you tell I could go on? Truly they are the best part of Peace Corps. How will I ever leave?

I guess that's all I had in my head for now. Hopefully my and my kids' understandings of each other will only continue to improve and hopefully when I do actually HAVE to leave I'll be able to tear myself from their side. Or maybe I'll just stay :) I send my love to the States and everyone there and my kids send their love as well. They would all give their left arm to go to America if they had the chance.

Cheers and ninakukosa!

~ Shub :)

P.S. my new baby paka has been climbing my curtains like in cartoons and is getting much better at catching mosquitoes. She loves sitting on the computer when I'm trying to type and sitting on the cutting board when I'm trying to cook. Oh well.

Happy Weekend!

Back home to Kilifi and a paka :)

After I jumped off a 135-ft tower over the Nile it sorta felt like everything I've done since then has been rather mediocre, but numerous people have asked where the next blog post is. So I'll just write about boring old Kenyan Peace Corps things :)

So after Uganda we all headed back to Nairobi together for our IST (In-Service Training). The place in Uganda where we stayed, though absolutely fantastic in every way, only served fish n' chips, or pizza. So for four straight days that's kinda all we ate. I was really craving some decent Kenyan food when we got back, and unfortunately later paid for my day-long binge on it with a night full of food poisoning. Awesome. Thankfully it didn't last too long, and thankfully I was in Nairobi where Medical is super close and handy. They are absolutely right that you always get sick when you travel. Anyhoodle, I definitely wasn't the only one to get sick during IST either, so we spent MANY evenings at the local malls getting deli sandwiches and chocolate. We also had really good Indian food, Ethiopian food, and Thai food too. If Nairobi had a Target and Starbucks it would be just as good as America.

IST is meant to be the time when all us education volunteers get back together and talk about how much we screwed up teaching our first term, and compare notes on how we can improve. Being with everyone else from my group again was definitely the most useful part. We learn so much from each other it's crazy. It's also just fun to share ridiculous stories about our individual sites. In fact the first day of IST was dedicated entirely to "Volunteer Report-Outs," which essentially stands for get-up-and-vent-sessions. It was awesome to hear how everyone else is doing, and get ideas for ourselves for different teaching methods and projects to work on. I now have a very long list of things I want to accomplish in two year's time. I know some of them, no matter how hard I try, will never get done, so I will always fall back on my two continuous goals for Peace Corps: to keep my kids happy, healthy, and free of HIV.

BUT, that doesn't mean I won't try and get some other things done. Here's a few things I have in mind (maybe posting about them will motivate me more to get them rolling):

• I want to do the World Map Project up at my school, since it's brand new and has nothing exciting to look at, inside or out. I might have to wait till the rainy season is over and will definitely need help from my kids, but 2 years should be plenty of time.
• I want to get through the red tape of taking my kids on a field trip and bring them to the Kilifi VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing, where you can get free HIV tests). It's EXTREMELY close and shares a compound with KEMRI (Kenya Medical Research Institute) which is an awesome facility and hopefully something I can take the kids to also. I know for a fact that some of my kids' parents are HIV+ and though it will rip my heart in two to find out any of them are, it's something that needs to be done.
• Some of the other deaf-ed volunteers in Kenya have started teaching KSL to their communities, and though Kilifi is really big for Peace Corps standards, and there's already an adult KSL night class at my school, I want to get involved in this somehow. I think it's super important that people other than the deaf themselves know they exist and can communicate with them. Since their English is so poor and Kiswahili is a lost cause, AND since KSL is now the third official language of Kenya, it only seems suitable that more people start picking up a few signs here and there.
• I signed up at IST to have some tree seeds mailed to me. What kind or how many I'm getting I'm not sure, but hopefully they'll come with instructions and what not. If this all follows through we'll have some super cool little tree seedlings planted.
• Another thing I mentioned before but haven't gotten started yet is getting a signboard made for our school. We need something to tell Kilifi there's a secondary deaf school. Not sure whether I need to get wooden or cement or what, and pretty sure there's going to be a bunch of red tape with this one too, but at least it's a thought.

On another note, while I was in Uganda I got word from some other volunteers staying at my house while on the coast that the mice in the house had shredded some of my scarves and multiple couch cushions and I assume were eying the rest of my closet as well. So I called a friend of mine in town, Felix (the man who sells me juice and didn't believe homeless Americans existed) and told him I needed to get a cat when I got back to Kilifi. The day after I got home I went to town to run errands and get groceries and while I stopped to say hi and get juice, Felix opened a little door in back and a precious little paka walked out. I finished my errands super fast and ran back to pick her up and take her home. She was a little traumatized by the bumpy tuk tuk ride, but she got over it pretty quickly. She's super cute, about 5 weeks probably, seems very healthy, loves chasing beetles and mosquitoes, and has already spotted the notorious house mouse, though hasn't caught him yet. She loves tuna and banana bread, and screaming when she can smell either one. I even found some really expensive commercial kitten chow at Tusky's! Who knew! She only gets it for dinner though, since I can't afford to buy too much. My kids love her too, and they think it's quite hilarious how I don't treat her like a goat or a cow or every other animal in Africa, and they laugh at how much I love her. Oh well, I'm already white and crazy; this is just another thing to add to the list of weird things mzungus do. ANYWAYS, I've just been calling her paka, which in America might sound cute, but in Kenya it just means I'm calling her "cat." So I need help with a name. Check out the pics and let me know if you have any ideas!

Ok moving on. Today at school was mostly just a hang out day for me, since about half the teachers were there and many of my kids haven't even shown up yet. So whether I should have or not I basically just chatted with my students all day long. We got a little planning in of projects for the term, but mostly I just wanted to enjoy their company; which I surely did. And I want to give you a little taste. At one point I took my computer out to show my Form 1's the video of me bungee jumping. They went a little crazy for a bit but conversation soon turned into other things. Here's how it went down, translated from sign of course:

Deaf Kid: "Did they pay you to bungee jump?"

Sarah: "No I had to pay myself."

Deaf Kid: "How much was it?"

Sarah: "70 in America, 5,600 in Kenya."

Deaf Kid: "You ARE rich, you just keep lying to us."

Sarah: "If you people tell me one more time that I'm rich I'm going back to America!"

Half the class: "No no! We were just kidding, stay."

The other half of the class: "OK! We're coming to America with you!"

Sarah: "I wish you could, guys."

Deaf Kid: "Let us see some pictures of you in America again."

(So I show them pictures I've shown them a million times of me in college and stuff)

Deaf Kids: "You used to be so pretty. Why did things change when you came to Africa? What are those little red bumps all over your face now and why is your hair so different? You definitely don't look the same."

Sarah: "Thank you all so much. I feel great."

Deaf Kid: "How much money is your computer?"

Sarah: "200 in America, 16,000 in Kenya. But I didn't buy it, my dad did!"

Deaf Kid: "So your parents are rich. But that must mean that you're rich too."

Sarah: "Seriously, I'm gonna punch you."

Deaf Kids: "How 'bout you lend us your computer for the night?"

Sarah: "Absolutely not."

Deaf Kids: "We promise we'll give it back."

Sarah: "If you give me 16,000 shillings I will give you my computer."

(They all start trying to see if their pocket money combined would be enough. It wasn't.)

Deaf Kid: "I'll give you all my books and clothes and wash your clothes for the whole term."

Sarah: "No. And don't be silly I can wash my clothes by myself."

Deaf Kid: "I'll give you my dad's car!"

Sarah: "Nope."

Deaf Kid: "I'll give you a kitten."

Sarah: "I already have one! You just saw it!"

Deaf Kid: "No no, you definitely need more than one. I'll give you as many kittens as you want."

Sarah: "Tempting, but no."

Deaf Kid (settles everyone down because his offer is going to win, and completely and totally seriously says): "I will give you 10 cows."

Before I fell over laughing I finally got out: "Are you trying to buy my computer or marry me?"

At this point I exploded in giggles and couldn't handle it anymore and had to walk out. My kids make me laugh SO much. Even Alyssa, my Beach Corps buddy up in Lamu, says that when she comes to Kilifi her face is always hurting because she smiles so much. So I will happily leave you with a hilarious photo of Emmanuel and Ali, pretending to do some big drama, but not able to keep straight faces.

Love 'em.

And I love everyone that reads this blog!! Cheers to you guys.

Miss you bunches,

~ Shub :)