Tag: ksl

Categories
Loitokitok

The Challenges Ahead

What am I worried about these days?  Well, let’s see:

  • Language: I am likely to test as "Intermediate" in KSL on the 31st.  I am regularly dreaming in sign language, but because training is in Loitokitok, where there is one deaf man in the whole town, our entire group is lagging compared to previous years.  I hope that when I go to my final site sometime around Jan 6, there will be a supportive deaf community to help me out.  I also know zero Swahili… basically only what’s on the inside cover of the Lonely Planet quick reference book.
  • Secondary project: The Peace Corps recommends that in my down time, rather than sitting around doing nothing, I should pursue a "Secondary Project."  Before coming here I anticipated that this might involve further development of the Adobe Flash sign language tutorials that I saw online, but…
    I do not yet have access to original source files.
    I am not sure what else might have been done already on this front.
    …so when I go to Nairobi for the swearing-in, I am going to scour the Peace Corps office to see what I can find.  There is an overall sense here that things got lost when everything shut down during the election violence, but there is another, most systemic, problem with "memory loss," that is, the lack of a structured year-by-year progress tracking for the overall deaf education project.  I worry that any progress I make might be forgotten in a few years— how can I help this organization to make sure my own work builds effectively on progress already made?  "Sustainability" is a key part of the Peace Corps’ mission!  Ken, the Country Director, seems keenly aware of the problem and has already taken some steps in organizing some of what’s out there, and he also mentioned some initiatives that I hope I can be a part of.
  • Connectivity: I’m getting pretty good at surfing the Internet on my phone, but I’m still seeking a better solution.  The fact that I got Skype Video to work with ErinRose makes me want a better laptop solution, because the pay-by-the-megabyte model would be painful for video chatting (and it’s also the reason you never see high-res photos on my blog).  There are now four mobile operators in Kenya and their data plans are shrouded in mystery and hearsay.  Ultimately I will wait until I move to my site to determine which carrier(s) are even viable, but it’s nonetheless frustrating to try to do research in advance.

Here is your reward for reading this post, a picture I took when walking home today from town, thinking about all this stuff.  You can see it raining on my home in the distance.

P1020574

And here is a picture I took in Ohio not long before I left for Kenya, at the 102nd Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show.  The goal is to grow the biggest pumpkin, but clearly this farmer had a secondary project of his own.  Perhaps there is a lesson for me here somewhere?

pumpkin heads

Categories
Mombasa

KSL

My Kenyan Sign Language is coming along.  A typical day in training
consists of morning KSL class, followed by some sort of health or
safety-related lecture, lunch, then a trip to a deaf school to interact
and watch classes in action.  Pre-lunch everything is pretty well
containd in the hotel.  To get to lunch we usually walk as a giant
group, moving through Mombasa like some fat albino snake, getting lots
of stares and the occasional shout.  People yell “Jambo” here at whites,
which means “hello,” but it’s reserved for our pleasure exclusively.
Sometimes other words are peppered in, like “Jambo Obama Hakuna Matada,”
which playfully mocks us as we pass.  I say playfully because I sense no
ill will.  It seems mostly like a way to be a funny guy in your group of
friends.  We rarely (as in single digit) see other white people.  I
generalize about he whiteness of our group, however, because the entire
group is not white, but the fact that the fat albino snake has a few
spots doesn’t draw any less attention.

Lunch is usually taken in a relatively small storefront (think
hole-in-the-wall Mexican food in San Diego).  The signs in town and the
menus are in English— I see very little Swahili in general, and as you
may have gathered, we are not in touristville.  I still have little
sense of what the menu items are, so I order at random, and with the
exception of the stinky pungent intestines with corn meal (eaten with my
hands, as customary), I haven’t had anything with a surprising taste.  I
usually get a cold Coke in a bottle with lunch.  There’s rarely AC
anywhere, and although I’m getting used to the oppressive humidity, a
cold Coke does wonders for my morale.  If only it were a Dr. Pepper…

From lunch we typically follow the existing volunteers, who are our
unofficial guides around town, as they flag a giant van that has enough
empty seats.  In Mombasa, at least 50% of traffic is made up of these
vans.  We pile in, and others come and go while we wait for our stop.
“Stops” happen whenever someone bangs the side of the van from the
inside to indicate they want off.  If there are too many empty seats,
the van’s tax collector jumps out and tries to get people to pile in to
fill it up again.  We each pay our 15 shillings (about 25 cents) and we
get out.

At school today I actually carried on a semi-effective conversation with
some new deaf adults.  I am still signing at baby-level, but it people
sign slowly and repeat a lot, I eventually seem to get it.  I am really
starting to enjoy “deaf sounds”  Deaf individuals obviously do not
depend on sound to communicate, but they still make them.  Laughing and
the like are more accentuated in some deaf individuals, often I think
because is is possible to do it while you continue to communicate.  In
the speaking world, it’s one or the other.  Similarly, sounds that I can
only describe as “squeals of delight” occur much more often.  They are
often quiet and sustained while the signing continues, which adds
another level of understanding for the hearing like myself, because it
conveys another level on top of linguistic and facial expression.  I
really enjoy the classroom for this reason.

We’re about to head to dinner as I write this offline (will post
later).   I visited Fort Jesus (no joke) earlier this evening and hope
to go back when there is more light to check it out and to get a better
view of the Indian Ocean!

Categories
Mombasa

Mombasa

I’m at an internet cafe in Mombasa.  First Internet for a while.  It’s slow and I’m not prepared (no USB stick in my pocket), so the longer what-I’ve-been doing post will have to wait.  Some highlights from my notes:

  • My goodbye present was amazing.  Thanks so much to everyone who called in.
  • They didn’t weigh or measure my bags AT ALL.  I’m sad now that we pulled so many things out at the last minute.
  • I drank a white port in Amsterdam during the layover– a final treat!
  • I sat next to the CEO of microcare.co.org during the 2nd flight– cool guy who gave good advice for a long life in Africa: “go to bed early” and “don’t eat salad.”
  • During the bus ride to Mombasa, we had to stop because GIRAFFES WERE RUNNING ACROSS THE ROAD.  Video to follow.
  • I already knew this, but Obama is HUGE here.
  • Mosquito nets over my bed in the hotel during training.  Emergency malaria meds in a kit courtesy of Novartis.

Today we visited 2 deaf schools around Mombasa.  My hair poofed up during the bus rides due to all the wind (needed because it’s HUMID), and the kids at the second school named me (meaning that this is my “sign name” for life, KSL, ASL, or otherwise).  My name goes like this: wiggle your fingers on your right hand while you trace your hand from the top of your scalp down toward your right ear.  Basically, indicate long curly hair.  They also named a girl in our group by tracing the shape of her scarf on her head.   Other volunteers will be named as time passes.  I like my name.

I really like the other volunteers.  There are a few of us who came from a multimedia background and we’re all hoping to apply it somehow here.

I’ll be in town for roughly a week before catching back up with the other trainees, at which point internet access will drop off even more.  I’ll try to over-post before that happens.  Wish me luck in learning Kenya Sign Language!