Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Lesson of the Millipede

As I paused to think and reflect about the past week, this past week can be basically summed up in one incident. After talking with my American Mama online (yay for technology!), I started getting ready for bed and had the living daylights scared out of me by a millipede that was about a foot long and an inch wide, sauntering in my hallway like it owned the place. And probably, before I moved in, it DID own the place. For all intent and purposes, the fellow was more or less harmless, but it sure did scare the hell out of me. After a couple of deep breaths, I got over it, and took the dustpan to gently move the little fellow outside, and said, sorry, buddy, there’s a new tenant here.

Once I take a couple of deep breaths, reframe any situation or anything that happened in a different way, think about it, figure out what I can do about it (or just accept it for what it is and do nothing about it), it becomes all that less scary. Granted, I’m still adjusting in a major way to the change in lifestyle – hell, change in everything – but I am getting used to the whole concept of living here, and trying to not to over do it.

The kids, at first, was a little overwhelming, but as I got to know some of them, see their personalities, and started learning their name signs (you go and try and memorize 200 kids’ sign names, as well as the teachers – it’s a bit of a challenge!), and figuring out which kids needs which type of teaching / support, they started looking a lot more like kids rather than a huge blob of green uniforms.

There’s a huge gap in special education here in Kenya (at least at the school I’m at, and I believe the same is for many other schools) – not specifically the special education of the Deaf, but of the Deaf with other disabilities such as CP, mental illnesses, and developmental disabilities, to name a few – they are all in the same regular classroom as the other students, and this is one issue I have noticed that might create a barrier for educating some of the kids (both the ones with the other issues, and the regular Deaf students). My head-teacher and I talked about that briefly, and he said that because I had experience working with the Deaf with mental illnesses, he wanted my input on how to address this issue, and figure out ways to make this work at the same time working inside the educational system already here in Kenya, so that’s one of the things I will be thinking about / working on. Any input, information, websites, ideas, whatever from any of you are more than welcome – please post in comments or email me if you prefer a more private conversation.

The Kenyan sense of time applies to everything, and that includes the beginning of a new year at school (the school year starts in January here). The kids are still trickling in, the teachers are working on their Schemes of Work and lesson plans, the admin staff is still working on who belongs to which classroom, and we are all also waiting to see what happens with the strike on Monday.

Today I headed over to a beach to take a dip in the Indian Ocean – it was a much needed and blissful swim. I swam away the difficulties that came over the past week, and reveled in the perfect temperature of the water, the gorgeous beach (we were almost the only ones there), and the perfect blue skies. I lazed around with a couple of other volunteers, had a great cheeseburger (the first one since before I left the states), and chatted the afternoon away. It was the perfect way to end my first week.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your first week sounds like a vacation! Swimming? Bah! So what's the current situation like with the deaf students? You mention they share a class, but how does that work? Deaf with hearing? Or just all deaf together, regardless of other disabilities?

Anonymous said...

Lucky you to have such close access to the beach! I'm annoyed that I'm not getting as much exercise as I hoped! Maybe when I move to another house and get a motorbike, then I can head to beaches and swim!!!! :)

And, hey! I'd take a millipede over spiders any day! :)

Unknown said...

paul - all the students are deaf, but there's varying levels of language ability and learning ability in each class - basically all deaf together regardless of ability to learn.

Lisa - we have huge spiders here too - they have a nook in one of the windows - and there's one that's about two inches wide just annoying the hell out of me cos I can't reach it... ;-)

Kate O. Breen said...

I think I saw my first Millipede an hour ago - cept it's maybe half a foot long. I'm still shuddering at the memory of it sauntering out from under my bed and I waited until it went near my door and I used my magazine and a shoe to pick it up and flick it outside. I thought it was my imagination when I clapped my hand on something hard and wiggly while asleep last night. *shudder*

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This blog consists of my personal thoughts and opinions. It does not in any way reflect the position of the United States Government or the Peace Corps.