note: the title is from the movie Zoolander for those in bewilderment.
I arrived in Kenya a few weeks ago but not without a minor heart attack in the process. I took a shuttle from where I was staying with my friends in South Africa to Johannesburg, where my plane was due to leave. After a four hour or so ride filled with quality South African morning talk shows, we arrived at an airport. In a half asleep state I looked around and saw signs littered with “Tambo International Airport”. It reminded me a bit of the airport when I first flew into SA, but I figured there was no way it was Johannesburg International Airport; we must have been to one of the other airports in Jo’burg. The shuttle moved on and right as we left the airport I started getting a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. I looked down at my ticked and it said my destination was “TB”, presumably short hand for Tambo. I got a strong feeling that I had booked my ticket for the wrong airport and that with one and a half hours until my flight I was going to miss it. My ticket was neither changeable or refundable, I had a connecting flight that I couldn’t easily change. Things were bad. I asked the driver if we were going to Jo’burg (I meant airport) and he assured me that we were. Well sure enough we arrived in Jo’burg… but not at the airport. I hopped and said “I know this may sound like a really dumb question, but are we going to Jo’burg International?”. He respond with both a look of pity and suppressed humor and told me that was the airport. As it turns out Joburg International is called Tambo International. Luckily he was turning around and going back in the airport so he agreed to take me for free which was really nice. I arrived at the airport about an hour before my flight (a mere 2 hours later than I was supposed to) and raced to the gate to catch my flight. I guess the moral of the story would be to learn the name of the airport you are flying from… something we never learned in high school.
Anywho here I am now in the amazingly beautiful Shimoni, Kenya. It boasts only 2 roads and is actually smaller than Falls Church if you could believe such a place to exist. I’m here with an organization called GVI who runs several programs from here. There is a Marine program which studies the local marine life as well as a forest program where they take data and observations of the surrounding forest and it’s inhabitants. Undoubtedly the most important, the one I’m doing, is community. Normally volunteers do a 5 or 10 week expedition in which they rotate between forest, marine and community but I elected to just do community for 9 weeks. Community is typically done on Wasini island with the local village and school (when I say local I mean the camp where we stay shares its fence with the school grounds), but at the moment there are no other volunteers here since there is a 2 week break between expeditions. I spent a week or so teaching on the island but since there is no one is on the island, the staff, interns etc are all on the mainland. This leaves me as the only member of community and I’ve been placed with a teaching position at The Shimoni Base Academy. The school is only 2 months old and seems as if it was built and thought of in less time. The school consists of 5 grade levels (each with a varying amount between 5 and 15 kids) and only 2 or 3 teachers. As a result the kids spend most of the day in the classroom doing what is apparently learning. The first time I walked in to introduce myself I popped my head into a classroom just to say hi and was immediately asked by one of the staff members if I wanted to teach that class. Feeling a bit surprised I declined and said I would start teaching the next day. So I looked at the next section in Standard (standard=grade) 5’s text book, went back to base and made a killer lesson plan. I walked into school the next morning and sure enough there was already a teacher in there. This after I explicitly said to the principal the day before that I was going to teach the class. I was then ushered into the standard 1 classroom and given their textbook sans lesson plan or anything. With only a basic TEFL (teaching English as foreign language) training course, I went in ready to rock and roll. The result was quite the opposite. I manage to scrape through the 40 minute class but it was in no way my proudest teaching moment.
From there on things have been going much better. I’m teaching 3 classes of an hour so a day in either English, maths, socials studies or science. The kids are really well behaved and for the most part are really excited to learn. Both GVI and the school have been interested in me doing clubs etc with the school so I arranged with the principal (principle?) to have lunch one afternoon. I showed up at the school to meet him, and sure enough he wasn’t there. I asked the secretary where he was and she had no idea. I got his number and called him only to be informed that he was “very far away” and would “be back tomorrow”. This from the man running the school. So the next day we met and he was actually a really nice guy, obviously with punctuality not being his strong suit. In the end we figured out that I’m going to be teaching adult English classes 4 or 5 times a week, which I’m really looking forward to. I’m also going to be starting a reading club, so the kids can learn to read good, along with an environmental club. So that along with regular classes is my plan for the next few months and I’m really excited about it.
Obamarama is out of control here. I fear wearing my Obama shirt in public for the barrages of “Obama!” I face from every single person I pass by. The local food here is really really good- the fish is fresh caught and coconuts cost only the equivalent of a US dime! My mom’s coming to Kenya this week for work stuff so she’s going to come visit me for a weekend so it’ll be super nice to see her and get all the delicacies from home she’s brining (in that order ofcourse!) Thanks to everyone who’s emailed me or posted comments - it’s really nice hearing from everyone. I’ll try to update in a week or so but if the meeting with the principal has taught me anything, its that things in Africa can be quite unreliable at best.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Back into the world of internet!
Hey everyone,
Let me start by saying that me being able to get on the internet every few weeks was a total lie - in the past 2 months I've only been able to get online once! I left CARE (the baboon sanctuary) yesterday and via a drive the Kruger National Park I'm staying with family friends in South Africa for a few days.
My stay at CARE was a different experience to say the least, but definitely different in a good way. There were about 600 baboons in captivity and a wild troop of about 400 that enjoyed waking us all up around 5 in the AM by playing and and running around on the roof our house (the mountain lodge). There were about a dozen or so fellow volunteers and we dealt primarly with 2 troops of baby and infant baboons. Days started at around 630 AM everyday (!) and ended around 545 PM and days of the week hardly existed; the weekends were treated just like any other weekday. Coming in this all seemed pretty overwhelming to me and it took a while to become fully adjusted to the day to day workings of the center.
I had 3 or 4 shifts a day with the babies, which meant sitting in with either of the 2 troops for an hour at a time with 1 or 2 other volunteers. As soon as I walked into the hok (cage in afrikaans) I was greeted by the more boisterous males jumping on me and the more timid females coming up to me and presenting. It amazed me how I was able to develop friendships
An hour later I've found myself not having typed a word and instead spent some well earned sidetracking on facebook.. some things never change from high school apparently.
Anyways, what I was trying to say was that after a few weeks or so of being at CARE I had actually made friendships with the baboons. When all the volunteers went in to the hoks to take the babies into the sleeping room at the end of the day, there were a handful of baboons that would jump straight to me every day. When they were tired they would take naps on me and when they felt the need to go the bathroom it would be somewhere in my lap ("crotch pee" was the term lovingly given) or on my shoulder. The babies were given bottles and food four times a day and we the volunteers had to prepare the bottles and cut up mangos, watermelons, sweet potatoes etc into monkey friendly pieces. The milk bottles were composed of the ever delicious river water and a formula powder (which tasted delicious by the way). It was really cute/bizzare at first to see baby baboons drinking from a bottle just like humans and to see the baboons with foster moms wearing the same diapers as human babies.
In my stay there were only a few baboons with foster moms and they slept, showered and in general lived their lives with the foster moms. This meant that when I woke up in the morning it was an everday occurance to see a baby baboon running across the dining with their moms chasing after them.
When I say dining room I use it in the broadest of context. The lodge where we all stayed was in effect a building with in a really big cage (not too settling during a lightning storm). There were no walls to the main 'dining room' just a chain link fencing seperating us from a would be sea of wild baboons in our kitchen. Our lines for drying laundy were enclosed in the back of the house and evernow and then a wild one would reach his hand through the fence and steal an article or two from the line; I was waiting to see a baboon wearing boxers and a tshirt running around the center but unfortunately this never happened. There was a full grown tree slyly situated in the center of the lodge and it took me a while to comprehend that there was in fact a big tree growing through the house I was living in.
Most days passed without too much drama, but when there was drama it happened big time. I think my most exciting moment of the trip was when we found a black mamba living in the house. During dinner someone had gone upstairs and found it tucked away in the corner of the bathroom and unfortunately we have to kill all the snakes we find because they're too big a risk to the humans and the baboons alike and its not feasiable to relocate them. At this point everyone was freaking out and one of the staff went and grabbed the 'snake gun' but when he went upstairs to send the snake six feet under, it had dissapeared. This only added to the hysteria because everyone walks around at night when it would be hard to see the snake. A few minutes later he went back upstairs and it had reappeared. A few minutes later we heard a loud bang, and if I thought people were freaking out earlier, they had turned into hyperdrive now. I heard an ear splitting cry of "oh my god its next to the fridge!" followed by an undecipherable slew of obscenities: the snake had started falling through the floor boards. Inch by inch the deadliest snake in Africa was slowing emerging, and it showed no signs of slowing down. The thing was just under 9 feet long! The snake was still moving and no one was sure whether or not it was alive or not. This is because their muscles keep on spasming for 10 or so minutes after they die so it's hard to tell if a snake is dead instantly or not. The staffer with the gun came sprinting downstairs to a kitchen covered with snake blood and a questionably dead black mamba. He looked at it (much closer than any of us were willing to venture) and sure it enough it was dead. That night when I woke up and had to go the bathroom, but I figured I'd tough it out until morning.
I have to wrap up the post but I hope I was able to give everyone a glimpse into my stay at CARE. I was really sad to say bye and leave all the amazingly awesome babies with whom I'd made close friendships with, as weird as that may sound. Animal Planet did a show on the center and you can find most of it here: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/28870-growing-up-baboon-baboon-babies-personalities-video.htm. I may post up some pictures/videos soon.
Tomorrow I'm heading off to Kenya and I'm really excited about for it. I also have no idea what to expect; the place is only accessible by boat and the only electricity in the lodge is solar powered so it will definitely be a change from home. I've also never taught large groups of people, especially those who don't speak english natively so it should be really interesting. I'm not sure how the internet access will be in town but I'll post when I can.
I hope my rambling made sense and theres a lot more that I could say but I've been surfing the web all day (I gotta make up for lost time right?) and after not really having seen a computer screen for 2 months I don't have the web surfing stamina I used to.
I'll be posting next from Kenya!
Let me start by saying that me being able to get on the internet every few weeks was a total lie - in the past 2 months I've only been able to get online once! I left CARE (the baboon sanctuary) yesterday and via a drive the Kruger National Park I'm staying with family friends in South Africa for a few days.
My stay at CARE was a different experience to say the least, but definitely different in a good way. There were about 600 baboons in captivity and a wild troop of about 400 that enjoyed waking us all up around 5 in the AM by playing and and running around on the roof our house (the mountain lodge). There were about a dozen or so fellow volunteers and we dealt primarly with 2 troops of baby and infant baboons. Days started at around 630 AM everyday (!) and ended around 545 PM and days of the week hardly existed; the weekends were treated just like any other weekday. Coming in this all seemed pretty overwhelming to me and it took a while to become fully adjusted to the day to day workings of the center.
I had 3 or 4 shifts a day with the babies, which meant sitting in with either of the 2 troops for an hour at a time with 1 or 2 other volunteers. As soon as I walked into the hok (cage in afrikaans) I was greeted by the more boisterous males jumping on me and the more timid females coming up to me and presenting. It amazed me how I was able to develop friendships
An hour later I've found myself not having typed a word and instead spent some well earned sidetracking on facebook.. some things never change from high school apparently.
Anyways, what I was trying to say was that after a few weeks or so of being at CARE I had actually made friendships with the baboons. When all the volunteers went in to the hoks to take the babies into the sleeping room at the end of the day, there were a handful of baboons that would jump straight to me every day. When they were tired they would take naps on me and when they felt the need to go the bathroom it would be somewhere in my lap ("crotch pee" was the term lovingly given) or on my shoulder. The babies were given bottles and food four times a day and we the volunteers had to prepare the bottles and cut up mangos, watermelons, sweet potatoes etc into monkey friendly pieces. The milk bottles were composed of the ever delicious river water and a formula powder (which tasted delicious by the way). It was really cute/bizzare at first to see baby baboons drinking from a bottle just like humans and to see the baboons with foster moms wearing the same diapers as human babies.
In my stay there were only a few baboons with foster moms and they slept, showered and in general lived their lives with the foster moms. This meant that when I woke up in the morning it was an everday occurance to see a baby baboon running across the dining with their moms chasing after them.
When I say dining room I use it in the broadest of context. The lodge where we all stayed was in effect a building with in a really big cage (not too settling during a lightning storm). There were no walls to the main 'dining room' just a chain link fencing seperating us from a would be sea of wild baboons in our kitchen. Our lines for drying laundy were enclosed in the back of the house and evernow and then a wild one would reach his hand through the fence and steal an article or two from the line; I was waiting to see a baboon wearing boxers and a tshirt running around the center but unfortunately this never happened. There was a full grown tree slyly situated in the center of the lodge and it took me a while to comprehend that there was in fact a big tree growing through the house I was living in.
Most days passed without too much drama, but when there was drama it happened big time. I think my most exciting moment of the trip was when we found a black mamba living in the house. During dinner someone had gone upstairs and found it tucked away in the corner of the bathroom and unfortunately we have to kill all the snakes we find because they're too big a risk to the humans and the baboons alike and its not feasiable to relocate them. At this point everyone was freaking out and one of the staff went and grabbed the 'snake gun' but when he went upstairs to send the snake six feet under, it had dissapeared. This only added to the hysteria because everyone walks around at night when it would be hard to see the snake. A few minutes later he went back upstairs and it had reappeared. A few minutes later we heard a loud bang, and if I thought people were freaking out earlier, they had turned into hyperdrive now. I heard an ear splitting cry of "oh my god its next to the fridge!" followed by an undecipherable slew of obscenities: the snake had started falling through the floor boards. Inch by inch the deadliest snake in Africa was slowing emerging, and it showed no signs of slowing down. The thing was just under 9 feet long! The snake was still moving and no one was sure whether or not it was alive or not. This is because their muscles keep on spasming for 10 or so minutes after they die so it's hard to tell if a snake is dead instantly or not. The staffer with the gun came sprinting downstairs to a kitchen covered with snake blood and a questionably dead black mamba. He looked at it (much closer than any of us were willing to venture) and sure it enough it was dead. That night when I woke up and had to go the bathroom, but I figured I'd tough it out until morning.
I have to wrap up the post but I hope I was able to give everyone a glimpse into my stay at CARE. I was really sad to say bye and leave all the amazingly awesome babies with whom I'd made close friendships with, as weird as that may sound. Animal Planet did a show on the center and you can find most of it here: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/28870-growing-up-baboon-baboon-babies-personalities-video.htm. I may post up some pictures/videos soon.
Tomorrow I'm heading off to Kenya and I'm really excited about for it. I also have no idea what to expect; the place is only accessible by boat and the only electricity in the lodge is solar powered so it will definitely be a change from home. I've also never taught large groups of people, especially those who don't speak english natively so it should be really interesting. I'm not sure how the internet access will be in town but I'll post when I can.
I hope my rambling made sense and theres a lot more that I could say but I've been surfing the web all day (I gotta make up for lost time right?) and after not really having seen a computer screen for 2 months I don't have the web surfing stamina I used to.
I'll be posting next from Kenya!
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