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Rwanda!

So here I am at my first Internet cafe of the trip. Since leaving Mombasa I’ve hiked around the Kakamega rainforest, played cards by a roaring fireplace, rafted the Nile for two days, relaxed on a small island in Uganda, and visited the Rwanda genocide memorial.

For know I’m in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and basically the furthest point from home that I’ll get. Tomorrow it’s back East again, with a possible ferry and train ride lying ahead in Tanzania. I’ve posted a few photos to the pics page for now, but those are just random phone pics, and I wont be able to post the pics from my real camera until I get back.

It’s been interesting to compare the cultures of the nearby countries to the one I’ve become so familiar with in Kenya, and Mombasa specifically. Uganda is pretty similar I think, although Kampala had some scary huge birds all over the place. They’re some kind of scavenger crane, and their presence is suspicious. Is there more death in Kampala than normal?

Rwanda is influenced by the French language and Belgian culture. At least in the capital, things can get incredibly sophisticated. People are stylishly dressed, public transportation seems to obey laws in general, and I’ve already indulged in fondue and frog’s legs!

Well, there’s your news update for now. More detail to follow, stay tuned…

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Mtwapa

Deaf Games 2010

First off, you can all rest assured that I have not died of an eye infection, nor have I been held for ransom in any of the countries I listed in my vacation plans.  Rather, my infection went away with some eye drops, and my vacation plans have changed so as to disclude DRC, so the latter is less likely to happen.

Last week was the annual Deaf Games competition.  You may remember my frustrations with this event last year.  This year was better, though.  It was held at a different school where we never ran out of water, and I didn’t need to pack a big group of volunteers into my tiny house.  Also, I’m more confident in my sign language, so I was able to roam around more and interact with students without embarrassment.

The games were held in Mtwapa, which is a seedy roadside town of clubs and prostitutes about a half hour north from Mombasa.  The school is about a half hour walk from the road, though, so it’s in a more comfortable village setting, closer to the ocean.

So, without further ado, a photo tour of the games:

Here’s one of my vocational students chasing after the ball.  My vocational boys played against the nearby secondary school boys.

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Here’s a girl mimicking my camera use:

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A boy enjoying the free water:

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The scoreboard: Mombasa didn’t do so well at Track and Field.  I used to run track, and I can relate to the feeling.

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A thumbs-up from one of my class 3 art students:

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One of the runners who fainted mid-race.  It’s a painful thing to see a person faint while running.  When it happened to one of my students, I ran and bought a bottled water, since they’re not normally given water in the first aid tent.

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The “obstacle course” (three-legged race, water-pouring competition, and potato sack race):

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This girl is one of the regulars who uses the computers in the evenings:

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An ostrich.  It’s a long story:

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Here are students dipping their hands right into the water source.  Many teachers and students got upset stomachs (AKA Crippling diarrhea) in the last few days of the competitions, no doubt due to poopy hands in the drinking water:

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A race:

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Here are the “micros:” students with Microcephaly.  I think there were five at the host school who would hang out during the games.  It’s a fascinating condition: all of their heads are small, but only some of the boys were verbal and had other bodies that were proportionate to their heads.  Other boys could not communicate at all and would mostly just drool and get angry and scream at people who were not nice to them.  They seem to be generally mistreated (I looked on as a headmaster from a visiting school shove one onto the ground hard) so the Micros seemed to latch on to me and the other volunteers, since we were nice to them.  They would often sit alongside us, drool and smile.

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Some of my school’s all-stars and my counterpart:

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Pilau (rice and potato) dinner, a real treat!  This boy is one of the adamant ones who normally comes to my house to insist I open the library at night:

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My counterpart in the truly beautiful dorms where the male teachers slept:

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Unloading the mattresses from the school bus in the background:

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The ride to the games.  Were the school that brought Pink Eye with us, which spread like a wildfire once we arrived.  Notice the teacher in the foreground with the sunglasses, trying to keep the infection from spreading:

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And on the of cute little students we left behind, who stayed and waited for her parents:

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It was a good time in general, but mostly for the kids.  I had good company with the other volunteers, but mostly the whole multi-day event consists of sitting around, which can be a bit boring.  Imagine a four-day track meet as an observer and you might get the idea.

I was a little affected by seeing one of the Micros pushed over by one of the headmasters, and I must admit it did put my into a sour mood.  It’s a different world here in so many ways, and that was a striking example of it.

I’ll probably be leaving home on Wednesday for my vacation.  I’ll try to update a bit on the road, but stay tuned to see if that really happens.  I also won’t put these photos or the others onto the Pics page until I get back.  Happy Easter!

Categories
Mombasa

Did a Whole Term Just Fly By?

In fact, yes.

Tomorrow will be the last day of classes for this term, followed by exams week.  I’ll be administering the same exams as last term, maybe just with the questions reordered, since it will provide an easy way to track progress.  This means, then, that tomorrow is the last real day of the term!

That’s not to say that it’s been a tough week, though, because it hasn’t.  On Tuesday morning I had a hard time opening my left eye, which is not normal.  A look in the mirror revealed that either I was transforming in the Toxic Avenger, or I had an eye infection.  As it turns out, I’ll never know, because the eye drops I stopped whatever it was from progressing.

It turns out that I wasn’t alone though—there had been a breakout at the school, with other teachers, students, even the cooks having disgusting, swollen red eyes.  I decided to stay home and wallow, and up until today (Thursday), I haven’t really interacted with my own students, since the thing seems highly contagious.

I did add a pictures section to the blog while I was hiding out in my house.  You should check it out, especially those of you who skim my blog and tolerate my ramblings just in case I post any more animal photos—now you can see all my new pictures consolidated in one place!  The link is the “Pics” tab, toward the top of the site.

I wasn’t a total blog nerd, though.  I snuck out yesterday evening and I saw Up in the Air, which was a good flick, but it made me a bit sad and lonely.  After the movie I shared a tuk-tuk back to town with a Chinese girl going to a nightclub.  The ride was a real language test.  Between me (English), her (Mandarin?), and the tuk-tuk driver (Swahili), we could barely communicate at all.  I did establish that she moved to Kenya to sell mobile phones, and/or she wanted my mobile number.  Maybe both.  Ironically, she’ll have to get in line, because the girl who works at the neighborhood Nokia shop just sent me a text message saying that she misses my “cute face!”  (It’s a long story, but don’t worry, her SMS was completely strange and unwarranted.)

So the adventures continue in Kenya.  Speaking of which, I’ll probably be taking a real vacation soon, and heading west to Uganda to raft the Nile, and then down to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo!  The plans aren’t done, but stay tuned.