Comments on: Deaf Games 2009

By: Greg Husbands

Greg Husbands — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:00:57 +0000

Hi Paul, loved your blogs. I hope you had a great birthday. I went to Elise’s graduation and it was awesome. Had a great sushi dinner the night before. Elise looked just beautiful and is really a wonderful lady. We miss you dearly and hope you had some sort of celebration for your birthday. I left you a phone message on your 916 number, hope you get it. Hang in there you are doing a wonderful job!
Take Care and love you
Greg

By: Nicolas Read

Nicolas Read — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:12:49 +0000

Happy Belated Birthday!!!

By: Allie

Allie — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:38:41 +0000

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Love hearing about your time over yonder-so amazing how I scoff at my LA tap water without even thinking about the fact that I at least HAVE running tap water! Gives quite a bit of humble perspective. We miss you over here! Hope you had a great birthday and can’t wait for the next blog….
XO~Allie~

By: Alejandra

Alejandra — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:43:30 +0000

Paul– Happy birthday!! I hope your day is yummy-food filled. I was so happy to hear about the fantastic time you and sister had together. Sounded incredible–I’m so happy for you two!

By: elise

elise — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:02:06 +0000

hey! happy birthday again! We just found the note from erinrose and a really cool picture of you on land/water I can not really tell what you are standing on….but anyways its a note saying that u wanted me to try those things for cooking im going to have some tea today because i was singing too much in the car and now my throat is sore. Love you. P.s I love how that place is called ONE LOVE

By: Jebb

Jebb — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:21:52 +0000

1. I’m proud of you.
2. Watch out for pirates, even in the swimming pool.
3. What’s up with Mark’s comment? Half a world away and he’s still bothering you about his computer. What a jerk.

Happy birthday Paul, miss you.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:12:30 +0000

Wow, 1992! You are correct about the yellow building being my home. It’s actually a triplex, as someone else lives downstairs and a couple lives upstairs. It sounds like the staff it totally different so many things will remain a mystery, but here’s another theory: maybe Blair built an extension to the woodshop? His name is in the outside concrete surrounding the covered outdoor area. There are also various chalk drawings inside the woodshop that are so well done that I think they’ve been there for a decade, because everyone is afraid to erase them… maybe Blair’s doing?

By: Carey Corson

Carey Corson — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:43:34 +0000

I’ve had some time to go back and read earlier blogs, and see that the woodshop IS still there. Interesting how the story of the woodshop has changed through the years. I left a note on the earlier blog about how the woodshop and tools were already there when I arrived in 1992. The tale I had been told was that the Danish had donated the tools and Christian Children’s Fund had built the workshop. I’m not sure that’s any more accurate than the tale of “Blair the VSO volunteer”. If James the bookkeeper is still there, he would probably be a reliable source.

By: sean marc lee

sean marc lee — Sun, 10 May 2009 09:21:14 +0000

hey paul…

seems like so long ago we lived on virginia… now you’re on the other side of the world!

just thought i’d drop by and say hello.

-sean

By: Carey Corson

Carey Corson — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:53:19 +0000

I just found this site. I was the very first volunteer at your site, back in ‘92.

I’m assuming that the yellow building in background of the volleyball pictures is the apartment they had promised to build for my residence when I was there. They never got around to building it, and I spent one year in a room at the end of the boys dorm and another in an apartment in Old Town. I’ve lost touch with everyone I worked with at the school and am assuming that no one is still there from the time that I was stationed there.

As these things usually go in Peace Corps, there were a number of mixups and misunderstandings, and I never made it to the classroom, but was able to open the woodshop while I was there. Is the woodshop still being used?

As for your comments about the standardized testing, thus it ever was. When I was there the kids were able to copy entire, neatly printed note books on all the core subjects, but were unable to read more than a word or two of what they had written.

Carey Corson, Deaf Ed, Ziwani School for the Deaf, 1992-94

By: Areba Collins

Areba Collins — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:11:06 +0000

Was this after or before track it was discovered to be a fake and eventually wound up?

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:02:15 +0000

Thanks everybody for the kind words. It was a tough week, and my time off in Nairobi has definitely been good for me.

The water problem was not simply financial, unfortunately. The water trucks had been ordered but just didn’t come in time. There isn’t really a culture of urgency here, even when dehydrated children are involved. People accept it here with a kind of fatalism, which I suppose is just a product of having no perceived control. This is something that is foreign to me and one of the reasons that weeks like this one can be so frustrating.