Stories.

It’s Week 7 of Term 2 and as far as Kenya goes, the phrase “same s*#@ different day" hasn’t ever meant more. I don’t know how my kids can continually be so happy all the time. It’s crazy.

Anyways, I just recently finished my all-time favorite literary trilogy, for like, the millionth time: Philip Pullam’s “His Dark Materials.” I know my mom would say that I need to try reading something new and get out of my rut, but I kinda like my rut; it’s comfortable. Every time I finish reading these books I get a new impetus to not be lazy and get up and do all the good I can in one day, and to stay cheerful and keep my mind open to new things and enjoy all the little stuff as much as possible. I love the way Pullman can make me feel like that. He also writes about how important stories are, not how well things are written, or how advanced the language is, but what happens in the end and how it happens. He says “After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most on the world.” He also says that "There are some themes, some subjects, that are too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book." I like these quotes, and I think they say a lot. And for no particular reason other than to tell them, here’s some stories:

So my school, as you might have read before, is brand new. It just started in 2009 and the process of finishing the compound and all the buildings is still going on, and probably will for a number of years more. Or decades. Anyways, we have this big tree-planting day thing this coming Friday, and the compound is supposed to be super clean and pretty for “visitors” who are coming on Friday. Who these visitors are or where they are coming from, no one has told me, and thus no one has told my kids, so I guess we’ll just wait and find out. But as far as keeping the compound looking spotless, there is not really anyone paid to do that, and lord knows the teachers don’t partake in manual labor, so who is left to do all the work? My kids. It was for that reason that Life Skills got canceled two weeks ago, and that I now have slowly-healing blisters all over my hands.

Last Thursday after school, around 4pm, the kids got the mandate again that they needed to slash. Now that the rains have come, the grasses are growing like crazy, and lawn mowers don’t exist here, so they slash. There are these things called pangas: flat metal rods with a lip at one end that is sometimes sharp and most of the time dull, and a handle on the other. These serve as lawn mowers. The kids each get a section of grass to slash, and they work till their blisters are full of blood and about to burst. Fortunately (I guess), they’ve been doing work like this their whole lives, so their palms are already calloused and rough, and slashing for them is just part of being human. But when they are finished they like to show me their palms and have me poke at their blisters. They don’t want anything more than a big “pole sana (I’m sorry)” and once they get my sympathy, they get on with their day. No big deal. And what’s funny is that since (THANKFULLY) they don’t cane at my school (at least not that I’ve seen), they only punishment anyone ever receives is to slash. But they all have to do it anyways to maintain the school grounds. So either the actual slashing as a punishment ends up not meaning anything, or the regular slashing everyone has to do anyways ends up feeling like a punishment. So last Thursday at 4 all the kids had to go get their pangas and start workin’ on the grounds outside the dorms and school. I was sick and tired of helplessly watching my kids suffer right in front of me, so I grabbed a panga from one of the girls and started slashing her part of the grass. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but with a little help and lessons from my kids, I was slashing like a true Kenyan. And man is it hard work. And man did those blisters show up fast.

I kept at it till Teresia’s rectangle was finished, and headed home to bandage my hands. If this was anywhere else, I would probably be complaining a ton, but this is what the kids go through every day. I wanted to experience it for myself. After slashing, they also taught me how to care for my blisters; “don’t pick at them,” they said, “and be careful with your chalk.” The roles then reversed and I showed them my hands, and got a big “pole sana” in return. But it’s true, that’s all I needed, just a little sympathy. Such is life. There’s a sign the kids use for when they feel like they’re being oppressed but they don’t complain and shut their mouths and sit on their hands and take it. If you ask them to spell it they’ll spell “mercy.” There’s another sign that they’ll spell as “normal” but actually means something along the lines of “no big deal, we’re used to it.” Those signs are used A LOT here.

So yesterday when I headed back up to school after computer class at the primary compound, I realized everyone was slashing again. Some of the boys had been told that they had to slash around my house. I remember thinking to myself a while ago that if anyone ever told my kids they had to slash my grass, I wouldn’t let it happen. So when I realized this was the case, I ran to steal a panga and though I tried to tell John and Jumaa that I could do it myself, they refused, and with the help of their huge Kenyan muscles, the work got done a lot faster.

Switching gears. I’ve been teaching (or at least trying to teach) Life Skills every Saturday. The Kenya Ministry of Education has this Life Skills syllabus that is racked with things like promoting self-fulfillment, self-awareness, self-esteem, and friendship formation and maintenance. Nowhere in the syllabus is there anything about HIV/AIDS education, healthy nutrition, or even how to get a job and rise above the poverty line. And those are the things these kids know the least about. So a number of years ago the Peace Corps developed a Life Skills Manual for volunteers that’s constantly being edited and improved. It’s awesome. The second lesson dives right in to how HIV is transmitted and how you can protect yourself. Ah ha! Something applicable! Anyhoodle, all of Term 1 was about HIV, and I still haven’t gotten through the whole topic, so I started it up again this term. Last week though I had a random question come into my head about my kids. I was curious about how their deafness came about; if they were born deaf, and if not then how old they were when they went deaf and what the problem was, and so on. So I asked them. Turns out the answers were all over the place. Some were born deaf, but don’t know why; some went deaf just a few years ago, some when they were five, and ten, and sixteen, and many that have absolutely no clue. They say, “well I remember crying a whole lot, and then I changed deaf.” One of my Form 3’s, Osman, told me his story a while ago. He was 8 or 9, had a really high fever one night, and woke up the next morning deaf. So I decided to change Life Skills on Saturday from HIV/AIDS to deafness and its causes. I feel like these kids have a right to know about themselves, and since their deafness is what defines them here, it seemed appropriate.

So since I forgot a lot of what I learned in my Hearing and Speech Sciences and neurobio classes in college, I had to give myself a little review. An afternoon on the internet (thank God for the world wide web) and I had my whole 2 hour lesson planned. I like Life Skills because it’s normally just me and the kids. And it’s all the kids too, all 72 of them. And they don’t have to wear uniforms, and they can sit on the floor, and ask questions, and we play games and have fun. And this topic was actually interesting for everyone. So I drew the whole diagram of inside the ear on the board, explained how hearing works, and where the problems of hearing loss can occur. Most of them had never even seen this diagram before. Then I moved on to the different types of deafness: conductive and sensorineural. Conductive hearing loss, since it’s in the outer or middle ear, can often be cured with surgery of some sort. Sensorineural hearing loss, however, is in the inner ear and thus is most of the time permanent. My guess is most of my kids have the latter. The last part was me explaining the different diseases and illnesses that can cause deafness, especially if not treated. These include measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis, scarlet fever, malaria, and more. I went through the physical symptoms of each one, and some of my kids actually recognized some of them as the one they had, if they were old enough to remember. I think the majority of them had either meningitis or malaria, but some recognized mumps and rubella as well. Another question I asked (which I sort of knew the answer to already) was if any of them have deaf parents or family members. Answer? Not-a-one. “Me deaf alone.” Poor kids. And I think I’ve said this before too, but their families don’t know sign language either. What sucks is that, even though I would never put down the deaf or Deaf culture and I don’t consider it a disability in any way, so many of these kids’ cases could have been prevented, with either the right medication or just a few shots. It is hard to be deaf here, and I feel for them every day.

I started writing this post on Tuesday. It’s now Thursday, and after a really rough day yesterday that ended in me crying in a bathroom in a fancy white-person resort outside town, I’m slowly figuring out the things I need to do, and how I need to change other things, in order to help my kids. They are the most important thing to me here, and though I enjoy every second I’m with them, I won’t be here forever. They were here before I came, and they’ll still be here when I leave, as will the other teachers and the way things are run. “Slowly by slowly,” as the Kenyans say.

There’s another quote I found somewhere on someone’s facebook wall: “If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said this would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.” I think this sums up Peace Corps quite accurately. I took this chance and now I’m here and these kids are changing me in so many ways. It’s frustrating and stressful and exhausting and sometimes takes every fiber of my being not to stab someone in the eye, but I’m pretty sure that in 20 years, I won’t have forgotten these kids, and I definitely won’t have forgotten the way they make me feel.

Well, I hope you enjoy these stories. I'll try to keep 'em coming. It’s hard to remember that it’s summertime back home, since things are so crazy busy on this side of the world, but I hope everyone is having an awesome summer. I just passed my 8 month anniversary of being in Kenya. Which means it’s no longer “When I go home in two years…”, it’s now “When I go home in a year and a half…” Yikes! Time is flying.

Sawa, tutaonana baada ye, na ninakukosa sana! AKA, cheers!

~ Shub :)

PS As always, here's some pics of my kids. Have I mentioned they're great?

Here's Paul, and Chengo hiding behind him.

Here's Monica and Mercy, enjoying my stylish

new rainboots, courtesy of Momma Hubbard :)

And after a day full of slashing, they turned

one of the hills into a long-jump competition.

Ok byeee!

Great Grandma Hubbard and "The Other One"

This post is dedicated to you guys.

It's almost 4:00 in the morning and I just got the call from Mom that Grandma had finally gone on to go see Grandpa, who passed away in '07. She'd been unresponsive for a few days, wasn't eating or drinking much, and had been told by family that it was ok to go. So it wasn't totally out of the blue. Grandma and Grandpa are no good apart, either, so I think it's better this way. She just turned 93. Pretty long life I'd say. If I can live to that age, and be that happy for that long, I wouldn't need to ask for much else.

Both my mom's parents died before I was born, so my dad's parents were the only grandparents I ever knew. And I could not have lucked out any more. Sometimes I think grandparents can be a little off, for one reason or another. But mine were right on; they were fantastic and wonderful in every way possible and they were all those things since as far back as I can remember.

Every summer since I was baby, my mom, dad, brother, and I would drive to Michigan to see Grandma and Grandpa. From Maryland to Michigan is about 11 or 12 hours on the road, and since Morgan and I were kids (and I think since Dad likes to go a little slow on the highway, though he might not admit it :) it always took us two days to get there. We'd do eight hours one day, stop and stay somewhere around Toledo for a night, and eight hours again the next day. Sometimes the car rides were fun, if I got to bring all my stuffed animals, and Morgan didn't bother me too much. But sometimes I wanted to strangle my brother and I'm sure Mom and Dad wanted to strangle both of us. All in the name of visiting Grandma and Grandpa. But it was absolutely worth it; every single time.

When Morgan and I were little, it was worth it because Grandma and Grandpa had a pool. I vividly remember finishing the long drive with a final pull into their driveway in Ludington, jumping out of the car, running inside to say hi to Grandma and Grandpa who were always seated in the same spots on the same couch with the same newspapers and the same CNN channel in the background, running to change into our bathing suits, and running to jump in the pool. There was no better feeling in the world at that age. We would swim until we looked like prunes, and then we'd swim some more. I remember the feeling of being in the pool, playing with Morgan and maybe the cousins if they had come, and knowing that Mom and Grandma were inside in the kitchen drinking wine coolers and cooking up something amazing for dinner. Sometimes it was fish that Grandpa had caught, and sometimes it was something else, but it normally always came with Michigan asparagus and at some point in the trip Mom usually used Michigan cherries to make a pie. Or Grandpa would make blueberry pancakes with Michigan blueberries. We'd eat till our bellies couldn't take any more, Morgan and I would head downstairs to watch Nick-@-Nite on the pink TV, and we'd pass out to "I Love Lucy" or "Bewitched" just to wake up and do it all over again the next day. What a life.

Some days we'd do other things around town, like go to the beach, or go shopping in Pentwater. There was a store in downtown Ludington (just a few streets mind you) called Fort Daul. When I was little I thought it was Fort Doll, because it was essentially a store made entirely for me and Morgan. There were gemstones and jewelry, dress-up clothes, figurines of every kind, stuffed animals, suction cup bow and arrows, Indian headdresses, and every toy pony under the sun. It was heaven. If there was a pool, Morgan and I would have lived there instead. Some days we'd walk out to the Ludington lighthouse on the pier, or go to the Big Sable lighthouse as well. Another favorite activity was taking Grandpa's little power boat out to the dunes on Hamlin Lake and park there for a while, so Morgan and I could spend the afternoon running up and down the giant sandy hills. I remember day trips to the state park, where sometimes we'd just enjoy the beach, and sometimes we'd go tubing down the stream. Sundays after church, especially when there was even more family in town, Grandpa would always take us to Scotty's for brunch, and though I think Mom got a little tired of the repetition, I enjoyed my eggs benedict every single time. Sometimes we were lucky enough to be in Ludville the same time as the summer craft fair, where I could get American Girl doll clothes and Mom could by Christmas presents. We'd spend the afternoon wandering and shopping for nothing and somehow always ended up buying tons of stuff. And at some point in the Michigan adventures we would always have to stop at the Park Dairy and get ice cream. Morgan and I always got Blue Moon or Superman, mainly because the colors were so outrageous, and Mom always got Mackinaw Island Fudge. It was perfect.

As Morgan and I got older it was less about the pool and Fort Daul and the sickeningly blue ice cream, and more about the people; namely Jessica and Jared, the neighbor kids next door. We'd spend just about every waking minute with them, either playing basketball outside, playing Mario-Kart in the basement, or playing cops and robbers at night till every inch of us was covered in mosquito bites. I remember taking Jess's ATV through the woods across the street, and the four of us playing in the dirt piles all day long. On quieter days we'd take walks through the Ludington cemetery across the street too, which, happily, is where Grandma will find Grandpa in their final resting place. When Katie, Jenny, and Mandy, the Gunberg cousins, would come into town from Grand Rapids or Grand Haven, the five of us grandkids would always get together to dream up some sort of show or performance thing for the adults. One year it was a skit about an elevator, one year it was a skit about a fly, and one year the entire basement was turned into a haunted house. I imagine these plays and skits were altogether ridiculous, having been devised and executed in just a few hours time by five crazy children, but the adults loved them anyways, and for that reason I suppose.

I remember the giant inflatable turtle and alligator that they had for the pool. I remember the smell of the asparagus waiting for me at dinner. I remember the terrifying sound of Grandma sneezing, and the sound that giant green wind chime in the stairwell would make when you blew on it. I remember the feel of the old wooden four-poster bed I slept in downstairs and the numerous autographed pictures of George Bush to Grandpa on the way down to the basement. I remember the taste of Cracklin' Oat Bran in the morning, which for some reason definitely tasted better in Michigan than it did in Maryland. I remember always seeing Grandpa eat half a head of cabbage and horrible cake-y raisin-y cookies for lunch. I remember Grandpa's tuneless whistling, every second of every day, and the way he continually pushed his elastic watch farther and farther up his arm, so that it eventually found it's home just above his elbow. I remember the little baskets of Grandma's lipstick in the bathroom, and the smell of the perfume she'd wear to church. I remember the house full of knick knacks and furniture and wall hangings from when they used to lived in South Korea, like that strange porcelain elephant that sat by the screen door to the pool, and that even stranger mural of weird asian bull-man hybrids with spears. I remember how disgustingly lime green the carpet in the living room was, but how I'd be pretty upset if it ever changed. And I remember wondering how on earth two people could watch CNN for so long, and not get bored.

So though Grandma and Grandpa might not have been the focus every single day of our Michigan trips, they were the reason for it all. Without them, I wouldn't have these unbelievable memories. I'm sure each of us grandkids has different memories that stand out the most about Grandma and Grandpa, but these are mine, and I will NEVER forget them.

I have Grandma and Grandpa to thank for so many things, but most importantly for the best family I could have ever asked for. They taught my dad, who in turn taught me, that home is not about the knick knacks or the carpet or the landscaping or the bedspreads and sheet sets. It's about the people: the family, the friends, and all the awesome love that goes around. And though those tactile memories sometimes are the most prominent ones, they wouldn't be there if it weren't for the people themselves. And as corny and cheesy as all this may sound, it's so unequivocally true, and even though it's taken me years to figure that out, I realize it now.

A number of years ago when my little cousin Becca (who is not so little any more) was 3 or 4 or something, she was in Michigan with the family, and since she's a generation down from me, Grandma and Grandpa were her great grandparents. I wish I knew the details of the entire story, but she ended up asking something about "great Grandma Hubbard, and um, the other one." Grandpa of course enjoyed this as much as everyone else and it became a long-standing joke among the Hubbard family; a true example of how awesome and silly they all are.

It's now almost 7am, and time to get on with my day. I wish more than anything in the world that I could come back to the States and say goodbye to Grandma one last time, but I'll just have to be there in spirit. My deaf kids are calling, and reminding me on a daily basis how happy they can make me, no matter the circumstances.

My love to Hubbards, Nylecs, Webdells and Gunbergs alike, and forever and always, my love to you, Grandma and Grandpa. Miss you guys.

~ Sarah :)

Ladies and gentlemen...

Tusky's has chocolate syrup.