Hello friends! I have very exciting news!!!! We were
recently told where our sites will be for the next 2 years AND I was lucky and
got to see my site during our volunteer shadowing last week!! I will be at
Sipili School for the Deaf J
Last Sunday to Thursday we all shadowed various volunteers
who are currently doing Deaf Education or Secondary Math/Science depending on
what we’re here to do. It was so educational, interesting and helpful!
Sunday I traveled and it was a long day-I left my house at 8
am and arrived at Jenny’s house at 7:30 pm! I started my journey by riding on
my first Kenyan bus. The buses and matatus (14-16 passenger vans) are main
sources of transportation here but can be tough sometimes because you have to
wait for them to fill up before they’ll leave. Therefore, it can take you much
longer to travel because you have an infinite amount of waiting time to add in
wherever you want to go. My experience also included someone standing in the
front of the bus preaching in Kiswahili the whole 30 minutes because they
figure they have a whole group of people who can’t go anywhere and have to
listen to you. That’s one to do it.
I also traveled on 2 matatus and while on the one going from
Nairobi to Nyahururu I saw my first herd of zebras in the wild!!! It was soooo
coool! Sadly, I didn’t get to snap any photos because I was in the middle of
the back row and first off, I didn’t want to just whip my camera out but also,
no one else was fazed by the sight of them. Oh well, it was exciting!!
So my town of Sipili is 56 km (2 hour matatu ride) from the
city where I have to go for my banking (Nyahururu) with the last 8 km (from my
post office in Kinamba to Sipili) being pretty much off the road. The trip to
my post office can take anywhere from 35 min to an hour even though it is only
8km…looks like I might be running there occasionally since I’d probably get
there faster J
Jenny, the volunteer who I will be replacing and shadowed
all week, and Jessica, the Secondary Math/Science volunteer who is done in
December as well, met us (myself, Vince and Madeline-2 math/science trainees)
in Nyahururu and took us to Sipili. On Monday I got to go to the school where I
will be teaching next year! It is a boarding school with 75 students enrolled
currently and 7 teachers I believe. There are 2 teachers for the little ones
(K-3rd grade) and then 5 teachers for the 4th-8th
graders. They teach KSL, English, Math, Science, CRE (Christian Religious Ed.),
P.E. and Social Studies, which they split among all the teachers. Each class is
40 minutes with a little more than an hour for lunch and a break in the
morning.
The students are so funny, bright and happy! I know I still
have a lot of KSL to learn but communicating with them just a little bit was
great! Every time I didn’t know a word they would fingerspell, point to things,
get a dictionary out, ask an older student or make wild gestures trying to get
their point across while being extremely patient with me the whole time!
After classes were over I had one of the coolest experiences
ever! Jenny had started a running club at their school and so now three times a
week they all go out and run this loop. The loop is 3km long. Monday we ran it
twice and Tuesday once. All the kids got changed and were laughing and loving my
outfit. I wear these crazy striped capri pants underneath purple or green
soccer shorts with a t-shirt on top and if it’s raining, my BRIGHT
pink/yellow/blue rain jacket. Now, I have to wear the spandex because my shorts
are too short (even though they basically go to my knee-don’t wanna be too
risqué and the jacket (in case I get pneumonia or malaria or some other disease
that is contagious? If caught running in the rain w/o it). The kids loved it.
We did maybe 3 minutes of stretching and then probably 20-30 students with
Jenny and me all took off together. It was FANTASTIC!!! The kids were just
smiling and having a good time-I had runners high for sure-and not even just
because we were at a higher elevation ;)
The other interesting part was that the Peace Corps had told
us beforehand that we should cover any tattoo we had before the community got
acclimated to us in case they didn’t like it. I asked Jenny if I should before
school and she said the kids would enjoy it and the staff wouldn’t even notice
it. She was absolutely right! The kids ate it up and I was glad because running
+ love are 2 signs I know well J They were so excited to run
with me after seeing it! The best was on Wednesday though when we were about to
leave and one of the Standard (grade) 6 boys, Patrick, came up to me and showed
me his leg. He had drawn on a runner tattoo on his leg like mine!!! He had a
huge smile and just stood there with his leg next to mine. I feel so lucky that
I’m with these kids for the next 2 years and I plan on getting plenty of
kilometers in with them before I leave.
Our last day of shadowing we celebrated Halloween by carving
a pumpkin! We all drew one aspect of the face on it and then Madeline and I
carved it with a leatherman; I only cut myself once! We also made guacamole
(which with fresh-off-the-tree avocados is delicious!! And I’m pretty sure will
become a staple food while I’m at site) with fried eggs & onions and then
we put it all on a chapatti=yum! The cherry on top of our dinner was mac and
cheese. Cheese is really only available if you buy it processed and even that
can be really tricky to find apparently. We were able to have this rare and
scrumptious delicacy because Jenny found it in one of the larger cities grocery
stores and had saved it until now. Score!
My trip ended on a high note when I got to see more zebras
and gazelles for the first time! Still no pictures were captured but I’m sure
in the next 2 years I’ll be able to take some, no worries J
It was a great experience overall and it has made me super excited to go and
teach these kids! I’m still uber-nervous as well but after seeing the kids and
my town, I’m more thrilled than scared, yay!
I hope everyone is having a great beginning of
November-there was a meteor shower last night (Monday) so maybe you can catch
the ending of it tonight. Also, don’t forget that Kenya doesn’t do daylight
savings time so we are now at 8 hours difference.
Love to all and don’t forget to send me updates of your
lives since none of you have blog updates I can check out…
Lots of Kisses from Kenya,
Elizabeth
p.s. I’ll update my address next week and that’ll be the one
to send things to from then on out!
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