Camp GLOW and August

So I actually got to sleep past 6:00 this morning, because the neighbor kids weren't screaming as loud as usual. *Sigh*. It's now mid-August, and as much as I need break months to catch up on sleep and get things done around my house, I miss my kids like never before. The school compound gets full of hearing children come home from boarding school, and is completely void of Deaf kids. It just feels like something (a lot of things) is missing. But I know that in a few short weeks they will all start trickling back into school, and things will be back to the way they should. I can't even fathom how much it's going to hurt to leave these kids for good. They are my life here, and without them, I don't feel right.

Maybe it was a mistake from the beginning to get so attached, knowing that I can't be with them forever. That's one of the caveats of teaching right? Students continuously come and go. Except in this case seeing them after school, sometime in the future, seems almost impossible. Hmph.

Anywho, I just got back from Kisumu last week, with 4 of my girls, one teacher, 4 girls from Lamu and another teacher, a couple girls from Malindi and south coast, and a BUNCH from Western and Nyanza province. Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Kisumu had about 86 girls total, half of which were hearing, and half of which were deaf. It's a two day trip to Kisumu for us coasties, since it's literally the opposite end of the country, but we survived, and yours truly ended up being in charge of A LOT of money to get A LOT of people fed and transported. It was uber stressful but also tons of fun, mainly because I had 4 of my own awesome girls with me. I took Mercy and Monica, both Form 3, and Teresia and Amina, both Form 2. All four are great students, but most importantly, girls that a lot of other kids look up to. Plus they are hilarious, and just fun to be around, so that was a bonus for me :) What was also cool was that since the majority of the other deaf girls at camp were from primary schools, my girls were forced into being role models right from the get-go. But they had no problem with that. Even on the first night of travel, one of the other volunteers commented to me about how responsible and grown-up my girls are. Even though that has nothing to do with me, I blushed anyways and went to tell them. The girls were just as flattered as I was, and I told them it was a great start and to keep it up for the rest of the week.

Mercy and Teresia were SUPER excited for PB&J and

potato chips. What a treat!

So Monday was all about communication and confidence and goals for the future. We started with the deaf girls teaching the hearing girls a little sign language, and giving them sign names. I then did the introduction for just the deaf girls, and later taught a lesson on saying 'no' and being assertive (something I keep going back and forth with in Kenya; should I abide by the silly rules of this perpetually indirect culture, or should I just be rude and confront people and say no?). Tuesday was women's health: I taught the lesson on pregnancy and already exhausted from all the hassle of traveling I took the afternoon off for a much-needed nap. Wednesday was HIV/AIDS day and I and another volunteer did the lesson on prevention. ::Enter dozens of penis and vagina models, and more condoms than anyone could ever ask for:: I showed the girls the proper way to put on a male condom then everyone got a chance to do it themselves. Shyness and embarrassment had to be thrown out the window for this part, but since they're all girls anyways, it wasn't too tough. I also told a really fun story to the girls about condoms, and deaf people, and communication. It doesn't translate well into English, and is much better in sign. I posted it here, with a brief intro. See if you can get any of it :) Thursday morning was about decision-making, and Thursday afternoon we did field trips to some NGOs in Kisumu town, and to the LVCT, the Deaf VCT in Kenya. Friday I taught a lesson on rape, just before the girls learned all about self-defense. Then Friday afternoon we went to an Impala park; saw a couple zebras, had a nice little boat ride on Lake Victoria, and came home for the closing ceremony and the disco. At the ceremony, each girl got called up individually and got a certificate and photo of the whole camp. The disco followed shortly after and lasted an hour or so before all of us counselors decided it was much more worthwhile to sleep. All in all, it was a good week. Exhausting, but good.

Mercy and Monica teach their new hearing friends how to fingerspell

My girls and I at the bonfire :)

Me teaching pregnancy

or something Yay condoms!

At the end of the week at the Deaf VCT. Love them!

Remember I said I did the introduction for my group? Well what I thought would be cool, since we had deaf girls from all over the country, would be to compare signs. So I held up a bunch of cards with words on them, and had everyone show their specific sign for it. Some words had virtually all the same sign, with a little variation in hand-shape or movement, but some had 4 or 5 different signs that were not even close to similar. Examples were "coast," "mzungu," "mango," "rice," "sex," "bus," and "pregnant." What's interesting though, is that even though the girls have different signs for the same word or concept, 98% of the time they still fully understand each other. It's actually pretty cool. Once you have a general idea of what a word might look like in sign, seeing it in lots of different ways is pretty intuitive. And on that note, I remember being super nervous that my girls from Kilifi would be the only ones at camp that understood me. Thankfully though, because of that whole intuitive sign stuff, that wasn't the case. I adjusted some signs here and there, or repeated myself with different signs, but all in all, it seemed to work ok.

Another funny thing was that a lot of people at camp thought I was deaf when they first met me. Some of the other deaf ed. volunteers brought counterparts with them, teachers at their schools who are also deaf. And apparently, for some reason, upon first meeting me, they assumed I was deaf as well, because of the way I sign. I took it as a compliment every time, and reiterated that my students are the best teachers in the world. I think I'm actually learning more from them than they are from me. Another flattery moment came when volunteers who teach in primary deaf schools told me they wished they taught my kids in secondary. My girls LOVED this and I told them once again how happy I am to be where I am, and how lucky I am to have them as my kids. Peace Corps is tough, but there's a lot I have to be truly thankful for.

SO. This week I have been sleeping and washing clothes and baking a lot. Those three activities usually take up most of a day, but I've also been catching up with my friends in Kilifi. Before I forget, I want to give a big shout-out to Ellen Jennings, who is moving back to the UK next week to go to grad school, and who has been an awesome friend and integral part of my sanity here. Thanks for all the Thai pork curries and the showers and letting me use your oven to my heart's content:) I miss you already!

Right now there are a bunch of volunteers in Mombasa (Bamburi, actually) at a week-long Peace Corps workshop, and when they finish there, a few of them are make the oh-so-long 45 minute trek north to Kilifi. Most of them have never seen the coast before, and since I practically live in a vacation spot, I plan on taking them on all the vacation-type adventures I can. I want to go to snorkeling, spend a day at a resort, and just relax on the beach. Yay Beach Corps! Then next weekend on the 21st I make the day-long trip to Nairobi once again for PST planning. We'll have 3 full days of meetings, I am DEFINITELY going to fit in time to see Harry Potter, and I'm coast-bound again on the 25th. Then the week after that I have to go to Bamburi for the same workshop half my group is at now. That will end the first week of September, and then my kids start coming back to school :) As long as I stay busy break months aren't that bad.

The pakas are doing good. We've been working on letting them outside, which is much harder for me, actually. It's like letting your kids go off to college: you just have to trust they'll come back at some point. I have recently seen one of the neighbor kids trying to beat them with sticks though, so I've kinda regressed and become even more hesitant than I was before. Oh well. Karibu Kenya. Currently, Marie is sleeping above me, on top of my mosquito net (she likes the hammock feel) and Toulouse is sprawled out on my Spongebob blanket, which he also enjoys peeing on now and then. Marie has no boundaries whatsoever and will go anywhere and everywhere she pleases, and Toulouse's new favorite thing is to eat everything in sight, whether it's edible or not, throw it up a few hours later, then eat what he just threw up. Cute.

So everyone is good, I'm still alive and kickin', and I hope you guys are all great back home. Summer is almost over right? Hooray for school again! Ok, love you all bunches and bunches. Check out facebook for the full reel of Camp GLOW pics, and have an awesome rest of August :)

Miss you!

~ Shub :)

Two down, four to go.

Sittin' here eating some cold leftover stir fry and wondering how on earth I just made it through the longest and hardest 9 months of my life, and why on earth those long months went by so fast. Hmm.

My school is officially closed. We were informed a few days ago that Kibarani (the primary school where I live, and where the kids eat and spend all other time outside the classroom) doesn't have enough money to keep feeding my secondary kids for the rest of the week. Luckily, exams are finished, so closing early is not a big deal. I spent yesterday finishing my marking and compiling grades, and attempting to talk to a BUNCH of my kids parents.

Since my kids (all but 3) can't hear a darn thing, they have to have to have someone else talk with their parents. Round about the time school is closing the kids all start realizing they have no money to get home. Kenya has this wonderful thing called m-pesa, which is essentially banking through your phone; you can send money back and forth, buy airtime for your phone or for internet, and even do all that stuff to someone else's phone from yours, and it's totally free to use. It's pretty genius. I just got an m-pesa account this term, and I'm not sure why I didn't get one sooner. BUT now that I have it, my phone gets passed around school like it's its job. First the kids will come up to me and ask me to call their parents. The first question I ask is whether or not they need money. If the answer is yes, the next question I ask is whether or not their parents know English. Some of the parents I know have decent enough English because I've spoken to them before, but most I have no idea. My kids say "Yeah! They know English!" Fine. So I call. Annnnnnd I get nowhere, because all I hear on the other line is Kiswahili. If I greet them in Kisawhili (which I've totally got down after 9 months), they start rambling. The conversation usually goes nowhere, because they don't know English, and my Kiswahili is so limited (kidogo sana!), so we hang up and I realize I probably shouldn't have believed the DEAF kid about which languages their parents speak. How would they know? The next thing I do is get one of my half-ers. I have three boys who are fluent in Kiswahili and their mothertongue and all that stuff, and can hear fairly well out of at least one ear. Emmanuel is Form 2, and Alii and Francis are Form 3. Francis is my fellow interpreter when we have outside people come in for Guidance and Counseling sessions, Alii is my head boy, and Emmanuel is my at-site Kiswahili teacher. They're wonderful. So they begrudgingly use my phone to call other kids' parents and ask for money. The money is sent to my phone through m-pesa, I use it for internet, and I give my kids cash out of my pocket. It's a pretty hilarious process, but it works.

So Saturday I head to Nairobi with four of my girls, one of my teachers, and 10 other people (deaf girls, teachers, and other PCV's) from the coast. We'll spend Saturday night in Nairobes and then we have private shuttles from our hotel in NRB to the center outside Kisumu where we'll have camp for the week. Camp GLOW is going to be jam-packed with life lessons and meeting new people, and I'm pretty sure my girls have NO idea how much they are going to enjoy themselves. Only a fraction of my kids have even been off the coast before, so this will be an awesome experience for them.

I, on the other hand, am quite nervous. As a camp counselor (which is no big deal) I have to teach a couple lessons during camp (also no big deal). BUT I realize more and more that 85 - 90% of the signs I use in normal conversation now I learned here, in Kilifi, at school. There was so much I didn't know when I get here, because the signing I learned in training was not the signing that exists on the coast. Seven months into it, talking to my kids and teaching them is not an issue, but that's with MY kids. I'm only going to have four of my kids there; the rest will be Deaf from all over Kenya, and probably won't understand a thing I say. Sadly, though, these kids are taught from an early age (especially the deaf ones) to never speak up if they don't understand, to just sit quietly and take it. Rote memorization is the name of the game, and participatory interactive activities are far and few between.

(Side note: One of my girls in Form 2, who I'm coincidentally taking to camp, asked me the other day if I had ever seen a Deaf teacher walk into a hearing classroom and starting teaching in sign language to a bunch of hearing kids who don't understand sign language. That's absurd right? She phrased it differently and I wasn't quite sure where she was going with it at first, but she asked again and I figured it out. These kids want so bad to understand and are so hungry for information. There is so much they don't know, because it has never been properly explained to them. And in a few short years time they have to take the most important exam of their lives. But how are they supposed to do that when all their teachers do is talk at them?)

OK, back to the story. The point is even if the girls don't understand me, because they come from a different part of Kenya, they will probably still tell me they understand. It's taken most of my kids the better part of two terms to realize if they ask me questions and tell me they don't get it, that I won't get mad. No problem! So I try to explain it a different way. Sometimes it takes twice as long, and I always walk out of the classroom thinking I would need 15 years to teach these kids everything they need to know for that exam, but at least they're understanding something.

What elseee..... Oh! I just got a call from my Peace Corps peeps in Nairobi to ask if I want to be a part of planning the up-coming Pre-Service Training for the new Education group coming to Kenya in October. Hooray! I am thrilled and thoroughly honored that they asked. Right now, out of around 150-ish volunteers in Kenya, three of us are Secondary Deaf-Ed volunteers. The rest of the Education volunteers teach at either secondary hearing schools, or primary deaf schools. BUT we are supposed to have 2 new Secondary Deaf Ed-ers coming in with the next group (YES!). I've also heard, from Peace Corps and even from some of my kids, that there are a bunch of new Secondary Deaf Schools cropping up all over the country. How cool is that? So I head back to Nairobi on the 21st of August to meet up with my awesome Peace Corps staff, and a couple other PCVs to hash out the plans for the upcoming PST. I can't wait. This also means I will once again have access to really good Ethiopian and Thai food, I can buy contact solution, and I can go see Harry Potter :)

On a creepier note, I recently discovered something (or a lot of things) that reminded me once again that I live in Africa. I came home one evening from dinner, and thank GOODNESS I left my outside light on, or I would have walked right into a swarm of thousands and thousands of ants at the base of my front door. My house is essentially just a big cement block and in no way sealed from the outside, and there's only one door, so I felt a little stuck for a minute. They were all different sizes, brown and reddish, and very shiny. There were also these HUGE ones being carried by the smaller one that I later learned are called sausage flies, because their abdomens are giant and wriggling and gross. They were everywhere, and blocking everything just well enough that I had to get close to them to open the door. So I did, terrified. Maybe these are those ants that can eat people or something! So I finally got inside, shut the kittens in my bedroom, put on my rainboots, grabbed the broom, the bottle of insect killer, and got into attack mode. I sprayed and swept for about 10 minutes, because they just kept coming out of the walls. Thankfully it was after dark, and late enough that all my kids had gone to preps, so no one could see how ridiculous I looked. I bet it was pretty ridiculous though. So I finished my killing spree and quickly got on google to figure out what these guys were. I think I typed in "swarm of ants in Africa" or something and the second hit down was an exact picture of my new found friends. Turns out they are called safari ants, driver ants, or siafu in Kiswahili. Check it out here. Apparently, during the rainy season, they leave their hill and migrate to a place where they can find food. They form these giant marching columns, which are easily avoided, if you can move, and if the column doesn't pass through your house. AWESOME. If something does get in their path, they will do everything they can to defend themselves, which really just means they'll eat you. I read other stories online about how people in villages in the Congo actually have to evacuate their homes, or be eaten alive. Any animals inside the house will surely be eaten. So as you can imagine, this made me feel really comfortable. It's not over. The next night I had to go out again, and when I came home, they were back, but this time they had doubled in number. For a split second I thought 'I have GOT to take a picture of this, no one is going to believe me,' then the realization that they were swarming inside the house hit me, and I started panicking; maybe they had eaten the kittens? So I got inside, saw the kittens were still alive, and sprayed and swept all over again, this time for even longer. Two nights was enough for me. The next day I went to town and bought this vermin powder stuff they have and threw a whole bunch in the holes where they were coming from. Thankfully I haven't seen them since, and hopefully never will again. The rainy season is nice because everything cools down, but there certainly are more bugs than I expected.

So two terms down, and four to go. Peace Corps spent a lot of training telling us our first three months at site would be the hardest, and everything else after that is a piece of cake. Strangely, I seem to be doing things backwards. My first term teaching was amazing. This past second term though was a LOT tougher than I expected, but for the weirdest reasons. I definitely cried a lot more in Term 2, and definitely had more thoughts about going home in Term 2, but I promised these kids two years, and I have to deliver. No one said this would be easy right? It just seems so often that it's hard for all the wrong reasons. I know now it's not the material things from America that I miss, it's the aspects of peoples' personalities, and things like a sense of priority, work ethic, and accountability. I'm learning more and more about how to 'play the game' here and how essential it is to my success as a volunteer. Hopefully this term was and will be the hardest, and hopefully things will only get easier. Time will tell right?

Ok, I'm exhausted and need some sleep. Miss you all like never before. Did I tell you I'm coming home for Christmas?

:)

Cheers!

~ Shub :)

Sarah: Camp counselor, committee member, and raw chicken.

It was Tuesday and almost midnight when I started writing this post. I was doing this while simultaneously wasting precious megabytes and doing everything I possibly could to find the season 2 finale of Glee. I just got back from Nairobi, where I met up with a bunch of other volunteers to plan for a huge event we have in August, and aside from just being generally awesome, the other PCVs also bring me stuff like Glee. I was THRILLED until I realized the last episode, that oh-so-exciting season finale, is only half there. I might as well ET and come back to America. I mean, this is just absurd. I can't live like this. Well, if Peace Corps is teaching me one thing, it's patience. Humph.

Anyways, as horrible as the 12 hour trip to Nairobi was, it's always refreshing to see other volunteers again, and have meetings on time, and actually get things done. The event we have going on in August is called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). Peace Corps Washington has different committees that they fund in each Peace Corps country, and I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but the three committees we have in Kenya are DPS (Diversity and Peer Support), VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee), and GAD (Gender and Development). GAD is primarily funded by PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), and one of the things that Peace Corps/PEPFAR puts on is Camp GLOW. It's essentially a girls' empowerment camp, no boys allowed (except for PCV counselors and staff), and we cover everything from job opportunities and self-confidence to sex, pregnancy, abortion, family planning, poverty, self-defense and everything anyone would ever want to know about HIV and AIDS. We'll take the girls on a field trip, we'll have a disco night, a movie night, a bonfire, talent show, and all the games they can possibly handle. It's gonna be awesome.

In April, this past school break, there was a Camp GLOW that was actually here in Kilifi! BUT due to some unfortunate circumstances with the Embassy or something, interpreters couldn't be hired, so deaf girls were not allowed to go. This time however, Peace Corps is def making up for it, and half of August's camp is going to be deaf. Hooray! I applied earlier this term to be a camp counselor for August, and Peace Corps apparently likes me enough so I get to go too :) I'm bringing four of my girls from Kilifi, two from Form 2 and two from Form 3, and also shepherding a bunch of other deaf girls from up and down the coast. It's going to be a two day trip to the camp's new location, Kisumu, which is all the way out in Nyanza province on Lake Victoria, close to Uganda, but I definitely won't be alone. When all of us counselors met in Nairobi to plan logistics we found out that Alli (another PCV on the coast) and I will be taking 13 deaf to Kisumu with us. We ended up joking about my numerous baby ducklings that will be following me west. Oh well. The more the merrier :)

So Camp GLOW meetings finished and I thought I'd go home on Sunday. Not quite. Remember how I said Peace Corps Kenya has three different committees funded by Washington? Well Kenya is also the only Peace Corps country in the whole world that has a Deaf Education program. Sometimes us Deaf Ed-ers feel a little bit pushed to the wayside in all the craziness that is the Education sector, and I won't even go into how forgotten the Secondary Deaf Ed-ers are. I love Peace Corps, and I love Peace Corps Kenya, but we decided back in April at IST that we needed to help them out a bit. So we've started another committee just for Deaf Ed. There's 5 people on this new committee, including yours truly, so that I can make sure they don't forget about Secondary Deaf Ed. We're still working on a name for the committee and on making everything official so we can get funding and start doing stuff. We want to make a centralized location, whether online or in an office somewhere, where all the Deaf Ed volunteers can go for classroom resources. These resources might have come from Peace Corps itself, or from past volunteers. There's a wealth of information and ideas on how to best teach our wonderful deaf kids, we just need a way to access it. We also want to get in contact with different deaf/education-related organizations, either Kenyan or international, and see what they can help us with, e.g. KNAD (Kenya National Association of the Deaf), KIE (Kenya Institute of Education), DeafAid (from Sweden), and Deaf Child WorldWide. And we also want to just be a support network for Deaf Ed PCVs. We get a lot of support from PC Kenya, for sure, but we are a unique sub-sector, and because of that, very close-knit. It will be nice to have an official, centralized group that everyone can turn to if we need anything. So, wish us luck in getting things off the ground! We know we can only do so much in two years, but this will hopefully be a very good jumping-off point for future generations of volunteers to take over and continue working on. Yay Deaf Ed!

So things are going ok in Kilifi. It's getting cold since the rains have come, and by cold I mean 72. Anything below 80 and my kids have to wear 3 sweaters. It's pretty funny. I'm actually getting so adjusted to the weather here that I have to heat my bath water in the morning. 72 is chilly. I'm gonna die when I come home at Christmastime. Things are perpetually busy as well. I've realized that I stand so much during the day that when I go home for good in the evening, the muscles in the back of my knees actually hurt to sit down. Heh. And I'm always so exhausted and go to bed so late that I'm usually asleep before I can even finish tucking my mosquito net in. This recently may have been because I was watching Glee till all hours of the night, but hey, I HAVE to watch it right? And speaking of my mental health, some days I just get so frustrated I want to punch walls, and possibly people, and just go back to America. Things are SO much easier there. But then I look at my kids and realize I could never do that to them. I told them I'd be here for two years and I could never let them down. They mean way too much to me. I mean, who would they laugh at if I left?

Exhibit A:

Yesterday my Form 3's interrupted Math lesson to tell me that I looked like a chicken that's been plucked but not cooked. Cute. Not only are these kids teaching me unbelievable amounts of patience because of what they have to go through on a daily basis, they're also teaching me a lot more personal acceptance, and to not be easily offended. They don't mean any harm when they tell me I was much prettier in America, or that I looked fatter when I got back from Nairobi, they're simply making observations. Osman was the one who brought up the chicken thing. He is so goofy and he never tries to be, but he also knows exactly how to pull my chain, and he tries that all the time. Sometimes he'll get in fights with me about gender equality or about corruption and stuff. When he noticed that I was the slightest bit miffed by the chicken statement, he played on it as much as he could, and pretended to drool when he saw me, and take bites out of my arm. "We can't focus in class Sarah because looking at you just makes us hungry," he says. So to keep the play-fight going I proceeded to pack up my bag and walk out. Gona saw I was about to leave and ran to the door to lock me in. I tried to counter the argument by telling them it's hard to teach them because all I think about when I look at them is chocolate. I ended up sitting in a corner and laughing so hard I cried. Everyone got a giant kick out of it, and math had to resume later on. Normal day :)

Alright, hope everything is good back stateside. Miss you all bunches and bunches. As always, here's some random pictures from the recent weeks in Kenya.

Here’s two of my boys with two of my other babies. The one on the right is that lovable trouble-maker Osman. He's also holding a pretty lovable trouble-maker.

Bow of the dhow I went on with Ellen and her parents a few weeks back.

Boys enjoying themselves at a little birthday party they had for one of the girls.

Catherine is saying "I love you Sarah."

Here's me with Reily, another volunteer from my group, when we met up in Nairobi. We were wearing the same thing and def lookin' pretty gangster.

Here's some of my girls doing a hilarious drama at the big

tree-planting ceremony we had a couple weeks ago.

Aaaaaand this is what happens when I try to plan lessons and stuff.

Okie doke. Give my best to America. Kenya says "whatup." Keep reading! Stay awesome. And Happy Belated 4th of July!

~ Love Shub :)