Deaf Games 2009

It’s over.  Mostly.  A hundred or so children are still milling around the school, sleeping on top of piles of backpacks and mattresses, waiting for buses or matatus to come pick them up, but the tournament is formally over and the winners have been selected.  It’s been an interesting week, and one that is a bit difficult to write about because parts of it were difficult, but here we go:

DAY 1

The structure of the week was elaborate, but all I knew on the first day was this: other schools are coming, and there will be sports.  And dancing.  I am interested in or good at neither, so I can’t say that I was much help.  On the first day, the schoolchildren and teachers arrived from up the coast in various busses with mattresses strapped to the tops, and I greeted them at first because there were no other teachers around.  Then the questions began: “Where are we sleeping?  Where can the children put their uniforms?”  I clearly looked stupefied, so the children ran to another teacher’s home to get the answers.

Many volunteers arrived, a really good bunch of people, and I was informed that I would need to make arrangements for them in my home.  I had already cleaned in preparation, but I can’t say I was ready for six people to sleep here, mostly because there’s really not that much room.

Not all of the coastal volunteers made it on the first day.  When asked where the other volunteers were, the teachers from their school gave conflicting responses:

“Where is the volunteer from your school?
“He is very busy with work.”
”Working on what?  Are exams continuing?”
”No.  Exams are finished and the children are all gone.”
”So what is he working on?”
”He only has a little work.”
”So why couldn’t he come?”
”Because he is working.”

And so on.  As it turns out, in this case, I believe that the teachers simple only had so many slots for a free trip to Mombasa, so they didn’t let him come.

In another case, a teacher swore that the two volunteers wanted to stay behind and clean, which was bizarre, because they had sent text messages earlier saying that they were coming.  As it turns out, that teacher had told the volunteers that there was a change of plans and that they would be leaving the next morning.  And then she left without them.

The latter two volunteers made their own arrangements the next day, but this was how the week began.  I want to be careful not to judge based on some cultural norms that I am perhaps unaware of, but suffice to say that there were a number of “misunderstandings” like this between the volunteers and the Kenyan teachers.

The night after (most) everyone had arrived, there was a two-hour meeting to decide what all the teachers would do the next day.  I had previously been informed that I would be handling “athletics,” which made me wonder whether I would be leading jumping jacks or stretching exercises.  In the meeting, I came to realize that athletics means “track and field,” and that I and one other teacher would be handling javelin.

In high school I was OK at the 200-meter race, mostly because the really good runners all focused on the 100-meter dash.  I was so-so at long jump, and one time I think I threw a shotput ball, but everything I know about javelin I learned from “America’s Funniest Home Videos“ (or was it “Faces of Death?”), in which people who don’t pay attention get impaled.  I accepted my post and figured that the pieces would just fall into place.

There was one other major topic in the meeting, one that I was familiar with already because I live here.  “The Water Problem.”

The Water Problem comes up every single day during the morning assembly.  Put simply, there is not enough water.  Our school has a brackish (semi-salty) well that’s not good for much except washing the floors.  Otherwise we depend on a big truck that comes every so often and fills our tanks.  But:

a) Our tanks aren’t very big, and
b) The truck doesn’t come often enough.

Now, there is enough water for the children to drink.  And there is enough for cooking.  Sacrifices are made in other areas, namely bathing and clothes washing. 

And the choo.

The choo (rhymes with “no”) is the Kenyan toilet, and in my school they’re all connected through some sort of elaborate plumbing system.  This system seems to not work so well if there’s not enough water moving through it, and then nasty things start happening at the “deposit points.”  The “choo status update” is a part of every morning assembly, and the news is usually not good.

What I’m getting at is that we don’t have enough water for the 150 students we normally have.  For Deaf Games, there were 500 or so students sleeping here, and by the time we had the meeting on the first night, the school was already out of water.

DAY 2

We walked to the nearby track and the children set up tables and chairs for the teachers so they wouldn’t have to sit on the bleachers.  Javelin was the first field event, meaning it should happen in parallel with the first track event.  I carried the javelins out on the field with one other teacher, who talked about about the last year’s Deaf Games.  “Good,” I thought, “he’ll know what to do.”

After ten minutes of standing around in the hot sun, waiting for something to happen, the other teacher informed me that he would go get the students.  A half hour later I gave up waiting and I sat down off to the side in the shade.  This of course prompted the nearby teachers to inform me that I am sick, because I am sitting alone:

“You are not well.”
”No, I’m fine.”
”No, you are not well.  What is wrong?”
”Nothing, I’m fine.”
”I see you are alone.  Tell me what is wrong.”
”It’s hot.”
”You aren’t well.”
(no response from me)
”You are not well.”

Et cetera.   I walked back to the teachers near the bleachers, still carrying the javelins, and I sat down there.

I watched the races for a while, which are run barefoot and cause the children’s feet to blister and bubble.  A number of children also fainted because, despite the water bottles purchased to alleviate The Water Problem, running barefoot at noon on the equator requires a little extra hydration.

The walking race is not normally so strenuous, but without shoes it can be rough:

I won’t get into the details of the javelin event because it wasn’t my finest hour, but suffice to say that I walked on and off  the field a few times, and each time was left alone, holding the poles, wondering if my feet would swell up again from sun poisoning.  By the time the last child had thrown his pole, I was visibly frustrated and had become outwardly cranky toward the other teacher.  When we sat back down, another teacher asked us to consolidate the scores into two “top six” lists: one for boys and one for girls.  He asked this in English.  The other teacher, the one I had been short-tempered with on the field, then turned to me and said, “He wants you to make two lists of the top six.”

I wrote it out with a scowl on my face, and I felt sour the rest of the day.  This was not a day full of smooth cross-cultural sailing.

DAY 3

“Culture day” features all of the plays and dancing.  The venue was the cafeteria, and the intended audience in the small room was clearly not the other students, but rather the teachers, and more specifically, the judges.

A boy waits for the start bell while the judges make notes on the previous student’s monologue:

I was truly impressed with the monologues.  So much so that I really want to make it a point to record them next year and subtitle them.  They’re highly rhythmic, and honestly, intense, and I’m pretty jaded when it comes to monologues.  Other than that, one dance stood out from the rest as being a bit odd (it was Scottish), but super high on the cuteness factor:

I battled sleep most of the time, as there were no breaks, not even for lunch.  I escaped a few times because I didn’t want to offend by nodding off, but whenever I left, people would ask me why I’m running off to be alone, and if I stay, people point out how tired I look.

“You are very tired.”
”No, I’m fine.”
”No, you are very tired.  What is wrong?”
”Nothing, I’m fine.”
”I saw you looking very tired.  Tell me what is wrong.”
”It’s hot.”
”You don’t look well.”
(no response from me)
”You are very tired.”

Et cetera.

DAY 4

Sports.  This is the big day for everyone, and it was the easiest for me, because events were spread out so I could move around at my leisure.  There are four sports in the competition:

Tenni-Quid, although i don’t know how to spell it. (My house is in the background):

Volleyball (my house is in the background):

Soccer (My house is… you get the idea):

Netball (basketball without dribbling):

Basically, my house was surrounded by sporting events.  This made it hard to hide out at home when I wasn’t felling well, which pretty much all day.  I think the cafeteria food from the day before (made from big bags labeled RELIEF FOOD) had disagreed with me.  It apparently disagreed with the children, who had a real problem on their hands as a result.  Remember The Water Problem?  On sports day the children began to boycott their choos because they were so nasty.  This says a lot because I would never use them even when they’re supposedly working fine.  Anyhow, this meant they had two places to relieve themselves: around the periphery of the school, or in my choo.  My mid-afternoon mine was clogged and overflowing, and apparently kids had thrown rocks into it as well, for good measure.  Not a good day to have an upset stomach, as I did.

Presumably it was also a bad time to take a stroll along the school’s fence.

I decided in the midst of all this that I was just too exhausted and needed to sleep.  Of course, this decision coincided with the electricity going out, meaning the fans stop spinning, but I was so desperate for a break that I just slept in my own sweat.

DAY 5 (TODAY)

Volleyball first thing in the morning, followed by a lot of waiting around.  Apparently this is the time when the judges pick which students they will send to Kenya’s Western Province for the next round of competition.  Interestingly, the judges have all along not been looking for pick the best teams, but rather to pick the best individuals to create a sort of “Deaf Coast All-Stars” to send off to compete with the other provinces.  Perhaps this explains why I saw children getting really upset at themselves for mistakes while playing, even if their team was wining.

This selection process takes an indeterminate amount of time, so there was a lot of milling around (roughly five hours of it, actually) while waiting for the results.  This means a lot of signing with the kids, which consists mostly of:

(note: literal translations)

“Your nose red.”
”Yes, my whole face red.  Sunburn.  Javelin all day.”
”Nose red a lot.”
”Thanks.”
”Red nose.”
(no response from me)
”Your nose red.”

…and…

(pointing at my face)
”What?”
(pokes me in the face)
”What?”
”Dot face.”
”Huh?”
”You have dot on face.”
”Yes.  Name mole.”
”Dot face.”

Also, during the morning volleyball match, kids from the neighboring school threw a big rock at me to get my attention and it almost hit me.

Well, in any case, the announcement were made, the winners selected, trophies dispensed, and the losers shipped off to return to their schools and their homes.

The ceremony: (The winners’ names were read out from a list, then spelled out in sign by the interpreter, then if anyone recognized the name they translated it into the corresponding sign name, then the kids who recognized the sign name found the winner and pushed him into the middle to sit down.  Quite a process.)

REFLECTION:

What I’ve shared with you if a brief overview of the week and a number of anecdotes, but it’s difficult to convey the emotional challenges.  Much of this is language-related… my signing has not really improved much, so it’s exhausting to be thrown in with hundred of inquisitive children.  Also, seeing the older volunteers interacting so effortlessly with their students made me a bit jealous: most of my students weren’t there, and I’m not that close to them anyway.  So while everyone else was busy, or at least occupied with conversation, I spent these days floating around.  Staying at home would surely offend, but wandering around with no goal or plan or knowledge of what was happening each day only exhausted me, and benefitted no one.  I don’t like feeling unproductive or ineffective, and a whole week of it drives me crazy.

Next year, now that I actually understand the structure of this whole event, I intend to get more involved in advance so I don’t fall into this trap again.  The kids overall have a good time just because it’s such a unique social event, so it’s worth doing right.

And hopefully a year from now my signing will be a lot better.