Training Day 5 (Good-byes)

Well, training ended without much fanfare. The session actually ended a bit early because we were supposed to hear from Peace Corps's IT staffer, but his flight from Nairobi was delayed because the airline was having a "go-slow" (it's a form of protest where workers show up, but do their jobs even more exceedingly slowly than they do on a normal day). This was pretty unfortunate because Peace Corps relies on a piece of software to send information to us, even though we haven't really had any exposure to it :(. We heard a brief speech on the abhorrent volunteer reporting tool that we have to file 3 times a year. We tried to raise some issues, but there's no way that our feedback would ever reach the level of people who have the power to change this. So it goes.

Before going to lunch, I managed to wrangle everyone from our conversation on Wednesday for a quick meeting. Five of us decided we were willing to commit to this project, so we assigned initial tasks and set a date for a follow-up meeting. I'll be researching the counseling process in Kenya, so that should keep me pretty busy :). I think we have a good direction and some good momentum on this project, so I'm optimistic that we'll have some good ideas at our next meeting.

The afternoon was pretty relaxed. I went to the pool and then played some volleyball. I need to improve my volleyball skills a lot, apparently. (Just remember, slap Jack!) The afternoon was a pretty lazy day, which was nice. I moved around talking to people the whole time and just taking in the day.

After dinner, we decided to head out. We drank a little wine at the hotel (yep, we even pre-game in Kenya) before hitting the beach. We found a little joint with only semi-exorbitant beers and good music (but no dancing) and took over the place for a little while. I found myself sitting with three of the deaf ed volunteers and talking a bit with them. At one point, another volunteer yelled at me (from all the way across the bar) for pretending like I knew what they were signing to one another. Since one of the deaf volunteers was there, they were translating what I had just said for her, but thankfully, I wasn't drunk enough (yet) to shout that back across the bar. Then we decided to head to a club near our hotel called Il Covo. It's a nice place and we were all looking forward to it. Jonathan and I walked another volunteer back to the hotel because she wanted to pass on Il Covo. When we arrived, we found that some of the Kenyans that we were hanging out with (counterparts and Peace Corps staff) had been turned away at the gate. Apparently, to maintain the atmosphere of the club, they charge all Kenyans a one time fee of 500 shillings to enter. The purpose of this is to reduce the number of prostitutes and beach bums wandering in there (we encountered plenty on the beach all week). However, they never charge white people this fee. Jonathan and I were particularly dismayed that a deaf counterpart had been turned away (most prostitutes do not dress in such a conservative manner). He started arguing a bit and demanding to see the manager. The word discrimination was thrown out there a bit. Jonathan managed to bring her and the sign language interpreter into the club, but it left a bad taste in our mouths. Then I went down and found that several Peace Corps staff had been told the same thing. I kept telling them it was bad business, since this was clearly not the clientele they were trying to avoid (I promised myself at the start of this week that I would be less confrontational, so I avoided words like discrimination). They grumblingly let us in, but one staff member decided that he didn't want to enter some place just because he had an American friend, while another decided that he wanted to talk to the manager a bit as well. After a short time, we all just decided to abandon the club and go back to the hotel. We were a lot happier that way, since we could actually be with our friends (the Austrians even brought out some speakers so that we could listen to music while we drank at the bar). I'm glad the night ended well, but it was still a rather appalling episode. The next morning, the word racist was bandied about a bit (mind you, the bouncer was Kenyan, although the owner was European) and we managed to calm ourselves a bit.

Well, now training is over. I don't even know when I'm going to see most of these volunteers and counterparts again (to say nothing of the ones who weren't at the training). It was nice to relax a bit, and now I feel pretty energized. I'm also excited about some of the projects that I picked up, and the fact that I will probably visit a few people's sites this term for more projects. There were some really amazing counterparts, so I hope that I will see them again next August. Maybe.