LOOKING GOOD!

Once again, apologies for not writing about this experience sooner. This experience was an experience that immersed us much deeper into Kenyan culture and brought Mackenzie and I much much closer to the Kenyan people! That experience......was getting our hair braided.

Back home you might be thinking this was an insignificant experience and nothing to exciting but it is quite the process to get your hair braided and every women in Kenya goes and gets their hair done and so we were experiencing something every Kenyan women goes through.

Mackenzie and I were so excited for this experience but hadn't realized that it was going to take 3 HOURS to get our hair braided or how painful it was going to be. We sat in our chairs as two Kenyan women tackled our Mazungu hair. They worked from the bottom to the top. Sectioning off tiny tiny squares of hair and with swift fingers, braided tiny braids all over our head. I lucked out on having a women who braided tightly but didn't do it painfully. Mackenzie wasn't so lucky. Once the 3hrs were over, we were looking pretty fine and feeling like new women!

When we walked out of the salon, the reactions no longer consisted of people just yelling Muzungu but people actually stopping and staring. When we were standing outside of the salon, we had one grandmother literally just stop, stand and stare for quite a while! Until we waved at her, snapping her out of her trance. It was so nice to have our hair braided, we didn't have to wash our hair everyday, SCORE! Bucket showers can be a pain when you have long hair, we thought we looked pretty cool and maybe just maybe we would fit in better.

Unfortunately, my hair was to soft for the braids to stay in. They started to un-braid (I can't think of the word that is opposite of braided) the next day. They don't put hair bands on the end of the braids because typically their dealing with fake hair which doesn't un-braid but Muzungu hair is to soft to keep the braids in. Mackenzie was lucky and because here hair is thicker then mine the braids stayed in for a while. However, by the end of the first week her head was killing her and she had to take them out. Although our lives with braids was short lived, I was so happy we got to have that experience. I felt really cool for a short period of time! I'm sure I will have it done again and have hair ties put in so that they stay  but for the time being I will have to live with my typical hair and wait until the next time I muster up the patience to sit for 3 hrs and get my hair braided again.

Thanks for reading!

So THAT's what i'll be doing......

November 12, 2012

Last week, all of us went to different parts of Kenay to meet up with current deaf education volunteers to see what its like in the life of a PCV. Mackenzie, Dierdra and I went to Kalifi since all of us are going to be the coast girls. Mackenzie, in Malindi up north, Dierdre in Kalifi in the middle and I will be in Shimoni down south. We shadowed Sara in Kalifi, she's a secondary deaf education PCV but she lives on the primary school compound. It's only a 2min walk from one another. It was wonderful having a break from training. At that point it was our 4th week of training and everyone was about to ring each others necks. The information were learning is good but it can be tough with miscommunications because even though we have a common language, English, there is still a lot that is lost in translation. Also, it's so much more fun actually practicing teaching then just hearing about it! Okay, I don't feel like writing anymore. I'm going to just list everything I saw....

- so happy to have a break from training, after a while it's so boring and you feel like your listening to same thing over and over and over again. It's was a wonderful break! And I got to drink my first Tusker. Party over here! It was delicious and the label  has an elephant on it so it's automatically a great drink. We also had oven baked pizza, ribs and great chicken curry. O WOW! is all I can say to how good that food was after eating ugali every night. Just imagine, dry, tasteless grits and you have ugali. Most of my friends like ugali, I haven't acquired the taste yet. But what a break from our training to be in a beautiful place, eat great food and meet lots of cool people and last but most of all not least we got to sign with kids, watch classes and get to know some of the secondary education kids!

-hard because there weren't teachers. In the primary school all the teachers were there for the most part but we would peer into a classroom and see the kids teaching each other. One of the boys from class 4 ran out and asked me to come and teach their class. I asked where is your teacher? they said they didn't know and she hadn't been in class for 3weeks. The secondary school was even worse! We would see the teachers in the teachers lounge doing their lesson plans and not actually teaching. Sara the PCV would be the only one hopping around from class to class teaching every subject she could and once again the students were teaching each other.

-the students in deaf schools are so well behaved! They don't run around or have side conversations. They want to be in the classroom and when asked to answer a question so many of them are ecstatic about answering. They show so much respect and the students were so patient when we didn't understand some of their signing. They would sit with us and try and try again to explain the signs and teach us! And once again they were teaching classes when there wasn't a teacher. In America the class would be chaos or we would just sit there waiting for instructions. The kids are phenomenal!

-primary school had great teachers except for the kindergarden teacher. The person that is such a crucial part of a Child's learning! We sat in on the class and the women literally sat and had the kids go through half of the alphabet and then had them sit down and write in their books. What she wanted them to do was re-write the ABC's but she didn't use enough sign language to tell the children/the children didn't understand sign language. After the kids sat down Mackenzie, Deirdre and I went around to look at what the kids were writing as the teacher just sat at her desk and twittled her thumbs. What we saw was horrible, they were writing letters backwards, one kid was just writing his name over and over again, one kid was just drawing doodles. None of them had a clue what they were doing and the teacher didn't care. So many deaf children have horribly literacy because it's hard to write and read English when your native language is Sign Language. Sign Language uses an entirely different grammar structure and many of these kids don't start school until they are 10 or 11 and if they have a horrible teacher like the one they had, then they have no bases for learning the needed basics to understand how to learn to write and read English or how to use Sign Language. It just made us that more motivated to get to our schools and teach the kiddies all the things they will need to know to become successful in school. Kindergarten teachers are one of the most important teachers!

- The kids in the secondary school protested and got their headmistress kicked out. Go team! It's a rare occasion for the kids to stand up for their rights in the first place and an even rarer occasion for their wants to be met. The head principle at the school was stealing money, didn't know sign language and was horrible to the kids. They are now getting a new headmistress but I wasn't there to see if the new one was going to be better.

- Kalifi is beautiful and odd mixture of wealth and poor. On one side of the bridge is the town. A cute town of palm trees and thatch huts, store shops and restaurants and the other side of the bridge, arching over the inlet from the ocean are these huge mansions. They look like they are from cribs the TV show.

- We had a great time meeting Sara's friends. Super nice people, most from the UK, Australia, a PCV who finished here two years and moved back to Kenya. All working for different NGO's. One women was teaching at a school for children with HIV/AIDS, the returned PCV was planting trees and doing other environment work, and the others were doing similar cool jobs.

- Sara and her children have a wonderful relationship! They love Sara and she's an amazing teacher. She is the kids, who are 17- 23 and in high school, only outlet for information. They ask her allllll sorts of questions and she guides them well. As well as shows them love and respect when most people in Kenya wouldn't give them the time of the day. I fell in love with her kids after hanging out with them for 3 days. I can only imagine what she is feeling leaving them, but everyone cross your fingers because Sara is trying to get a job in Kalifi to keep teaching at the school.

-  Every PCV in my group went to different parts of Africa to shadow volunteers. It was unfortunate and horrible to hear but every volunteer experiences, teachers not teaching, principles stealing money, teachers not knowing sign language, kids being treated like dirt. But we also all experienced phenomenal teachers who actually cared about the kids education! Having the hardships of deaf children in your face and then seeing how a teacher can be a great role model and direct these kids in the right way just made all of us so excited to get to our sites and get to know our kids. I know I am! I can't wait to have the kids teach me and ask me questions and work with them to know their strengths and weaknesses and just to love them and be loved! They are such wonderfully happy human beings!

- Can't wait for Shimoni!

Moving to Shimoni

October 27, 2012

I found out my site a week ago and I couldn't be more excited to move! The area is called Shimoni  and i'll be teaching at a unit called Kichakamkwaju, yeah I know the Peace Corps gave me the easiest school to pronounce :0) I have 8 students in my entire school, since it's a unit not a government funded school. I'll have students from kindergarten to 8th grade all in one classroom teaching them all at once. From what the current volunteer said to me, what's going to happen is that I will have 1 or 2 kindergarteners in my room,  then 1 or 2 2nd graders, 1 8th grader or whichever students and i'll have to teach a little of the lesson that day to the older kids and then set them to do work and then teach the younger kids whatever lesson and then check on the older kids to make sure they don't have questions, are confused, need more work etc. and hop back and forth between students! It's going to be a crazy day of teaching but so great at the same time. I'm going to get to know my kids so well since there are only 8 of them and I can really understand where they are in levels of learning and how fast they learn so that I can make the curriculum specifically for them.

Shimoni is on the coast of Kenya, near the Tanzania boarder. It is known for being a tourist town because there is great fishing, snorkeling and you can watch dolphins off one of the islands. It is a Muslim community, which is going to be so interesting to see how I fit in with the community! I hear it's brutally hot and very dusty but an unbelievably beautiful spot! Also, one of the poorest parts of the coast.

I'll be living in a large room that acts as my living/bed room and doing all my clothes washing and cooking outside. Which is fine since it's so hot, it's not a big deal. Although, I'm not sure what I'm going to do during the rainy season for cooking but cleaning my clothes will be easier since I can just use the rain water instead of fetching water! I have to figure out my water situation because I can only get salt water from the wells and we only catch enough rain water to drink it. But I would like a freshwater shower every once in while!

I'll be living in structure that is kind of like a stone court yard with rooms surrounding it. Supposedly I'll be living with mostly men and the teachers from the hearing school that is attached to my deaf unit.

I haven't done a ton of research, I've only been asking around because I don't want to get any expectations. Also, the little amount of research that I did do was for tourists and I definitely not be living the highlife of nice hotels and fun explorations all the time due to the Peace Corps budget I'm on. So I'm ready to get there and figure out my life as a Peace Corps volunteer and how I fit in and what fun things I can afford that is also what the locals do or what places to eat or what places to go for my food.

Vicky who is the volunteer now, is leaving me a list of which vegetable and fruit mama's to go to and how much everything is. And places she likes and every. Mama's are the women who look after everyone and knows everyone! Pretty much all the women who are older. Many Mama's in Kenya who you can turn to for help!

Please take a look at any website about Shimoni and if you find out something cool definitely pass it along. Even though I say I don't want any expectations it's still nice to hear about cool things that I might miss when I'm living there or researching it myself!

Thanks for reading!

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

October 24, 2012

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD:

This is going to be a random list of happenings that makes me want to sing....What A Wonderful World By:

•    I was feeling sick one night and went into my room early. My Host Mama knocked on my door and asked me if I was alright. I was feeling so homesick and my head/stomach hurt and it was just not a good night. She asked me what hurt, so I told her that my head hurt and she launched into this wonderful speech about how stress can cause stomach aches, head aches and make you miss home! And that I was very far from home but I had a goal and a dream and that was to be here and teach children who are deaf! She said I know that you miss your family but your our family now and we will be here. She told me I had to keep thinking about my goal to be a teacher and even though it was hard I have to follow through with my dream. Before that moment I wasn't sure how my family felt about me staying with them. There had been a few times when I didn't think they truly wanted me there but after host mama's speech, I felt liberated, rejuvenated and so welcomed into their home. It was just the remedy I needed for a bad case of the homesickness.

• Hearing from everyone back in America. I know it's tough for my Mom and Dad to have me living half way across the world but they have expressed so much encouragement and every time I talk to them it makes me that much more excited about what I'm doing. It is the same for when I talk to my sister, brother and Chris as well as Neal and all my friends. You guys inspire me to keep realizing what an amazing journey I'm going through and how excited I am to get into that classroom and teach those kiddies!

•      We went to Machakos School for the Deaf and I finally had enough KSL (Kenyan Sign Language) to have conversations with the kids!!!!! They were so excited to see a bunch of foreigners able to communicate with them. It makes me think of what our trainers have been drilling into us as we learn how to become teachers in a deaf school. They keep saying many of these kids come from hearing communities where no one knows sign language, including their parents. Many of them don't know how to read or write, cutting them off from any communication to the outside world. When they finally get to a deaf school it's wonderful because they have one another and some of the teachers who take the time to get to know them and know how to sign. But that can sometimes be the extent of their world because not many people learn how to sign. When I can communicate with these kids well and know that I can teach them how to read and write, it makes me realize how much bigger their worlds can get if they can become literate. They can go to the market and buy food by themselves because they can write, or talk with their parents through writing until the parents can get sign language, they can read books about the world, Kenya or famous deaf people to make them realize that being deaf is not an inability!

•      Elizabeth, Carla and I went for a 3hr hike the other day up one of the many mt's surrounding Machakos. It was one of those It's A Wonderful World moments but i'll do a post about that another time. But a great moment that stuck out was when we were coming down the steep slope. We were all slipping because the tread in our shoes wasn't enough and the incline was steep enough for us to feel like we were skiing down rather then walking down. As Elizabeth is sliding down almost doing a split she yells back to me...."I feel like Elf. You know when he tries to get onto an elevator."  (look at picture above) I laughed so hard while trying to keep from rolling down the hill. There are so many moments with Elizabeth and Carla. My walking partners, who walk the 45min to and from school everyday. On our walks, I listen and share about my own life back in America, we talk about what was exciting that day, we practice our small amounts of Kiswahili and our KSL, we laugh a whole lot, everyone in my group has a great sense of humor. I guess you do when you place your self in a foreign place for 2years and know that you will be living with minimal amenities. But it was just another moment that I think about and makes me enjoy my time here in Kenya more.

Those are just a few of my What A Wonderful World moments! I have a lot that brighten my day and help me through the tough days.

Thanks for reading!