Reflections

As my time here draws to a close, I have been reflecting quite a bit on how much things have changed for me, both in Kenya and back at home in America (or should I say the “states” so I get used to saying that now).

When I first moved to my community of Mumias, anytime I would walk to town the word “Mzungu” (meaning white person) would be called out to me. Now when I walk through town I often hear the word “webo” - hopefully spelled correctly. After several months of hearing that I finally asked a friend what that word means. I was told it means “girl of our tribe” in the local language of Luhya. I heard this and a slow smile crept over my face. Finally after putting in my time of nearly 2 years, the town of Mumias views me as a local. I find this to be a good feat because Mumias isn’t a tiny village that is easy to integrate into. It’s a fairly good size town with many different people everyday.

I also think back to when I first started to teach. I still remember the first day of teaching classes, as I walked towards the door of the classroom it felt as if my heart was going to jump out of my chest. My hands couldn’t stop shaking (which isn’t exactly what you want when you have to teach using sign language). It would take an entire class or two… or three for me to get the kids to understand what I wanted to happen.  But just last week I had taught my last life skills class and the topic was healthy relationships. The students brainstormed a list of all the different types of relationships and were able to list so many. Then they made up dramas within 5 minutes that portrayed different healthy and unhealthy relationships. I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time I watched them present their dramas. 2 years ago, they wouldn’t have been able to do that…. But now they can and they do even better than expected.

My first 5 terms of teaching at my school, I would wonder how much influence I really had in being here. My thoughts have finally been answered this last term. Almost everyday the past month the students ask and confirm the date that I will be leaving Mumias. They beg and plead for me to stay and continue to teach them until they graduate. They tell me that when they leave school at the end of the term I better hide because they will be crying knowing I won’t be here when they return.  The other teachers have told me how they have noticed how much the students enjoy my teaching and that I will be sadly missed when gone. Sometimes you’re never told how much you are affecting someone’s life. I am lucky enough to have been told.

However, as happy as I am to know how I have made an impact on my students… they have made an impact on me 10 times larger which I can not put into words. As I write, tears fall down my cheeks knowing that I will be leaving them soon. 

It is such a bittersweet leaving my community. I am truly excited to come back to the States and see my friends and family again. But the thought of leaving my girls makes my heart start to pound just as it did my first day of teaching as I took my steps towards the classroom. It’s interesting how things do change.

Kenya… it’s been amazing, and I will see you once again someday. But until then, America get ready because I’m coming back!

Death as a part of Life

It's 9:30pm and normally I would be asleep by now (sad I know), but for some reason I'm not ready to go to bed yet. So I thought I would give you all a little update on what's been happening.

A few weeks ago while standing at assembly (students announcement type of thing) in the morning, my principle informed everyone that a form 2 (sophomore) student had died earlier in the week. When she announced this, it was a very odd moment for me. I looked around at all of the faces of the students who just heard this information for the first time. There was no show of emotion. No tears. No... nothing. I do not want to think that Kenyans are heartless people. Far from that. But at this moment I realized just how much death is apart of everyones life here in Kenya. For all of the students, they have probably already lost a classmate during primary school, a sibling, a parent and so on. Death is so common here that when it occurs... its nothing new. The funeral was the following Monday. So all of the students started a money collection which would go to the family. They also prepared a dress for the girl since she did not have one to be buried in. The funeral was out in the village, but to my surprise when I arrived there were Catholic priests in their robes with their special cups giving a service. I don't really know what was said since most of it was in Luyha, but for a small bit it was interpreted into Kenyan Sign language, during which they just described how the girl died (diabetes). Once the service was over they moved to bury the girl.... which was quite interesting. The clan in the area the girl was from has a tradition to bury everyone sitting up. So they had a special coffin made in which 2 boards could be removed to reposition the coffin into sitting position. Apparently this started when the king of the area long ago died in a mud slide sitting up. Below I have a picture of this old mama who I just couldn't resist taking a picture of

and this is a picture of some kids at the funeral who just couldnt resist the Mzungu. They look happy don't they? (Kenyan just do not smile in pictures)

The weeks following the funeral have been very fulfilling. I travelled to Nairobi recently and not only get to eat good food, drink good beer, and hang out with good friends, but also got to get a project that I've been very excited about started. There is a group of Volunteers working to create a video that is deaf friendly showing the process of going to get tested for HIV. Along with this video I want to make a poster showing how to use a condom correctly and another showing what to do if you are HIV - or HIV +.  So to say the least I'm very excited to get this project going.

I have also started a Health club at my school the past weeks with a fellow teacher. I taught them all how to do self breast exams. And today I just had a very successful meeting about the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

And here is a picture of my first health club meeting: self breast exams :)

Bad Lesson turned good

A few weeks ago I taught a life skills class about self esteem. I personally did not think the lesson went very well, so I was dreading having to teach life skills again the following week, but lucky me, I was going to be travelling for a meeting the day that I was supposed to have the next life skills lesson. I told my students that I would not be in class for chemistry or life skills that day and gave them some work to do for chemistry. At 3.30 (30 min before the end of day classes) one of the students came up to me and told me the class wanted me to teach them life skills then since I would not be able to on Friday. I was thinking to myself "seriously they want another class after that last horrible one?" So I said "we will not be able to finish before 4 if we start now. You really want me to come teach life skills?" and she replied with an enthusiastic yes! I'll just say it was very nice to know that even though I thought that my teaching skills were subpar, my students seem to not think so :)
Also this last weekend I decided to try to get a group of girls together to teach them how to play Ultimate Frisbee. Even with the scorching sun bearing down, I was able to round up 13 girls to play. After about 20 minutes of them all learning how to throw the frisbee, the game began... and it was so much fun! The girls caught on really fast and we played for about an hour maybe. At the end I asked if they wanted to play again in the future, and they all said yes (I mean why wouldn't they?) I asked them if they would want to play on saturdays or on sundays. They politely asked if we could play on BOTH saturday and sunday. :) looks like I have some fun weekends ahead in the future.

And So A New School Year Begins

I've had a busy month and a half off of school and I was lucky enough to enjoy it with friends and family.      The biggest highlight of course would be meeting my father and being able to spend Christmas on a safari in one of the national parks. We got to see a full arched rainbow so close that we could see where the pot of gold was located, all the while a pack of lions was sitting in front of this said rainbow. It was just amazing :) Also during the trip my father got to come back to my site and get the true experience of visiting a kenyan home, which means eating so much to point of needing to unbutton your pants but this is not possible since you are in someone elses house. 

I am now back at my site trying to get mentally prepared for this new school year. But luckily since I am in Kenya this means that I have the pleasure of being on Kenyan time. The teachers were supposed to have a meeting yesterday to start the school year off, which means of course that the meeting was held today instead. And since the students first have to have exams to start the term, this means that I don't start to teach until mid next week. Ahhhh how nice. I have an entire week and a half to get mentally prepared to begin teaching again. There are still those moments that are so typical to Peace Corps volunteers where I question how much longer I can make it. But then those moments are counteracted with high moments which reconfirm why I'm here. So I bring this up because as I was sitting in the staff meeting today thinking about the coming school year, I began to wonder how I will be able to do this all again for an entire year. I mind started to spin thinking of the long hours that will be spent waiting for meetings to begin, hours spent preparing lessons, and material for class, and of course the long hours spent sitting alone in my house at night often staring at the geckos crawling on the walls. However after the meeting a student who I never even taught last year came up and greeted me excitedly and happily, my mind slowly began to settle realizing that I can actually do this for another year.

Grunting my way through

I just walked back from town and took the normal route passing through a housing compound. I greeted the people who live there as always. But this time they decided to respond and have a conversation in what I believe was Luhya (the local tribal language in Mumias). I believe what they were saying is how I go by foot alot to town. However this is just speculation as to what they were truly saying. But I was still able to participate in this conversation even though I only know a few greetings in Luhya. How did I do this you ask?... well by grunting my way through the conversation and of course throwing in a few eyebrow raises. If you are ever involved in a conversation with a Kenyan, expect to hear some grunts from them to show they are listening and if they raise their eyebrows at you.... no they are not hitting on you, they are just paying attention to what you are saying. And you can also expect this from me when I do return to the US because it seems that is now how I converse myself.
Well it has been awhile since I last posted. I guess I should stop making promises as to how often I will post. So to those who are still reading my blog and the mini adventures of my everyday life in Kenya, thank you :)

It has now been a year and a little more than a month that I have been in Kenya now. I made it through my first year of teaching!! Whew!! There were definitely some points that I didn't think it would be possible, but thankfully it was. I've been quite busy the last few weeks. I travelled to Loitokitok (where I had my training last year... and wow it is weird to go back after a year with new trainees there instead of you) with a few of my students to participate in model school (a week of practice teaching for the trainees who will be volunteering as teachers next year) It was a wonderful, busy week with 3 of my students and many other students from other volunteers schools', and it just got me rejuvenated for teaching next year. Every afternoon after the classes we had different activities for the students. One afternoon the activity was about condoms. After discussing how use a condom and some important facts, we asked for a volunteer from group of students to come up and show how to correctly use a condom. All students just sat there until after a few seconds my student raised her hand confidently to volunteer. Let me just reiterate this... it was MY student who is deaf and is only with 5 other deaf students and all 32 others are hearing... MY student walks up to the front of the class and demonstrates clearly and correctly how to use the condom. I was so proud. I was the one who taught her this information in Life Skills class. This was one of those moments in my service here in Kenya that just confirms as to why I am here. : D        On a side note one of the other activites that we had was a bondfire which included delicious 'smores! yes thats right, I got to have a smore here in Kenya.

After Model school, I travelled to Nairobi to have my Midservice Medical exams. It may not sound that exciting, but I was EXCITED! It meant I got to hang out with my fellow volunteers for 4 days and not only that... I got to eat delicious food, not just the typical ugali! We also discovered this amazing brew pub. When we walked into the place, it was like being transported back to the US. So least to say, we gave that particular place quite alot of business in the 4 days that we were all there in Nairobi.

I'm now at my site trying to keep myself entertained which has included washing my clothes, floors, walls... reading, and napping on the floor. So as you can see my life at this point is packed full and at times just not enough time to do everything that is needed to be done, haha. I do love my school breaks!

It is only 5 more days until Christmas... and you wouldnt even know it. I love it. There is none of the typical propaganda or holiday crap everywhere. Quite peaceful I must say. And since its only 5 more days til Christmas, that means there are only 4 more days until my Dad arrives!!!!! Oh how I cant wait!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Crazies

I have made many promises to update my blog the past 2 months, and I’ve just been slacking. And I know I have already said this before, but starting now, I will try to post more (at least once a month : ) At the end of term 2, Peace Corps had all of the volunteers on a travel ban because Kenya was having a voting for a new constitution and they wanted to be prepared in case there was a repeat of violence. So for the travel ban period, I traveled to a fellow volunteers site in Lamu, which is on the coast :D. Great decision.


For a vacation, I met my mom and sister in London/Scotland! Leaving Kenya was kinda surreal and I had slight culture shock just at the airport in Kenya because there was so much candy from the states!! Why cant that be found IN Kenya and not just in the airport!? But the entire trip with my mom and sister was just wonderful and it was very very hard to leave and say goodbye again.

I’m not going to lie. It was hard for me to return to Kenya, and at first I wasn’t very happy. But when I returned to my site and saw some of my teachers I work with, they seemed genuinely happy to see me there and greeted me with the Kenyan double hug/kiss thing! And some of my students greeted me the same way. Having that happen really helped me to feel better about being back and I was able to get back into the swing of things. The start of term 3 was the first time I have been at school the first day school is to officially start. So on that Monday I go into the school at 8am as normal… and I am the ONLY teacher there… I have heard from the other volunteers that this is what happens, but I just thought my school was pretty good about starting on time… but then I realized I was never actually at school when it started, I was always at meetings for Peace Corps the first week and then arrived at school the second week. So I started to teach anyway since most of my students were there. The first class of chemistry I had I decided to play Hangman with chemistry words. It was the first time my students had ever played, and they caught on pretty fast. When one of my students came up to pick the word, instead of drawing a man… she started to draw something else which turned out to be a duck. Then the other students followed suit and when they were at the chalk board would draw other things instead of a man. I though this was great since they often don’t show too much creativity.

This term is also the first time I am teaching a hearing class (don’t get me started on why there are hearing students at this deaf school). At first I didn’t want to teach the hearing class, but the other teacher really needed me to because his schedule was too full to take it. So the first day of going in to teach the hearing class, I was really nervous and not to excited about it. But when I came out of there, WOW… I didn’t realize how hard it really is to teach the deaf chemistry until I was able to teach the hearing! But I still love my deaf classes : ) After any class which I take them to a lab or show a demonstration, there are a few students who will thank me. And one of my life skills classes asked me to teach them life skills on Friday night because we had missed life skills class in the week. I find the Kenyan students just wonderful. I mean would any american students ask to have an extra class on a weekend??

My school is having 3 new classrooms built since we don’t have enough at the moment. The first 2 days the construction workers were at the school digging out the foundation and they got a lot finished. I was thinking to myself “wow they are going to have these classrooms built in like a month!!” Oh how silly of me, I must have forgotten I am in Kenya were everything happens at a glacial pace. Since those two days…. There has been no work done what so ever. That was 2 months ago. That’s Kenyan time for ya.

One of the workers at my school has been trying to teach me Luhya, the local tribal language. It is nearly hopeless but I have been able to learn a couple of greetings. So one day when he came in to greet me, there was a hearing student standing nearby. He saw her and told her to say “mulembe“ to me. The student gives him a questioning look and says it to me. I reply with “mulembe mno”. The student has a shocking look come over her face. Then the worker tells her to say “amacheni” to me. She does, so I say back “gaouma”

The student goes running out of the staff room. About a minute later I walk out of the staff room to see the one student now joined with another hearing student. One of the girls calls out to me “teacher teacher!!” I stop and look over. The one student is whispering in to the ear of the other. Then the other looks at me shyly and says “mulembe“ . So I say ““mulembe mno”. With a look of absolute astonishment she continues and asks “amacheni” to which I reply “gaouma”. The two students turn to each other with wide eyes and go running off laughing a squealing. They just could not believe that I know some Luhya.

As I have mentioned before, the crazies in town tend to be attracted to the mzungu. So one day I was walking to town with Lee to go eat at a hoteli. As we’re walking along, this man with one eye comes up in between us and starts rambling about god knows what. And of course he has no personal space and decides to get in mine by talking to me with his face half a foot from mine. So thinking the best thing to do is to ignore him, we continue to walk on. But no the crazy man doesn’t get the message and he thinks us not talking to him is an invite to join us at the hoteli. He follows us all the way to the hoteli and into it, and he decides the best seat would be at the table right next to ours. For about 5 minutes he continues to sit there all the while harassing the waitress and just being annoying. So finally the cook comes out from the kitchen and kicks him out, and throws his bag out the door! Haha I seriously felt like I was in an old western movie or something. In the same hotel right after the crazy man is kicked out, this woman comes in with a small baby and she sits in the same seat that the crazy man was in. While Lee and I are eating, she just sits there… staring. (What can I way, watching a white person eat is great entertainment) Once I’m finished eating I go up to the counter to pay. I am standing in line and I so happen to be right next to the woman who is staring. As I’m standing waiting, I feel some one hit me on my leg/hip. I look down and it’s the same woman. She looks at me and says “habari yako?” (how are you?) and just turns around. I seriously couldn’t help myself and I just laughed out loud.

This past weekend I left my site and will not be back for 2 weeks. I went to a fellow volunteers site to help teach and also to learn some self defense so I can teach it to my girls for life skills. I have been at Danielle’s site in Litein which I have been to before. The students at her school all remembered me and were really excited for me to come again. The little ones are all just so cute and cant get enough of me. They will come running up and hold my hand, pull my arm around them as Im walking, pinch the fat on my arm, examine the arm hairs which they find so weird since they don’t have any, and so many other things. You cant help yourself but to smile because they are just so cute and funny.

At one point in the day, I was sitting in Danielle’s staff room waiting for her to finish some work. As I was sitting there one of her fellow teachers started to talk to me saying how all mzungu look the same. So I replied that she is only saying that because we have the same skin color and in that case I could say the same about Kenyans, that because they all have black skin, they all look the same too. But she just didn’t understand the point I was making and said “no no because some of us are brown and some are black, we have different tints of skin color. If you and Danielle stand next to each other, you two look the same” I continued to disagree with her for some time because Danielle and I look nothing alike. However, I eventually had to just give up because this woman just would not understand and continued to think that all mzungu look the same. So if you ever come to Kenya, expect to look the same as all the other mzungu that have come to visit, hah.

On the journey to get to Danielle’s site I was sitting in a matatu waiting for it to fill with people. As I’m sitting reading my book by the window, a man who is selling gum walks up to the window and just leans his head in and puts his forehead on my shoulder. I then lean away from the weird man. When he moves his head out of the window, I sit back again and begin to read my book. Then the man again does the same thing, so this time I push head forehead back with my finger and tell him “no”. I must say I think that the times on a matatu tend to be when the most entertaining things happen.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for Nairobi to meet the new group of education volunteers that are coming in fresh from the states. It is just so weird to think that I am now one of the older volunteers and will be helping to train them. It seems like just a month ago that I was freaking out about leaving for Kenya and trying to gather all the supplies at last minute. Wow how time is flying by!

This is for you Natalee…

 My second term of teaching has come to an end! Wooo HOO!! Like I said before it just flew by, but I’m not saying that is a bad thing. But this term did go much better than my first one. It helps so much when you actually know what to expect and what you will be doing. My students did tell me they wanted me to continue teaching them chemistry, which was shocking and good new to hear.
Even though I have now been in Kenya for 9 months, it seems that something happens everyday that just makes me laugh at the differences in the culture and such. These things especially  happen when I go to town. For the past month I have been teaching Kenyan Sign Language at one of the local health clinics in town. The second time I went to give the lesson, they put me in one of the rooms to wait until the lesson began. I sat down on the stool in the room. There was one pregnant  woman and a nurse in there.  They were talking, and then the pregnant woman went behind the cloth curtain which is slightly see through and proceeded to have an exam…all while I am sitting on the other side of the curtain in this small room. I had asked if they wanted me to sit outside, but they just responded with, “no no no you’re fine“. Needless to say I felt a bit awkward. It’s also funny, because the thighs of women are hardly ever shown and are considered sexual, yet I’ll be sitting on a matatu or walking though town and I’ll just see a mama sitting with her boob hanging out for the whole world to see.
I think one of my favorite things is when I walk to town are the little kids. Even if they are just calling me mzungu… they’re just so cute. Last week a group of kids changed the normal chanting of mzungu into a song which consisted of “cha la la mzungu! Cha la la mzungu!!”  all the while they were dancing… just because a mzungu walked by.  It’s typical for the kids to say “how are you” in a high pitched voice trying imitate us apparently, but on one rare occasion instead of saying “how are you” a group of kids just said “I am beautiful”. Haha, it made me smile quite a bit and I told them I agree. Another thing that is typical, a little kid will smile and say mzungu when I walk by but if I walk up to the kid to bump fists… many times the little kid just bursts into tears. Very comical
Another thing I have yet to get used to is being called madam all the time. It used to only be around school when some other teachers greeted me, but now whenever I walk to town most people are calling me madam. It is quite nice compared to be called mzungu all the time, but its still weird
Since I am on my break now, I am leaving tomorrow to travel to Lamu (a town on the northern coast) to stay with another volunteer for a week, and then I am off to Scotland to meet up with my Mom and sister!!!
I can’t wait!!!!