Walk for a Bus Week!

Hello Hello Hello J

  This blog is an update on the latest biggest project happening at Sipili School for the Deaf!!! As some of you know, back in March, my school was planning a ‘Walk for a Bus’ to raise money for a school bus. However, 3 days before the event was to take off, some unforeseen issues popped up and we had to postpone it. But now we’re back in business baby!!

Some information on our school and the walk…we became an officially registered school in 2006. We are the only school for the Deaf in all of Laikipia County, which ranges from Nanyuki to Sipili, 240 km, about 4-6hours in length. We are a public boarding school with 80 students registered from infant class to Class 8 with an additional vocational class.

Every year we aim to attend Games, Music festival, Drama festival and field trips however, the transportation is difficult to arrange. Our students are such visual learners but sometimes they cannot attend festivals or trips because we don’t have the means to get them there and back. We are hoping to purchase a school bus so our students have an opportunity to see more of Kenya and learn about various topics while seeing them in person.

We realize raising money is difficult but we are hoping to apply for a Peace Corps Grant after the walk. The PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Grant) is a grant that can reach $10,000 as the maximum and that is what we’re aiming for. The community must raise 25% of the total in order to receive the grant and that is why we’re doing the walk, as our community contribution. The grant is not like most grants as it gets the money from donations. My school has to apply for the grant with a variety of papers and budget lists. Then it will go through a review process done by other PC volunteers in the Grants Commitee. After it has passed the test, it gets sent to PC headquarters in Washington DC and if it is fine, then it will be put up on the PC website. Once on the website, it is up to any supporters in America to donate. I will have a short paragraph about our school and the project and how much money I am hoping to raise for the school. Anyone can support us. If you search ‘Peace Corps Partnership Grant’ the website will pop up and you can check out every PCV around the world who has a grant up. I will tell you all more about that once the walk is completed, we know how much we’ve raised and how the grant application is going but that’s the direction we’re hoping for.

The walk is now taking place from 26^th-30^th May. We will leave tomorrow afternoon for Nanyuki so that we are able to attend church the following morning. The learners and teachers that went to county Games in April had gone to one church while there, 2 months ago, and received a lot of positive response about our school. We hope to go back to the same church on Sunday and receive some donations to help our cause. We will sleep in Nanyuki again on Sunday before the walk begins on Monday morning. We hope to start the walk off and then walk around Nanyuki trying to get donations first before walking onwards. We are going to walk about 8km past Naro Moru where we will be spending the night at a school. We hope to do lots of walking and lots of collecting donations J The rest of our schedule goes as such, for those of you with a Kenyan Map who may be interested. Day 2 we leave from Naro Moru and go to Mwaiga to sleep at another school. Day 3 we’ll leave Mwaiga in the morning and go to Nairutia to sleep at our 4^th school. Then on Day 4 we’ll walk to Nyahururu, my banking town where we have informed a lot of businesses, banks and higher up people to let them know we’ll be arriving and we’re hoping to receive a lot of support in town. On Day 5, our last day, we’ll walk to Sipili past Kinamba. We are aiming to reach Sipili between 3 and 5pm and receive a big welcome from our town and school!

There will be 10 learners participating alongside myself, another teacher- Wairia, one of our cooks and a B.O.G. (Board of Governors) lady who wants to walk with us the whole way. Our principal will be there for the flagging off in Nanyuki and our deputy may meet us for a day on day 3 or 4. We have informed all of the high up people in Laikipia County, the police, the education officers and Peace Corps people.

While we are all on the walk, the learners and other teachers here will be doing their part to continue raising awareness and collecting any money from the community. Two teachers will be taking some learners to market on Saturday, since it is our market day which means there are tons of people in town, and telling people about what we’re doing. Then on Sunday a few teachers and all of the learners will attend the big Catholic Church they go to every Sunday and will make an announcement and try to raise more money. It is a continuous process.

I can tell you this has not been the easiest thing to plan with my counterpart. We’ve had our share of hiccups along the way and I will be glad when it’s over but I also am excited for the adventure. It will be a week of strictly Kenyan food-no pasta for my dinners, talking to as many Kenyans as possible while on the road, hanging out with the same 13 people every day and hopefully walking a lot of kilometers!

We are ready this time! The banner & posters are ready, the packing list is made, we have places to sleep every night, the learners are informed, Sipili town has posters everywhere and the schools/churches have had announcements made.

Lastly, I ask that you please send us your thoughts and well wishes that we may finish the walk, receive donations, stay safe, remain healthy and have a great time learning and walking together!!

Thanks and many kisses,

Zabet

Zany Zanzibar Trip: Part 1

Hey Hey Hey J

 Recently I went on a short vacation over land and ferry to the magical island of Zanzibar with 3 other volunteers: Caitlin, Eva and Deirdre and we had quite the adventure.

We all arrived in Nairobi the day before, slept at a nice hostel and our day began at 4am.  We hopped in the taxi, drove 30ish minutes to the bus stop and waited for our bus to leave at 6:15. The bus left and within 2 hours we came to the border crossing. We got our visas ($100 but it’s good for one full year multiple-entry) and headed on our way after about 1 and a half hours. We rode on that bus for the whole day; stopping here and there for bathroom breaks and saw the beautiful Tanzanian countryside. We were surprised because we rarely saw any towns or people, just a lot of open land and animals grazing. We arrived late in Dar around 10:45 and hopped in cab to take us to our hotel. We drove to a place right outside of center city that I had found online. After getting out of the cab and tried to pay the man 5000Tsh thinking that was enough; he quickly became very upset because it was supposed to be 5000/person. We were confused and very tired from traveling and the currency in Tanzania is in much higher numbers so it was harder to do conversions in our heads. (Really rough estimates for conversion: 2000Tsh=100Ksh=$1.20ish)We finally paid him the correct amount and his parting words to us were ‘you will fail’. Thank you kind sir. In fact, we think there is a possibility that he cursed our vacation. Witchcraft is much more prevalent in the coastal areas of Kenya and presumably Tanzania but we’re just speculating because we didn’t have great luck the rest of our trip hahaha twas quite humorous.

The next morning we took a taxi into center city to exchange our money and passed two exciting restaurants we knew we had to go to. Our first stop after the bank was SUBWAY! Yes, Subway. There is only one Subway in Kenya and it was built a few months ago but it is in a mall that Peace Corps Volunteers are now advised not to go to anymore. You can’t really find sub bread anywhere here and lettuce and cold cut meat are only available in large cities, expensive and I don’t have a refrigerator to keep them in. Therefore, we were all hardcore craving it and dove into our delicious subs for breakfast. We followed it up with a stop at Smooch, a frozen yogurt place-yum!! At last we were filled and headed to the port to hop on a ferry. We paid but the man took a while to bring us our tickets and so we ended up in this mad rush to get on the ferry before it pulled away but thankfully, we made it. We rode first class, I think that was my first time ever riding first class for anything, and made it to the island 3 hours later. We knew it would take longer because the cost was slightly less since we opted for the ‘slow’ ferry. We called our hostel on the ferry ride over and they offered to pick us up for free, we were ecstatic. So we get off the ferry and see a cute little old man holding a sign above his head with our name and the hotel name! Another first I believe! We started following him and after 5-6minutes thought he must’ve parked far away when he walks right to our hotel after only 10 minutes of walking, hence them being able to do it for free J We set our stuff down and went to explore Stone town. It’s a beautiful town on a beautiful island. We walked around for around 2 hours but we didn’t see what other people had been talking about. We didn’t see many door carvings, things to buy except the same stuff we could buy in Kenya and we didn’t see any super old buildings. We ended up eating at the little local place with delicious food including meat sticks, chapatti, fish, samosas and classic ugali. We went back to the hotel so some of the girls could shower since it was sweltering outside. It made me so happy that I live in Sipili at elevation, where it can get hot but never like that. The coast was hot like the kind that makes you sweat while just laying there and sticky all the time…and we went during the beginning of their ‘winter’! While back at the hotel we said hello to one of the guys staying there and we all heard an American accent. He left by the time we tried to knock on his door and see what he was up to that evening and so we asked management to tell him where we were hahaha. Perhaps a bit stalkerish but the possibility that he was a PC volunteer was high since we were there on the low season and staying at the most common place for backpackers and volunteers to sleep at. We also asked management if there were any bars or places to dance in town and they said they were all really far away except one. They led us past some winding roads and up to the top of a hotel where a bar did not await us, but a fridge with some beer in it did. It was cold though and the night was warm so we hung out there for a long time. And the guy from our hotel showed up with his friend and it turned out they were in fact both PC volunteers from Rwanda! It was so neat! I learned that Rwanda has the best roads in all of Africa, it is land of 1000 hills, it’s beautiful and they have about the same amount of PC volunteers as Kenya. The only other 2 main things I remember are that gorillas are their main attraction but it can cost over $500 to see them and that they don’t hear too much about the genocide in their villages although they don’t try to bring it up either. Oh and at the end they said they were leaving the island early to get a head start on their journey back but the main reason for getting a head start was so that they had time to stop at the Subway as they passed through Dar. Volunteers think alike J

The following morning, Easter Sunday, Caitlin and I got up at 6:15am to go on a run. We both put on tank tops and American running shorts, thinking that we would be ok in these outfits since we were in a more touristy place. No no no no. I’ve never felt more underdressed and scandalous during a run in my life. Suffice to say, if ever you go to a place that is populated by about 98% Muslims and you aren’t at a resort-it doesn’t matter how touristy it sounds in the books-you should cover at least your knees and don’t try to run early in the morning thinking you’ll skip the crowds because they get up very early to pray. It also helps if you know your way around and the language. The morning started out great. We turned left and suddenly found a few bars and a sweet park and old buildings that we’d been looking for! We ran through winding roads, past cool carved roads and so many gift shops that we couldn’t find the day before. Caitlin and I ran for 50 min and then tried to find our way back to our hotel. No dice. Thankfully Caitlin knows Kiswahili because surprisingly, my Kenyan Sign Language doesn’t do any good in Tanzania-especially when you don’t meet anyone who is Deaf. We kept asking people where the port was and we kept getting directions…to a different port we didn’t know existed until we showed up across from it. So there we were in a totally different part of town-very dehydrated-and at a total loss. Thankfully the people were very trusting and we managed to get a ride on their version of a matatu for about 20 minutes back to a place closer to town even though we had no money on us. We had no money and no cell phone. We hopped onto the open bed truck type vehicle (their version of a matatu) with a long connected bench along the perimeter and a roof on top and no windows, just the open air. Picture two Caucasian girls with very white skin from the knee up wearing running shorts and tank tops, sweating, and sitting in this open truck as children continue to pile in the back wearing head to toe garments as they go to school. These kids are the cutest things and they all kind of just stared at us with a bit of confusion on their faces as they check out our outfits and us in general. We finally reach the end point and realize we still don’t know exactly where we are but we manage to make it back to the hotel, a total of 3 hours after we had left! Quite the way to start our morning. The rest of the day we sat on the beach after traveling to North Coast, only an hour matatu ride. The beach was lovely but everyone’s health was not. One girl got sick in the morning but was feeling better and then the other two girls felt sicker than they had the day before. Giardia had hit and chosen its victims. We still managed to relax and just hang out which was the best option for everyone in their state of health anyway.

Zany Zanzibar Trip: Part 2

Monday was a fully relaxing day on the beach. We took a walk and collected shells and just soaked in the sun. We also talked to guy about snorkeling the following day. And fun fact, that Monday was my 2.5 year anniversary with Nathaniel J Can’t hardly believe it!

Tuesday we met up with some other people at the beach at 8:30 ready to snorkel and relax on a boat all day. We had booked a day on the water, 8:30-3:30, boating out to an island to snorkel, eating lunch and returning to the beach. It was beautiful out and after a few stops along the coastline at other beaches; we had 20 tourists on the boat ready to roll. At 9:30 our luck ended that day. It started to rain and only let up for about 45 minutes the whole day until 5pm. And 2 of our girls were still pretty sick. As I said, luck was not on our side. We spent the first 2ish hours of rain on the top of the boat with only 2 tarps to cover us and the couple sitting near us. It was us against the elements hahaha. It rained pretty hard for maybe 30-45 min at one point and we were all convinced it was going to start hailing and we were only wearing bikinis, light tank tops and short shorts. Oy. We arrived near the island and everyone jumped off with our goggles and breathing thingies. It was my first time ever snorkeling and my experience only added to the laughter. I am blind as a bat without my glasses and I don’t have contacts with me here in Kenya so as I put the goggles on, I was fully relying on my friends to watch out for me. They were nice and did keep an eye on me but guess how many fish I saw in the one hour of snorkeling? Now before I tell you, I did hit a PR (personal record) since it was my first time and maybe I could convince you that I tried to see that many so that the next time I go, I’ll also get a PR…but the number I saw? A whopping TWO. Hahahaha oh the ridiculousness of sitting on a boat in the pouring rain all day to see two fish was not lost on us and we laughed about it the whole way home as we continued to get wet. We did enjoy a lovely lunch prepared by two of the Tanzanian men, of a large fresh fish, a vegetable salad type thing, oranges and rice-quite good! The night ended with a big game of Farkle that Deirdre had brought and cold showers since the hot water was out haha.

Wednesday Caitlin and I got up early to run on the beach and it was fun and good since we didn’t feel scandalous this time. However, beach running is still one of those things that always seems cool at first and then it fastly loses the appeal in my opinion….and I am definitely getting worse at English since arriving here. It took me about 5 minutes and a few rereads of that last sentence to figure out what was wrong and realize that the word ‘fastly’ does not exist haha. We hung around Stone town, got some souvenirs and ate ice cream. I also learned while roaming around town that Freddy Mercury once lived in Zanibar and now there is a restaurant named after him and plaque on the door of the house he used to live in. The ferry left at 3:30 and guess what movie they played-the fact that one was playing at all was crazy already-but they played ‘The Italian Job’! My brother loves that movie so much and because of his love for it, I have seen it a million times and love it as well. I was the only one who had seen it and so since the volume was turned completely down, I became the narrarator for my friends. Normally I try to only do that for my students but since the ferry felt like it was flying (we took the fast one back that only takes 1.5 hours instead of 3) and we were all sort of feeling a little bit seasick, it actually took our minds off of the ferry ride and we enjoyed the first half of the movie. That evening we had bad luck again. We had seen a discount thing in a magazine for the city on our way through town a few days before and all of us were excited for the deal. It said if you came in as a table of 4 ladies on a Wednesday night, you would each get a free glass of wine and 20% off if you got an entrée. We were hooked. It ended up being about 15 minutes outside of the city but we sat down at our table and asked our waiter about the deal. He asked the manager and it was a no-go. He claimed it should’ve been taken away from the magazine a few years ago and that it was originally made for their restaurant but they moved a few months ago and the deal doesn’t exist anymore. Same restaurant-just a different location-and it was in the most recent magazine and yet, nothing. We ate there anyways since we had gotten a taxi there and there weren’t really any other restaurants around. After paying we decided it didn’t matter, we were going to dance in a club or bar and have fun. We walked across the street a club that PC/Tanzania had suggested and there was only a large screen playing futbol. No dancing. No music. No nothing. We weren’t going to give up just yet. We found a taxi and asked him to take us to the best club in the city and after talking it through with a few of his taxi friends, they all suggested the same place. We arrive and the person at the door says there is an 8000Tsh cover charge (about 400Kenyan shillings or a little less than $5) but it was only  Wednesday night and after we looked in we saw maybe 10 people in there…with slow chill music playing! No dancing to be had. So we went back to our hotel and passed out.

Thursday was my day to get sick. Thankfully no giardia but similar symptoms. We walked around the city for an hour as we waited for the Subway to open at 9am hahaha. We had our priorities. With Subway bags in our hands we climbed aboard yet another bus. It was 10:30am and we didn’t leave until 12:30…and didn’t stop for a restroom until 6:45pm. All I have to say is thank goodness for Pepto Bismol. We didn’t arrive in Arusha until midnight but our hotel reception was very thankfully awake and could let us in which was all we wanted and were worried about. We got a little less than 6 hours of sleep before waking up to get ready to ride another bus. This was the point where we split up. Deirdre and I went on a bus to Nairobi while Caitlin and Eva were going to Eastern Kenya so they opted for a different route. Smart move. Our bus left at 8 and was smooth sailing until we reached Nairobi. Even the border crossing was fine. We also rode the bus with a English guy who was in the midst of traveling from South Africa all the way up to Kenya/Uganda/Rwanda, pretty cool. Then we hit Nairobi. Freakin’ Nairobi. We sat in traffic for maybe an hour and a half-at 2pm-partly because there is ALWAYS traffic and partly because they are cracking down on foreigners and were doing random passport stops with everyone on certain roads. Nairobi is getting worse and the police are trying to crack down on things there. We got off the bus around 2:30ish, hopped in a taxi to take us to a matatu stage going towards Nakuru. We just couldn’t get enough of transportation this vacation ;) We hit traffic again going out to Nakuru which rarely happens and it ended up taking an hour longer to get there than usual.

Saturday was the last day of our travels. We got breakfast at one chain coffee house they have there and I treated myself for my Birthday that was in two days. I got a slice of warm apple pie, a mocha milkshake and a bagel with CREAM CHEESE! I don’t even think I ate cream cheese when I visited the USA last year for 2 weeks, which means it’s been over 1.5 years since I’ve eaten a bagel or cream cheese and it was amazing. Our waitress gave me a bit of a funny look bringing me pie and a milkshake at 9am but it was sooo worth it! We hit up the clothing piles next and Deirdre and I got some good deals/finds! She ended up with a bunch of cute dresses she can wear at school and I found a pair of hot pink corduroy trousers for only 500Bob ($5ish) as well as dark red trousers with black polka dots on them for the same price-whabam! And I’m not sure if my sisters know yet but recently I found one of my best finds yet-a pair of hot pink heels that are actually my size and were only 900Bob!! I’ve been on a search for these heels for years and I always think I’ve found them to bring them home and realize they are too small and I have to give them to my sisters. Well worry no more, they’ve been found J After shopping I left Nakuru and made it home at last. It felt so so so good to be back in Sipili.

That was one thing Deirdre and I talked about-how good it felt to back in Kenya. Yes, Tanzania and Kenya are neighboring countries and yes, they have many of the same tribes and speak Kiswahili, but they’re different and Kenya feels like home. It felt right.

That’s the end of my traveling story and here we are at the end of break. School officially starts on Wednesday, tomorrow, and the students will start slowly rolling back in. It is also the rainy season though it doesn’t feel like it as we are in deep need of rain. W have gotten two itsy bitsy sprinkles in the past 2 and a half weeks and we would really appreciate it if you guys would spread some of the rain love since according to Facebook pictures, it appears there is plenty on the east coast, USA right now. Thanks guys. The last thing is that this weekend I get to go to Nakuru where I will meet up with all of the Deaf Education volunteers and a counterpart from every school to start planning for Camp Uwezo. This will be my first year attending and I’m very excited to hear what it’s all about. All I know is that it is a Camp strictly for the Deaf and we will each bring 1-4 of our students to attend the Camp later in Term 2. It’s going to be great!

I’m sorry for this post being so long and I hope you are all off to a great start in May!!

Many kisses from Kenya,

Zabet

Ps. For any volunteers reading this past, present, future or if you want a glimpse in our lives, here is a funny link that is being spread around right now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/26/signs-you-served-peace-corps_n_5023578.html