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.