MY HOST MAMA'S DANCE

My mama meets with a women's group, who are mostly teachers, once a month to go and visit the villages that they grew up in and bring presents to the parents and show their thanks for having such great parents. They vote on which village they are going to visit that month and get to meet each others families.

This month my mama asked if they could not go to the village and have it at her house because she wanted me and my friends to see what a traditional Kikamba ceremony was like as well as interact with teachers from Kenya. All the women agreed and were excited to meet us and we were so excited to meet them. My host family and I dance a lot, I think Ann who places us in our houses had to know how much I LOVE to dance because the minute my family wakes up in the morning they turn on the music and start to dance. Even my 5 year old brother has a jerking motion with his legs shaking that sort of goes along with the music. Which was why it was so nice to get to dance with my mama all day!

There are certain traditional dances and songs that they sing every time they visit each others families. They do special Kikamba (the name of the tribe in Machakos and the language that is spoken in the Machakos region) dances, to welcome in the women who are a part of the club, to talk about how thankful they are to have each other as friends, to thank their parents for being good parents, to thank god for giving them such good lives, families and being prosperous.

The dances are all done in a circle as one women sings out in Kikamba the other women respond singing the same line. At the beginning of the ceremony all the women stand in two lines singing welcome to each women as she enters the compound and they sing her name as she dances through the two lines of women dancing as they welcome her. After all the women are welcomed in, we all eat TONS of delicious food preparing us for the many hours of shaking it and singing. haha

All my deaf ed friends got to come and enjoy the festivities with me. The women gladly invited us up to dance and soon were saying how happy they were to have us as friends now. My friend Jay, who was deaf got to be one of the two men at the dance. Jay is deaf and I wasn't sure how my mama's group was going to react to having a deaf person in the group. Some Kenyans don't really know what to do if they meet a deaf person or the believe that they are cursed or they believe they are stupid. So I was excited to possibly open their minds to how well rounded deaf people and culture is! They women took to Jay so quickly. Anna, Mackenzie and I were interpreting the entire time and the women were constantly asking us if we got it and did Jay understand what they were saying. We were teaching them small amounts of KSL and it was so fun to have a multitude of cultural exchanges. And the dancing everyone loved!

It was such a wonderful day that I got to share with my mama and my friends. All the women were so welcoming and they kept saying how thankful they were that all the Peace Corps volunteers were integrating themselves and fitting in so well with Kenyan culture. My friends had a blast as well, everyone was up and dancing! It was so great to open up the deaf world to more hearing people who were all teachers and get to integrate further into the Kenyan life style!

Thanks for reading!

KENYA THANKSGIVING!

During HIV/AIDS week the Loituktuk crew came to Machakos. The Loituktuk people are learning how to teach Math and Science to hearing kids. IT was SOOOOOOOO great seeing them! We only got to hangout with them in Nairobi at the very beginning of this adventure for about 4 days in total but in that small amount of time we all got so close. We all stay in touch through text but it was great to just hangout and catch up.

Their sites will unfortunately be very very far away from my site but we already have ideas floating around of when we are going to visit each other during our breaks and staying in touch.

What was great was that we got to celebrate Thanksgiving as an entire unit. Thanks to my friend Ben who made good friends with chef at the hotel they were staying in, the hotel cooked us Thankgiving dinner.......Kenya style. Before we knew that the hotel was cooking us dinner we thought we were going to have to go find a turkey, kill it ourselves (I'm not joking), cook all of our food over a fire and figure out how to get the ingredients we wanted from Nairobi. Thanks for Ben's amazing bargaining skills, we got a turkey, cranberry soup (it was more soup then sauce), mashed sweet potatoes, ham, rolls, and other delicious food! It wasn't quite the feast that we are use to, no stuffing, pie, brussle sprouts or endless amounts of turkey or Thanksgiving sandwiches the next day. BUT IT WAS A SHOT AT THANKSGIVING! and we were with everyone and that was what mattered. I missed everyone at home but I'll have a lifetime of Thanksgivings in America.

It was great, all the Kenyan trainers joined us and got to experience their first Thanksgiving. We also had lots and lots of beer with dinner and so the party was a great time. By the end of the night we were all playing spin the bottle dance, so if the bottle faced you, you had to go in the middle and dance. The trainers brought their traditional dances and the Americans brought their 'get low' dancing. The two combined is the best dancing EVER! Who knew that some of our trainers, who are straight edge during the day could get down and dirty on the dance floor. It was such a great time sharing a holiday that was so important to all the of PCV's with our Kenyan friends.  

We got to stay at the hotel with the Loituktuk people which is  BIG DEAL because typically we have to be home by 6:30pm to our home stays and we can't leave the house. But on Thanksgiving we got to all hangout all night at the hotel catching up and having a wonderful Thanksgiving party. We also, had our friend Kris who is from Australia, a girl Anna from Germany and another girl Jessica who was from the Netherlands who joined in on our American holiday!

It was my second time having Thanksgiving outside of the United States and I have to say it was quite the success!

I'm thankful for all the new friends that I have made, this wonderful experience I'm in the middle of, the kids that will be my students, and my family and friends who have been so supportive while I've been abroad!

HIV/AIDS IN KENYA

We had HIV/AIDS week two weeks ago. Kenya has about 1,500,000 people living with HIV/AIDS. Every year the amount of people who have HIV gets lower and lower. Because its such a problem, Kenya tries to incorporate information and teaching kids how to protect themselves in most classes, TV shows and they started to have life skills in school. Such as in English some of the readings that they have are about HIV. The problem is that many people won't talk about if they have HIV/AIDS or tell their partners if they have it because there is such a bad stigma that goes along with having HIV/AIDS. Many people think if someone gets HIV then its an automatic death sentence. People also are scared to share anything with that person. We had teachers come in, who were HIV positive and share their stories of how it was to be HIV positive and a teacher. They are part of a big organization that tries to find HIV positive teachers who can share their experience, be support systems to each other and teach the children and others about being HIV positive.

They said when the other teachers found out that they were HIV positive, they didn't want to eat lunch with them anymore, they wouldn't share cups as they use to, the other teachers wouldn't talk to them. When you come out with your status it can become a tough life after because people are so fearful of the disease and they believe that they are going to die if they get it. Unfortunately it doesn't encourage people to protect themselves with condoms, get tested or talk about it. It shoves the issue into the dark and causes people get spread HIV/AIDs because they much rather be ignorant of their status then know it. Another women said that her husband left her with a little girl because both mother and child were HIV positive. He refused to get checked himself, unfortunately he most likely has it and now has another wife and children who he might have infected or he might have passed away because he wouldn't go and get tested.

Men typically don't get tested because they are to embarrassed. They tell their wives to go get tested and then see what the results are. Women also have more of an opportunity to go get tested secretly because they are the ones that take the children to the doctors appointments. But there are commercials that are going around Kenya, encouraging men to go get tested with their wives because it is men that spread it the most rapidly. Many men in Kenya have multiples wives and partners.

Now there are medications called ARV's that people can take, which helps them control the effects of HIV and allows them to live much longer lives and many times a complete life. I didn't know this but the United States actually gives money to Kenya so that treatment and medication for HIV positive patience are free. Also for TB and malaria, two other diseases that are big problems in Kenya. Don't worry I take my malaria pills everyday! Hospitals also test mothers before they gives birth. Both for the health of the mother and child and also for safety of the doctor who is coming into contact with the mothers blood. If the doctor finds out that the mother is HIV positive they will give the mother the option to find out if she is or not and if the mother decides she wants to know and she is HIV positive then they will put the child on the ARV's as soon as the baby is born preventing the child from receiving HIV. Which has decreased the amount of children with HIV/AIDS significantly!

The teachers said that when they told their students, the students didn't react poorly. They just said that the kids told them, 'well it doesn't change who you are, we still love you'. Which was really good to hear.

Now it is our job to teach our kids about HIV/AIDS in our life skills class and how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Being a deaf ed PCV we had to spend time learning how to explain HIV/AIDS in sign language and learn the different signs because it can get really confusing if your not using English and its such a touchy topic its a little nerve racking because you don't want to be relaying the wrong information. But we learned a lot of fun activities we can do with the kids to teach them all about HIV/AIDS.

It was really an eye opening experience talking to teachers who are HIV positive and see how they not only live with the disease but teach others about it. Its going to be a tough subject to teach but such an important one. I look forward to trying and breaking down the negative stigma that follows those who are HIV/AIDS positive and also try to help my students grow and spread awareness and to teach them how to protect themselves or learn what actions to take if they do have HIV/AIDS.