Amazin' Zanzibar

After working for GRO, accompanying my kids back to Mombasa and dropping them off, I was ready for a true vacation.

By that, I meant a true vacation, not the PCV share a bed with two other people way, backpacking it through the coast, but a true vacation. And a true vacation we got. I met Paul and Erin at the tail end of their Cross Sector Training in a very fancy hotel, starting off the vacation in a nice way, a great and air-conditioned room (ah, air conditioning, how I miss you …), a nice night out with a few of the other PCVs, and just a good way to relax after a good and intense week.

Paul, Erin, and I then headed down to Paul’s house in Mombasa and started thinking about buying the bus tickets to Dar-es-Salaam, and after talking with a few other volunteers who visited there, and thinking about the eight hour bus ride, then the three hour ferry ride … we started looking at the plane tickets available, and the thought of an hour’s flight to Zanzibar rather than something like 12 hours of travel appealed greatly to us. We awaited the arrival of Alyssa and Matt who had taken the overnight train that took 20 hours rather than 12 (par for the course), and after twenty hours on the train, they were in agreement, so we excitedly bought plane tickets, like little children in a candy store (speaking of candies, GRO staff gave me some American candies for volunteering to help out, and this was excitedly shared amongst the travelers, so I guess you could say we were truly kids in a candy store). Below is a view out of the first plane I have been on in 2009.

Arriving Zanzibar, we headed to Stonetown where we stayed at a decent hotel, did a lot of walking, a lot of eating of amazing seafood, and drank some fancy cocktails. We also checked out the spice tour as well as slave caves, and enjoyed the artichecture of Stonetown. We also checked a couple of beaches, saw a gorgeous sunset from a happy chance of being at a bar on the roofdeck. Playing cards and reading were also on the programme, as we were serious about relaxing, and relax we did!



After four days, we headed to Paje, a beach on the eastern coast of Zanzibar, and it was amazingly gorgeous. A few of us caught the gorgeous sunrise the first morning we were there. More great seafood, fancy cocktails, books, naps, walks along the gorgeous beaches, bodysurfing (where I had an unfortunate wave steal my sunglasses), and exploring a bit of the reef when the tide went out a couple of kilometers awaited us for the next few amazing days in Paje.





Returning to Mombasa early in the morning yesterday, I was refreshed and relaxed, but I was also ready to head home to Kilifi. I wanted to chill at home for a few days before my next trip, do some laundry (which I am doing in between writing blog entries), and just be home. After a week in luxurious (by Peace Corps standards) settings, it was a bit of adjustment to return to Kenya, where orders get mixed up, encounters with street kids addicted to glue in Mombasa, the hustle and bustle of cars and people in Mombasa – needless to say, I was ready to get to the peaceful campus of my school!

Matt, Alyssa, Erin, and Paul – thanks for being great traveling buddies – I look forward to our next trip!

Global Reach Out

As exams drew to a close, teachers started planning various projects for the August break, a few going to Nairobi University, others in Mombasa, and one in Uganda, a few wanted to focus on their shambas, and a variety of other things. I had a few things on my programme, Global Reach Out, a trip to Zanzibar, hopefully a trip to Lamu (that is still in the works), and a few days at home before the school term starts again in September.

I had volunteered to escort two of my Form One students to the Kenya Youth Leadership Camp in Nairobi, sponsored by Global Reach Out. You can read about them here, and look at the blog for the Kenya 2009 Program here. The basic idea is to bring American and Kenyan people between the ages of 18 and 29, and have these two groups of people work together to create a five-day leadership style of camp for the secondary school students, two chosen from each secondary school in Kenya, modeled on the Youth Leadership Camp in the United States.

Traveling with two students to Nairobi, a city that I don’t particularly like, for a number of reasons, was an interesting experience – the kids were great, and had no problems, but I found myself unable to relax (traveling is usually a relaxing experience for me, for some weird reason), being responsible for them, and just dealing with the Kenyan transportation system which had us arrive Nairobi two hours later than expected (or maybe we should say, just as expected, grin), and it was just a bit of work working out all the details.

When we arrived the campground, called the DEPOT, it was great to be back in the camping mode, it was really interesting to see the American delegates go through the same mind process I went through during my first weeks of PST, and it really threw me off, the fact that I have been in this country for nine months, and I have become much more familiar and understanding of the variety of cultural conflicts. The two groups worked together, regardless of all the cultural conflicts, the choppy KSL that the Americans picked up, the fact that the summer camp concept is extremely foreign to Kenyans, and developed a great camp.

My kids loved every minute of it. I saw both of them grow, their confidence building, and their communicating skills leaping in bounds. They were surprised, and then very proud to discover that everyone that works for GRO is Deaf. I think that this may be one of the first times that they realized that they could actually amount to something, just like all the Kenyans, the Americans, and the admin staff who were also Deaf.

We played all the classic games, steal the bacon, capture the flag, had an Olympics type of day with crazy ass relays running in lesos and a variety of other things. We also had team building activities with the kids, trying to encourage them to have an opinion, and develop leadership skills. At the end, the kids complained that it was just too short, which made all of us proud that they really enjoyed and learned a lot during this week. The result-oriented Americans complained that they did not see much difference in the kids but we talked about the slow process in Kenya, and that our impact in this camp would not be felt for another few years when these students grow up and start working in leadership roles.

I was worried that seeing the Americans would make me homesick for ASL, for the US, for the American Deaf community and my friends that I am missing tons, but strangely it did exactly the opposite. It only strengthened my resolve that I was doing the right thing by being in Kenya and serving in the Peace Corps. Seeing the Americans were fantastic for me, a boost and a reminder of home, but at the same time, also making me feel good about what I am doing here (but oh my goodness, the s’mores rocked – that’s definitely one thing that I missed about camping back in the states!).

I am excited about GRO for next year, and I hope to be again involved in some capacity, working with another two great groups of Americans and Kenyans.

Mepho Dreaming

Mepho is the anti-malaria medication that I am taking, and a side effect of this once weekly pill is very weird and lucid dreams.  Don’t go to the wiki page because Mepho sounds like the boogeyman drug, but I have not had problems with it up to now (knock on wood).  I decided to write a few of the dreams that I have had in only one night (that I have been able to remember, at least), and each time I wake up with a start, wondering if it was just a dream, or if it really did happen.

Dream #1: I was talking with a meter tall chocolate bunny about investigating a crime involving another chocolate bunny.  We went to the hutch with search dogs, but the dogs kept eating the chocolate bunnies, so we had to have numerous burials for the bunnies we accidentally killed with the dogs.  After a while, one of them woke up and their ears poked out of the freshly dug grave like a zombie would in a zombie movie, and started helping us solve the crime. 

[Note: I had just finished the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I think that may have something to do with the ears poking out of the grave …]

Dream #2: I was dancing with another PCV when we started melding into one person.  We fought about which site to return, where to travel, who we wanted to talk to, who we wanted to see, and just basically everything.  We were like two people in one unambiguous blob.  It all got so intense, and the blob heated up so much that it nearly burst in flame. 

After that dream, I woke up in the middle of the night with a start, and for a few moments, I was horrified and thought that it had really happened.  After a minute or two, I realized that I was not in a blob, but under my mosquito net, and that I was laying on my bed, in my bedroom, in my house.  You can imagine the relief I felt.  While it was not necessarily a nightmare, it was just really weird.

Dream #3: I was teaching my KG-1 class, and the kids kept flying around the classroom.  I was nearly at my wits end when I started zapping the kids with a stun-ray type of device and they all started to fly lower and lower until they finally settled in their seats.  At that point, all the kids lost their flying capabilities. 

There were several other dreams that night, but I could not remember them.  These kinds of dreams usually occur the night of the weekly dose, or the next night.  I have heard stories of the medication affecting a person so much that they have to switch to Doxy or Malrone.  I hope to avoid the switch to Doxy because Doxy makes you extremely sensitive to the sun, and that’s not a good thing if you’re living in a costal area right on the equator. 

At this point I am just enjoying the vivid dreams, so hopefully that will still be the case when I COS.  

Random Loitokitok Photos

Here's me in the traditional Masaai outfit that my home stay family gave me at the end of the two months training period.  I'm in the front of the house that I lived in for PST. 

My homestay Mama.

My homestay cousin, brother, and sister.

Final exams, woo hoo!

Kenyans have a deep appreciation of exams. 

They take the examinations extremely seriously.  As you can probably surmise from the previous sentences, this week is the final exams week (and not a week too soon, regardless of the improvements I have made in myself as a teacher, the increase of confidence and all that jazz, I’m totally ready for a few weeks off). 

During morning assembly every morning they would ask for the kids that needs medication or infirmary attention to head over and wait for the house parents to dispense medications or figure out what kind of medical attention they will need.  Yesterday morning, when prompted, the kids all claimed that nobody is sick, and it took some serious wheedling and dealing to get the right folks where they should be.  They did not want to miss an exam. 

Yesterday morning, when I entered my KG-1 classroom with the telltale brown envelope, and then confirmed that it was indeed exams, my students, twenty-three of them, more or less burst in applause. 

When I talk with the other teachers during the tea break, I talked about the American fear and distaste of the exams week, and I described the lengths that some people I knew of (friends of friends, naturally, grin) went to in order to avoid exams, and some teachers were shocked.  Others thought that it was hilarious that a bomb threat would have been taken that seriously (they refused to believe that the police would actually come with bomb-sniffing dogs when a bomb threat was called in).

Now, for a country that basically hinges their lives on exams such as KCPE and KCSE, the teachers I have worked with shocked me with the lack of studying skills they taught their students.  A couple of teachers and I exchanged our examinations concepts and studying skills, and we all thought it was funny that American model would be study like hell for exams, and then try to get out of it, while the Kenyans says, oh well, I’ll get what I’ll get on the exam, and then seriously live by the results. 

As a result of this conversation, I have been working with the Form One students over the last few days and evenings helping them study.  We talked about how to review and pick the most important parts of information they need to remember, we practiced a few ways of quizzing each other, gave them a study guide for the English and Computer Studies classes, and went over the vocabulary for questions to ensure that they understand what each question is asking. 

I see a tremendous interest in this information, and I think I will continue working with these students on these skills during the midterms and final exams, and hopefully they will feel or become more comfortable with taking examinations.    Well, maybe not more comfortable, as it is so steeped into their culture, but have more confidence in their performance one those examinations. 

You know you’ve been in Kenya for a while when ….

Just thought I’d like to post something light, and just shed a bit of light on a few of the funny cultural differences I’ve experienced out here. 

… a family of four on a motorcycle doesn’t shock you anymore.

… bado, bas, and sawa (see Erin’s entry explaining Kiswahili vocabulary) become permanent fixtures of your vocabulary.

… Tuesdays and Thursdays become synonyms for no electricity.

… you start asking for seconds of the scalding hot tea on a 95 degree day.

… you’re surprised when you’re in a matatu that haven’t wired their horn to the high-beam flasher. 

… you wonder where the three inch wide spider that you’ve become used to sharing the bathroom has disappeared to.

… you start picking up Britishisms – oi, hallo, mum!

… detailed discussions of bowel movements with other PCVs becomes appropriate dinner conversation.

… you give up on trying to explain that WWF and WWE are totally fake.

… you start dreaming about washing machines.

… machetes are considered more as farming implements rather than something out of a Rambo movie.

… you understand and adjust to the hierarchy on the road – the right of the road belong to the biggest animal, person, or vehicle. 

My fellow PCVs – please feel free to add onto this list!  

UPDATE: Check out Nic's blog for a few great additions! Thanks, Nic! 

My Birthday Cake

Our Lady Of (Drown Your) Sorrows Cake With Heavenly Frosting

Yield: Enough for an army

CAKE

3 Milky Way bars, cut into small pieces (we used Mars bars instead)

3 Three Musketeers bars, cut into small pieces (we used Twix bars instead)

3 Snickers bars, cut into small pieces

½ cup butter

2 cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup sugar

½ cup shortening

3 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 by 13- inch baking pan. Melt the candy bas and butter in a saucepan. Blend. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar. Then mix in the shortening and eggs. Beat well. Slowly add the buttermilk, beating until fluffy. Then add the vanilla and candy-bar mixture from the saucepan. Beat well. Pour into the pan, and bake 60 minutes until done. When the cake is still hot, ice with:

HEAVENLY FROSTING

1 bag marshmallows, cut in half (unfortunately we did not have any marshmallows (we didn't get a chance to go to Nakumatt [Kenya's answer to Wal-mart] – and the shop had just ran out of gelatin so we couldn’t make homemade marshmallows – next time for sure!)

1 cup chopped pecans (couldn’t find pecans so we went with macadamia nuts)

2 cups shredded coconut (freshly shredded coconuts that we overpaid for!)

1 box confectioner’s sugar

4 tablespoons cocoa

8 tablespoons heavy cream

4 tablespoons butter, softened

 Place the marshmallow halves, sticky side down, on top of the hot cake. Scatter the nuts over the marshmallows, then a layer of coconut. In a bowl, whip the confectioner’s sugar, cocoa, cream, and butter. Pour over the hot cake. Serve when cool.

--

There's a picture of me with the cake on someone's camera - I'll be sure to post it as soon as I get it.

We baked this cake on the stovetop using a large pot with a layer of sand, and then another pot with the cake batter inside it on top of the layer of sand, and then a lid covering the whole shebang.  It basically created an envelope of heat around the inside pot. 

Regardless of the fact that it was a little burnt on the sides, it had to be one of the best cakes I have ever eaten.  I was glad to celebrate the beginning of my 29^th year with this cake, and with a group of really cool people. 

It’s a good start so far.