Idle Hands, Mombasa, and Barack

This week is the second week of the teacher’s strike out here in Kenya, and I’m finding myself with way too much free time. I was talking with some of the other volunteers from my group about this, and we agreed that too much time on our hands makes our brains and imagination over analyze everything, and needless to say, that isn’t good – we were starting to second guess our skills, our ability, and comparing ourselves to others, and just basically beating ourselves up. You can imagine my relief when I was able to fill up some of the idle time with the other volunteers, a few DVDs, as well as some house shopping, and a lot of eating out in Mombasa.

Regardless of the amount of idle time I had, I find myself energized by the visits with the last year’s Volunteers, and the weekend in Mombasa with a couple of this year’s Deaf Eds (look at Paul’s blog if you want to see a couple of pictures of the weekend). I started making lists that I plan to post up on my door or wall in my room – projects to do around the house (for example sewing some curtains from lesos – there’s a few of those old fashioned non-electric sewing machine with the foot pedals here at the school – they’re everywhere, I have yet to see an electric sewing machine), long term projects for the Deaf Ed Peace Corps Project that could possibly be secondary projects, including updating the Deaf Education Manual, things I need to buy for the house, kitchen / food projects (such as making cheese – I have access to milk from the school cows, and the cheese out here is so expensive [especially on a Peace Corps budget], I thought it would be fun to try and make a bit myself).

I am starting to used to the slower lifestyle here, the slow internet connection, television without captions (if there is a TV), the concept of not necessarily multi-tasking or having to do a few things at a time, basically just throwing out everything that I’m used to or am familiar with back in the States. I read in one of the cultural exchanges / handbook / resource manual that Peace Corps gave us, and it said that one of the most important concept of many cultures is just the act of sitting. In the States, we look at sitting as just a waste of time, but out here in Kenya, it’s a sign of respect, a requirement to stop and chat a bit (in KSL, “to story”). If I don’t stop by and chat / story a bit, regardless of what my schedule is, I would be considered really rude, so that’s definitely a cultural difference that I’m adjusting to.

Last Tuesday, one of the other Deaf volunteers came over and stayed the night, and we went over to the neighbor’s house, to story a bit, and watch our new President swear in. We were talking about how proud we were as PCVs that Obama was sworn in, and how cool it was that we are in Kenya – almost surreal in a way, that my Kenyan neighbor and I could actually relate with the same person with a lot of power – and look at him with pride and respect.

Pretty cool, I think.