MOVING TO SHIMONI

As you all know from my last post it took me two days to get to my site. It took me longer to get to my site then anyone else even those people who were the fly in sites. Funny enough the people who had to fly in sites which are the furthest sites were the shortest travel. The way that you get from Nairobi to my site is ride a 10/11 hour bus ride from Nairobi to Mombasa, then take a tuk tuk from to likoni ferry, take the 10min ferry ride to the other side of Mombasa, then board a matatu for 2 hours ride to Shimoni. You could do this trip in one day but the issue is that the last matatu to Shimoni is at 6pm so if you miss this matatu welp, you better go find a room wherever you are, so it took us two days to get to my site.

It was cool though, my principle and I traveled together and he was very laid back about the traveling. I am the 4th Peace Corps volunteer at my site so he is use to us American's and also he wasn't to horrified at the large amount of luggage I had unlike other principles who had never had a Peace Corps volunteer and saw the massive amount of stuff we had to bring to live in Kenya for 2 years. Although, it was still quite a site to see lugging a big hiking backpack, a big duffle, a smaller rolly bag and my small backpack into tuk tuk's, buses, etc. Thank goodness we only have to do that two times in total for the entire two years!!

The most exciting part of my trip other then the fact that I was finally moving to my site and getting to meet my kids, was that I got to stay in a tent rather then a room when we stayed overnight in a place called Voi. They use one of those old looking safari tents that you imagine in the old colonial safari pictures with the men with a handle bar mustaches, khaki shorts and shirts and a big khaki hat. They put in cement flooring and a bit of a structure to have a real shower then a bucket bath, as well as western toilet but it was a magical experience. I was hoping my home in Shimoni was going to be the exact same but unfortunately that's not what Peace Corps qualifies as a place to live for 2 years.

When I got to Shimoni, it was NOTHING how I imagined it. Honestly, I couldn't help but mix thoughts of a Florida beach town with an African twist of dogs, cats, goats, chickens running around, mud huts every where, and dirt roads. It was weird looking place I created in my head. What Shimoni actually looked like was a dirt road leading into a very small area that had thatched hut restaurants, vegetable venders, fruit venders, then it forked and one dirt road lead you to a mosque, more homes and a hotel and the other lead me to my home. The road that leads me to my home is parallel the water so I get to see the water everyday riding my bike to a form school. My road has a bar, a hotel, some businesses and then a bunch of homes at the end and when my road finishes you can walk down this cute little path to the beach. (Pictures will be posted when I feel comfortable taking my camera around, since it's an expensive thing to have and I don't want people getting the wrong impression that I have tons of money and can rip me off all the time)

I have my own little room in a house. You walk through a metal door and there is a big hallway with rooms on either side. Back to the dorm life! I love it though, it's cozy, it's not a lot of cleaning and we have a backyard with palm tree where I can hangout or neighbors whom I hangout with in their homes. It's also so very quite and beautiful! Because most people don't have electricity the stars are unbelievable and despite it being pretty hot during the day Shimoni cools down at night and there is a constant breeze so sitting in my backyard at night time is very relaxing. Luckily, Viki the last Peace Corps volunteer who lived in my room left me a ton of her stuff so it wasn't to much of a pain in the butt to move in.

When I moved to Shimoni it was 3 weeks before we had to start school so I did a lot of wondering around and heading to my banking town Ukunda/Diani, a big tourist spot that has a grocery store (so exciting!), that is 1.5 hrs away. I lucked out on my site, we get a good amount of different foods and I can eat fish whenever I want! It's beautiful and the people are so very nice! I have had incidences where my bike broke down and random person walking will just come over and help me. Or people inviting me to have chai with them or dinner at their houses. I do get hassled a bit by the men, which can be VERY annoying but I just say Hapana (meaning no) and for the most part they leave me alone.

I live with a family who rents out the other rooms in the house and owns a house 50ft away. There are two girls who are around 20, one women who is in her mid 30's, her son, cousins', sisters, etc. and they have taken me in as a family member. It has been so great! I eat dinner at their house all the time, play cards with the girls, and hangout with the little ones. They have helped me acclimate so much and help me through the confusing cultural differences and understandings. The older women also has had a lot of interactions with people from America and other parts other parts of the world so she understands my culture better then most which gives me a nice break from the constant struggle of cultural differences I face everyday. The girls who are around 20 also give me such a nice break because it's like I'm hanging out with my own sisters. They have helped me more then I can explain!

Shimoni is wonderful and the South coast is stunning. The South coast isn't as developed as the North coast and so the drive down to the my site is just fields of palm trees and lush fields of different trees and small communities of huts and houses. I love it!

Thanks for reading!

SWEAR IN!

After 10 weeks of waiting, cramming in information about teaching, Kenyan culture, language, host family experiences and time with each other. December 14th, 2012 came and we were sworn in as true volunteers. At that point everyone had been calling us Peace Corps trainees as is the Peace Corps tradition and the excitement of soon being called a Peace Corps Volunteer built up as we got closer and closer to our swear in date.

All the girls dressed in their finest traditional Kenyan garb that we all had made for this specific event and the boys dressed in traditional Massai clothes, Kenyan dress shirts or looking spiffy in their button ups and ties. We all piled into a bus and were taken to the ambassadors house, a beautiful house that had a big gardens surrounding the entire property with monkeys running around in the trees. When we entered the backyard we were greeted by women in grass skirts dancing while drummers played traditional Kenyan music. The air was filled with so much energy from how excited we were to be at our ceremony to the people who had helped us along the way and ready to give us our certificate as an official Peace Corps volunteer.  There was also the smell of burgers, chicken, potatoes salad, real salad, and beer in the air. Even though it had only been 10 weeks since we had anything close to a burger, or real ketchup. Just the thought of being able to eat and drink some of these delicious things got us all giddy haha

We walked around greeting people, looking around the property and of course checked out the forbidden pool which had once been a part of the ceremony but I guess in previous years PCV's had gotten to drunk and started getting to foolish around the pool lol One wonderful surprise that I got to experience was that my host Mama had surprised me the night before at my hotel saying she was going to be there for my ceremony. It was so so sweet and I was more then happy that she could be there for me. My host family and I still talk while I live in Shimoni and have planned a time when I can visit them in Machakos and a time when they can come to Mombasa.

One of my favorite parts of the ceremony was when the people who were dancing, drumming and singing called the people who were going to teach in each region (coast, central, western, eastern and turkana) to come up and dance the traditional dances from that region. As many of you know, I LOVE to dance so when they started calling us all up there to dance I couldn't have asked for a better ceremony. By the end, each and everyone one of us were up dancing as well as many of our counterparts having an absolute ball! It was so great to get a taste of the vast cultures we were all going into and just to see how much fun everyone was having and obviously getting to dance just was the cherry on the top of the cake/day or whatever you say.

During the ceremony many people such as our country director, the director of the education program, the ambassador spoke about the history of the Peace Corps, the values and goals of the Peace Corps, the impact the Peace Corps has had on Kenya and the work that we will be doing once we all moved to our different sites. My favorite speech was by 3 of my friends. Jay, Vince and Amber who thanked everyone for their help in our training and our experiences in the last 10 weeks but what was cool is that Jay signed the speech, Vince said it in English and Amber spoke in Kiswahili. It was a great representative of the many faceted experience we had during training and will have during our two years of training and showed how many cultures were being exchanged, learned about and practiced while here as Peace Corps volunteers. I looked around during those speeches and realized that I was about to leave the people that I had bonded so well with, used as support to get through some of the tough times during the first 10 weeks, laughed with during cultural confusion moments, discussed life, learning, teaching, friends, family, EVERYTHING under the sun with, had become my best friends and now we were all moving to 27 different places to do some amazing work as teachers for two years. It was a sad/happy/proud moment!

After the speeches, each of us got up with our headmasters and mistresses from the school to get our certificates. Each of our headmasters and mistresses had all come to Nairobi for a few days so that we could get to know each other, have them be there during our ceremony and then travel back to our sites together. Then after the certificate giving it was chow time!! All of us piled on the food, grabbed a few Tuskers and sat down stuffing our faces with the amazing food, contemplating on what it would be like to leave each other, what our sites were going to be like and hoping that it wasn't going to be an awkward ride with our headmasters and mistresses, seeing that most of us were going to be traveling at least 6 hours to get to our site and at most two days (that was me haha) with just our headmasters/mistresses. O and we were going to have two years worth of our lives in bags that we had lug from bus, to matatu, to tuk tuk to whatever form of transportation. If you have never been in any of these forms of transportations in Kenya, let me just say it looks a lot like in circuses when 10 clowns somehow get out of one of those tiny little cars. So with our HUGE bags getting into any of these forms of transportations is an awkward situation alone.

The ceremony was pretty spectacular and as great as I had imagined it was going to be! And Woop woop, now I'm a PEACE CORPS VULNTEER! ex-Trainee.

Thanks for reading!