Well to start things off, let me extend my apologies for not writing a post last week. I'm sure you were all on the edge of your seat anticipating a new post and then I let you down. But as I suspected, last week did go as planned. Not even close.
So let's start at the beginning and I'll try not to ramble on. At the start of last week, I sat down with my supervisor and said, 'Ok. I've got two weeks before I go to Nairobi for two weeks. Let's make a work plan." She agreed and we laid out a schedule for the next two weeks. I went home that day so excited and thinking there was a slight chance I may actually gather a substantial amount of data before I went off to IST. So Tuesday, well, Tuesday was great. I went to the group I was supposed to go to. Got all the information I needed from them and then interviewed a married couple. I was so pleased. But then my supervisor called and said that they needed me to attend a meeting at her house the next morning (not in the work plan) in order to help them type up some things that needed to be e-mailed to some man, who was unbeknownst to me, by the end of the day. Now I was supposed to go meet the District Education and Social Service officers in a town called Mbumbuni (boom-boon-i). I simply needed to do a meet and greet which would've taken a whole hour out of everyones day. But instead, I sat at my supervisors house while everyone spoke/yelled in Kikamba to each other for three hours and then they handed me the papers to go type. Rather than boring you with the mundane details, I'll just say that I didn't get home that night until about 5pm and I had left my house at 9am. Oh and I probably did a total of 3 hours of work.
Later, I received a call from Andrea saying that we (myself, her, and another volunteer) were going to be learning Kikamba from Friday through Sunday. Oh, and everyone was going to be staying at my house. Great. Now, on Thursday I was supposed to go meet with another group to get some info from them but my counterpart, who was supposed to take me, informed me the night before that he was going to Nairobi for the day. At this point I threw the rest of the work plan for that week out the window. I decided I would go meet Andrea in a nearby "bigger" town to pick up a mattress for my house guest who was arriving that evening and some actual food. The other volunteer, Brian, arrived that night and given that it's a common trend for Peace Corps Volunteers to be a bit on the strange side, there were many awkward silences between him and I for the remainder of the evening. So this language training, while incredibly helpful, threw a bit of a wrench into my work plan because instead of going from Friday through Sunday, it was actually scheduled to go from Friday through Tuesday. Which meant Monday and Tuesday of this week were also not going to go as planned.
Finally picked up some speed on Wednesday though. I again guilt-tripped my counterpart into escorting me to one of the schools in town so I could talk to the principal. He took me there, introduced me to the principal of the secondary school and then hit the road. The school I visited is called Yangua (yan-goo-a). There's a pre-school, primary school, a secondary school (or high school), and a polytechnic school (where you learn specific trades like tailoring and dress-making) all on the same compound and there's only enough classrooms so that each grade has one room. I didn't get an opportunity to visit the polytechnic this time around but I'm hoping after IST I'll be able to meet with some of the staff from there. The secondary school just opened last year and currently only enrolls Form 1 and Form 2 students (9th and 10th grade). The Form 3 and Form 4 student attend school in the next town over called Kakuswi (ka-ku-see) which I visited after I left Yangua. Kakuswi also has a pre-school, primary, and secondary within the same compound but they seem to be a bit more developed, so to speak, than Yangua. I'm hoping that I will be able to do something in both of these schools throughout my two years here because not one of them, out of four different schools, has HIV/AIDS education. The principal of Yangua Primary and another primary school teacher were trained on guidance and counseling for the orphans enrolled at the school and they occasionally work together with my CBO to do HIV/AIDS awareness within the community but that's as close to HIV/AIDS education as I got. The principal of Kakuswi Secondary was very interested in having the students take a life skills course which teaches them about water, sanitation, hygiene, and HIV/AIDS but he doesn't have a teacher to teach the course so that may be an opportunity for me in the near future. Kakuswi also has a computer lab and he really wants the students to become more proficient in typing and I said that many people within the community also want to learn how to use a computer so there may be a project there too.
Thursday and Friday were a bit mundane. I met with the District Public Health officer on Thursday. Sat in on a meeting with their Comprehensive Care Clinic which focuses on those living with HIV/AIDS in the community which was actually quite interesting since I am here for Public Health and all. But after that I just headed back home and didn't do much of anything. Friday I went to a meeting for a couple minutes in the morning. The group members tried to give me an entire fish. I may or may not have freaked out a little. They all laughed and they took the fish back and brought me an avocado. This I could handle. Then I went into the office, attempted (and failed) to write my CNA, talked about what foods we grow in America with our project manager. Ate some food and then went home.
Speaking of the fish, I forgot to mention what happened late afternoon on Tuesday. Some of the ladies from one of our CBO's groups came to my house and every single one of them brought me some form of food, including a live chicken and a foot and a half long papaya. Again, they tried to hand me the chicken, who was tied up, I put out my hands and then quickly pulled them back, freaked out a little, and then they laughed and said they would hold onto it for a bit. Then I made too strong of tea and completely butchered a loaf of bread as I attempted, and failed, to slice it with a relatively dull knife. I'm almost positive I could've done a better job had I just used a butter knife. After they left I took inventory of what they brought me and I had: 1 live chicken, 2.5 kgs (5 lbs) of rice, 4 papayas (1 of which was that giant one), more peas (some in the pods, some out of the pods) than I knew what to do with, and 9 eggs. Literally, the only things I ate were the papayas and the eggs. The rest of the stuff I ended up giving to the mamas on my compound. I realize I could've kept the rice for a rainy day or for when I have no food but these women feed me (most of the time against my will) almost every day so I like to give them things like this every once in a while. The peas would've gone bad before I could have even eaten 1/4 of the amount they brought me so I just got rid of those too. Now about this chicken. I'm apparently supposed to be the one to slaughter it, de-feather it, and cook it. I'm incredibly surprised that they actually seem to think I could do any of those things since they all think I need to sit down as soon as I arrive somewhere because the 10 feet I walked must have really tired me out. Just in case you were wondering, it's still alive and I've offered to buy all the fixings to make a delicious meal if they help me with making it and mainly, killing the chicken.
Tomorrow I finally head into Nairobi for IST. I'm beyond excited to see all my friends and eat delicious food (PIZZA!). Not so excited about the training but I will make do. While I'm at IST I turn two months old meaning I will have been an official volunteer for two months and been in Kenya for four months! Crazy! Sorry, no pictures this time around because my camera has been out of battery for the past week but I did take some good ones of the kids today so I will be sure to upload those on my next post.
