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.
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