Slump and Bump

I’d be lying if I said I’ve been too busy to update my blog recently.  To be honest, I’ve been in a bit of a slump.

It might be health-related.  I managed to beat the giardia without the help of any medicine, but that was quickly replaced by a scary looking bump on my arm: a bug bite-turned-folliculitus-turned-staph infection that I’ve been taking antibiotics for ever since I went to the hospital last week, but nonetheless it stubbornly remains.  I think about how many infected wounds I see at the school here, and it’s no wonder that I managed to get one myself.  At least mine is being treated, but  I worry that this is a side effect of my tiny bucket baths, in which I use about three liters of water each day due to the shortage.  Perhaps my technique is not refined, so I’m not keeping clean enough?  Anyhow, I bought a more aggressive antiseptic to mix with my bath water.  (The popular brand here is for this is Dettol.)

The other problem may be isolation.  I talk to ErinRose every day, bless her heart, but otherwise I just have the Internet, and spending a lot of time on the Internet isn’t good for anybody.  With the exception of that daily phone call, I often pass entire days without speaking at all.  This doesn’t mean I’m not communicating—of course I’m signing with my students, but I’m still far from mastering sign language, so it doesn’t leave me feeling as connected as English does.

It also may be my frustration with the progress at work.  I have days when I do feel good about my time in the classrooms, but I also have days when I feel like no amount of confidence can turn me into a good teacher.  I have no idea how I ever could have had so many good teachers in my life.  It’s such an incredibly difficult job that I’m lucky I even had one.

The newest woodshop students are the source of much of my anxiety.  One is the brightest in the class, but he’s cocky and just further widens the range of abilities that I need to cater to.  The other student is the furthest behind, and he has one amazing ability: he’s really good at making me believe that he understands what I’m teaching.  Whatever I explain to him, he will sign back to me, quite accurately, indicating that he understands, then he will look down very intently at his paper, lifting his pencil as if about to write something, hovering it above the paper as if deep in thought, then he will wait for me to turn away, at which point he relaxes.  If I look back again, he’ll be sharpening his pencil with a razor blade, telling me that the pencil tip broke, and that after he sharpens it again, he’ll get back to work.  He can stall like this for hours, and it’s a tragedy, because he’s great at it, and it clearly is the product of years of practice, in which he’s tricked all his teachers into not teaching him.

Truth be told, on days when I’m feeling tired and defeated, I want to believe him.  But I can’t fall for that trap, because it’s a mirror of the larger problem here, which is the self-delusion of the entire network of aid organizations, in which solving real problems becomes so daunting that it becomes good enough to get the right statistics to show success, get a good photo op, and call it a day.  But I’ll leave this distressing topic for another time.

Enough of all this introspective business.  Here’s a video of some students practicing a poem for a local competition.  It’s signed word-for-word from the written poem, meaning that many of the kids don’t even know what they’re signing, but it’s an interesting peek into Deaf poetry if you’ve never seen it before.  That’s my yellow house in the background, and the girl in the foreground is the one that I tutor after school to show her how to use her laptop.

More recently, on July 3, I finished reading my book about all the US presidents, which gives all their mini-biographies in chronological order.  It was a dry read, full of bulleted lists, but fascinating.  Inspirational and depressing at the same time… if I’m going to be president, it looks like I either need to join the military or become a lawyer.

To celebrate my independence from this dense work of nonfiction, on July 4 I was coaxed out of town for the day (a rare event), and I left home in the morning to go to Kilifi, which is an hour north via matatu.  As I walked from my home to the matatu stage, I stumbled upon a July 4 parade.  I love surprise parades, and they appear to love me, seeking me out no matter where I go.

Here we are in Kilifi.  That’s me on the left, holding the camera.  We’re in a tuk tuk (3-wheeled motorcycle), and because it’s raining outside, there is extra plastic on the sides to protect us, as you can see.  Kenyans take the rain very seriously.  I would make a joke about wicked witches melting, but witchcraft is taken very serious here so I won’t.

When I got home I was welcomed by my rusty gate, which immediately fell off its hinge and refused to close.  Children could therefore enter my courtyard freely to peek in my windows or watch me bathe.  I did not like this idea, so I notified the school who promptly fetched the local welding duo.  They were here a few hours later, having pushed the welding equipment across town in a giant wooden cart, as is customary.  What was exciting to me was that I saw my first extension cord in Kenya, although as you can see, it’s just raw wire jammed into the outlet.

I am baffled that the welder didn’t wear glasses.  Sparks literally danced along his arm as he worked.

I was warned that if I looked into the light I would die, so, despite my disbelief, I squinted at the light, indirectly, through my camera.  I was fascinated later by the distortion the bursts of light caused in the photos.  That’s a really bright light.  Probably good that they warned me, even if I would have survived.