Training Day 2 (Adventures in Mchangastan)

Today was a pretty action packed day. Yesterday we met Antony, who works for Peace Corps and PEPFAR, so he is facilitating a lot of the training. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and it's nice to have a facilitator, since a lot of our training sessions in the past have dwelt on less useful information because there was no one to steer the discussion. The first person to talk was a woman from PEPFAR. She gave us a lot of data we had seen before, but she still managed to stay engaging as she thoroughly detailed the present state of HIV in Kenya. We also got interesting perspectives from all of the Kenyan counterparts throughout the session. Still, I think we were all glad when we could stretch our legs a bit.

Medical was also there in the morning. Mary and Sylvia are absolutely wonderful people. I talked a bit with Mary (Sylvia wasn't there this morning). Conversations with Medical are always incredibly therapeutic. They really sympathize with us a lot and try to help us in whatever way they can.

After a delicious lunch, we went out to learn some games and activities we can try in our community to start a discussion about HIV. We were generally enjoying just being on the beach. I know I would have to improvise a lot of equipment to make these activities work, but I may try them once I get back to site, if I can find time. The session was dwindling a bit, so I went over to where Paul (one of the deaf education volunteers) was building a sand castle (or temple). All of a sudden, this became our top priority for the remainder of the afternoon. The session was ended pretty abruptly when one of the games involving slingshots nearly resulted in a tourist casualty.

Antony finished the session shortly after, so we all just stayed there building. It became quite the village, centered around the temple. The temple became much less glorious after Virginia (a counterpart who teaches outside Mombasa) started kicking sand onto it and into my mouth (she was just playing, but she seems to be a bit mischievous). Paul remained the creative genius behind our whole effort building roads, bridges, farms, canyons and anything else you can imagine while I took on roles like Moat Deepener. Jeff (my charcoal buddy) came in and built a staircase (a surprisingly challenging feat with sand) leading to the infinite abyss (a deep trench to slow the imminent destruction of the incoming tides). Then Erin (another deaf education volunteer, but not the Erin who I visited during my Kamba weekend) started helping to build the well where the villagers could throw their gold. We made her queen of the village after she put a spiral staircase into the well so that the people could retrieve their gold if they ever needed it. I started working on a ladder to help people cross the infinite abyss while Saidi (a Kenyan counterpart who works as a drug rehab counselor) built the railway. As the tide started to come in (the water came all the way to the edge of the beach, so there was no safe place to build; besides, it's more fun to watch the waves wash over the immense efforts), we worked on building more defenses around the town. Jeff came back and started building heads to place around the town to watch over the citizens and protect them. Our queen named the city Mchangastan (mchanga is sand, so it seemed like a good name) and we watched with satisfaction as the water slowly filled the infinite abyss and were deflected away from the queendom by our cliffs. Eventually, the water drowned all our citizens, but we stayed and watched until the last head was washed away. Our queen even symbolically through herself into the well to sacrifice herself for her subjects. All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable experience (and even a pretty good cultural exchange).

After a delicious dinner (pretty much all the meals are amazing; I don't think I would be eating this well if I were in the states), a few of us volunteers had some drinks at the hotel. The conversation turned progressively more absurd as the evening went on. Still, it was nice to kick back a bit and joke with everyone.