That being said, I have finally officially decided that I cannot extend Peace Corps for a third year. I was thinking before that I would maybe add an extra year, because I love teaching my kids so much. But some things (read: people) are making it very difficult to be here. So I'll be home at the end of this year! Ack! Our COS (close-of-service) date is supposed to be in November sometime, and after I COS I want to come back to the coast for a few weeks to say bye to everyone, before probably flying out of Mombasa and making it home sometime mid-December.
So that leaves me about six months. Six more months with some of the best and worst people I've ever met in my entire life. It's not all bad though. First off, my power finally came back on a few weeks ago, after they finally brought a new transformer in from Mombasa. That was promptly followed by someone from KPLC (Kenya Power and Lighting Co.) coming to Sarah's house in particular and shutting off her power alone because she was two weeks late in paying her bill. (Side note: Mind you last year when I first moved in I was not told by anyone for six months that I actually had to pay my electricity bill at all, and in that time my power was never turned off, but I guess that's besides the point. Awesome job KPLC. Way to be consistent.) So I raced my butt into town to the KPLC office and yelled at them for a while before finally agreeing to pay my bill, which also had a 580/= reconnection fee. Ugh. Needles to say my stima is on now and will hopefully stay on (save for the minor on and offs throughout the day) for the next six months.
We also had about 4 days without water last week. Usually the water follows the stima and will only go off for a few hours or so, but when I got to school and read the paper I realized they were doing some sort of pipe replacement up north in Malindi and would not be able to turn the water back on for a few days. Thankfully at school (both primary and secondary) we have tanks - I think around 1000 liters a piece - that fill from the tap while the tap is on, and then are full when the tap goes off. A thousand liters is a lot, but for 4 days with about 95 thirsty, smelly teenagers 1000 liters can go pretty fast. Thankfully the water people weren't lying when they said 4 days and it was back on as expected.
Here's another thing to be happy about: Wednesday afternoon is always NYAMA DAY. Hooray! Nyama means 'meat' in Swahili and Wednesday afternoons have the best meal of the whole week: ugali, mchicha (sort of like kale or spinach), and nyama. It's the one time in the whole week the kids get meat. Granted I eat a lot of meat on the weekends with my uber busy social life (ha!) and all the bbq's and fun dinners I get to go to. My kids, however, are not so lucky. At least they get meat at some point, but they're growing/grown kids and need their protein and one small bite of beef once a week can hardly be enough. They're still alive and kicking though, and the scarcity of good food at school makes the Wednesday afternoon meal that much better :)
Some more random thoughts/stories:
- Most of my kids obviously cannot hear a thing, this being a deaf school (contrary to what certain hated people at my school think). This forces their other senses to become impeccable, namely sight and smell. But when I'm outside the classroom the kids can't see me. So what I have heard on NUMEROUS occasions upon walking into the classroom is "We thought we smelled you coming, Sarah!" I always check with them to make sure it's a good smell and not a bad smell and they respond with, "Yeah it's a good smell. It's the Sarah smell." These kids crack me up.
- We had to give tests this week, although since we've only been teaching for about two weeks there wasn't a whole lot of information we could test. So I just ended up giving a short quiz on the board. My kids know I like to joke around and play with them but I guess sometimes they have trouble figuring out when I'm trying to be serious and when I'm not. My Form 3 math quiz had about five questions, and just for the sake of some giggles I wrote a sixth question on the board. "(6). Be happy." This was followed by a line that said the question was worth 1 million points. Totally just having fun right? Here's some of the responses my Form 3's gave to me for question # 6 (copied exactly):
- 9,000,000 cm
- 100
- I am love yu friend students All happy very good.
- Be love tearing
- God bless you Sarah
- You is can
and a lot of really funny looking happy faces. It definitely gave me a good laugh at the end of day.
So everything is still moving here in Kilifi, though always very slowly. Africa in general has a different way of telling time than the rest of the world, but the coast of Kenya sometimes seems to be the slowest. But it does move. I've gotten myself into a pretty wonderful group of friends here and I count my lucky stars every day that I ended up HERE in Kilifi rather than some other real village in the middle of nowhere Kenya. Kilifi has almost everything I could ever need, along with a fabulous group of ex-pats from all over the world, and a bunch of white Kenyans who have taken to calling themselves the colonialists. Whatever they are and wherever they came from they're great. Kilifi seems to just attract the coolest types of people. Last weekend was spent on boats and at bbq's, eating oysters and drinking beer, and this weekend is looking like it's going to turn out very similar to the last one. Things could definitely be worse :)
I'm sitting in bed typing this post with a big fat orange tabby asleep and mid-dream next to me, belly up, paws in the air, stomach flab rolling out, and a purr machine inside him that is very reminiscent of the motorbikes you see (and hear) all over this country. It's going to be hard enough saying goodbye to my kids forever (still not sure I'll even manage it), but having to also leave my pakas behind? Too much. So I've also decided I need to bring them back with me. It's not going to be easy. Or cheap. But I can't leave them. Tummy flab and all.
Sorry for the lack of pictures this post. My camera got stolen a few weekends back when I was being just the slightest bit complacent about leaving my things somewhere. I'll get another one soon, from a friend or I'll buy one in Mombasa. So until then, just keep looking at my albums on facebook and you should be ok :)
Until then, hugs from Kenya and happy start of summer back home!
~ Shub :)
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