Gede Ruins

A few weeks ago Mary and I visited the Gede Ruins to cross that off my Kenya bucket list. It was a gorgeous day, and we had a nice time.

New Roommates

On a lighter note ... a couple of months ago, I got a couple of new roommates! They moved into my bathroom sink while I was in South Africa.

Damn squatters!

Two years...

Next week, on the thirteenth of November, I would have been living in Kenya for two years. Over the past few days, I saw on the facebook statuses of a variety of people from the group who came last year that they were here for a year, and I remember posting that very status on my facebook account last year.

Two years. It boggles the mind.

My close of service will be on the seventeenth of December, and I am set to end my two-plus years of service.

After two years of grammatical rules that I had to relearn and explain in KSL, on Tuesday I will be giving my last lesson to the Form Twos and Form Ones – on active voice and passive voice for the Form Twos, and phrasing grammatically correct questions and answers for Form Ones, before we start revision for the end-of-term examinations.

Two years of ups and downs, frustrations of trying to teach the phrase, “in spite of,” frustrations with the quality of the English textbook that never explain anything and expect the students to understand by utilizing only three examples, frustration with some students who would make mistakes in their homework assignments while they mastered the concept during class, frustration with students who seemingly mastered the grammatical rule in their homework assignments, but fail miserably at their exams. These frustrations I felt so keenly throughout the two years, as if the students’ failures were my own.

Over the two years, I discussed, a number of times, with students and other teachers, the American sense of accountability, and that because of the failures of the students, that also meant the failure of me as a teacher. My students were shocked and dismayed when I shared this with them, and this was a part of the process of getting them to open up, getting them out of the Kenyan mentality of not-asking-teachers-any-questions-to-avoid-offending-them, telling them that I wanted them to ask me questions when they did not understand a concept so I can better explain the concept or find a different way to explain the concept.

Other teachers were equally dismayed as this prompted some teachers to truly think about how they are teaching, and that the quality of Deaf education in Kenya is probably not the fault of the students, but rather the education system that failed the students.

In between all these frustrations, I went on a good number of absolute highs, better than anything I had experienced, when my students understood how to use past participates correctly, when they identified the vocabulary words on the exams correctly, when they improved their reading comprehension skills, and especially when I saw the quality of their compositions improve dramatically over the two years.

My students gave me almost all the credit for all this work they had done, all the improvements they had made throughout the past two years, and I have a hard time accepting this. My students talked about the uncertainty of who would be teaching English next year, and while I am grateful for the compliments and positive reviews of my work over the last two years, it is difficult and sobering to think about what will happen over the next few years in terms of their English education.

Today while typing this blog entry, I realized that I had made an impact on several students, inspired them to work harder on their reading and writing skills, I was surprised to find that it was enough. I wasn’t the idealistic Peace Corps Volunteer who started out my service with the aim to Change The World, but I did hope I would change a thing or two.

I think I did.

Oh, and by the way, only two more laundry days to go in Kilifi.

Countdowns

Many of the countdowns in my life have involved laundry. 

Yes – you read that correctly – laundry. 

Before we get to that, a thing or two about countdowns – there is about ten weeks left of my time here in Kenya.  A few weeks ago, Ginnie posted her 100 days to COS blog entry, two weeks ago, my group, the 2009-2011 folks, well, what’s left of us – 24 our of 42, came together for what could possibly be the last time we all would be in the same room for our COS conference.  There is about seven weeks of school remaining, and not counting the exam weeks, about five weeks left of instruction (probably less, as unexpected things have a way of happening around here). 

I have numerous things to do before I leave, packing up my things, planning post-COS traveling with some people (there is already a long email thread between my group), finishing up my teaching, and trying to do a few last things on the Coast that I have yet to do so. 

So, laundry. 

During my freshman year in University, I lived in Krug Hall (to you current Gallaudetians, Ballard Residence Complex West, I think, but for me, it would always be Krug), the only dorm without an elevator on the campus. I lived on the 4^th floor, the top floor of the dorm.  The laundry room, with only four washers and four dryers for approximately 300 students, is in the basement, so I became an expert in running downstairs to ensure there were free washers and dryers, then rushing back four flights of stairs to pick up my bin of dirty clothes and rushing back down.

The last few weeks of my residency in Krug Hall, at the end of my freshman year, I was counting down the times I needed to do laundry.  I remember clearly the feeling of relief when I arrived to the fourth floor with my clean and folded clothes for the last time ever. 

Years later, I was living in an apartment in Williamsburg, a neighborhood in Brooklyn known for tenement apartment buildings, where railroad apartments used to house immigrant families numbering in tens or twenties now only house two people.  For those buildings, bathrooms and laundry rooms were afterthoughts as immigrant families would use the outhouse in the backyard to do whatever they need to do and the laundry would always be washed by hand.  As a result of that, our bathroom consisted of an insanely small shower on top of the sink, and a toilet where you’d need to squeeze yourself in to sit on, and of course, no sight of a laundry room. 

The closest laundromat is about a five minute walk from my house, and while the sight of Brooklynites walking around with drawstring bags of dirty clothes in carts is pretty common, I hated toting it down two flights, walking for five minutes and then doing laundry there.  I remember at one point thinking I wished I were back in Krug. 

When I quit my job in New York, made arrangements to move out of Brooklyn, I remember making that last trip to the laundromat with glee.

Yesterday, when I was washing my laundry, for the nth time, I wished I were in Krug, or even Williamsburg laundry-wise.  While doing my second load, the non-white clothes, I started trying to calculate how many more time I would be doing laundry by hand in my living room or on the veranda of my house, and I realized with a start, that many of my major life changes had included countdowns in loads of laundry.

Seven weeks left of school? Pfft.  Five weeks left of instruction, whatever.  Ten weeks until COS, yeah yeah yeah. 

Seven-ish laundry days left in Kilifi.  That I can relate to. 

Proudly Deaf

“In America, are there pastors or preachers that makes promises and try to cure Deaf people?” Josephine asked with a dispirited air around her.  I was standing outside of my house talking with her and a couple of other students during our lunch break during the beginning of the last term. 

“Unfortunately, yes.” I replied, uneasy of the direction this conversation would probably be heading into – religion is always a sticky area, especially here in Kenya, where they claim that no atheists exist – and knowing that I would hear yet another heartbreaking story.

“I saw one of those pastors during the holiday.” Josephine began half-heartedly.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Mum took me to this church, not our regular Sunday church, and I had no idea what was happening.  All of sudden mum pushed me forward, and this pastor just grabbed my head and began shaking it.  I was scared and didn’t know what was happening.”

“That’s terrible!  Was that for your Deafness?”  I exclaimed. 

“Yeah.  I asked mum about what happened, and why it did – and she told me that she was hoping to be able to make me hear.” Josephine said. 

“That’s just wrong.” I said. 

“Do Deaf Americans have similar problems?” Monica asked. 

“Yeah.  We don’t encounter these as often as you do here in Kenya, like I just heard about this pastor coming to Kilifi last weekend saying the same thing, but we do have a few pastors in the United States who said they could cure Deafness.  It’s always hard – it’s not easy being told that something that you are is not good enough.  It just sucks.”  I replied.

This statement has been drilled in my kids time and time again, and really, not only in my kids, but in my friends and even myself as a Deaf person - I have encountered numerous people in the past, and will encounter quite a few more in the future that had and will have doubts of my capacity as a Deaf person.  Many of these people probably don’t realize they actually do this themselves, for example, not taking the time to communicate clearly with the Deaf person (essentially making them feel that they’re not worth the time or energy), looking at the hearing person for a response, rather than the more qualified Deaf person, and so on. 

Needless to say all this drives me absolutely batshit.

It especially drives me even more batshit when my students buy into that mentality and lack of self-confidence.  I know that this change will not happen overnight, but I do what I can to try and talk up Deaf people – trying to make my kids more confident in themselves as individuals, and especially as proud Deaf individuals. 

“Oh, the hearing students are better at this than me …”

“The hearing school plays football better than we do …”

“The exams for the hearing schools are tougher …”

I’ve heard these from my students many times over the course of last five terms, and probably will hear more of that over my last term.  Every time someone say something like that, I refute with an example, I talk about the time I borrowed the exam from the neighborhood secondary school for English, and compared to what I was doing myself – that some parts of my exam was tougher.  I talk about other Deaf Kenyans who have hearing family, brothers and sisters, and cousins that did not pass KCPE (the entrance exam into secondary school) while the Deaf individuals passed.  I reminded my boys of that one huge football match when they played a local all boys’ school and just absolutely killed them. 

“Sure, Deaf people have challenges in their lives, but so do everyone else.” I would say. 

Time and time again, I work hard to instill Deaf pride in my students, and I know I’m fighting the overwhelming tide, but it’s just something that I need to do as a Deaf person, to not only keep myself sane and feeling good about who I am, but also to hopefully see my kids grow up to become confident adults. 

One evening close to the end of last term, after an especially bad day of non-communicativeness from teachers at my school, and a few exchanges of emails with Peace Corps that left a bad taste in my mouth, I walked around my school checking up on my kids to see how they were doing with their homework assignment and studying for the upcoming exams, we started a conversation about a couple of other teachers and how uncomfortable they felt in approaching them for something they need or whatever because the teachers would not communicate clearly with them.

“So what does that say about me? That I’m an easy target?  That explains why you all ask me all these weird questions and for whatever you need!” I asked with a laugh.

“Yeah, you’re easy!” Mercy said, slapping Shukurani’s hand, to laughter from the table I was talking with.

“Don’t worry, we still respect you as a teacher.” Alii added with a smile, worried that I was offended. 

From a table across the room, Lemmy stood up and signed, “Of course you’re easy!  You’re Deaf, we’re Deaf, and we love you!”

The entire room erupted with laughter, as Lemmy was rarely that expressive.  After some more joking and correction of homework, discussing the focus of the exams with my students, I suddenly found myself in a much better mood. 

Maybe some of the things I’ve been saying are starting to sink in.

Just maybe.  

Shark Alley

Photo taken by Mary - Ginnie and I saw the swish of this shark as she jumped for the bait.

This shark swam right in the front of our faces - maybe only a foot away - what a majestic and amazing creature!

Glee and smiles was all over our faces - I'm the one on the right.

This experience is one of the coolest things I've ever done, sharing a place right up there on the top with some of my most mind blowing experiences.

Penguins, whales, and sharks, oh my!

[9^th attempt of writing of the South Africa trip blog entry]

Hugging my travel mates, my partners in crime, the two people that I would spend the next ten days traveling across the southernmost country of the Africa continent, I didn’t know what I was into for as I sat down and started to chatter excitedly with them.  Sipping my cappuccino, we talked about the final few details and took a quick look over in the guidebook I had bought when I was in the States over the holidays. 

After the usual Nairobi taxi debacle, we finally got to the airport, and then on the plane.  I thought, it’s finally here!  The trip I’ve been thinking about for almost a year and half as a gift to myself for turning 30, been planning for the past few months, and it’s finally here.  I hoped I wouldn’t be disappointed – I wasn’t, not in the slightest. 

Is a travel tale truly a good tale if they don’t have a couple of bad taxicab drivers tossed in? We finally got to Soweto after a three hour cab ride – with the cab driver complaining that guidebooks should have not only the address of the hostel, but directions there – and there, in Soweto, I knew I got lucky with Mary and Ginnie – our first major inside joke began there. 

We continued from Johannesburg to Capetown on the bus, after a few mishaps with the train – apparently they lost the engine – we were not quite sure what happened, but that was when I realized that we were truly Peace Corps Volunteers when we just shrugged and tried to figure out what to do … and watched a group of travelers complaining and arguing with the train staff. 

Capetown was amazingly beautiful; our exhausted bodies and minds absorbed the positive vibes from the town.  We stayed at a hostel with energetic and welcoming managers – they welcomed us with quite a few shots of whiskey and tequila.  Table Mountain and the District Six museum were on our itinerary and we explored, ate, drank, and enjoyed Capetown to the fullest. 

Picking up the tiny white car, Mary and I was excited to drive yet again, and especially on the wrong side of the road … we drove to Cape of Good Hope and hiked up to the lighthouse being knocked speechless by the beauty of the landscapes and the ocean.  It was good to see the Atlantic again – it was almost two years since I was last in that ocean.  Continuing on to our next port of call, Stellenbosch, we stopped by and saw the African penguins, where we snapped and gawked to our hearts content, glad to have a break from worrying about being culturally appropriate and being able to be truly tourists.

Tasting wines at five different wineries, and a splurge on a cheese platter was next on our program, as we enjoyed the scenery of vineyards after vineyards, excellent food, excellent conversations – the trip was halfway over, and I was not sick of my friends, nor of their chatter – we had something good going right there.

After Stellenbosch, we headed to Hermanus. 

Hermanus provided to be a nice and relaxing place, a nice contrast to the Capetown vibe.  We watched quite a few whales pass the cliffs – Hermanus was one of the few places in the world that you could just stand on a cliff and watch whales pass by.  It was a perfect place to rest after the high of Capetown, the gluttony of Stellenbosch, and I could feel my mind wandering, and my shoulders relaxing. 

The next day I posed for an Ellis Island portrait on the boat, rocking up and down on swells, in the middle of the driving rain gripping the steel railing with a pained expression, wind spent hair, and a scarf tied around my head, I looked for sharks in the water – and saw my first few Great White Sharks – excitement started to build as I knew I was about to jump into the cage and watch them in their world.  The waves increased and at the point before Ginnie and I was about to jump into the steel cage, the skipper informed us that we had only thirty minutes before we had to head into shore.  Jumping in the mind-numbing cold water, Ginnie and I gripped the steel cage, which was rocking with each wave, waiting for the sighting of the shark – I saw the first swish of the tail of a shark, and I couldn’t help my huge grin.  As the skipper command us to duck down again, I went under yet again, and saw this majestic creature saunter around the cage, completely in control, in its element.  After a couple more ducks and twenty more mind-numbing minutes, we had to go back to shore, but not without huge grins and amazement on our faces. 

After the longest hot shower of the year, I finally warmed up, and then we headed to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African continent.  I stood there, knowing that this was one of the last days of our trip, looking at the Indian Ocean, the ocean of my current home, and the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean I had swum in numerous times throughout my childhood and adulthood, with a relaxed grin plastered on my face. 

Looking back, I continue to think of moments of the trip that made me smile – the jokes, the chatter, the friendships - I couldn’t have asked for better friends to travel with, a better place to visit, nor a better way to spend my last break and vacation of my service.