…and feeling a bit out of sorts. After making a short pit stop in Machakos for a bit after leaving Nairobi, I returned to site earlier this week. It’s been a rough couple days back. Speaking real English for two weeks did absolutely nothing for my Kikamba and my community is making me very aware that I’ve forgotten a great deal of it over that short amount of time. On top of that, I haven’t seen or talked to my supervisor since I’ve returned and my counterpart is MIA more often than not. And the icing on the cake is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Before IST I was constantly trying to put together information for my needs assessment and while I realize I still have plenty of information to gather on those matters, I’m quickly realizing it’s a little hard to find my footing and get back on track.
Oh yes, Nairobi. That place I went on and on about for blog post after blog post. Aside from the formal training, I had a blast. Not to say training wasn’t interesting…well, no, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Training was incredibly boring and out of 9 full days of it, I can safely say 2 ½ of those days actually presented useful information. It’s not that Peace Corps didn’t try, because they did. Each and every day was packed with speakers from some organization or field trips to places in and outside of the city but it’s the type of training that was endured that was most painful. Most/all of the speakers came in with a very well thought out, formal lecture on what their organization does and some of them even attempted to involve us in activities in order to learn specific things. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t what we were expecting or wanted. The majority of these activities involved teaching us things we already learned during our two months of training and the lectures were more often than not incredibly dry and hard to pay attention to for longer than 10 minutes. There was a glimmer of hope when we told one of the organizations that we really wanted an informal discussion on specific and culturally appropriate ways to talk to women and girls about sex and STIs. Everything was going great and then after lunch break they went right back into having us diagram the causes and results of teenage pregnancy on a problem tree. Not helpful. So this is how the days went. But the nights and the weekends, well they were the best part.
There were so many pizzas, sushi rolls, burritos, toasted sandwiches, iced coffees, and drinks in combination with good conversations and great company during those nights and weekends. The creative people in our training class got together and organized a toga party and a mock-prom, complete with a prom king and queen, during those two weeks. It’s difficult to put into words exactly how much fun it was to be with all of those people again and also sad to think that it may be the last time I see some of them before we end our service in two years. Regardless, plans have been put into motion for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. There’s discussion of renting out a house on an island off the coast for New Years…that would pretty much top any and all previous New Years celebrations I’ve attended.
In other news, I received a glorious package from my Mom, Michael, and Kait on Wednesday. Hot Cheetos, Chili Cheese Fritos, Cherry Sours, granola bars, Clif bars, Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal, clothes, nail polish, makeup, and pictures from when Kait and I were youngins. I felt as though it were Christmas in September. I’m taking extreme caution to ration my binges as I need this to last me for some time but surprisingly enough, I’ve ate more of the Clif bars than anything else. Most likely because I haven’t gotten a decent amount of protein in my diet since I left the states. Also, when I got back to site, my counterpart informed me that the electricity at the main house on the compound was disconnected at some point last week and they were working with the power company to get it turned back on. On top of that, he failed to mention till 8:30pm on Wednesday that “they” (whoever they is) announced the entire district would be without power for all of Thursday. So needless to say, my phone died around 9am Thursday and I restricted my time on my computer to the bare minimum so as I could watch an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” before I went to bed last night. Thankfully, power was back on in town today (still not at the main house) so I paid a whole 10 shillings (that’s 8 cents) to get my phone charged and I’m currently sitting in our CBO’s office charging my computer. I may be able to watch two episodes of Sunny tonight.
As a final note, at IST I was able to swap out some of the books I had read for books from other volunteers (mostly my friend Clare) and one of the books I got was The Art of Racing in the Rain. Now we sold this book for months while I worked at Starbucks and even though there’s a cute dog on the cover, I never thought to pick it up and read it. But it rained here Wednesday morning so I cracked it open…and I read the entire book before 5pm. Now, I’m a dog/animal lover, we all know that but this book was like reading our late golden retriever’s mind. I laughed. I cried. It was a great book and if you have some free time on your hands (if you’re anything like me you’ll only need one rainy day), I highly suggest reading this book, especially if you are an avid animal lover. And yes, it’s ok to cry.
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