A slice of Brooklyn in Loitokitok

As we were leaving one of the places that we meet up to have a soda (seriously – that is the woah thing to do out here in Loitokitok – grab a Fanta or a Coke!) we bumped into a RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who worked in Loitokitok during his service and was back in town visiting his old friends. We were introducing ourselves, and he mentioned he was from New York City, and I told him that I lived in Brooklyn for six years. He then said that he lived in Williamsburg, and after some discussion, discovered that we lived only a few blocks from each other (tho in different time periods). Who would have thunk that I would meet a Brooklynite, much less someone who lived in the neighborhood that I lived in and loved, in a teensy weensy town in Kenya.

After a couple of weeks here in Loitokitok, regardless of the beauty, the past week of fantastic weather, I now realize that Loitokitok is less than ideal for training for the Deaf Education program. One of the biggest challenges that we find is the dearth of Deaf people in the area. We had a few Deaf kids come in for us to practice teaching, but some days a few kids would come, other days only one or two, so it was tough for us to get any sort of consistency. School closed on the 21st of November (which was why we were sent off to Mombasa to visit the schools before it closed), so it was strange for both education programs (Deaf Ed and Math/Science) to have training during this time period.

We all also had a conversation with the person who is responsible in picking our schools / sites, and we discussed what we wanted, what we did not want, and we would probably find out where we will live for the next two years by next week or so, so it is an exciting and anxious time for all of us.

This morning I met up with the only other person in our group that knows ASL (a girl who went thru the interpreting program and works as an interpreter) and we tried to sign only ASL, just for a break from the intensive drilling of KSL throughout the training, and we found that we could not do it. Some KSL signs snuck into our conversation like it was just natural. I was reminded of the time I met the other Deaf Ed volunteers in Mombasa, and they were totally into the KSL mode, I wondered how long it would take me to get to that point, and apparently it did not take as long as I thought it would.

Time is a funny thing here – time goes really fast at the same time it goes kind of slow, so training is going pretty quick, but some aspects seems to want to just plod along. We are all enjoying spending time together and becoming pretty tight, but we are all also ready to move to our own place, start working at the schools we will be assigned to, and just basically settle in for the next couple of years. We will see how it goes over the next few weeks!