Before I write about that I'll go back a few days to meeting up with my cohort in Philly, since I'm sure my mother wants ALL the details. :o) I have a bad head cold right now so I'm not feeling very articulate or creative but I will try not to make this too dull. Our time in Philly was short and mostly filled with staging and orientation details. We had a 5 hour staging session on Monday where staff from Peace Corps in D.C. led us through exercises meant to remind us of the goals of the PC mission and to help us remember why we chose to do this in the first place. The application process can take a really long time, I submitted my own application in April 2011, so it's helpful to revisit our motivation for applying and to clarify our own goals, expectations and worries about the next couple of years. We now have a handy workbook to refer to when we're all alone at our sites wondering why the heck we did this to ourselves!
I've discovered the best way to survive a 15-hour flight - don't sleep the night before. The PC had hired a bus to pick us up in Philly and drive us to JFK for our 11:15 am flight. They scheduled in a gigantic buffer of time which meant we had to be down in the hotel lobby at 2:30am. There didn't seem to be much point in sleeping, especially since my body was still on CA time, so I puttered around that night trying unsuccessfully to port my mobile number to Google voice (enter the infinite loop of buggy Google software) and stayed up until it was time to meet up in the lobby. I had volunteered to be a group leader for the journey so I had to show up a little bit early. Fortunately, that role was quite easy. I couldn't sleep on the bus and was excited to be traveling through Manhattan at 4:30 in them morning, which looked pretty sleepy, IMO. We arrived at the airport at 5 am to learn that the ticket counter didn't open until 7:30 am. I met a South African woman in line who's husband worked for the UN so she had lots of interesting stories to tell and the time flew by. At the check-in counter I discovered the rigid check-in policies of South African Airways and had to check one of my carry-on bags as it was DOUBLE the weight limit for carryon baggage. Oops! I've never been a light packer, and this time is no exception. I managed to sleep for most of the first 12 hours of our 15 hour flight to Johannesburg, waking only to eat dinner, and only watched one movie. I was dreading the long flight but being sleep-deprived made it tolerable. That and melatonin! Our landing in the Jo'berg airport was a little scary. We were coming in for a landing and as we were nearing the ground the plane suddenly accelerated and banked upward. Turns out there was a flock of birds between us and the landing strip so we had to abort that landing. This made us a little late for our connecting flight to Nairobi but they were not going to let the plane leave without 28 of its passengers so we made it just fine. I had a window seat on the flight to Nairobi and I spent most of my time looking out the window staring at the African landscape. I saw a big lake that I think was Lake Malawi and at one point had the most amazing view of Kilimanjaro peaking over the clouds. Beautiful!
Getting off the plane in Nairobi was an incredible experience. Some of the Peace Corps staff were waiting for us at the end of the gate exit holding a Peace Corps sign and beaming at us. I felt so welcomed and so excited to be part of this community of people and couldn't stop smiling. In a break from tradition, ALL of my bags made it to Nairobi but unfortunately some of my cohort weren't so lucky. They had rented two buses to transport us and all of our luggage and we had our first experience with the traffic of Nairobi. On the way to the conference center where we're now staying we saw trees full of cattle egrets and their nests and lots and lots of Marabou storks hanging out on signs and power lines and in trees. They're huge and creepy looking and were everywhere. I was in heaven. I know I'm here to do a job but I'm excited to be stepping into a whole new world of bird life.
We're staying at a conference center where we each have our own rooms, unlike in Philly where we had roommates, and have hot showers and reliable electricity and internet. This will soon change so I'm relishing it. Training the last two days has been mostly paperwork and general overviews on the topics of health, safety and security, teaching and our home stay experience. The Kenyan teaching expert who came to speak to us spoke so passionately about teaching and the education system in Kenya and made us all feel passionate about our own roles here in Kenya. First, we need to get through 10 weeks of training!
I'm running out of time to write about the rest. There are lots and lots of lovely birds all over the center where we're staying and I've been shamelessly walking around with my binoculars around my neck. There are other bird lovers in my group and others who are interested so I'm in good company. My colleagues will be pleased to know that I have gained some notoriety as the person who worked on the Human Genome Project. I forget that this might seem cool to people as it was just a job to me for many years. I appreciate the reminder that I was part of science history. We started our Kiswhaili lessons yesterday and practiced greeting one another. "Habari yako?" "Nzuri sana" Everyone tells me it's an easy language to learn. I hope that's true. We went to a Nairobi mall yesterday where we all picked up mobile phones and and experienced our first matatu rides. My number is +254 0703 764 160 so feel free to call. It's free for me when you call and I would love to hear from you.
Today we learn about water treatment and then we're off to Loitoktok, our training town. We've been a group of 28 so far but 8 or 9 of those folks are Deaf Education volunteers who will be training in a different town so, sadly, we'll be split up. One of our volunteers is deaf and it's so amazing to see the way he's supported by Peace Corps. Tomorrow we meet our host families, the people we'll be staying with for the next 10 weeks. I am excited and apprehensive and ready to jump in, I just hope that my head full of snot clears up soon. Being sick has made this experience even more of a challenge as I'm a bit of a whiny sick person and would much rather be sleeping all day but one of my fellow trainees, Amy, a Wisconsin native also, has been taking good care of me and I'm soldiering on.
I must sign off now as I really need to eat breakfast before they stop serving it. I won't have much internet access while in Loitoktok so updates will be a rarity but that doesn't mean that you can't contact me. I can receive text messages on my phone, free for me, and would love love love to get packages and letters. I could really use some blister pads as some of my shoes seem to be bothering me. :o) The mailing address is
Andrea Aerts
c/o Peace Corps Kenya
P.O. Box 698
00621, Nairobi, Kenya
So that's it. Just a litany of details. As I said, this head cold has just wiped me out. My cohorts have gotten together in the evening to hang out, swap movies and ebooks and I've been in my room sleeping. This will all clear up soon, though. Until then, I rest when I can. More later...
No comments:
Post a Comment