And apparently, so is September.

Yup, that's right. We're more than half way through with September and still haven't gone back to school yet, thanks to the nation-wide teacher strike demanding a 300% salary increase. I definitely agree teachers deserve to be paid more money, but 300% seems a little unreasonable. Although I know virtually nothing about those kinds of politics so maybe it's like bargaining (which I now am fabulous at) - start high and end up meeting in the middle. Either way, this is the third week of the strike and my school compound is still completely empty. I walk through it on my way into town sometimes and it just makes me sad. I miss those kids somethin' awful.

Thankfully, however, if I wander around town long enough I always seem to see a few them, who have come back into town from home, because they're eager to get back to school, or just eager to get out of the village. Usually when they come back into town they end up staying with another one of my kids' families, which means at least they have someone to talk to now. A lot of the Form 4's have come back and have been going to Kilifi library all day everyday to study for their exam. They biggest exam of their life is next month, the KCSE, and they're trying to make up for the lack of school. They're so dedicated! Granted they haven't had the best education their whole lives, so the realistic chances of them passing are pretty slim. But that's a morbid way to look at it. Maybe some will surprise me! Who knows.

So the last time I wrote I was in Nairobi at the Peace Corps office, and we were all just about to leave for our COS (Close Of Service) conference. Boy was that FUN. I'll get there. First let's talk about animals! Before the conference started I met up with Anna and Josh, other deaf ed-ers, and we biked around Hell's Gate for a good number of hours. As tired as I got biking (I don't exercise much around Kilifi because it's too bloody hot) we did see some cool stuff, and MAN was it beautiful! Here's some of that evidence: 

The crew for the morning :)

Almost hit these dudes with the bike!

Zebra butts.

Pumba.

The conference was held at this really cool camp thing just outside Naivasha, which is about an hour or two outside Nairobi. The night we arrived we were told we had to do medical stuff that evening, so we needed to be on time. Little did we know "medical stuff" actually meant a free happy hour, thanks to our fabulous country director! And obviously once you get a group of Peace Corps volunteers near some free alcohol, madness ensues. Those pictures are on Facebook ;)

We spent the mornings and afternoons learning about life after Peace Corps - how to write a good resume, how to present yourself in an interview, all the benefits of being a returned volunteer. And when we weren't in the conference room we were spending as much time as possible soaking up each other's company, which consisted of a lot of ultimate frisbee and jumping in the pool with our clothes on. I've said it before and I'll say it again: my group here is the best, most eclectic and wonderful bunch of people I could have ever asked for. I'm gonna miss everybody.

THE GROUP - Even though Shub isn't really looking at the camera, this is still a wonderful picture :)

The last night of the conference was basically just a big party for us. Before the ridiculously fancy dinner we had a gathering of our whole group, plus our training manager Joseph, one of our directors John, our Education boss Enos, and our incredible Medical Officer Lisa. We all got presented with nifty thank you certificates signed by all the PCKenya staff, an envelope of letters from each other, and then we did a fun Peace Corps Kenya tradition (though I'm not sure how far back the tradition goes). With all of us in a circle, one long spool of ribbon was wrapped around each of our wrists, symbolizing how connected we are now, and then Enos went around the circle and cut each of us free, since Peace Corps is just about finished and we all need to go get a real life now! The kicker is that we have to keep the ribbon on our wrists until we successfully make it back to our homes in the States. Cool huh?

The ribbon stuff was followed up by an absolutely AMAZING meal, a gorgeous Peace Corps cake, and finally lots and lots of dancing and hugging and picture-taking.

All of Deaf Ed!!

Myself and Amanda - my partner-in-crime, and one of the best people I've ever known.

And I didn't get a shot before they cut into it, but you can still see how pretty it is :)

While at COS conference we finally got our actual Close Of Service dates, as well. I will be officially finishing Peace Corps on November 30th, 2012. Once I get all the paper work done in Nairobi and say goodbye to everyone there, I'll head back to Kilifi (private citizen and everything!) to say my goodbyes here, square things away with the new volunteer who's supposed to be moving into my house, and pick up the kitties. No tickets are bought yet but the plan is to fly out sometime around the 15th of December. I'll keep you posted on that stuff as it unravels.

I'll definitely be back to Kilifi August of next year, for a very important and exciting wedding, so I'll be able to see all my friends here again. My kids, on the other hand, will not be so easy to find when I get back. So keep your fingers crossed that school actually does open this term, so I can at least see my kiddos one last time before I leave. I wish I never have to say goodbye to them. Another post will probably follow in the near future about how much they mean to me, since I think this one is long enough.

One last quick shout out to my CRAZY WONDERFUL brother, Morgan, and his newly engaged fiancee, Ala! I love you guys! Congrats and make sure you get married while I'm in the country :)

Loads of love and hugs to everyone from Kilifi!

And happy Autumn!

~ Shub out :)

August is for relaxing!

Another term gone and now only one more left!

Ack!

I'm currently in Nairobi sitting in the lovely resource room at the Peace Corps office, typing this post with the available free internet :) Hooray! It's been a crazy month off, and only getting crazier by the minute.

We closed school early which means it's been even longer since I've seen my kids. Thankfully, though, the month is almost over, which means school opening, and my last term in Kenya, is right around the corner. I spent the first part of the month in Kilifi, doing a lot of sitting around on beaches and boats, lots of cooking and bbq-ing, and a lot of relaxing. Usually the months off are the times when volunteers want to get out of their site (the village!) and go travel and do stuff. I, on the other hand, live in a vacation spot, so I don't need to go anywhere to do all those fun vacation-y things. Everyone just comes to me :) I do get sort of bogged down in the laid-back lifetsyle of the Kenyan coast, so I'm glad to be up and out and feeling useful again.

I've been in Nairobi since Monday, and will be here until the weekend. Myself and the three other volunteers who are secondary deaf-ed have come here to the main PC office to work on our KSL technical signs project. Kenyan Sign Language is a very new language, and being so young, there are not signs for a lot of words that come up in the subjects we teach, namely Physics, Math, Bio, and Chem. So we (the four of us) and some of the Peace Corps language trainers spent some time this past term working with our students to develop signs for words like "square root" and "factorize" and "electron" and "mitochondria." We've come to Nairobi this week to compile the videos and pictures we've taken of our kids doing the signs so that we can eventually make more of a standardized lanugage for the math and science subjects. It's been a slow and tedious process, but it at least seems like we're getting things done, so we're just going to focus on that.

After doing some more serious shopping and other errands around Nairobi, most importantly buying cat crates and seeing the vet here, I head out Sunday to meet up with some other volunteers in my group in Naivasha. We are going to go to Hell's Gate (a game park) and bike/hike around on Monday and hopefully see some really cool animals. I still to this day have not been on safari in Kenya, which is a little embarrassing. How can I return from two years in the Peace Corps in Kenya and not have been on safari here? I have been on a wonderful safari in South Africa, but not in my own country yet. I plan to remedy that this weekend. Since the Hell's Gate game park is super close to where we will be staying for our Close Of Service conference, we will just head straight from safari to our hotel in Naivasha, and meet up with the rest of our group there.

Crazy to think that the last time we were all together as a group was IST, last April of 2011. Eek! I can't wait to see everyone again. Even though I've made so many wonderful friends in Kilifi over the past two years, my Peace Corps peeps were my initial coming-to-Kenya crew and they'll always have a place in my heart :) I love my PC group so much and I can't wait until we're all together one last time, before we all head our separate ways after Kenya.

After COS conference we head back to Nairobi in groups for our final doctor and dentist appointments while we're here. Then next weekend I'm supposed to head back to the coast. Though right now there are lots of crazy things going on in Mombasa so I don't know if I'll have to take a bus back, or if they will fly me. Fingers crossed! Either way I should be back in school next week sometime, though it's still up in the air whether school will officially open or not anways. We've had issues at school last term, that may or may not carry over to this term, AND all the teachers in Kenya are sayng they are going to go on strike at the beginning of this term too. Ack! So much craziness.

I'll leave you with some pics of the Kilifi part of my August holiday, and will post more from Hell's Gate after we finish all our stuff here and I get back to Kilifi.

Karaoke night at Members!

Private beach down on the plantation

Getting ready to head to Watamu for the night!

Kinyonga Adventure Camp at Kivukoni School :)

Sundowners on Ross's boat.. typical Kilifi evening. 

Mark the water sports instructor doing what he does best. 

G'night Kilifi sun! See you kesho. 

Path down to George's beach on Sunday morning

Katembo (dorm father at school) and his family at their home.

Sometimes it's nice to get away from town every once in a while..

Festus, Oliver, and Jessica- cutest kids ever.

And then back home to MY family. They clearly miss me when I'm gone. 

Ok e'erbody. As always, it's now a few days after I began writing this post. So now we gotta head out to the Peace Corps office one last time today and finish up the work for the week.

Much love and hugs to everyone.

~ Shub out :)

Winding down :(

One of my Form 3's woke up from a little snooze on his desk after finishing an exam early, got my attention, and said (in Signed Exact English so there was no mistaking it) "I will never forget you." Ugh. Way to tug at my heart strings, Emmanuel.

When I first got to school here and for the first few months of teaching these kids I was in what some might call the "honeymoon phase." I was so entranced by my kids' kindness and respect for everyone (even people who seemed not to deserve it, in my eyes), and their general unfailing happiness, that I wasn't really able to look past it and see their human sides. I've had just about two years with them now and I've gotten over the honeymoon phase, because I've spent SO much time with them and therefore know them SO well. Knowing them this well has made it feel like that stage after the honeymoon, when you really get down to business. All of those things from the beginning still ring true to this day, but I've had a chance to see them more clearly as people, instead of just part of these exotic two years in Africa. They've made me way too angry at points, but they have also been the ones who have cheered me up when I've felt like all I wanted to do is gauge someone's eye out. So in a sense it's like I love them even more now. Though it's hard to explain how I feel about my kids here, because it seems like more than just love. It's sort of a dependence/friendship type thing too. And the more I try to explain it, the cheesier it sounds. Humph.

That being said, school is closing now, because we don't really have enough food for the kids to stay any longer. After a lot of excitement and drama last week that I really shouldn't write about on the internet (ask me if you don't already know and want to) the kids finally started their exams and just finished yesterday. That means starting now-ish I'm all alone again, and have to rely solely on my social life to keep me busy. Closing school is always a small relief, but more of a let-down for me, because I miss those darn kids so much. Fortunately though, it seems like there will be a lot of visitors this August, which is good, because it will keep things moving in Kilifi.

This month into the middle of August is also Ramadhan, which means my Muslim kids are fasting. The ratio of Muslims to Christians at school is about 60/40, and during Ramadhan the Muslims can't eat while the sun is up. This makes it really tough for them to take exams, because their stomachs are rumbling at them all day long. Poor kids. And since they're not allowed to eat with the rest of the school, they cook their own food for after dark, which I got to taste some of on Saturday for movie night. It was actually pretty delicious. Still not sure if it's worth not eating all day, but it's their choice, right? Mom always said I was a good eater, anyways. I'm not too keen on the fasting.

Anywho, time here IS winding down, whether I like it or not. We've been getting emails from Nairobi about our Close Of Service conference and doctors appointments and all this other crap we have to do before finishing Peace Corps. I can't believe it's almost over. My life in Kilifi has become so much more than just the "Peace Corps" part. It's become my life in so many wonderful ways, and the thought of having to say goodbye to everyone here is not something I like. I'll be back to Kilifi next fall at the very latest for a wedding and a lot of catch up with my friends here, so saying goodbye to them won't be so bad. Saying goodbye to my kids, however, will probably be the hardest thing I've ever done. When I left for Peace Corps, and said "see you in a few years!" to friends and family stateside, it obviously wasn't easy. But I knew I'd see all those people again. My kids however, are not as easy to contact, or get in touch with, since most of them don't have phones or parents that know English, or email accounts or skype. Some of them do have phones though, and I'll definitely be trying to find them as soon as I get back.

Another thing about these kids is that working with them has made me truly fall in love with the Deaf community and Deaf culture. When I'm not using my hands to talk, something feels out of place and not right. So maybe when I get back stateside I'll try to do something similar there. I've been so immersed in Kenyan Deaf culture, however, that I feel like I really don't know much at all about American Deaf culture. Although some other deaf Peace Corps Volunteers have told me there are some parallels between the two so maybe I know a little more than I think.

Whatever the case may be about Deaf cultures in different countries, and whether or not I have/will fit in to any of them, it still remains that I have no idea what I want to do when I get home. Probably get right back on the plane and come back to Kilifi. Ugh.

Well here's some shots from the end of the term. Feel free to check out the good 'ol FB as well. 

Can you tell how much I like grading tests? It's not much...

EXCEPT for when I get messages inside them like this one:

Drinks at Makuti Villas means chalk time for Kelvin

My least favorite school meal - Githeri with soya beans. Bleh.

Lucy and Lilian, being themselves.

Fasting during Ramadhan means making chapatis for after dark :)

Why are you both looking so grumpy?

This is Gona telling me my hair has gotten really long.

Emmanuel doing a problem on the board for everyone.

Catherine looks like she's trying to ward off the devil

but she's actually just making the plus sign.

Best view ever: standing at school watching the kiddos get dinner.

Okie doke. Hugs to everyone!

~ Shub out :)