The race to the end of January ...

I thought that I should post something on this blog websie thingy at least once in the month of January. I guess I beat the end of the month by two days, and here's sort of what I've been up to in the past month and a half or so.

I went to four new countries, am currently in the fifth, read the best of Sherlock Holmes at least three times, saw amazing pyramids and rock-hewn churches, gorgeous mountains, met an old college friend who made a new life for herself in a new country and her friends, got bitten by a dog and got rabies shots, had a baby thrusted at me for photos, saw gorgeous temples and momuments, took over a thousand photos, read many books, went on numerous buses, trains, taxis, tuk-tuks, and planes (and had several crazy ticket experiences), met a good friend's boyfriend and traveled with him for a few days, joined couchsurfing, bargained a number of times, drank numerous cups of chai (damn the British for colonizing and spreading their love of good tea and bad coffee ....), bought a small trinket from each country, got so cold I had to buy mittens, got so hot I wished I was dipped in the Artic, was amazed at how fast the internet was in comparison to Kenya, watched a few movies (yay for foriegn accessible airlines!), met travelers from New Zealand, Australia, China, a couple on their honeymoon from India who admitted to being a Bridezilla and the poor suffering newly wed husband, ate incredible food (good bye bland food in Kenya!), planned various things for the next month and a half or so, and all in all am having a pretty good time.

Hope you all are having a good start of the year, and I'll try to post something next month ...

The Northern Frontier, the Ambassador’s Christmas Party, and Close of Service

“This bus ride sucks.” I said for probably the 20th time to Matt when we were bouncing over dry river beds with dust swirling around and landing onto us, Kenyans, more specifically the Turkanas, their women sporting awesome mohawks and a full neck of necklaces piling into the bus until we were suffocating.

We were going to Lodwar, near Lake Turkana, with the objective of visiting the lake and doing some cool things around there, as our last trip before our Close of Service (COS), and just because we thought it would be something cool to do.

In a way, it was truly the perfect last trip for Paul and me, who will be leaving Kenya today, after two years of service (and Matt, in a few more months), as it was the truly bush Kenyan experience, nothing like our trip to Zanzibar.

Bargaining was definitely on the menu on this trip. And wasn’t about to leave at any point on this vacation until we jumped on the plane back to Nairobi.

We bargained the price of the tour of Lake Turkana, met with numerous people in the Kenya Wildlife Service, who we think probably wanted a piece of the pie we were providing, a few people from the other side of the lake, all wanting some certain amount of money.

We bargained the price of the cab from the crazy town of Kalokol, we bargained with the Beach Management Unit guy on the shore of Lake Turkana (and to this day, we’re not sure why we paid him, nor what service he was supposed to provide us). We bargained with the driver of the boat about not only the cost of the trip from Kalokol to the defunct Fisherman’s Lodge, but also from the lodge to Central Island. We bargained for the matatu from Kalokol to Lodwar, and for almost everything in between. Just writing about how much bargaining we did makes me tired.

Matt and I agreed – jumping onto that plane was one of the best decisions we ever made.

Last night, a group of us COSing PCVs along with a couple others went to the Ambassador’s residence for the annual Christmas party – which was exactly the opposite of our trip to Lodwar. It was almost like a company Christmas party at that place, a lot of food, a lot of drinks, and a good way to spend our last night in Kenya.

This morning, I finished the final few details and took care of the last few pieces of paperwork I had to do, and I have now officially finished my Peace Corps Service. I will be flying out this evening to meet a dear friend in Ethiopia, beginning my three months of travel.

I hope to be able to post a few photos here and there, but just a warning: posting will be very light, probably until I return to the States in mid-March, when I will try to figure out what to do with this internet bloggy thing.

On that note, I, along with my students at my school want to wish you a fantastic holiday season, a great New Year’s and hope to see you all next year!

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.