Machakos and The "G" Club

Entering Machakos, a town that I knew that had the presence of Miss PCP Machakos, I was hit by a twinge of sadness that she would not be in the area to show off the Machakos that she knew so well due to factors beyond anyone’s control, even if she is enjoying Dancing With The Stars. On that note, I was determined to enjoy Machakos to it’s fullest, and indeed, I did enjoy the town.  PCP, I hope we did you and Machakos proud!

We checked into a very nice hotel, waited around for a fun reunion with Paul, Matt, and Lapu, and got ready to start the KSL immersion week. The trainees were introduced to a normal school schedule (even if they were doing exams), language classes continued to be held (I was amazed how far they had gotten in a week and half of language classes – this PST was definitely going much better), guest speakers from various departments and organizations headquartered in Nairobi came by and shared information.

The four of us PCVs, realized that our lousy PST really colored our view of what information should be shared with the new trainees, and we may have gone overboard in the doom and gloom and cultural miscommunication stories – at one point, one of the trainees basically asked us, “Did anything good happen?!” Whoops. After owning up to our mistake, we talked about our good days, about the times that we could see light bulbs going off with our kids, making friends with the community, the day that we realized that time was going faster more than it was going slow, so I think we more or less balanced out our doom and gloom stories.

In midst of all this, I finally became a member of The “G” Club. Joining The “G” Club is a rite of passage for all Peace Corps Volunteers, and a few were surprised that it took me this long to join. The G stands for Giardia, which is an ailment that can wreck havoc on the digestive system. While details can be (and were) discussed with fellow PCVs, I think I will refrain from horrifying and losing the five readers of this blog, so I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. I was glad to get the dose of medication even if the side effect was an aftertaste of aluminum for a week.

I am eagerly looking forward to going back to my site, seeing and talking with the Machakos students made me miss my students, and that made me all the more ready to head off. While it was fantastic working with the current volunteers, meeting the awesome trainees, I was, and will be ready to head home in a couple of days (sorry, I’ve ran into a creative block on how to end the blog entries a different way, so you’ll just need to roll your eyes and say oh yay, she’s yet again excited about going home …).