Christmas on the Coast

My last blog post of 2012 (weirdddd!)…and it happens to be my 12^th blog (I think), love that J Well, tis the season to be jolly, fa la la J I am back in Sipili and wanted to tell you about my Christmas on the coast! I traveled 16 hours or so via matatu and bus to get to Kilifi where Deirdre, a deaf ed volunteer, lives now. A total of 6 of us, 5 deaf ed and one math/science volunteers met up for the holidays. On Christmas Eve we hung out at a friends house by the beach who Deirdre knows, some guy from England, and it was a lot of fun! Christmas Eve is also Mackenzie’s Birthday who lives in Malindi, a coastal town about 45 minutes away. We had great food, some drinks and just relaxed. I don’t think I could’ve done much more than that after the long day of traveling so it worked out well.

Christmas Day I had wanted to run but the coast is sooooo hot!! I have no idea what the temperature is but I’m sweating every day, all day if that helps a little. It’s just hot all the time-morning through the night and there is no air conditioner to retreat to haha.

We headed down to the beach early in the morning and met up with a Swedish family that comes to Kenya for a month every year. Their family started this tradition of swimming across a small segment of the Indian Ocean (they call it a creek but it is about 50 times larger than any creek I’ve encountered) and back about 7 years ago. The original swim was done to raise money for malaria and now they just do it every year because it wakes them up and feels great. I was not as amped to do this swim as I would’ve rather run to the other side but it was too hot and I didn’t know where to go haha. I am not a swimmer at all and although lots of my cousins and siblings are swimmers, I didn’t get that gene…however, I did the whole thing!! YOLO J (You Only Live Once!) I was swimming in total for about an hour and 15 minutes perhaps? The water was incredibly warm and I think that was probably at least 5 times the length of any distance I’ve ever swam consecutively and that was from way back when during elementary school swim lessons in the summer! I did do some aqua-jogging as well while reminiscing about our early JCXC morning swims but the water was def never that warm! 

After our swim we headed back, ate some spaghetti lunch (I think I’m going to hit a record of consecutive days eating spaghetti-I might be 7 for 8 days right now!), and then just relaxed for a bit. Around 4 we headed down to the dock where another one of Deirde’s new friends met us and he took us out on the water on his boat. It was so incredibly beautiful! We saw a lot of mangroves, awesome birds I don’t know the name of, tons and tons of white jellyfish and a sweet sunset over the water! It was pretty amazing!

My day ended on a great note because I got to skype with both my family and Nate! It was hard at some points during the day when we would be reminded that it was Christmas but when we were weren’t thinking about it, it wasn’t too bad because it didn’t feel anything like Christmas at all. I was sweating, getting tan, swimming, surrounded by lush greenery and I was thousands of miles from my family-the very opposite of every Christmas I’ve ever had. It was really good to chat with everyone and see faces though!! It made me really thankful to have the support I have been blessed with!!!! Thank you!!! J

The day after Christmas we decided to treat ourselves. We went to this resort place where you pay a flat rate to swim all day and eat a buffet lunch. It was sooooo surreal!! It didn’t feel like we were in Kenya…or in the Peace Corps! Haha it was a really nice getaway and time to hang out. We did the water aerobics class in the morning for half an hour and relaxed by the pool. We decided that going once or twice a year would be a wonderful way to indulge ourselves and have a break. I have only been to a few places like that before and it always feels a bit peculiar because it’s so unlike places I normally go to. It was a really nice way to relax and take a breather from the craziness of everything here and prepare ourselves to teach!

The whole break was a lot of fun and super good to talk and see the other volunteers!! I think that was the best part because we’d only been at our sites for one week but it felt like a long week. We’d gone from seeing each other for at least 9-10 hours every day and spending most of our waking moments surrounded by other volunteers and our host families to being totally on our own. It was great to talk with the 5 girls and know that we were all going through the same emotions. We talked about how it’s awesome to be on our own but there is so much we have to learn about our communities and since the students aren’t there for another week it can get kinda lonely at site now. We are trying to make friends but it is tough stuff. It’ll get easier though and once the students are back I’ll have my hands full.

I hope everyone had grrrreat holidays and continue to do so!!!

Merrrrry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!!! J

Kisses from Kenya,

Lizbeth

p.s. I took lots of pictures but I wont be able to post any until I have my first break or go somewhere with my computer where I have faster internet, here in Sipili I can upload one or two but it takes a little bit. Hakuna Matata

From Machakos to Sipili...I'm an Official Volunteer!!!

Wow! So this time last week I was in Machakos sitting around with my host family pondering what site would be like and super excited for the new adventure. On Wednesday we left Machakos after a fun host family appreciation luncheon and headed for Nairobi. In Nairobi we were with the Math/Science group once again and had a fabulous time! We had sessions all day on Thursday going over stuff that our supervisors and stuff that we needed to know before we headed out into the real peace corps life. They also gave us a little bit of free time each evening to go to the mall area…mind blown. We visited the Westgate Mall, which has sooo many stores it was like America. It was packed with so many foreigners along with Kenyans and so many things that we hadn’t seen in 10 weeks! I ate a sub: amazing!, chocolate gelato: expensive but worth it if I only have it once/twice every year and then at the Nakumatt (basically their version of Walmart) I saw so much stuff I hadn’t seen in a long time! Nakumatt is part of the mall and packed with stuff. Now granted we are now living on Peace Corps stipend which means not very much at all and since most ‘Americanized’ items available are very expensive, you have to choose wisely when special trips to Nairobi or other large cities are made. I invested in some quality face wash, laughing cow cheese and the gelato. Wednesday when I went with some of the other Deaf Ed volunteers it was very funny thinking about our experience in retrospect because we walked around for one hour before we had to head back and the entire time our jaws were dropped and we were walking sooooooo slowly! We just hadn’t seen anything like it in 2 months and I at least didn’t think I would see something like that for the 27 months I was in Kenya. Eye opening for sure.

Friday was swearing in-such a fun day!!!  We drove to the USA Embassy with our supervisors and had a nice ceremony followed by a picnic sort of lunch-fantastic! They had arranged for a dance group of about 6 ladies and 2-3 drummers to come and play/dance for us and they were awesome and got everyone involved at some point. It just felt very surreal to actually be sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. I’m no longer a trainee! Say whatttt?! Post swearing-in we all headed back to AFRALTI, our hotel place and I got my head shaved as a buzz cut! I’d been thinking about it before leaving saying that I wanted dreadlocks for a year and then I’d shave them off so I could experience that and what a shaved head was like all while being away from America. Sadly there is a negative connotation associated with dreadlocks in my community so I just went for the shaved head look now. Another girl in the Math/Science group also wanted to do it and Jocelyn, Deaf Ed, later decided to that evening. I was kinda nervous beforehand but pretty ready for it and now I love it. It’s sooooo easy to wash/not mess with in the morning/run with and not have to worry if I don’t have a hair band! The only thing I’m worried about now is what it’ll look like when it grows out because I don’t have any sort of barber who has dealt with ‘mizungu’ hair before. Oh well, I’ll get to that when my hair is long enough. After my hair was shaved I headed out to the mall with Jocelyn and Mackenzie because they both wanted ear piercings and I was on the fence it but went along anyways. I soon found out it wouldn’t cost very much at all and I was feeling pretty bold at this point since I was a new volunteer with a newly shaved head, so why not make the trifecta? I now have an ear piercing at the top of my left ear! Friday was full of highs with the finale just being everyone hanging out and trying to soak in all the volunteer time they could before we’d all become separated from one another.

Saturday was a different story. I woke up after not much sleep pretty early to start saying good byes as everyone left at different times. My matatu left at about 8 stuffed to the brim with my stuff, Vince’s stuff, Vince, our 2 supervisors and me. His supervisor called ahead about a matatu to pick us up at the hotel but didn’t think about all of our stuff and so there wasn’t enough room for him to come in the same matatu as us. He caught the next one and met us in Nyahururu 45 minutes after we arrived. After my stuff was taken from the matatu and put onto a cart that some man pulled for us to the next matatu stage we boarded the 2^nd matatu of the day to head to Sipili. Vince and his supervisor left us there as they boarded a different matatu to Marlal. It was during this ride that I started to fully realize that I was on my own now. I didn’t know of any volunteers sharing my banking town and I knew there wasn’t another volunteer in Sipili since the Math/Science volunteer didn’t get replaced. I started to get really nervous after we got to Sipili and allllll of my stuff was put on the back of a piki piki (motorcycle) to be driven while we walked to my school compound, my new home and I saw the tons and tons of people everywhere since it was market day! Eeeeek!!! Thankfully lunch calmed me down.

I am currently staying in a small house in the compound but across from the actual house I’ll be living in. It still needs to be painted and some other stuff is still being worked on as well. The hope is that I can move in once I get back from my small trip for Christmas. Fingers crossed!

Sunday was a dream come true/an odd day. All of the stores were closed and we’d gotten to Sipili around maybe 4:30 on Saturday, eaten lunch and then I just relaxed-didn’t buy anything. I got a nice 30 min run in and then with the exception of walking around/exploring the town to see if anything was open, I stayed in my house literally just watching movies on my laptop and eating the chocolate my parents had sent me that I’d wanted to save until I got to site. WIN!

These past few days have been good. I’ve gotten a lot of relaxing in, read a book, watched some movies and am trying to learn my way around town. I explored my banking town, Nyahururu, a 2 hour matatu ride away, for the first time today. I was pretty scared because it’s sooo much bigger than Sipili and I didn’t know if I was ready to go or not. I don’t go to cities in America very often and after being with 8 other Americans and told not to go anywhere by ourselves in Machakos I was a little nervous. Hakuna matata, I made it safely through my journey and got everything I wanted: food, money (the main reason I had to go since I have to pay for all of my furniture but I didn’t have any money to order/buy it), a sweeeet mask I’m excited about and paint so I can spruce up my house with a little color once I’m allowed to move in!!

Overall, things in Sipili are going well. This weekend I’m traveling with a fellow volunteer, Britni, down to the coast to stay with Deirdre and 2 other volunteers who live on the coast to celebrate Christmas! It is going to be a loooooong travel day since the average it takes me to get to Nairobi is 5-6 hours and then after I meet up with Britni and we take a bus together that they say averages at least 10 hours…yay? But its totally going to be worth the time and money because it means I wont be alone on Christmas. It’s going to be really strange I have a feeling but it’ll be nice to see familiar faces, watch Christmas movies with other Americans, eat delicious food and spend time together before the school year starts!

I’m sending all of you lots and lots of love and Merry Christmas’s!!!!!

Love and kisses,

Zabet

(not sure if I wrote about this in a blog yet but this is my new nickname here, pronounced ‘Zah-bet’) J

One More Week of Training!

Week 9 of training is completed and I have one week to go! The big news from this past week was that we had our language final on Monday. I kind of nervous since our test was on KSL and they told us that if we used ASL it might take down our score a little bit. We had been taught KSL for the past 8 weeks but during model school we didn’t get much language practice and a lot of the students there use a big mixture of ASL with KSL. However, all worked out in the end and all nine of us passed with an Intermediate score or higher. Intermediate was what we needed to pass and that was what I got-I’m happy! If we didn’t pass then we wouldn’t be sent home but we would be put on probation I believe and would have to get tutoring hours while at site. Now I just gotta learn the village sign and the ASL that my students use J

My only other news is that I got my first dress made for me and now I have something a bit fancier to wear besides the 7 outfits I’ve been wearing for the past 9 weeks for our swearing in ceremony! It’s got a zebra print and it’s a pale yellow with black stripes/zebras….hard to explain but I’ll post pictures at some point of swearing in and then you’ll see it J

Other than that, most of our sessions this week were fine. Everyone is ready to be done with lectures and go to site. Next week we leave our host families on Tuesday, have our host family appreciation lunch with all the families in Machakos on Wednesday and then we head out for Nairobi on Wednesday afternoon. I’m sad to be leaving my family but glad to know that I can come visit them on my breaks. They said anyone that comes to visit me is more than welcome to visit Machakos so they can meet you! We will then meet up with our supervisors once in Nairobi and have some sessions on last minute details we might need to know for the next day and a half. The big day is Friday when we will be sworn in as volunteers!!!!!!! Can’t even believe it!! Then Saturday we all head out in the morning for our sites…on matatus…with alllllll of our stuff…just us and our supervisors-who we’ve just met…for potentially loooong trips…to our new homes for the next 2 years! WHOA!! Let the craziness ensue!

Also, this means I have a new address which I updated on the side if you want to send me mail J

Model School

Model school was last week! Whooop Whooop! Model School meaning that Peace Corps was trying to help stimulate a real-life school setting for us for one week. Peace Corps asked Machakos School for the Deaf if some of their students would be willing to stay at school for one additional week of school so we could practice teaching them and make it as real as possible. They just finished school but the headmaster picked 10 students from grades 4,5 & 6 along with 15 9^th & 10^th graders for the guys in our group who will be teaching at a secondary school. We had 2 volunteers who have completed one year of service and 2 who are about to finish their service who agreed to help out the whole week as well as 4 Kenyan teachers who normally teach the classes we were teaching.

Monday we observed the volunteers and Kenyan teachers and made our lesson plans. We then taught a total of 7 classes (35 min/class) over the next 3 days on various topics/subjects. We taught science, math, English or social studies. It went better than I thought it would since I still don’t feel like I have a wide range of KSL vocabulary and seeing as it was my first time ever teaching a class! The students at Machakos School are so incredibly smart and since we were doing lessons on topics they had just covered that year it also made it easier. I know I’m going to have my work cut out for me when I go to site to start teaching but this stimulation definitely helped. I’m going to have lessons go really well sometimes and also have lesson plans that I feel good about but then go horribly wrong. It’s a learning process and I’m getting more excited about teaching each day.

On a different note,, two weekends ago I went to my first Kenyan wedding…reception. It was about 10:30 am on a Saturday when I get a knock on my door from Whiney (Moosami’s mom, my Mamas one daughter who lives with us). She asked me what plans I had for the day and I didn’t have much except purifying my water and washing my clothes…I know, my weekends are craaaaaazy here! She invited me a wedding she was attending….in 1.5 hours. Haha no biggie. I tell her I don’t know what to wear and end up in jeans and blouse since she told me I could and I don’t have any real special occasion clothing, plus I figured I’m going to stand out either way. We left 2.5 hours later (Kenyan time as usual) and were driven about 15 minutes to a theological college where the wedding was being held. The wedding ceremony was supposed to start at 9 I think but she guessed that it started at least an hour later. Whiney had decided that we would miss the actual ceremony because they were usually pretty boring and since it was just the 2 of us plus her son who is 4 and Mumbi who is 11, it wasn’t worth it I guess.

We arrived about 10 minutes before the ceremony finished and got to see everyone taking pictures galore! There was a wide range of fancy dress and it was fun to see. After pictures everyone filed into 3 tents that were set up with chairs in maybe 4-5 rows-no tables except one for the bridal party. We started by eating a good meal of 1 chapatti, stew, one banana, pilau and a coleslaw type salad. We ate while the bride and groom took more pictures. When they came back everyone stood up and started dancing behind them and following them into the reception area. It was high energy and a lot of fun to watch. There was a little more dancing to follow while the bride and groom ate their lunch. A few speeches were given then it was time to cut the cake. This was crazy to me how many people got fed in this process…..ok so the bride fed the groom and vice versa. Then the bride fed the maid of honor and then the groom fed his best man. Next the bride & groom walked over to her parents and fed them and then they did the same for his parents. After that they walked back and cut more so that the groomsmen could walk around and give bite size (about quarter-size) pieces to every guest. The first 2 rows got a piece actually cut from the cakes on the table and then the 4 rows behind that got a piece that was in a little baggie with a ribbon tied around it. It looked like so much work! After all the guests were fed the bridesmaids and groomsmen each got a piece as well. The last thing was the presentation of gifts from the parents and maybe grandparents, I couldn’t quite tell. Everyone else put their gifts on a table but the parents each came forward with their wrapped gift and handed it to the bride and groom while a picture was taken with everyone’s hand on it. It was funny because after the first gift Whiney leaned over and said that back in the day it was crazy because some parents would buy mattresses and bed frames and have them carried in but they don’t do that any more….all of a sudden what’s brought in? A queen or king size mattress and all the pieces to make a bed frame…Hahaha we laughed and deiced maybe it does still happen.

The reception was pretty much over after that and people cleared out pretty fast. I found out that it was a smaller wedding than most though it looked like a medium/big wedding to me. Also, in towns crashing weddings, like I was doing, is pretty common but not that many people do it whereas in villages it is very common and they have to plan for tons of extra people who weren’t invited. The last interesting tidbit is who the bride and groom are…now I still don’t know their names, I tried to ask but got no answer, but I found out that they are both members of the Navigators Club…which I think is the same one my brother is in at Penn State!! The one director of the club was there and he said he had connections at Penn State and that there are a lot of Navigator groups based all throughout Kenya and Africa! I just thought that was pretty cool J

HIV/AIDS Week

(I wrote this blog last week but had no Internet access to post it until now but it is really about 18. Nov- 24. Nov)

The week’s theme: HIV/AIDS.

National World AIDS Day: 1^st. December.

The Math/Science Trainees who we hadn’t seen since the first week of training when we spent 4 days with them came down to Machakos for all of last week so we could learn about HIV/AIDS together. We are all educators but we also are all ‘Behavior Change Communicators’. That basically means we are going to try and help our school communities and communities as a whole with some of their behaviors that could change for the better. We aren’t going to change any villages in big ways but we learned how we could help in little ways to educate others and do what we can. We learned a lot about HIV & AIDS and thought I’d share some of knowledge with you.

Fast Facts on the Global Overview of HIV/AIDS Pandemic from ’09:

- # of people living with HIV (not AIDS in ’09): 33.3 Million

- # of kids (age 15 and younger) living with HIV (not AIDS in ’09): 2.5 Million

- # of deaths due to AIDS (in ‘09): 1.8 Million

- # of orphans due to AIDS (in ’09): 16.6 Million

- #of new infections of HIV/day (in ’09): 7,000

- # of newly infected individuals in 2009: 2.6 Million

Fast Facts on HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Kenya (2009):

- # of people with HIV aged between 15 and 49: 1.5 Million

- 22% of Kenyans are aware of their partner’s HIV status

- ½ of those surveyed reported having unprotected sex with people whose status was unknown to them or with partners who were of a discordant status

- The prevalence rate for people between the ages of 15-49: 6.3%

- # of orphans due to AIDS (aged 0-17): 1.2 Million

The law: Section 24 of the HIV & AIDS Prevention and Control Act criminalizes the willful or reckless infection of others with HIV. People who know they have the virus are required to divulge that information to their sexual partners. Those found guilty of knowingly putting others at risk of infection are liable to a jail term of up to 7 years or a 500,000 shilling fine,

Kenya as a country is doing better than many other countries in Africa but there is still a lot of work to be done. The first reported case of HIV in Kenya was in ‘84/’85. Kenya is hoping that by 2015 they will prevent the majority of babies from becoming HIV+ from their mothers. They are trying to prevent mother to child transmission by promoting C-sections if the mother is positive. They are also trying to encourage people to get tested in the first place so they can accept their results and get the help they need.

We had a big session on stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS and became more informed on the topic so we could assist others. People stigmatize out of ignorance, fear, stereotypes and other reasons. Self-stigmatization is the worst kind and people have self-blame, avoid company, hide their illness, have a negative attitude and often avoid HIV services. As NEPHAK says, (an organization helping people living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya) “Let us replace shame with solidarity and fear with hope”!

The last big session of the week was about real people living in Kenya who are trying to help others with situations like their own. We watched a movie called ‘Courage and Hope: Teachers Living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa’. It was initially a book and now they made it into a movie as well-its pretty good!! The book looks into 12 teachers live and the movie looks closely into a handful of the people mentioned in the book. It is about 40 min long and very encouraging! The best part of the session though was after watching the movie. We learned that two of the ladies in the movie had agreed to come in and talk to us some more. Jemimiah and Beldina are both teachers whose lives have been changed by HIV but have decided to advocate for people like them and go around talking at schools and in communities to educate others.

Jemimiah is a teacher by profession but now works in the Teacher Service Commission (TSC). She specifically works on the workplace policy for people living with HIV/AIDS. There are an estimated 18,000 teachers living with HIV in Kenya though only 3,500 teachers have been tested positive. The estimation was based off of the # of adults affected and the number of adults that are teachers so the estimation is rough but they know that either way, many teachers are affected but have not been tested. There are policies in place that help teachers but only if they have been tested and can prove that they are positive. The policies include: getting provisions to attend clinics for check ups/picking up refills; extra sick days if needed; fair labor practices ; if headmaster stigmatizes teacher then they get reprimanded and there are others but it comes down to the fact that these only help the teachers who have gotten tested. The biggest thing they say right now is promoting everyone to get tested! Also, Kenya as a whole does have an increased number of people on ARVs (Anti-retroviral medication) and more people have access to getting the drugs they need but there is still a lot of help needed in that situation.

Beldina says that we can fight stigma with following 4 steps:

1. Know your HIV status
2. Accept your results
3. Disclosure (relieves you of the burden of secrecy)
4. Have a NEW START in life! (NEW START being an acronym for: nutrition, exercise, water, sun light, temperament, acceptance, rest and treatment)

If you follow these steps than stigma won’t stand a chance! Kabam!

So besides learning all about HIV/AIDS we got to celebrate Thanksgiving together! My friend Jocelyn and I decided to start our mornings off by running a ‘Turkey Trot’ since it is tradition with our families. Not exactly the same but still solid. We then had regular sessions before our feast! Some members of our group talked to the hotel where we had sessions and came up with a plan. They very kindly agreed to cook us up a Kenyan Thanksgiving dinner with a list that we gave them, We had turkey-which I’m guessing was free range and local since we’re in Kenya-mashed potatoes, veggies and cranberry sauce which looked like gravy. It was better than I had imagined it! A solid transition from an American Thanksgiving into a Kenyan version….especially since I can’t see eating that good next year when I’m at my site. The food and company made it a little easier not having a Lindenhof turkey, pumpkin/apple pie and canned cranberry sauce. It was also great to be surrounded by American friends even though I missed the chaos of a beautiful Linde Thanksgiving full of ‘Merican football & soccer, lots of eating, talk of relationships and who will be the next to wed and tons and tons of laughter. It’ll make me that much more excited in 2 years when I can experience it again at home J

Also, lastly, I wanted to say CONGRATS CONGRATS to my sister Bek Bek on a wonderful performance at Miss Solanco which was the Saturday after Thanksgiving….You’re the best and I’m sad I missed it but I can’t wait to see pictures/videos!!!!!….she is the new Miss Solanco and I’m related to her! Way to represent! Win!! ;)