The Night Bus

Well, I should be packing up my house right now, but I wanted to write about tonight first.

One of the most serious infractions in Peace Corps Kenya is traveling at night. If you are staying within a village or town, it is kosher as long as you take safety precautions (e.g. in a town, you should be traveling in a taxi or other approved vehicle), but going town to town is strictly verboten. One volunteer was administratively separated from the program earlier this year and although the reasons were never clearly explained, we got the impression that it was primarily on account of traveling on the night bus (though there were other infractions in there too).

Well, sure enough, one day out of the Peace Corps and I am riding the night bus. I took a bus to Voi, which arrived around 5:30 PM. I said my good-byes in Voi and bought my ticket at 6:00. I hopped onto the bus where a few people were sitting, glanced around filled with dread for how cramped this vehicle was and pulled out my book. Two hours later the other passengers started making a big fuss and I looked up and realized that there was no driver or conductor. I was a little worked up over this, and spent the next hour trying to get a refund even though they'd disappeared with our money. I thought about taking my sharpie and writing "wezi" (thieves) on the window of the bus, but decided against it (MY REVENGE: Dear readers, if you are ever traveling from Voi to Taveta do NOT travel with the crooked people at Taveta Coach). I had to find another bus, buy another ticket and wait another hour before we finally got on our way. So that was 4 hours of waiting and then a 2 hour ride.

Honestly, this wasn't the first time that I had traveled at night in Kenya. Admin told us that the restriction was in place on the embassy's recommendation and that it was on account of our safety. True, some volunteers have disturbing horror stories about trips on the night bus in Kenya. But there are just as many horror stories from volunteers about trips on the day bus or matatu. On the Voi-Taveta road, I feel just as safe traveling at night as I do during the day and it's usually a whole lot more comfortable on the vehicles that go at night (no loud music, more leg room and a lot fewer stops). One of the first things Enos told me when he visited my site in March was how rough the ride was. If that's his comment after a trip in the land cruiser, I think that I should be allowed to prioritize comfort a little bit.

There are roads that I would absolutely avoid traveling on at night, but Peace Corps doesn't trust volunteers to make those judgments for themselves. This is one of many examples of the parental attitude (a pretty insulting one, at that) I encountered at Peace Corps. Had I followed that rule, it would have interfered with my ability to be an effective volunteer. Sometimes I was breaking it because I had left site for personal reasons (a.k.a. to unwind), but other times it was because I was on Peace Corps business and it didn't make any sense to prolong my travel schedule. Some volunteers told me that they are scared to break the rule not because they fear their safety, but because they fear Peace Corps finding out. It would have been nice if Peace Corps would equip volunteers to make decisions concerning our safety, but they prefer to convey the sense that they do not trust volunteers to make most decisions for themselves.

Exiting Triumphantly

Long version will come later, but here's the short version:

I am no longer a Peace Corps volunteer. I have exited triumphantly or ET'ed (okay, so maybe it stands for Early Termination, but I like my acronym better). I am happier than I have felt for most of this year and I just feel a wonderful sense of freedom flowing through my body.

I should still have a pretty action packed life, so I intend to keep the blog going. Also, I am thinking of putting up my Blogposten Verboten (forbidden blog posts) which I would not have been able to put online while serving as a volunteer. Like the part before our swearing-in ceremony where I asked if Peace Corps would tell us when volunteers were leaving the program and I was told that volunteers were smart enough to figure out for themselves when people were sent home. Yep, I got lots to talk about...

Anyway, I missed the countdown while I was away from my blog, so:

29, 28 and with my departure, 27 remain out of the original 42 (over 1/3 gone). For math/science teachers, 6 out of 13 remain (over 1/2 gone). Not so triumphant...

December

I'm still alive! Just in case you were worried.

In fact, the primary reason for the lack of posts is not that my life has been boring but that soooooo much has happened. I'm going to try to get lots of updates up here soon about job searches, Tanzanian safaris, pedal-powered drill presses, finding Cherry Coke, family visiting, meeting a long lost relative, touring a flower farm, biking through Hell's Gate (it's a national park here), taking a Kenyan safari, going to Mombasa, Christmas at Nick's site and the future (Dun! Dun! DUN!!!)

There's a secondary reason that you'll see too.

Thanksgiving done right

In spite of the increased risk in Nairobi this time of year, several of us volunteers wanted to meet there and cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner. I was incredibly drained after all of the issues with exams, so I was thrilled for this kind of pick-me-up. Erin (the business volunteer) arranged for an RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer) who lives in Nairobi to host us. Martha now works for the Carter Foundation in procurement and was an excellent hostess. We were particularly impressed with her ability to procure cranberry sauce to really complete the dinner.

On Wednesday morning, I traveled to Voi and met up with Greg (public health volunteer near me) and we hopped on a bus for the six hour ride to Nairobi. The ride is a whole lot more pleasant when there is someone to share it with. Fortunately, it was generally uneventful and we were able to talk the whole bus ride. We hopped off in Nairobi and after my frustrating struggle to figure out where to catch the matatu we needed (I should really know this by now), headed to Westlands for some grocery shopping.

We met up with Erin and Paula (another business volunteer) at the store and split up the shopping list. We struggled a bit figuring out how to convert some of the quantities needed for recipes (1 1/2 cups of butter is how many grams?) but it was lots of fun to do a huge grocery run. We made a quick trip to the food court where Greg assured me there were amazing tacos and they certainly lived up to his descriptions. Then we wheeled the groceries out to the street to grab a taxi (Erin tipped over the shopping cart along the way and there was a moment of panic as we checked the eggs and saw that miraculously none of them had broken). The taxi ride was very slow (Nairobi rush hour is atrocious) but we finally pulled up to Martha’s apartment and marveled at everything at our disposal: stove and oven, microwave, refrigerator and lots and lots of kitchen tools. It was fantastic.

Greg and I were planning to meet some of the public health volunteers who are in Nairobi currently, but were not able to come for Thanksgiving. Paula opened the wine and offered us a glass. Turned out that was enough to keep us there the whole night. We missed the public health volunteers (I was sad, since I still haven’t met half of them), but had a wonderful time. We enjoyed a gourmet dinner of popcorn and apples as the wine kept flowing. Erin arranged for Greg and I to spend the night, since it would be easy to start cooking right off the bat the next day.

In spite of the fact that we were up until after 1 (I’ve been doing that a lot lately) I was the last one awake at 8:00 (much later than I’ve been waking up lately, actually). We started cooking at 8:30 and pushed on through the day. Paula and Erin were running the scene on tubers (yep, we had potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, all of which were a pretty similar hue of off-white) and I was assisting. Greg went to visit one of the public health volunteers who suffered a pretty nasty attack in Nairobi. During low intensity parts of the cooking, we got hot showers. (Amazing!) David aka Mr. Gourmet (an ICT volunteer) showed up a bit later and started the great pie crusade. He threw together some pretty amazing pie crusts from scratch and invited me to roll out two of them (he believes in beginners’ luck). We made pecan pie, pumpkin pie and apple pie. We had to get them done early while the turkey thawed so that we could cook that for a long time.

Carly (another science teacher) arrived around noon, and she and I ran to the grocery store (only ten minutes walk from Martha’s apartment) where we ran into Alex (business volunteer). We picked up a few more supplies and grabbed a fantastic lunch at Java House and all caught up a bit. Erin called me three times while we were there to make two additional requests from the grocery store and to accuse me of stealing the peanut butter (I was completely innocent). As we were heading back to the apartment, we made a detour to a gas station where Alex wanted to fill his football (American football to complete the Thanksgiving experience). The attendant asked if we had a needle, which we didn’t. We were about to leave and come up with a plan B when he decided to try forcing the compressed air against the valve. We stood there chuckling about this ridiculous idea only to have our jaws drop as the ball inflated. Pretty amazing.

When we got back to the apartment, Nik (another public health volunteer) was mulling some wine (I kept hearing him say mold wine instead of mulled wine, which was pretty confusing). The turkey was in the oven and we were just waiting at this point, so we enjoyed celery (first time I’ve seen that in Kenya), raisins, mango gummies, devilled eggs and chips and salsa. All of the business volunteers received a text message from Louis (their APCD or Peace Corps supervisor) wishing them a happy thanksgiving. I was excited to also receive a text from Louis and gloated to the other education volunteers (Louis is pretty amazing).

The last bit of preparation was making the gravy and carving the turkey. I was really impressed that all the food was out of the oven by 4:00. Fortunately, Tom (another science teacher) arrived and we crowned him the Gravy King. The Gravy King lived up to his name. Nik became the carving king. He also did a pretty impressive job. At this point, it seemed like the mulled wine was setting in. We had a delicious thanksgiving feast. After eating, we ran outside to catch the last bit of daylight and throw the football around a bit. This was my chance to talk to Matt (the only deaf education volunteer who was able to attend) and catch up a bunch. Then we came in and ate pie. Alex whipped some cream and all three pies were amazing. I guess David was right about beginner’s luck; I’ll probably never be able to roll them out like that again.

Kristy (one of the science teachers who has finished her service and will be leaving in December) arrived after most of the food was gone, but lots of turkey remained. This was unfortunate for her, since Kristy is a vegetarian. Still, she seemed pretty thrilled about the pie, so it wasn’t so bad.

After all the food, we lounged in front of the TV a bit (stumbled on an episode of The Office and part of Paris Je T’aime, though some people were disappointed that we couldn’t find the parade or football; I was thrilled to see satellite TV). I made sure to corner Nik and Paula at different points throughout the night to talk about doing a charcoal project in their villages. Paula and I have been talking about this for a while, and I’ve been too busy to organize the details, but we finally ironed everything out, I believe. Nik’s is a pretty funny story. I was trying to download Amy Smith’s talk on TED about charcoal when I noticed on the comments page that one of the most recent comments was from a volunteer based in Kenya. I had been trying to meet with Nik to talk more about this, so Thanksgiving wound up being a pretty golden opportunity. It was especially funny, since most of my training group knows me as (or makes fun of me as) The Charcoal Guy. The public health volunteers never had to deal with my incessant discussions on the topic, so they didn’t even know how excited I get about it. It sounds like I may have a few charcoal projects in my future.

One of the high points of the evening was when Nik stood up and regaled us with a poem, which was fantastic. Apparently people had a bet about when I would start talking about tryptophan during the night (I never used the word). As we lounged in front of the TV, we watched people slowly drop off. Alex fell asleep on the floor, lying down with one leg crossed over his knee and his shoes still on. Nik laid on the floor and when we asked him if he needed a blanket he replied “No thanks, I’ve got my iPod.” The rest of us went to bed again shortly after midnight and had another fantastic night’s sleep.

In the morning I woke up to find Paula mopping the kitchen floor. Paula had also done the largest share of the cooking. And washed the lion’s share of the dishes. And probably paid the largest portion for the groceries. She is an absolute angel and we all love her dearly. David and I had to drag Nik out the door and after three matatus and a bit of walking, we arrived at the Peace Corps office. I greeted a few staff members and then went to see Enos (my Peace Corps supervisor). It was the first time I’d seen him in over six months. Carly and Tom were both already in there, so I had to wait a bit before he had time for me. Fortunately, he quickly approved my plans to travel to Tanzania (to see Jodie and Jackie!) and Loitoktok (to meet the new education volunteers). This’ll be my first time using vacation days. We also quickly caught up (he knows most of what’s going on at my site because of my monthly reports) and quickly discussed food security (a passion of our new country director), upcoming audit’s by Peace Corps’ Inspector General, and he gave me a USB stick since Peace Corps is now issuing them to volunteers.

I ran over to talk to Tim (the public health APCD) quickly about the USBs. Since he is a fantastic resource on trees, I was trying to convince him to put some materials on the flash drives for new volunteers so that volunteers can might be able to access info quickly on trees (for example, lots of education volunteers find themselves involved with tree planting projects in their communities). It seems like he’s pretty enthusiastic about the idea. After that, we grabbed a quick pizza lunch in Nairobi (the trick to affordable stays in Nairobi is to find the places that have 2-for-1 specials on certain days of the week) we hurried to the bus station to head back to site. I was excited as we traveled that Greg actually understood one of my jokes when I referenced South Ossetia and Abkhazia (I promise, this one was hilarious). Greg and I rode the bus with Erin and Paula and it was a really nice trip. We even got to see Janet (she is Erin’s boss at her site) who I adore.

It’s nice to be back at site, although I don’t see getting a full night’s sleep for a bit longer…

Exam week hell

Last week was pretty crazy, but I didn't have any time to catch my breath. At school, I had 130 exams waiting for me to mark. I went to school Sunday morning and stayed there the whole day to grade and record. It was pretty tedious (especially grading agriculture; I vowed not to teach it, but I promised the 3rd years that I would write exams for them), but I saw some healthy improvements on the chemistry papers. I stayed at school until sunset and then hurried home to avoid running across any elephants (they come out after dark these days and they're uprooting trees right now).

Sunday night, I talked with one of my colleagues who told me that he had written an exam and given it to my chemistry students. I was pretty irritated by this. I knew that for him "writing an exam" means copying the review questions from the end of each chapter (that's what he does for the subjects that he knows, and he's not a chemistry teacher, so I was pretty confident that this was just a waste of the students' time). I had promised my students authentic exams, so this kinda undermined me. He had offered this earlier in the week, and I had politely declined, then I had to re-explain to another teacher and clear it with the headmaster. Apparently the headmaster felt that in spite of this understanding it would be better to have someone set the exam for me (I had already written everything, I just needed to make the photocopies). The really frustrating part is that the reason for the change was so that we could close the school on Tuesday (today) instead of Wednesday as planned so the teachers could start their vacation a day earlier.

Monday morning, I went in and informed the students that the exam would be going ahead as planned. They were not happy about this. They had been told on Saturday that they were done with exams. They had not studied since Saturday and they had left some of their books and supplies at home (massive calculator shortage). I prodded them until they agreed to study a bit before the exams (they were also unhappy since I was going ahead and giving them Paper 1 and Paper 2 just like they will see on exams next year). I had to make myself the bad guy a bit, which was pretty unpleasant. Also, all the time spent discussing this with the students meant that my stack of exams wasn't getting any smaller. I gave them the exams and added another 45 papers to my stack (I had finished 100 of them by that point). Instead of diving right in, I decided to bond with my students a bit, so we kicked the soccer ball around in the rain for a little while.

After that, I went home and put every ounce of focus I had into grading. It was really draining. I had only slept four hours the night before (because of all the grading) so at 1 AM I had to set aside my last 25 exams and take a nap. I woke up at 3:30 and methodically worked through the last stack of papers (I was not completely coherent, so it was going pretty slowly). I finished at 7:15 at which point I had to hastily get dressed and run to school. At school I found that there was still another teacher grading exams (he was the other one who had to give exams) so I was glad that they weren't waiting only for me. I set to work recording all of the grades. The numbers were a bit dispiriting in math; on one of the math papers, the median score was 1% and the students were having trouble copying formulas that were provided to them.

Compiling grades is always an interesting beast. I have the task of compiling all the scores in the computer to calculate averages and rankings. I have to rely on the other teachers to actually enter their grades. I often get yelled at for not entering them for them, which is incredibly unpleasant (a certain teacher spent all of last week bragging about how little work he had and how he was just sitting around and then had the nerve to yell at me for not entering his grades for him fast enough this morning). By the time I finished all of that, they were waiting on me to complie everything for the third years. The sleep debt was taking its toll and I was going a bit slowly, but it also takes me a bit longer than the other teachers because I don't just use their standard choices (1. Wake up, 2. You are not trying, 3. Aim higher, 4. Poor/Average/Good and a few others and on a few papers I saw "to improve your score, stop getting Fs") but instead try to give relevant feedback to the students. The other teachers don't like this when this cuts into their vacation time by 20-30 minutes.

I had to make an appearance at a meeting for the parents before we could dismiss everyone. I explained to them the issues that we are having (teacher deficits last year and this year mean the students are 1 or more terms behind in nearly every subject). I think I used my last ounce of coherency speaking to them since I had to do it all in Kiswahili. I thought it was pretty choppy, but I got a nice ovation. We left for the day at 3 PM. The best part was after I handed out exams and report cards and gave a little speech about studying during the break when one of my other students asked if she could make an announcement. She told the class to use their time well during December and to be very careful so that everyone would return next year. I smiled as I realized the meaning. There is a lot of downtime for adolescents in December, which leads to a disproportionate number of September babies amongst teenagers.

Good advice. Don't get pregnant right now.

Filler post

Hmmmm, so it looks like I won't be able to put up blog posts this coming week. I still plan to write them up and upload them sometime later. I'll still have email, so feel free to contact me.

Not getting enough sleep

Well, the fourth years finishing exams means that the rest of the school is about to start them. Today was the first day for the third years and the second and first years will start on Monday. I have 8 exams during this set of exams. I've been up past 11 every night this week (and past 1 twice) writing exams, which is a far-cry from the 9:30 bedtime I maintained during my first two terms. The other teachers are baffled that I'm still teaching lessons all along. They asked me why I wasn't in the staff room most of the day. I just walked out rather than trying to explain why I think it is helpful for students to have a teacher in the classroom.

Fortunately, our deputy principal brought some tree seedlings to school this week, so I really enjoyed that activity with the students. The students were really impressed that I could dig a hole and plant a tree (some students actually didn't fully grasp the concept and were planting seedlings that were still in plastic wrappers). I've encountered this a lot at school and I used to think that was because of their perception of Americans as being very removed from manual labor; I have since learned that it is because of their perception of teachers as being very removed from manual labor (I would stand jaw agape with all of my students if I saw any of the other teachers wielding any kind of gardening tool).

My topic in life skills this week was drugs. With my third years, we talked about alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and miraa (a leafy plant that is chewed as a stimulant). With the second years we only made it through the first two topics. All the third years who had been suspended for smoking marijuana were back for the lesson (one day after their trip to "jail"), including one who was expelled (I don't understand what these words mean anymore). One student asked what marijuana plants look like. Fortunately, lots of people here have T-shirts and handkerchiefs with the plant on it, so one student pulled her handkerchief from her desk and all the students' eyes widened with understanding. I felt like this was one of the most important and productive lessons that I had given all year, and it still baffles me that most schools do not make real efforts to teach students about these topics (unless you count caning students for any kind of suspicious behavior, which most of the teachers at my school deem sufficient) considering how rampant the problem is in schools.

I took all of the students into the lab this week (not all at the same time, though). I'm glad to report that I have no scars to show for it. It was really sobering to realize that the first years hadn't even held test tubes yet. They felt such pride just pouring compounds from one test tube to another. The bulk of my time in the lab, however, was spent putting out fires (not figuratively). Students were learning how to use the new Bunsen burners and apparently several of the hoses leak. I had forgotten how much I like fire. :)

My mind keeps coming back to exams. I wrote this set on the computer, which was really nice. I'm way more organized this time around, which has been somewhat refreshing, but has led to the title of this post. I had a few essays earlier this week to distract me, but now I'm in exam mode. I'm dreading the part where I will have to grade 8 stacks of papers in 36 hours. The principal makes it sound like we might close the day before Thanksgiving, which means I might be able to meet other volunteers and have a celebration. Unfortunately, this sleep deprivation may well continue until that point, so I'm expecting to be quite the zombie for Thanksgiving.

Today marks one year in Kenya for me and my training group. I'm usually pretty big on anniversaries, but I'm actually kinda numb to this one. Oh well, congrats to the 30 volunteers who have made it this far.

Great job guys!

My fourth years finished exams yesterday. No ceremony. No fanfare (well, they got a slightly fancier lunch). Just calmness after three weeks of exams.

Congratulations Andrew (Mwafusi), Daniel (Mwadime), Fanuel, Nicodemus, David, Linet, Anne, Serapia, Lazarous, Sophrine, Margaret, Catherine, Noel, Eunice, Jane, Lucy, Dinaice, Thomas, Hillary, Alex (Mkala), Steven, Isabella, Monica, Herman (Peshu) and Mariam.

In case you were confused, Sophrine, Noel and Hillary are all boys.

Now they wait a few months for results. Then a few more months to figure out if they qualify for university, college, vocational school or simply a bright future in Maktau.

Drugs and flame-throwers

This morning, I was sitting in my office grading exams (only a month overdue on that). I kinda zone out while I do that, so I didn't notice that several of my third year boys were summoned to the office. I subsequently didn't notice that several of my third year boys were sent to the village cell (as close as we have to a prison) for drug use (marijuana). All in all, one-third of my students were sent away for the day. There was no drug bust or anything. I'm not really surprised by this, but I'm pretty sure that the confessions were extracted "under duress" (read: savage beating. The other reason that I avoid the office sometimes). I don't know what happens to them next. I hope they'll be back soon. Otherwise, we're gonna lose a lot of really good students. I had even planned a lesson for later this week on the hazards of drug use.

Also, in the afternoon I was showing my students how to prepare ethene (yes, that is part of the syllabus, I'll probably have a syllabus-tirade post up here soon). After demonstrating the test for ethene (it turns bromine water from orange to colorless) I had a bunch of extra ethene coming out of a flask. So I did the only logical thing that I could think to do with a large supply of gaseous fuel. I showed my students how to make a flame thrower. I was kinda disappointed in myself actually. If I were a cool teacher, I would have showed them how to make a green flame thrower. Maybe later in the week...

The countdown continues

Sorry, I forgot to mention this. 31. 30. (71% of our original group remains.) No teachers left this time.

Anyone want to start taking bets on what percentage of the group will finish their two years?

What does this mean?

I am very grateful for all of the Kool-Aid I've gotten from the states. Thanks Thuy, thanks Peter, thanks Jackie.

Now I have a lot of Kool-Aid and I've started reading the packages. Apparently Tropical Punch and Cherry have to announce "artificial flavor" on the front. Fair enough, I didn't expect to find much real fruit in Kool-Aid.

Lemonade has to announce "natural flavor with other natural flavor" on the front. Pardon?!? ?????

It's not going to stop me from going through about a liter a day as we go through the exam cycle.

Yeah, nice.

Real life adventures of a mad scientist

So I had a lot of fun on Halloween being a mad scientist. I used the excuse to say things like "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate" and the numerous jokes about particles hanging out in bars (neutron walks into a bar..., sodium is having a drink..., hydrogen and oxygen are hanging out...). I'm pretty sure everyone found the jokes at least as funny as I do. Nearly.

This week there's been a lot of madness and a lot of science in my life. On Monday, I was using some nitric acid for a chemistry demonstration. I spilled some on my hand. I've spilled acid lots of times, and it's usually pretty minor. This time, though, it was a lot. And nitric acid is some pretty fierce stuff. It started itching a bit and then the burning set in. I would have dealt with it more urgently but I was in the classroom at the time. I felt that this justified a break in the lesson, so I ran back to the supply room and neutralized the acid. It was kinda painful and actually turned my fingers yellow. Mostly just painful when I was holding chalk. But that's not a big part of my profession.

On Tuesday, I was working with hydrochloric acid. I didn't spill any on my hands (see, I can be careful from time to time). Unfortunately, concentrated hydrochloric acid is pretty volatile. And rather unhealthy to breathe. I think it causes loss of appetite and headaches. Pretty sharp ones, too. I think there's something about lung damage in there too.

Wednesday I stayed out of the lab. It was glorious. Yesterday was a busy day in the lab since we had to prepare a lot of things for the laboratory portion of the chemistry exam (that was today). We had to clean a lot of supplies and prepare solutions and sort through a ton of equipment. Mercifully, the headmaster recruited an extra set of hands for this. Having a professional lab tech around definitely took a lot of the pressure off. The gentleman was on loan to us from a nearby school (that is much more staffed than we are). He was a bit old and it seemed like he wasn't all there (he would wander off from time to time or open gas taps for no reason). Still, having him around meant that I got to leave school before sunset. I definitely give the headmaster credit for coming through on this one (he also bought gloves after he saw what had happened to my hands).

Mercifully, the exam went off pretty well (the only snafu was when the gas started leaking out of one of the lines and burning on one of the lab benches). We were disappointed that we couldn't figure out the results that the students were supposed to get from doing the specified trials. This was a pretty harsh exam, so hopefully there will be low scores across the country (national exams are hella curved). Oh and apparently I rubbed my face absentmidedly at one point. I didn't feel it, but apparently I have a little yellow acid burn on my nose.

I really need to work on this safety thing a bit (gloves are a step in the right direction, now I just need to make a sale on goggles and breathing masks).

Halloween Weekend

Halloween weekend started on Friday afternoon. As soon as I finished my lessons, I ran outside to wait for the bus. It took 40 minutes to arrive, but when it showed up Jackie and Jodie (Jodie is a friend from college who is currently working in Arusha, Tanzania which is 5 hours west of me) had saved a seat for me. We grabbed a quick lunch in Voi before heading to Mombasa. We knew we had a lot to catch up on, so we frantically discussed lots. I was especially excited to hear all about her new venture called Global Cycle Solutions. The work sounds really exciting, and the challenges that she is facing must be really frustrating.

We met up with a few other volunteers (some from Peace Corps, some from other groups) in Mombasa and headed to Jonathan's place. Jonathan was an amazing host for the whole weekend, and I don't think that any of us could adequately express our gratitude for how well he managed everything. After arriving, we ran out and grabbed dinner at a local cafe (where many of us were sadly engrossed by the WWE episode on the TV). Then we went back to Jon's house and helped him put the finishing touches on decorations for his house and laid the plans for the following day. We stayed up until just after midnight, so I wished people a happy Halloween and a good night.

Saturday morning was an early morning (comparatively), but everything moved at a leisurely pace, so it was nice. I took care of some computer stuff and then a group of us hopped on the Likoni Ferry to head back into town. We met some more volunteers and people went off their separate directions. Jonathan and I stayed at a restaurant for a lunch meeting with Deanne about our HIV hotline project (attendance seems to have decreased slightly). It sounds like our roles in this project are about to change pretty drastically, but it should mean that everything may be running smoothly in a pretty short timeframe. Or maybe we're about to become mired in something beyond our comprehension. Still, I think my optimism is justified.

In the afternoon, we swung over to Nakumatt for some grocery shopping (mostly food for breakfast the next morning). I apparently don't know how to read a receipt so I made fun of Jodie a lot for buying way too much bread before learning that she had bought a pretty good amount. Then we went back to Jonathan's place for the party. But since we had some time before the party Jackie, Jodie and I had another meeting on some follow-up work for D-Lab since we all attribute our presence over here to that class (and of course, I can't take a fun weekend without filling it with meetings for secondary undertakings). Jackie provided us with delicious store-bought and refrigerated hummus (much better than my concoction) to make it a dinner meeting. As we were wrapping up our meeting, people started arriving in costumes.

I ran and put on my costume (all it needed was a lab coat and some gel in my hair so it would stick out), grabbed my props (a beaker and some test tubes with a few chemicals inside) and promptly began accusing no one in particular of calling me crazy (like any mad scientist would). The party was a huge success. I got a beaker of wine from a lion queen, I yelled at a nerd for her methods of data analysis, I played lots of rock-paper-scissors with a hare krishna, I tried to bargain with a hawker, I told pirate jokes with a swashbuckling pirate, I got candy from Superman and drank beer and Jell-o shots with a really sleazy Italian. However, the most amazing part of the party was the matatu conductor, the matatu driver and the matatu. They played their parts perfectly and drew uproarious laughter the whole evening. We drank and danced and I finally made my way to sleep at 3:30 while half the people were still singing and dancing.

I emerged at 6:30 and found that several people were already (or still) awake. We lounged a bit before I started the breakfast crusade. Over the next 3 hours, I scrambled 45 eggs (we bought cheese which made the eggs and extra-special treat). Jodie made a crazy amount of toast (all the more impressive since I was using the only frying pan, so she had to do it in a stockpot). We got lots of compliments on our cooking, though that may have been due to how empty people's stomachs were (my hangover might have led to a few shells getting mixed in with the eggs). Then a few of us stuck around for computer work (yet another debt I have to Jonathan) and house-cleaning before heading out.

I said good-bye to Jonathan and thanked him profusely. I also said good-bye to Jodie and promised to visit her in Arusha soon (she is letting me borrow her laptop case, so I can't back out of this one). Then Jackie and I headed back to Maktau. In spite of the blackout when we got home, we pulled out our laptops and planned projects for a few hours before deciding that we would both get a really, really good night's sleep.

This was my first time seeing an MIT person in 353 days. I think it really helped me to pull off the "work hard, play hard" mentality the whole weekend.

Bzzzzz-ZAP!

Rain is glorious. I love the feeling of rain. I love the smell of rain. And most importantly, it means that farmers here might even see a harvest this year. But rain can also cause all manner of problems at school. First off, my voice is mostly gone because raindrops falling on a corrugated iron roof make a lot of noise. My efforts to explain the unit circle required a lot of shouting to be heard.

Second, my third year students are still in that mud shack which means that a little stream flows right through the classroom. I had an elaborate analogy about cooking beans to explain the Haber Process (the industrial method for preparing ammonia), but the students were pretty distracted as I had to jump over the stream to get to the blackboard to write notes and then jump back over the stream to get close enough to them so that they could hear me over the sound of the rain hitting the roof.

Third, there is a large transformer next to the school that gave the title of this post. There was no lightning in the storm, but the heavy rainfall caused something to go haywire. I was sitting in the staff room when I heard a buzzing and a very loud pop. Chaos ensued. All of the first and second year students were bolting for the gate to the school compound. There is no such thing as a fire drill in my village, so it was panic and free-for all. They threw desks across the room and I was amazed that no one was hurt.

I went to see what they were looking at and heard the transformer buzzing and sputtering and giving off a brilliant light, but I didn't see any immediate danger. I ran over to the gate at the opposite end of the compound to corral the students. I was mostly concerned about them standing out in the rain and catching a cold, but I also wanted to assuage their fears. Some of the other students told me later that they thought that I was fleeing in panic like the others. After a five minute delay, the students came back to class and everyone settled down.

Since the second years are the most skittish, I gave them a talk on how they need to handle themselves in an emergency (remain calm, remain calm and REMAIN CALM). Then I realized how foolish they had been. In the classroom, there was virtually no risk. They opted to run to the gate which connects to a chain link fence that runs the perimeter of the compound. I explained that if the wire had come into contact with the fence on the opposite side of the compound they would have been in a much more dangerous position. I'm just glad that no one was hurt.

Fourth, I had to subtract another one of my accomplishments today. I was so proud that the school had agreed to put up gutters so that they could collect rainwater from the roof and harvest it in a tank. Even though they were only at 10% coverage, I figured the success of that area would be a good demonstration and encourage them to expand the project. Today I studied the system in action. It turns out that the tank leaks. And the pipe to get water out of the tank doesn't work. And the pipe to feed the water into the tank wasn't actually feeding it into the tank so much as to the top of the tank where it would flow off. So instead of increasing the school's quantity of water, this project has probably increased surface run-off (basically erosion) and nothing else. Goes to show the importance of following up and evaluating projects. I know what I need to start working on tomorrow.

Still, I got lots of laughs from my students as I ran around in the rain and I love being soaked to the skin.

April showers, except it's October

The arrival of the rains has been glorious. My dusty existence (I kinda enjoyed picturing myself as Pigpen from Peanuts) has been replaced by a muddy existence. I would call it the lesser evil of the two.

My favorite thing has been catching rainwater from my roof in my buckets. I mostly use it for laundry (I have no idea what kind of organisms are on my roof, so I figure it's best to use it when it's mixed with lots of soap). I have harvested enough that I've been able to rinse my laundry after soaking it (for most of the past six months, I just kinda lived with the fact that after my clothes dried, there was still a bit of detergent on them). The community taps are running again, so water is available for cooking and drinking (it was available before, just had to be severely rationed). Most importantly, things are turning much greener in the area and some of the seedlings at the school are looking healthy again (and the ones that aren't looking healthy provided a valuable lesson about trees that are not hardy enough for the area).

Apparently El Nino is making it a bit more intense than usual. A lot of people in the village have dug terraces, which is very practical with all the rain this year. Unfortunately, several of them didn't actually plant anything after the intense labor required to dig them Those who did plant mostly planted corn. Apparently my conversations about multi-cropping (raising more than one crop), intercropping (raising crops together, especially ones with a symbiotic relationship) or alternative crops didn't sink very deep. Hopefully the corn will produce a harvest this year, although it hasn't for the past few years.

Hummus

Our wonderful Peace Corps cookbook comes with a recipe for hummus. Since I found garbanzo beans in Voi, I've been experimenting with them, so this seemed like a fun challenge. I was skeptical of the book's suggestion to replace the tahini (very hard to find) with peanut butter (much easier to find), but it actually worked rather well. My creative substitution that worked less well was roasting the garlic in margarine and using vegetable oil in place of the olive oil (not very hard to find, but pretty extravagant on my salary). All in all, it was a pretty satisfying (and nutritious) dinner. And then I washed it down with some Kool-aid. Always classy.

Life Skills

One of my new things is teaching Life Skills. The class is encouraged by the government, though most schools (as far as I can tell) don't put many resources into it since there are no exams. I am only teaching it to my second and third years for right now. We've talked a little bit about HIV and violence (both topics are woefully under-covered in the syllabus and there is lots of misinformation out there) and today was a big hit: how and why to use a condom.

I presented them with a spice container that was to be the model penis. I went through all the info and demonstration (I thought about having one of the students help, but I wasn't sure if that would lead to bigger issues) and I think the students set new records for attentiveness. Then the question and answer session started. They started with a few clarifying questions on condom use (e.g. what should I do if I cannot find a condom?). Then, the questions started going towards sexual practices (e.g. what is the best sexual position? Is it true that having sex can cure back pains?). Finally, questions turned to biology and anatomy and betrayed how much the education system had failed to teach them about their changing bodies (most girls even as old as 19 didn't understand their periods at all and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what they meant when students were asking about secondary virginity).

It was nice that this was all on Friday afternoon, since most of the other teachers skipped out early. The students are much more free and open when I am the only teacher around, so it made for a much more productive lesson. I am very proud of this bond that we have developed, I just hope that most of the messages will sink in.

Another good-bye

Volunteers Serving Overseas (VSO, which is Britain's volunteer organization) sends their volunteers out for one-year programs. Sadly, that means that my neighbor Chris (he works 60 km from me in Voi) is finishing up his service. A bunch of us got together to say good-bye to him yesterday. Jai (he runs a supermarket in Voi and is a friend to most of the volunteers in the Voi area) put together some fantastic curry and we sent Chris off in cheerful fashion. I hope my path will cross with his again later in life.

Also, one more volunteer from my group is gone. :( 32 remain.

Bureaucracy 3

Peace Corps requires us to complete a form (called the Volunteer Reporting Tool or VRT) three times a year to show what we have accomplished. All the data is entered into a spreadsheet and presumably makes up the bulk of what is presented to congress to determine Peace Corps funding. In spite of the wide differences across the program, Peace Corps volunteers in Kenya will complete the same form as volunteers in Guatemala or in Bulgaria. That means that the form is pretty generic and often ambiguous. There is no paper copy, and the form must be filled out in Excel (which is actually a bit of a challenge since most Windows machines here are crawling with viruses). I discovered that my form had some entries locked in by my Peace Corps supervisor. I was pretty surprised to learn that my village is in Voi, seeing as that is actually an hour and a half from where I live.

When all is said and done, they will be able to come up with statistics like "Volunteers in Kenya have developed critical thinking skills in 1328 students (ages 15-24) in 2009" or "Volunteers in Kenya have increased awareness about AIDS in 28746 people during 2009" (these numbers entirely made up and do not reflect the actual results of the survey). What does that even mean to increase awareness? I told my students what T-cells are. Did that raise awareness? Several of my students with critical thinking skills are at risk for being expelled because they are using this knowledge to question certain bits of authority. Is that what Peace Corps had in mind when they formulated that goal? Not all volunteers complete this survey, do they extrapolate in that case? How big is the margin of error on those numbers? I worked with a lot of people on agriculture and environment projects, but since those sectors don't exist here, Peace Corps is not interested in quantifying that data. Does that mean that I should stop working on those kinds of projects? They asked how many of my students scored C or above. That seems pretty irrelevant, since some schools have lots of students who already average Bs, while at other schools, students are used to an average score of 10%. Why don't they ask about improvement in scores or some other less arbitrary metric?

There was also a section where we wrote a few paragraphs talking about our challenges, lessons learned, accomplishments and anything else that we thought Peace Corps should know. I tried to paint a pretty clear picture, but I imagine the quantitative information will be reviewed much more intensively than the qualitative information. After filling out the report, I felt like I have been a big disappointment in terms of what Peace Corps wants us to do. I think that I've done some good work, no matter what any VRT wants to say.

In unrelated news, Jackie wrote a cool post on development which includes pictures from my school.

Bureaucracy 2

The fourth years start their national exams (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education or KCSE) on Wednesday. We have been filling out paperwork for months and making sure every single t is crossed and every i is dotted for this. Tomorrow is a national holiday (Kenyatta Day to commemorate the independence hero and the first president) so school will be closed and we had to prepare the school today.

Step 1: In order to make sure that there is sufficient space between the candidates (that is how the government refers to students taking exams), it became necessary to split the fourth years into two rooms. That meant the third years lost their classroom. They had to haul their desks to a decrepit mud shack that is supposed to serve as a lunchroom (no one eats in there because it overheats and is pretty uncomfortable; instead, it is used for bicycle storage). For the next three weeks (candidates will sit for 20 exam papers in 8 subjects over this time), this miserable room will be their classroom.
Step 2: All books have to be removed from inside candidates' desks. All graffiti (there is a lot) has to be scratched off their desks using sandpaper. All posters and teaching aids must be removed from the walls. All blackboards must be scrubbed clean.
Step 3: Teachers have to prepare space for the invigilator. The invigilator is an education officer who will help supervise exams and make sure there are no irregularities. He or she needs space in the staff room and it is necessary to make sure that there is a plate, fork, spoon and tea cup for the guest.
Step 4: First, second and third year students are strictly forbidden to walk anywhere near the third or fourth year classroom. Extra warnings are issued about "noisemaking".

I'm worried that there will be another half-dozen steps and I just haven't found out about them yet. I think that I am just as anxious about exams as the students are. I'm hoping that all this chemistry review will pay off.

Bureaucracy 1

Schemes rank among the biggest wastes of time I have ever encountered. Kenyan teachers are required to write schemes of what they plan to teach over the course of a term. The general idea is that you take a copy of the government syllabus and transcribe it onto forms issued by the school. For example an entry might look like:

Week: 6
Lesson: 28-29
Topic/Subtopic: Nitrogen compounds/properties of ammonia
Objective: By the end of these lessons, the learners should be able to 1) state the chemical and physical properties of ammonia, 2) Describe tests to identify the presence or absence of ammonia, 3) perform laboratory tests using ammonia.
Teaching/Learning Activities: Lecture and demonstrations
References: KLB Form 3 Chemistry book pp. 137-139
Remarks: Well taught

And we're supposed to do this for pretty much every lesson of the term. In theory, it could be a good idea; in practice, it is a waste of time. The previous math teacher at my school would come to school drunk, skip his lessons, and all the students would fail exams. Yet he had impeccable schemes and he always included the remark "well taught". Teachers are also supposed to fill out lesson plans and then records of work. All this paperwork serves to cut down more trees and typically is not read by anyone.

I had relied on my headmaster's non-presence thus far to avoid filling them out. With the arrival of a deputy headmaster at our school, there is now someone to follow up on this process. I spent my Saturday afternoon at school filling out the paperwork (always in duplicate; one copy for me, one for the office) and chuckling to myself about how ridiculous this all was. I decided to cut a few corners and include more comments in my schemes.

Remarks: These lessons were disrupted because other teachers removed students from my class to punish them.
or
Remarks: Lessons were lost because headmaster pulled the teacher out of class to type letters for him.

Now, if the headmaster wanted to observe my teaching or perhaps sit down with me and discuss my syllabus coverage, he might be able to glean some idea of whether or not I am doing well in my teaching. Unfortunately, this radical idea is completely out of the question here. Even in training, most of us thought this practice pointless. Still, both our technical trainer and our Peace Corps supervisor felt that they would make us more effective teachers. I still haven't figured out how...

Lots of laughs

On Wednesday I made laughing gas for my third years. We have to study nitrogen compounds in chemistry, so dinitrogen oxide (laughing gas) is part of the syllabus. The book told me that I was supposed to strongly heat ammonium nitrate, which meant I had to take one of the unlabeled bottles which I hoped was nitric acid and mix it with ammonia (never any doubt about ammonia, since its noxious smell is pretty distinctive). I think it went well. I was able to narrate convincingly for the students what was going on (first releasing ammonia gas, which changed red litmus to blue, then water vapor which condenses on the side, and then laughing gas, which relights a glowing splint). Also, I got to breathe much nicer fumes than I usually ingest.

Yesterday, I got the chance to do a lab with my second years. This is the first time I've taken them into the lab for a practical lesson. This one was a bit delayed because craftsmen were doing work to install gas taps. Unfortunately, during the process, our distilled water got sent to the kitchen and used there (pretty expensive water to use for cooking). I had to use tap water. That doesn't work so well for preparing solutions, since most of them formed precipitates before the lab. The students were pretty eager and they definitely enjoyed getting to use real test tubes and beakers and staring at solutions to see if a solid was forming. I think it was the worst lab session I've run in some time. I'll try to redo it when I can get some distilled water.

Today I arrived at school at 7:10 to get some extra time for reviewing chemistry with the fourth years. I lost some lesson time this week, since my voice has been pretty weak (still getting over that cold). Then, over the course of the day, I was pretty busy for the next 11 hours at school. Somehow I wound up not teaching a single lesson. The morning, the headmaster had me typing some things for him (the secretary is out for the rest of the term, so we all have to pick up some of the slack, since she had a whole lot of responsibilities). The afternoon was given over to a priest to pray for the students to do well on their exams. He told some pretty good jokes, so that was fun. After school, a truck came to deliver water. I stood around collecting the water that was leaking from the hose. I ran around the compound collecting containers to store water so it wouldn't be wasted. I explained to my students that I was stealing water from the weeds so that I could give it to the trees. I was around the truck for almost 2 hours and I collected more than 50 liters (12 gallons) of water. You might not find that as exciting as I do.

In other news, I got some pretty useful emails this week about our HIV hotline, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic about that. Now I just need to get some more things done on some of my other projects.

Jackie in Mwakitau

We hopped on a bus Sunday morning. Just before our bus left, my friend Will (recently left Peace Corps and is now back in Kenya working in Mombasa and free to travel at night or ride on motorcycles to do his work) ran up to us to say hi before running to catch a different bus. our bus didn't have good movies :(, so I slept a bit on the way to Voi. Jackie and I grabbed some food in Voi on our way back to my site.

Jackie and I had a lot to catch up on. I made some Kool-Aid (Jackie brought me lots and lots of Kool-Aid packets, which should serve to give me a pretty serious addiction). We found ourselves talking shop pretty much the entire time. She came to school with me the next two days. She was a big hit with the students. They asked about her dreds. They asked her about being a female engineer. They asked us if we were a couple (at which point, Jackie made advances on me). They asked about everything. Jackie seemed to enjoy how forward they were (especially my third years) and I think they made a pretty good impression on her.

Jackie was my 4th visitor in a week and a half, which was pretty fun. I don't think that I'll have visitors again for a little while. Still, the offer is on the table that if people come to visit me, I will cook authentic African food. Just probably not local Kenyan food. I kinda botched the Ghanaian peanut soup when Jackie was here, but it turned out well last week when Emily was over. Since Jackie was here two nights I had to figure out a second food that I can cook. I managed to make chana masala (Indian chickpea dish), which turned out pretty well. I hope no one ever visits me for three nights, since I'll probably run out of things that I can cook.

This morning, Jackie is heading off to Arusha in Tanzania for the next leg of her volunteering project. You can read all about her adventures on her blog (here and here) as well as her perceptions of my village. I will definitely have to visit her down there at some point.

Nairobi again

Primary reason for this trip was my follow-up appointment to see how my mental health is doing. I travelled on Thursday to Nairobi. Pretty uneventful bus ride, which I was grateful for. I was coughing a bit the whole way, which hopefully didn't make anyone else sick. I arrived earlier than expected so I decided to head over to the Peace Corps office and see the staff.

I greeted the staff and caught up with people a little bit. I met with Serah, who is our Volunteer Support Assistant and when our APCD (the Peace Corps staff member who is supposed to support us) is not around to help us, she is the one we can go to for help. I told her about my exam issue (submitting those agriculture papers was the secondary reason for the Nairobi trip) and she got on the phone trying to figure out how to help me. She even helped me to meet the new country director.

I went in to meet Steve and we had a nice, frank conversation. I had to start off by apologizing for something that I had posted on my blog (sound familiar?) and then we talked a lot about issues. We discussed reforming Peace Corps (I even brought up this campaign, which has some pretty interesting ideas) and he told me about getting settled in Kenya (he arrived here about a month ago). We discussed a lot of issues for volunteers related to training and service (he seemed pretty surprised by some of the things that we endure). Then he had to take a call, so I went back to the hotel.

I found a few other volunteers on the guest list, so I was glad to have some company for the trip. I also felt slightly under the weather, but that didn't stop me from grabbing dinner with another volunteer in town for mental health. Then we found a third volunteer who was also in Nairobi for mental health and grabbed second dinner, which was two-for-one burgers at a fast food joint near the hotel. We hung out a bit and then crashed early.

I spent most of the night coughing and woke up with almost no voice (not a good recipe just before an appointment to talk with someone) so I made sure to head to the office early to grab some cough drops from medical. They also put me on antibiotics and double strength advil (I wasn't entirely sure that antibiotics were the right thing for a sore throat, especially with a pretty cursory examination). Then I went back and found Serah, and she had sorted out all of my issues with the exams (which I am very grateful for). Then I ran over to say hi to Louis, and discuss bio-gas and peanut shellers before he had to leave for another meeting.

I went to my appointment, which went pretty smooth aside from having to suck cough drops the whole time. It sounds like I won't need another session, which is nice to hear. Then, I went to the Peace Corps office where they were having a reception for our new country director. I hung out with the volunteers a bit more before having to run across town to put a signature on the exams and pick up a receipt (pretty painless, except it was quite a ride to get there and back).

All the exhaust in Nairobi kinda aggravated my throat so I was ready for an exciting Friday night of doing laundry and waiting for the advil to kick in. One of the volunteers invited me to dinner, but I was pretty down for the count, so he was stuck eating on his own (sorry, man). When the advil kicked in, I found myself flying through the laundry (had to stop when I ran out of hangers) and worked up quite an appetite. I ran out to dinner at the nearby Indian restaurant with another volunteer. He ordered the chilli naan thinking of Southwestern food. He gave me a piece of it and I did not manage it very well (the spice was pretty intense).

Saturday morning was pretty unpleasant. I wanted to grab some apples (so happy they have those in Nairobi) so I went to the ATM to take some cash. Peace Corps deposits our money into a bank which only has branches in Nairobi, Mombasa and one town near Mount Kenya (in other words, completely inconvenient for the vast majority of volunteers). Whenever I'm in Nairobi or Mombasa, I try to withdraw for lower surcharges. Unfortunately, the ATM decided to steal all of my money (it took 75% of my monthly salary, leaving me with $7 in my account). So I spent the rest of the morning sitting at the ATM waiting for the manager arrive to learn that they would correct the transaction on Monday (I'm betting the stupid bank is not going to refund my ATM fees, though; I found it ironic that their slogan is "what stress-free banking is all about").

I went to lunch with a bunch of volunteers and we had delicious sushi. We realized that most of us were having money problems and bonded over our common experience. I was grateful that my friend Jackie showed up halfway through lunch (Hi Jackie, I missed you, can you spot me for lunch?). During our travels in Ghana, I borrowed money from her the whole time (also due to ATM issues), so it felt like old times. The other highlight of the afternoon was when one of the deaf education volunteers showed up with no voice, so we lamented that she needed some kind of language that didn't require a voice. Something with gestures, maybe. A kind of sign language, if you will.

Then we went back to the hotel to watch The Lion King (you know, when in Kenya...). We only watched about 2/3 of the movie before the sound cut out (now I want to see the ending). Then we went out to Java House for the dinner (Hey Jackie, put it on my tab) and went out for a little dancing. I wound up dragging down the party, since I decided to head out with my sore throat and everyone came back with me (it was pretty late anyway and we had to travel the next day).

Aside from the ATM, Nairobi was much better this time. Volunteers are pretty amazing. I hope that everyone who I saw there has a complete and speedy recovery.

Authority

Case 1:

Last week, my headmaster announced that we would be giving the third years midterm exams that would not count towards their final grade. The other teachers seemed to be in favor of this, since they would be free from giving lessons during the week. I protested saying that since the third years would be taking comprehensive exams at the end of the term, I didn't want to lose precious lesson time, since I was still trying to get them caught up with the syllabus. The headmaster declined, saying that he was also behind in the syllabus, but that this was the only way to motivate students to do work (apparently, giving exercises and activities and going over solutions is not effective regardless of the fact that I have tried to encourage the other teachers to try it out). I knew that that was his final word.

I wrote an agriculture exam for them (I am no longer teaching agriculture, they self-study, but I promised them that I would help them track their progress), but left the chemisty and math exams unwritten. When the secretary asked me about them, I told her that I had taken care of everything myself (as in typing and making copies). Then I told my third years the plan. They were sworn to secrecy, but I was going to use the exam time for teaching. They were very excited by this plan. Everything went smoothly, and I was grateful not to fall further behind. No other staff member knows yet what I've done, so maybe I'm in the clear. The students won, I won and it seems like everyone else was not affected positively or negatively.

Case 2:

After I had filled everything in for the agriculture reports and handed them to the headmaster to be signed, I waited an hour before he handed them back to me with his signature to be submitted. While waiting for him to sign, I had tied up my loose ends at school for the afternoon so that I could travel to the district headquarters and submit them.

The papers were past their deadline, which was entirely my fault. That was also why I was so concerned with making sure that there wasn't any further delay. It is a 2 hour trip for me when transport cooperates (which is not as often as I'd like) and I knew that I would be cutting it close to arrive before the office closed. Still, I felt certain that it was worth a shot. If the vehicle didn't show, then I could just get back to school and get started grading papers. Right as I was at the gate to leave the school, the principal stopped me and said that I should just go the following morning, since I would not be able to arrive in time. I tried to protest, but to no avail. I could barely hide my scowl, as a bus drove past 5 minutes later meaning that I probably would have arrived in plenty of time. I was most dismayed because the afternoon was my free time, while the following morning, I would have to skip out on lessons (certainly not a concern to him).

The next morning I woke up early to catch the first vehicle out of town. I managed to arrive at the office without any problems. The office had only been open for 30 minutes when I arrived so most of the staff hadn't arrived yet. Still, they were able to direct me to Priscilla, the woman who would know what to do with everything. I arrived and greeted her and profusely apologized. She told me that she could not accept them, since the reports had already been collected. She gave me a number to call in Nairobi to find out what I should do. Then she added that if only I had come the day before, she would have been able to accept them. I left her sight before I let the scowl creep back across my face. I called the number in Nairobi and they told me that the only remedy was to deliver them in person to the Nairobi office. Fortunately, I will be in Nairobi anyway this weekend, but it will be incredibly hard to get to the office while they're open.

I seem to have lost in this case. Everyone else seems to be unaffected.

-----

I think there is a lesson to be learned in here about what happens when I do what my headmaster tells me to do.

Different Reactions

Today a little twister (well, a powerful gust of swirling wind which was kicking up lots of dust) passed by my school right as the time came to start our afternoon exams. I was with my third years as the dust came in through the windows and several of us were a bit blinded. Many of the windows slammed shut, and I tried to close the ones that were still open in case another one came along, but the students complained of the heat, so I left them open. Then, we all heard the sound of glass shattering. I motioned to my students to continue their exams and went out to investigate.

I found that one of the panes had come loose in the first year classroom and had fallen to the ground. My first instinct was to go to the first years and make sure that no one was injured. Fortunately, all of the glass fell outside of the classroom, so there was nothing to do except sweep up the shards. However, before I could do that, I saw the reactions of other people.

The students were somewhat startled by this, but much more anxious about their imminent exam. Some of the other teachers came out of the staff room to gawk and then blithely returned to their crossword puzzles (others didn't even bother to see what had happened). The headmaster was the only other person who reacted with the urgency that I did. He hurried from his office to the classroom and informed the students nearest to the window that they would be paying to replace the window. Everyone laughed until they realized he was serious. Then he marched back to his office.

I went back to my third years to borrow my broom and reflected a bit on the situation. The first years are a rather docile class, which means they have the least discipline cases, but it also means that they don't raise issue when the headmaster puts out these ukazis (tsarist decrees which were known for their unpopularity). I swept the glass as best as I could and thought about trying to have a little discussion with the class about how they felt about this. Unfortunately, since it is exam week, I knew that they wouldn't appreciate any additional distractions, so I put it off for another day.

After I finished sweeping and checked on my third years, I went to speak with the headmaster about this. I knocked on the door to his office and realized that if he was in there, he was not giving the second years their history exam (15 minutes after it was supposed to start). When I heard his voice inside, I forgot my initial purpose and instead collected his exams and handed them to him and politely reminded him that the second years were waiting for him to give the exam. He thanked me and sent me away. I began to worry that he was going to wait for me to finish supervising my exam and then ask me to supervise for him (again), but I was relieved when I heard him walk into the classroom next to me ten minutes later to give the exam.

And my shirt ripped on the door handle today while I was rushing into the headmaster's office earlier. One of my favorite shirts no less. Oh well, exams finish tomorrow, so things should get better.

Visitors

Last week, my friend Nick called and asked if he could come visit my site over the weekend. I haven't had any visitors since April (that's mostly my fault; I don't invite people, since I know it's far out of the way for most and there's not a whole lot for visitors to do), so I was excited about this. Nick was actually the second one, since my friend Emily had also asked if she could come on Monday and see my site, since I had to turn her down the last time she asked.

Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out that all of us could hang out, but perhaps that was for the best, since it would be quite a struggle for too many of us to sleep here. I spent the end of last week trying frantically to make my house presentable and to find water so that people could cook and drink and bathe while they were here. I made a picture to put up on one of my walls (I used something I learned in elementary school art class: Thanks Mr. Patterson!) so that they would be less bare. But, I was a bit tied up at school, since I was also planning for exams which are this week, so I reached a stage that could charitably described as semi-presentable. Good thing it was only Peace Corps volunteers coming to visit.

On Saturday, I went to school to wrap up on organic chem with my third years and supervise the compound. When the bell rang at noon, I bolted over to the main road and miraculously caught a bus right away heading to Voi. I met up with Nick and we grabbed a delicious lunch before taking care of some errands. I grabbed a spare mattress (I don't think my house will be nearly as popular if I make my guests sleep on a concrete floor), we surfed at the cyber a bit, I made photocopies of a chemistry review packet that I had made for my fourth years and then Nick went to the keysmith while I went to the phone store to ask about a modem. We both realized that we needed more cash, so we went to the ATM. The machine proceeded to eat Nick's card and tried to skip the part where it gives me my money, so we were not in a good mood as we finished errands and ran over to the supermarket to grab a bit of food for the ride back to site.

We got back and played with the modem a bit (okay, a lot) before we realized that we were late (that means more than two hours past the starting time) for the goat-eating party that my neighbor was throwing. We went and knocked on his door only to find him sleeping and he told us that the party was cancelled since most people bailed. However, he is never one to turn down a beer, so we did the village pub crawl (not a challenging feat when there are only two bars). We swung to one of the late night cafes and grabbed a late supper and then played cut-throat (a three player billiards game) before returning home and crashing.

The next day, I stopped into church for a short time, but Nick and I spent most of the morning further tinkering with the modem before I put him on a bus back to his site. I spent most of the rest of the day trying to make ubuntu work (not only is the machine now capable of playing audio and visual files, but sound also comes out of the speakers now). I tried to do a bit more clean-up before Emily's arrival (Nick tried to conceal his disapproval of my slovenly lifestyle, which is mostly caused by immense thriftiness with water), but found myself pretty lazy so it didn't really go anywhere.

Yesterday, I went to school for the start of midterm exams. I used the chemistry exam with my third years to tie up loose ends in organic chemistry and start the next chapter on nitrogen compounds (I don't think anyone else at the school knows about my decision not to give the 3rd year math or chemistry exams yet). One of my third years came to me with some pretty vague symptoms (this is rare for him, since he usually has pretty specific symptoms when it comes to exam time) and I tried to get him permission to go to the doctor as discreetly as possible, but the whole staff room caught wind of it and started accusing him of faking everything. Though he has quite a track record for becoming sick during exams, it seemed like a pretty lousy claim, since these exams won't count toward their final grade and he has been trying to get more practice. After the session was over and he had gone to the doctor, I played the swine flu card (some of the students had had the same thought). I commented that though it seemed like an extreme long-shot, it wasn't impossible with his symptoms. As the village's likely preparedness for this in terms of testing and treatment is nil, I figured it was better safe than sorry. Perhaps a bit alarmist on my part, but I worry a lot about my students (I already had a flu shot).

After I gave an exam for another staff member in the afternoon, I ran out to the main road. I only had to wait ten minutes before I saw a bus coming by, which I was pretty sure contained Emily. I flagged it down and she hopped off. I had collected them there deliberately so that the bus wouldn't take them to the other side of the village before dropping them off, but also so that it would seem like I'm completely in the middle of nowhere (from where we were standing, there was not a single building visible; only weeds and power lines). We walked and talked as we headed to the school where the students were studying for the next day's exams. I introduced Emily to the teachers, and then we went to meet the students, one class at a time. It was a big hit. My third years even suggested Taita names (Emily is now Malemba, which is a nice name). Then we went back to my place. Emily was relieved when we were able to grab a matatu (driven by my neighbor) to get a lift instead of walking the 3 km to my house. She was even more impressed when we didn't have to pay.

We grabbed a cold soda at a cafe near my house before going home and watching a movie (fortunately Emily brought speakers, since my computer can play sound, but that doesn't mean the machine has terribly audible speakers built in). After that, I whipped up some of my peanut soup while Emily bathed and cleaned my room a bit (yeah, it's that bad). Then, we ate on my bed, since I am still pretty limited in terms of furniture. After that, we played computer and talked for a long time before crashing (I should be wary of using that term, but the bed was able to support three of us sitting on it, though for sleeping, I was on the spare mattress in the kitchen). We thoroughly enjoyed the conservapedia article on Barack Obama's use of "mind control" during the election.

In the morning, we woke up early, but didn't move very quickly, so we left a little later than planned. Fortunately, about halfway to school, we saw one of my second years, and he agreed to help Emily to school so she wouldn't have to put any more weight on that ankle, so I walked to school without her. I had 30 minutes before I was supposed to give an exam, but I still had to prepare a few things, so I left Emily in the staff room. I came back after the exam and they seemed to be having a good time with the other teachers during the tea break, so I didn't feel bad abandoning them. Emily told me she wanted to put some money toward the school fees of the student who had helped her get to school, so I think everyone won in that situation.

Then, the headmaster informed me that I was supposed to have submitted the agriculture reports from the fourth years (their napier grass projects) last week at the latest. I had been putting that off since, in spite of the hard part being over, it was still a source of great frustration. Still, I realized that I needed to deal with that right away, so I abandoned Emily again. I was about halfway done when she found me and told me that it was time for them to go. I took a ten minute break and walked them to the main road. Even though they were only here for 18 hours, we had a lot of fun and I was sad to say good-bye to them. We agreed that we'll have to hang out again soon and then I hurried back to finish up those agriculture reports and make sure that the teachers were giving their exams (they weren't).

I finished a bit before lunch but I had to wait more than an hour for the headmaster to sign the documents. I was ready to sprint to the district offices (60 km away), but the teachers stopped me as I was at the gate and assured me that the office would be closed for the day before I would arrive. I guess that's my project for tomorrow.

Books 9.0

**** Life of Pi by Yann Martel. This was a really fun read. I nearly put it down too early, and I'm glad I finished the whole story. I would definitely recommend this book, although I think it is easier to read if you go through it in a short time.

** Teach Yourself Swahili. I decided to brush up my Kiswahili a bit. This was not a very good book for that. The structure was pretty awkward and they chose to emphasize strange bits. I really like Peter M. Wilson's Simplified Swahili. Anyone who prefers a solid grammatical foundation should opt for Wilson. I loaned my copy out 5 months ago and I really hope that I get it back soon...

As an aside, one of my neighbors was reading a book by Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather) called The Fourth K. I picked it up and glanced through the first few pages, but I had to put it down when they introduced the plot device where some MIT physics professors had stolen material to make an atomic bomb. I was not a fan.

Le plus ça change...

My school started a new policy this term where they were not going to cane students. You'll have to forgive me for scoffing when I heard this. I was impressed that the policy lasted an entire week. Then, yesterday one of the teachers felt that it needed to be reinstated
over a serious infraction. Two of the students had lost the button on their trousers. Sadly, three solid whacks didn't make the button appear. I'm impressed that the teachers lasted a week, although it's possible (probable) that there were some beatings that I missed while I was in class.

...le plus qu'ils restent.

That's not actually true

Ok, I know I still need to write up last week and over the weekend
(bunch of things happened), but that won't be up until next week or
so. Same goes for Books 9.0.

One of my jobs at the school is deciding the school timetable. I've
tried to consider the requests of the teachers and I've also tried to
keep it logical (previously, students would start each day with a
different lesson and might have the same subject three times in the
same day or two classes trying to use the lab at the same time).
Students have been happy with the regularity that comes with my
timetables and the other teachers are mostly happy with how it works
for them. However, every now and then, one teacher will make a request
and I have to restrain myself from just turning to them and saying
"What a load of crap!" Some of them include: we can't have math
lessons after lunch, since the ministry says that students learn math
best in the morning; I can't teach English in the afternoon since
students won't pay attention after lunch; you should move one of my
biology lessons so that I don't have to be at school at 8 every day.
The schoolboard has asked me to make sure that someone is trained to
do this after I leave. I just told them that there is no trick, it
just takes some patience to ensure that everything is balanced for
both students and teachers.

Today I had to do one of the most difficult things in the Kenyan
classroom. I had to explain to my students that their textbook is
wrong. For most students, they have to take everything that the book
says as absolute truth, since they don't have any secondary source
material. Besides, since it is written by the government, that
increases their faith (don't get me started on this point). However,
when the book says things like "Sodium hydrogen carbonate is an
example of an acidic salt, since it has an extra hydrogen ion," I felt
I had to take a stand. When I told the students that this wasn't
actually true, they were pretty skeptical. Then, I took some baking
powder (cue that music for The More You Know) and tested it with some
red litmus paper. It turned blue (meaning the compound is a base, not
an acid) and I think I saw some students shaken to their very
foundations by the treachery of their books. Fortunately, they
recovered with laughter when they saw me shaking calcium carbonate
vigorously in water for some time to show them that it won't dissolve.

Then, there comes those lies we tell ourselves. I like to pretend that
I know how to manage a lab. After feeling a tad under the weather
yesterday, I decided to ask my friend Pete (good thing I hung out with
the chemical engineering majors in college) if the chemical fumes that
I have been inhaling are as harmless as I like to pretend they are.
They are not. I definitely need to fashion some kind of mask so that I
don't keep doing this (I take precautions to minimize risk, but they
seem to be inadequate). Also, I need to figure out how people will
manage the lab once I'm gone.

Nairobi, niko na moyo mseto

Paris, je t’aime has a much nicer ring to it, but for Nairobi, I have a mixed heart. Brace yourself, this is a pretty long post.

After 8 long hours of matatus and buses and matatus on Thursday, I made it to Nairobi and headed over to the Kenya Continental, which is where volunteers stay when they’re on Peace Corps business here (including medical work). I checked in to find three other volunteers at the hotel (I had just missed Nick who had been there the night before and had just returned to his site). I called Peace Corps and they told me that I could take it easy and then come in tomorrow, so I was glad to recuperate a bit. My friend "Beth" is here with limited mobility, so she had to stay in bed, but Kelly (math/science education from the group before me) and Jason (new public health volunteer) brought me to the mall (actually there are several malls in Westlands, which is a rather posh area of Nairobi, and they are all within walking distance of the hotel). We stopped first at the bookstore, and I had to stop myself from buying more than three books. Then, we went to Nakumatt (it‘s kinda like being at Wal-Mart, but a little smaller) and picked up a few things to bring back to the hotel (it‘s really hard to find Oreos outside of Nairobi) and I grabbed some candy to bring back for my students. Jason bought himself an electric hair trimmer, and it was later pointed out that he does not actually have electricity at his site. Every time we would hear it buzzing for the rest of my stay (surprisingly often, I might add), we would chuckle a bit.

When I was leaving school on Wednesday, I told some of my students that I would not be coming the next day because I had to go and see a doctor. They all expressed their condolences and some suggested that I bring them some kind of present (usually in candy form) from my trip (I didn‘t mention Nairobi, since I was worried the suggestions would increase). Then one of them stopped to make sure that I was leaving lesson notes so that they could keep working while I was away (already submitted), and I was glad to see that work ethic. Then one of my students said that I was only allowed to bring candy if I was healthy so that we could celebrate; if I was sick, then I just needed to get better. My students are really wonderful.

Anyway, we made it back to the hotel to see Beth who managed to sit up halfway when we got back. We settled on carrying out dinner from Java House, which is good comfort food. Kelly and I ran over and placed the order. While we waited, we were bombarded with previews for G.I. Joe and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. (I loved that book growing up!) We swapped stories about our schools and how overwhelming everything gets at times (Kelly‘s area somehow manages to get less rain than mine, but there is a little more water, since there is a river nearby, but water is just a big nightmare in general) while we waited for our food and then we carried it back to the hotel. Our supper was delicious (complete with a chocolate-banana milkshake), and we all hung out for a while to raise our spirits. We went to bed very full.

On Friday, Kelly, Jason and I grabbed an early breakfast at the hotel before walking to the Peace Corps office. When we were five minutes away from the office, Medical called me and asked if I was at the hotel, since they had sent a driver to pick me up. I hadn’t realized that I qualified for chauffeur service, so I apologized and explained that I was already at the office. I went in and greeted medical to talk a bit and find out how everything was going to work. Mary explained to me that she had booked me in Nairobi until Monday (I won‘t miss school, since it‘s a national holiday) so that I wouldn’t feel rushed and then we talked a bit. Poor Mary is the only Medical staff member right now (Sylvia is on vacation), so she is watching the four of us at the Continental, plus there was another situation earlier week and she has to keep tabs on the other 60 healthy volunteers in the country to make sure that they stay that way. Before leaving her office, I stepped on the scale and found that my weight has stayed steady at around 160, which is sounding pretty healthy, I think. Then I went to say hi to staff in the office, and I sought out Louis (he manages Peace Corps‘s Small Enterprise Development program and is a really remarkable guy) to see if he had my bio-gas DVDs. Louis and I are incapable of having a short conversation, so while we were discussing solar technologies, another staff member came in to collect Louis for their staff meeting and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to greet other staff members (Joseph was on leave, so I wouldn‘t have been able to see him, and Enos had traveled to visit possible sites for the next volunteers, so we missed each other this time, but I was disappointed that I didn‘t get to say hi to Antony, Tim or introduce myself to the new Country Director). I hung around the office for another 20 minutes and used the computer before heading off to my appointment.

So, after all this, I should probably explain why I’m here. Four years at MIT definitely built up a pretty high tolerance for stress and putting high demands on myself. Still, I had a few warning signs that I might need to talk to someone about some things, so I asked to come to Nairobi to sort a few things out. I talked to a nice British woman for about an hour and we discussed some strategies and things that I should work on so that I don’t burn myself out. We talked about coping mechanisms and healthy outlets, but all in all, it was a pretty short conversation, so we scheduled a follow-up appointment for October. I went back to the waiting room and called the Peace Corps driver to pick me up and take me back across Nairobi (office is only open for a half-day on Fridays, so I didn‘t get to see the rest of the staff). The traffic was pretty nasty on the way to the office (sorry, in true British fashion, I was at a “surgery“), so it took the driver an hour to come back and pick me up. I noted all the British people (and a few Germans) who came to the surgery and how few Kenyans there were. While I waited, I thought a bit about the conversation and talked to mi amigo Daniel until the driver pulled up.

I had the driver drop me off about half-way to the hotel so that I could meet up with Kelly for lunch. I had run into Tori randomly when I arrived on Thursday and we all agreed to meet for lunch, so that was nice. We ate at the Java House (you might start to notice a theme) and had a wonderful time and I had to say good-bye to Tori again, since her flight was the following evening. Then I went with Kelly to the hospital for her appointment (makes sense, since the bulk of the appointment is usually in the waiting room anyway). She had to wait when we arrived to get a short note from one doctor (that took 40 minutes) and bring it to another doctor (there was a mistake in scheduling her appointment, so that took another 30 minutes) who read the note in under one minute and said that it would be okay for her to return to her school (she was pretty sick of Nairobi after the amount of time she had been here) and then she was done. Then we had to wait an hour for the driver (Friday afternoon Nairobi traffic is hell) who was given the wrong location at the hospital by the Peace Corps office, so then we had to go find him. So that day was not exactly a model of efficiency.

Then we went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day with Beth and Jason. Kelly needed to do a little shopping before going back to site, so we ran to the mall and made a few other stops, but we were still pretty full from lunch, so we stopped at an Indian restaurant near the hotel and brought back some naan and called that dinner. When we placed the order, the waitress looked at us and said “But aren’t you going to order food???” and we replied nearly in unison “bread is food!” Then we went back to the hotel and ate together complete with Oreos for dessert (we never made it to them the night before). Kelly and Jason went to bed pretty early (Kelly had to pack and was leaving early for her bus in the morning), so I stayed and talked to Beth for a while longer before talking to my parents and then crashing. Beth had left the hospital, but since she wasn’t really mobile and just stayed in her simply furnished room all day, it really felt like she was still in the hospital, but without all the doctors (just a big bag of Tylenol).

On Saturday, I woke up a little after Kelly had left (I had had a lot of trouble falling asleep, and wound up sleeping from 3 am to 7 am), and Jason and I grabbed breakfast before heading to the Peace Corps office to take care of a few things on the computer. Another volunteer had come to visit Beth, so she got to have company all morning. Jason and I talked a lot all morning and got to know one another (I don‘t have that opportunity very often with the volunteers who stay in the Western part of the country). We came back to the hotel to meet Beth and two other volunteers to have sushi for lunch. It was a fun lunch, in spite of the fact that the conversation wandered from AIDS to concentration camps and lots of other cheerful subjects in between. The waiter moved incredibly slowly, and Beth had to leave lunch a bit early, since she had already been sitting up for an hour and needed to lie back down. After lunch we left Beth and Jason to nap, and I went to the mall.

After shopping around a little bit (I picked up another gift for my students: a couple of chemistry review books for their exams), I found a computer store and bought a small laptop. $450, or two months of Peace Corps salary. It’s a nice little machine (I‘m using it right now to type this) and I’m planning to Linux-ify it next weekend (it‘s a Windows machine and viruses are incredibly rampant here) and get it set up with a modem. I’m not sure if this will make me more productive (it‘s going to be pretty useful for things like writing exams, working on this AIDS hotline and a few other projects) or less productive (I have that pesky addiction to webcomics), but it’s nice to have this.

I stopped at a Nakumatt (I gave up on counting the number of Nakumatts and Java Houses in Westlands, but there are a lot) and found that they had Coca-cola with high-fructose syrup (i.e. American style, instead of using sugar like the rest of the world), plus it came in a can, so that was fantastic. As I walked back to the hotel, I called Mary to tell her a bit about my appointment (and to have her straighten out things with the hotel, which thought that I was checking out that morning) and the follow-up. And then I found out that I can open a whole new can of worms. Apparently at the staff meeting, she announced to the staff that I was reconsidering my decision to leave Peace Corps (I had told her as much on Friday) and she reported to me that the staff was very supportive. It wasn’t until after the call ended that I realized that I had not actually talked with the staff about my plans to leave Peace Corps (that was also why I never mentioned it on here before now), so I don’t know what kind of position this will put me in. I had told Mary about my plans in August and made sure that it was in confidence, but I guess the fact that I came to Nairobi changes confidentiality? Or something? Anyway, my cards are on the table. I had previously committed myself to leaving Peace Corps for causes related to stress at school as well as other stresses in Kenya unrelated to my community (I hope that is sufficiently vague) and now I am trying to work some things out before I commit myself to anything.

Then I arrived back to the hotel and talked to Beth and Jason a bit longer (Jason is 26 and apparently had guessed that I was older than him. For those of you keeping score at home, I‘m 23.) before taking orders for dinner and heading over to (any guesses?) Java House. I’m pretty sure we’re just addicted to the milkshakes there, but the food is pretty good too (you can actually eat lettuce without worrying about intestinal parasites). I waited for the food alone this time and while I sat there, I read the script for David Ives’ scene called Sure Thing (an absolutely hilarious scene, and I discovered the prescience of one of the lines in the script). We all turned in early, since Beth looked pretty tired and Jason was packing to return to site. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to sleep, so I tinkered with my computer a bit and wrote some emails on my phone (I‘m way behind on emails right now, actually) before I finally managed to fall asleep around 4:30.

And then I woke up at 7 am. Yuck. I said good-bye to Jason as he went for his bus and ate breakfast with Beth. She had an appointment at the hospital that morning, so she packed all of her bags (last time she went for an appointment at the hospital, they admitted her without warning and she had to stay for a week) and we talked while we waited for her taxi. I got a call from Louis saying that he was in the parking lot with my DVDs. I went out to see him and found him there in a T-shirt and jeans (it‘s so rare that we see Peace Corps staff that informally) and talked for a few minutes. Then Louis realized that Beth’s taxi was sitting there, so I went to collect Beth, and he went back home. Before Beth got in the cab, I told her that she wasn’t allowed to get readmitted to the hospital.

I ran to the mall to see if the cyber was open, but apparently it stays closed on Sundays. I walked over to the supermarket and bought some apples and Nutella for our lunch and a liter and a half of Pepsi (if I‘m going to start sleeping on my college hours, I should probably consume caffeine like I did when I was there). Right as I got back to the hotel, I got a one-word text message (those are always the worst) from Beth that said “readmitted”. I was disappointed with her for not listening to me, but then, I guess she wasn’t really in a condition to fight off all the nurses. I grabbed a taxi to the hospital and while I waited, I called Medical to request an extra day here (that means that my students will miss a day of lessons L, but otherwise, Beth will be completely alone in the hospital), which they granted. I found Beth in her hospital bed and not terribly thrilled to be there. I gave her the apples and the Nutella as well as my copy of Arabian Nights in case she wanted to read and she gave me her key so that I could go back to the hotel and collect her belongings and check her out of her room. They had some flowers at the reception, and so I asked and they let me take some for her and asked me to send their condolences.

I made it back to the hospital, but it was not during visiting hours. They know Beth pretty well at this point, so they didn’t even bother me as I went to her room. I caught her just before lunch and I stayed with her until just after dinner. I tried to find a deck of cards, so we could pass the time that way, but a lot of shops were closed since it was Sunday, so I just had to rely on conversation. We talked a lot and I tried especially hard to distract her every time the doctors or nurses came to poke her again (I don‘t envy human pin-cushions). We talked about the fact that the doctors take her blood just about every day to feed the vampire who is staying down the hall. We talked about family and friends in America (we sat next to each other on the plane when we first came to Kenya and talked about that a lot, and I found myself remembering snippets of that conversation as we talked). We talked about life in the hospital (Peace Corps staff does not really visit volunteers in the hospital, so it comes down to hoping that other volunteers will make the trek to Nairobi and visit). And we talked a bit about primates. The doctors came and gave her some pretty strong medicine just before dinner, and I was a little disappointed that she remained rather coherent and didn’t start speaking gibberish, but the meds were knocking her out and visiting hours were coming to an end, so I called a taxi.

I found the hospital vending machine and bought an apple Fanta (first time I‘ve seen that flavor, but I don‘t think that apple was meant to be a soda). My taxi driver was rather talkative, which was nice because I didn’t feel like saying much. She steered the conversation towards Christianity pretty quickly (which is very common here), which allowed her to segue to faith healing. She explained how her shoulder ailment had been cured by prayer (Pentecostal, by the sound of it). Then she started telling me about how prayer will even cure AIDS and doctors don’t actually know what they’re doing. I was pretty relieved when she dropped me off at the hotel. Then I walked down the road to the Indian hotel and had a really amazing meal there (I hadn‘t actually eaten aside from a banana, an apple and some pineapple juice for breakfast, but during dinner Beth gave me her Jell-o). I made it back to the hotel and realized that I hadn’t eaten at Java House the entire day. I managed to throw on my pajamas, but I didn’t climb under the blanket or the mosquito net before falling asleep just after 9 pm. I woke up a bit after 3 am feeling a bit chilly and rather itchy (Nairobi mosquitoes can be pretty fierce) and not feeling the least bit tired.

Today is my last day in Nairobi, so it will probably include a quick trip to Java House and maybe Nakumatt as well (Peace Corps office closes for all American and Kenyan holidays, so the office is closed today for Eid, so I can‘t head there), but the bulk of the day will be spent in the hospital. When I arrived in Nairobi, I learned that for a time, the number of volunteers who were in for medical was staying pretty consistent at 4. Now I am alone at the Kenya Continental and when I leave tomorrow, Beth will be alone at the hospital (except Beth is actually going to leave tomorrow and go back to site, since she‘ll make a miraculous recovery today). I only spent a few days here; most people were here for longer, and I can definitely understand their impatience to get back to site (the increased weight and paleness and diminished bank account are among the physical reasons). Okay, well that’s certainly a lot to read, so I’ll do the other two things that I have thoroughly enjoyed doing in Nairobi that do not happen very often at site: take a shower and put on clean clothes.

Happy last day of winter (well, I'm in the southern hemisphere, but this ain't a typical winter) and Eid Mubarak.