My computer is temporarily working so I thought I would take this rare opportunity to write about a wonderful organization that I am working with called Kicks 4 Kenya.
Kicks 4 Kenya has graciously donated a bunch of soccer equipment to my school. Earlier this week we started practicing with some of the balls and cones that we’re donated by Kicks 4 Kenya. The students were thrilled to play with the new balls and even the neighboring school wanted to join in on the fun. When we initially went out to practice the entire school followed as well as all of the students from the hearing primary school…there must have been 300 students circled around me.
Thanks to TJ at Kicks 4 Kenya and all of those who made contributions to our little soccer project. I greatly appreciate your efforts and I will be sure to keep you updated as the school year progresses. We are preparing for the Deaf Schools competition in early April. I am hopeful with the addition of the equipment that we will be ready to compete!
I just return from an amazing adventure with my dad. He arrived a few weeks ago and immediately we were off to Masai Mara. Masai Mara is one of the best game parks in all of Africa. It shares the Kenya/Tanzania border with the Serengeti. The highlight of the safari was seeing two cheetahs chase down a gazelle. Unfortunately, our vehicle got stuck in the mud a mere fifteen feet away from the two cats and my dad and another guy got out to help push us out. I stayed put as i have a whole life to live yet. We finally got out of the mud and actually scared the cheetahs away. It was by far the best safari I have been on. After two days at Masai Mara we headed to Nanyuki to meet up with the rest of our expedition to hike mount Kenya.
Mount Kenya was amazing. The first day we were forced to hike an additional five km since our matatu could not make it up the mud filled road to the park entrance. We slowly made our way up to the peak over four days to avoid altitude sickness. On the fourth day we woke up at 2 am to hike the remaining distance to the peak. It was almost a full moon so we hiked to the peak with our headlamps turned off only using the moonlight. We made it just in time to catch the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen.
Now its back to work. We had a painfully long teachers meeting this morning in which we allocated classes among other things. I am happy with the classes I will be teaching this year. I will continue teaching math and English to my class (now class four), I will teach reading to classes 1, 2, and 3 and I will teach one lesson a week about AIDS/HIV to each of the upper primary classes (class 4 through 8). I am pretty excited about the progress on all of my secondary projects as well.
I am also excited about getting my computer fixed soon so I don’t have to deal with this damn internet cafe crap. Believe it or not its taken me 30 minutes to type this up because of the slow connection and overall slow computer that I am on at the moment. So I apologize to everyone that sends me emails yet I have not responded yet. Please bear with me.
Greetings from Loitokitok.
After all of the time I have spent in this little town over the past year, the beauty of Mount Kilimanjaro never ceases to amaze me. I’ve been fortunate to call Loitokitok home for at least a short time as its probably one of the most beautiful places I will ever live in.
As I mentioned before I am helping out with training once again. I sure have spent a lot of time with this new group of trainees. It has been interesting to watch them develop over the past few weeks. I really enjoy being on this side of the training. I am mostly here to answer their questions and assist with anything. I was pretty busy this last week though, as I had to assist during numerous question and answer sessions. They have been grateful for all of us volunteers helping out. Its surprising how much they have changed in such a short time. Since it is so close to Christmas I have decided to stay in Loitokitok until after Christmas rather than head back to site only to turn around again to pick up my dad at the airport.
Since I’ve been here I already have visited my mama and baba a few times. Tuesday I stopped by my mama’s clinic to say hello and she bought be a coke. I asked why she didn’t buy one for herself also. She said she had just taken tea and ask if I had tea that morning to which I responded that I did not take tea that morning. Shocked, she just stared at me for a second and said, “My God” as if something devastating had happen.
Unfortunately, my brothers aren’t around as they are in Nakuru visiting their grandma.
Paul and Ginnie will be here in a few days for Christmas and I am told some other volunteers will also be around. It should be another exciting Christmas in Loitokitok. Maybe I’ll get to slaughter a goat again.
Well I have some horrible news. I came back to my site to discover that my computer is broken. I have no idea what happened to it. It was working fine before I left. I am hopeful that it can be fixed but until then my posts will be even more infrequent as well as my emails. And no more aim chats for a while.
I just return from an eventful journey. I headed to Nairobi for Thanksgiving with friends. After Thanksgiving I went to Hell’s Gate with some new volunteers and Mr. Thomas. It was a pretty good time. The trip started out miserably as it was constantly raining and cold. But the second day was perfect. We rented some bikes and biked through the bike. As expected, the bikes weren’t that great it was worth it though because it was pretty awesome to be biking alongside zebras, giraffes, warthogs, buffalos, and more. It was nice to get my ‘biking fix’ in. Its been too long. Halfway through our ride we took a tour of a gorge. It was like being in a small canyon. It was nice to get off the bikes for a while and do some hiking.
After Hell’s Gate I returned to Nairobi for my mid service medical exam. After being poked and prodded I’ve been deemed fit to continue on with my Peace Corps service. The appointments themselves went fairly quickly so the majority of my time was spent lounging around the Peace Corps office with the rest of the education volunteers from my group.
While in Nairobi we hit up some of the nicer dining establishments. One night we ate indian food, another night we had some delicious sushi. The night after Thanksgiving Tom and I went to a favorite Ethiopian restaurant among volunteers. We ordered a ton of food and stuff ourselves for a good hour. I don’t think I’ve even been so full.
After being in Nairobi for medical exams for a few days I headed to Lake Nakuru with fellow deaf ed volunteers Charlotte and Erin. I’ve been low on funds after traveling around so much lately but I’ve heard such good things about Nakuru that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go there. It lived up to my expectations. Since the park surrounded a lake, there was abundant wildlife. We tried to find some lions and jaguars but unfortunatly we did not. Hopefully when my dad comes in a few weeks I will finally see a lion while on safari.
This weekend I head back to beautiful Loitokitok to help out with training again. I’m not sure what I’ll do after that maybe come back here and spend Christmas with my neighbors or join up with some other friends on the coast. In the meantime, I’ve been cleaning up my house and preparing for my dad’s arrival. Only about three more weeks and I’ll finally have a visitor!
Once again I am in Nairobi. I am writing this post from the comfortable confines of the Peace Corps office. I arrived in Nairobi yesterday to meet up with some other volunteers to celebrate Thanksgiving. A former PCV who now works for an NGO in Nairobi graciously invited us into her beautiful apartment so we could enjoy a feast. We also got to watch The Office! All of us were pretty excited for that.
The term ended on Wednesday as the parents came to pick up their kids that day. This term sure flew by. To wrap up the term I had to fill out forms for each student and write their marks (grades) in each of their report books. We had to compile a form to give to their parents. On the form I needed to list the things that they students needed to bring to school next term, the existing balances, and any medical fees that the student incurred over the term. I was stunned to see the ridiculously high balances for most of the students but I guess its not surprising as most of Kenya is very very poor. The school must accept the students even if their parents can not pay the school fees.
Now I have a pretty long break until the next school year starts in January. I’ll be in and out of Maua. I will continue to make some trips to Nairobi and Loitokitok to help out with training before they swear-in in January. Most importantly, my dad is arriving in Kenya just after Christmas and we’re both getting excited to climb Mount Kenya together and go on a safari.
OK I’m going to take a page out of RPCV Kira’s book.
Grab a piece of a paper and something to write with. Now, write down my address:
Matt Palma NJIA Special School
P.O. Box 436 - 60600
Maua, KENYA
Write me and tell me what you want on the blog!
Last week I had the opportunity to meet the new trainees upon their arrival to Kenya. Like I said before, its always nice to get out of here for a short break and spend some time in a decent hotel. It was an interesting experience to see them right as the got off the plane. I felt like an RA in a dorm and they were a bunch of incoming freshmen. They had many questions about Kenya and what its like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was happy to answer any questions they had. It reminded me of myself a year ago, moving to Kenya to become a PCV and really not having any expectations. While it was nice to meet them all right away, a few days afterwards I came down with the flu (possibly this swine thing everyone’s talking about). But everything is fine now.
Unfortunately I missed some class time being away in Nairobi and then getting sick. I did manage to give the kids a bunch of work to do before I left such as some worksheets and word finds that I made to keep them busy while I was gone. We have also been working on a sweet little art project that I am realizing will go a long way.
I handed out two pieces of construction paper to each student. Beforehand I told them that I was going to pick the colors so there would not be any fighting. Once everyone had their construction paper they had to fold them over. This gave me an opportunity to review a prior ‘whole and halves’ fraction lesson. Then they had to share my scissors and cut along the folded line. Then they had to switch one half of each color with each person sitting to either side of them. In the end everyone had four different colored halves which we proceeded to staple into small books. Basically, I had this idea to make books out of the construction paper but I really had not figured out what I was going to have them write in the books.
Once we were finished making the actual books I realized that they really love them and they’re going to bring them home to show their parents and my hope is that they will look through them often over the holiday. I figured it would be a good way to put a lot of the information we learned and then they would constantly be reviewing it. So each page in the book had a simple topic. One page just listed the months of the year, another had the days of the week, another had time, another had ‘opposites’, another consisted of writing a word in plural form, whereas another was the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ and vowels. We’re not finished yet.
Earlier this week we had a visitor who fitted some of the students with hearing aids. I’ve noticed that a few kids have hearing aids but I never really investigated into the quality of the aid. I just assumed it was of very poor quality and was most likely some brand that I never heard of. Anyways, I went to introduce myself to our visitor and I starting asking him questions about the hearing aids. Much to my surprise they are the same brand as mine. The model isn’t the same but it was neat to see that same familiar Phonak brand that my family uses. One of the students that received a hearing aid is in my class. It has been interesting to see him function with it and hear new sounds. I try to test him in class by making different noises. When I do a very loud low hum he first thought it was a plane flying overheard. Since he has figured out that its me every time I hum he just smiles and points at me. During the middle of PE he heard some nearby farm machinery and his face lit up. I was curious to see just exactly what the sound from his aid was like so I did a little experiment and switched one of his with one of mine. Obviously we did not switch ear molds, I only switched the aids. It wasn’t bad, just different.
This post has nothing to do about my experience in Kenya. If you don’t care about the Green Bay Packers, then you probably do not want to continue reading.
You cannot call yourself a Packers fan and root for Favre at the same time. Especially today, this is a HUGE game, not because of the drama of Favre’s homecoming but because of the race for NFC North. I bleed green and gold. I have nothing but respect for Favre and as a Packers fan I truly appreciate everything he has done for our team over the years. He had a remarkable career in Green Bay and someday he’ll be inducted into the hall of fame as a Packer. He played for so long that I feel like I grew up with him. But those days are over. You can’t live in the past.
While I was sad to see Favre retire from the Packers, I agree with Ted Thompson’s decision to not let Favre come back. Favre poured his heart out in an emotional press conference in which he said:
I know theres been a lot of comments and issues in the press lately about why I’m leaving, whether or not the Packers did enough, whether or not Ted and Mike tried to convince me to stay. None of those things have ANYTHING to do with me retiring. And thats from the heart.
If Favre was allowed back and the next offseason had another emotional retirement press conference, how would we know that it really is official? When is it final? We would have been left to the mercy of his waffling even after he has an emotional press conference and declares he is done.
Favre’s performance in the second half of last season proves that Thompson was right. Ted Thompson is one of the best general managers in the league and arguably the best judge of talent in football. He is to football what Billy Beane is to baseball. He builds his team through the draft which is the best way to do it especially for a small market team like the Packers. He has put together a great team, with a great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. We’re lucky to have Ted Thompson as our general manager and Aaron Rodgers as our quarterback.
Aaron Rodgers didn’t ask to be Favre’s replacement. Not only has he played brilliantly in his first two seasons as a starter but he has been a true professional ever since he was drafted. Many people thought he would go number one in the draft several years ago but he fell all the way down to the Packers. He even handled that embarrassing fall in the draft with class.
A lot of speculation has been made about if the fans are going to cheer for Favre or boo him. I say who cares? Just cheer loudly for Rodgers. He’s our quarterback now and he has done one hell of a job.
Last week my good friend Charlotte came by for a visit. She was in Nairobi helping to organize training for the new trainees. She had a few extra days so she made the trip north to Meru and Maua. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate as it was cold and rainy during her entire visit. But it was a good time. Charlotte is deaf and I made her visit every class and brag about herself. It is very important for the students to see a successful deaf person. They and I miss her already. It was a fun few days.
Today and tomorrow we have exams. This is always a frustrating and disheartening time because as I have mentioned before the tests are really pathetic and therefore are a terrible measure of the students’ abilities. There was one entertaining moment in the day when a lizard came into the classroom and scared everyone. It caught everyone off guard but its not nearly as terrifying as a bird flying into the classroom.
Next Wednesday I will be joining a few other volunteers to meet the new trainees at the airport. I am very excited! I haven’t left my site at all in the past two months and I need a break. The arrival of the new trainees reminds me of how I felt when I first arrived in Kenya. I had no idea what I was in for. I can’t believe its been almost one year.
Happy Halloween!
As you may have noticed there have been some additions to the website. There finally is an ‘about me’ page and a neew page, The Harambee Project. I am working in collaboration with Books for Africa, a nonprofit organization and four other current and returned volunteers to bring over 20,000 books to schools throughout Kenya. I recently met with the Board of Governors at my school to make sure they help with funding to build the library. Books for Africa is giving us a sea container of books but we need to raise the money to bring the books here. Please take the time to read about the project. If you have any questions please let me know and I will do my best to answer them. Also, thanks to Andy Camann for updating the website!
On Tuesday we started multiplication. The kids are pretty good at their multiplication tables but I wanted to make sure they actually understand the concept. The former volunteer, Sharon, previously brought with her some interlocking math cubes that have been a blessing. I use them for everything in math and they are such a great visual.
The simple problems they understood fairly quickly. It was a hilarious moment when I said that 2×3 is the same as 3×2. First I showed them 2 stacks each consisting of 3 cubes then I slowly changed the stacks into three stacks consisting of 2 cubes each. They were blown away. Jaws dropped, arms were in the air…What a spectacle.
A side note, I endured another death defying matatu ride into Maua earlier this week. Pray for me, seriously. Those drivers are crazy.
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