What Have I Been Up To Lately?
Book currently reading: God of Small Things, by Arundati Roy. A brilliant writer, a genius with words, highly recommended.
Music currently listening to: A bunch of MP3 mixes Lynn and her co-worker Joshua sent me. Thanks, y’all! I love them, cheeseball tunes and all. God bless the 80s.
Last movie watched: The New World, the “bonus” flick on a gladiators-themed, 8-movie DVD. God bless cheap (ahem*pirated*ahem) DVDs from Nairobi.
Last good movie watched: Spirited Away, for the second time. (Send Miyazake flicks! Princess Mononoke, Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service. Send Margaret Cho. Send Eddy Izzard. SATC. Six Feet Under. Anything except gladiator movies.)
Current project at work: Teaching a computer skills workshop. My sitemate Tony stopped by my office today and I said, “I’m teaching my co-workers how to turn on the computer.” He laughed. I was serious. My co-workers were pretty stoked to learn the word for “keyboard,” “monitor,” “CPU/hard drive,” and “mouse.” Today they learned how to minimize and maximize windows, how to drag and resize them, how to copy files to different folders, and how to type a letter. I won’t say it was two solid hours of gratification watching them get excited as they learned. The gratification was there, but it’s hard to describe what it’s like to teach in Kenya. It’s easier to rant about the failures of the education system here. About students who graduate from high school with the critical thinking skills of a primary school student. About students who always say they understand when they clearly don’t, because they’re afraid to ask questions for fear of being ridiculed, and when asked to articulate what they don’t understand, are unable to. About asking someone with a college education a simple question such as, “What is counselor supervision?” and getting the answer, “It’s for counselors.” Teaching this workshop has made me realize how smart some of my co-workers are, even though their chosen career is, for example, um, janitorial engineering. They ask questions that show they are trying to piece together some cause-and-effect relationships behind how these programs and functionalities work. The sad thing is that most of the time, and for most of their lives, they’ll never have the opportunity to realize their full potential. In most situations they’re not expected to, or their voice, their ideas and opinions are not valued, and therefore never requested, or even suppressed. So after awhile they just do what they’re told and keep quiet the rest of the time. It has really made me understand the value of an education – especially for women – and the value of money, in a way that I never have before.
Latest time-wasting craze: The daily sudoku puzzle in the paper.
Latest attempt to recreate the comforts of home: Tuesday night, when I had two other volunteers over for dinner. Earlier that day my co-worker had given me a giant bag of oyster mushrooms – yes, oyster mushrooms, which I didn’t think existed in Kenya. It turns out she’s friends with a group of mamas who grow oyster mushrooms and sell them as an IGA (income-generating activity), which means I now have a mushroom hookup. It was one of the happier moments of my Peace Corps service, up there with the first time I had a Javahouse espresso mocha chip sundae in Nairobi, and every time I get a letter or package or postcard in the mail (keep ‘em coming, folks, put a smile on your favorite PCV’s face today!) Dinner was pineapple curry and Justina’s special mushroom mystery surprise, followed by a (bad) selection from Tony’s gladiators DVD, a giant vat of popcorn and chocolate. By 10pm our tummies were full of uncommon non-Kenyan food, and our brains were full of a very bad movie about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, with lovely cinematography. Tony went home to put yeast in his mead. Really, it’s not a metaphor. He’s actually making mead. Neetha and I stayed up for another three hours gossiping in American (an actual language.) I LOVE BEING NEAR CIVILIZATION!! The next morning I made spinach-mushroom crepes, and Neetha said, “Oh my God, you made crepes!”
Current domestic source of befuddlement and mild insanity: Mysterious curls of poo on my walls. How does poo get on the wall? I thought I had a mouse but mice don’t run up the wall to poo. Hickory dickory dock. I get a lot of slugs, so maybe they’re leaving their poo on the walls. But there aren’t any slime trails around the poo, which makes me wonder if it’s coming from geckos. Whatever it is, it’s gross, and rude.
Still wondering: Should I have gone back to Nairobi a day early from Lamu to meet Barak Obama? He had a meet-and-greet with Peace Corps volunteers at the embassy. It’s the media coverage that’s killing me, along with hearing other volunteers rave about what it was like to meet him. Guess what I learned? Obama is charismatic as hell. Obama has a great sense of humor. Obama knows how to deflect idiotic questions. Dammit I missed him! Even today there was an article about him in the paper. Kenyans LOOOOVE this guy. Although they love him a little less after he gave a speech at Nairobi University saying that corruption and tribalism are crippling Kenya. Three weeks later politicians are still complaining that he was given misinformation about Kenya’s political scandals from the opposition party, and that his portrayal of corruption here was wrong, but nonetheless he should stop talking about things that are none of his business. Because the best way to deal with problems is to tell people to stop pointing them out.
Music currently listening to: A bunch of MP3 mixes Lynn and her co-worker Joshua sent me. Thanks, y’all! I love them, cheeseball tunes and all. God bless the 80s.
Last movie watched: The New World, the “bonus” flick on a gladiators-themed, 8-movie DVD. God bless cheap (ahem*pirated*ahem) DVDs from Nairobi.
Last good movie watched: Spirited Away, for the second time. (Send Miyazake flicks! Princess Mononoke, Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service. Send Margaret Cho. Send Eddy Izzard. SATC. Six Feet Under. Anything except gladiator movies.)
Current project at work: Teaching a computer skills workshop. My sitemate Tony stopped by my office today and I said, “I’m teaching my co-workers how to turn on the computer.” He laughed. I was serious. My co-workers were pretty stoked to learn the word for “keyboard,” “monitor,” “CPU/hard drive,” and “mouse.” Today they learned how to minimize and maximize windows, how to drag and resize them, how to copy files to different folders, and how to type a letter. I won’t say it was two solid hours of gratification watching them get excited as they learned. The gratification was there, but it’s hard to describe what it’s like to teach in Kenya. It’s easier to rant about the failures of the education system here. About students who graduate from high school with the critical thinking skills of a primary school student. About students who always say they understand when they clearly don’t, because they’re afraid to ask questions for fear of being ridiculed, and when asked to articulate what they don’t understand, are unable to. About asking someone with a college education a simple question such as, “What is counselor supervision?” and getting the answer, “It’s for counselors.” Teaching this workshop has made me realize how smart some of my co-workers are, even though their chosen career is, for example, um, janitorial engineering. They ask questions that show they are trying to piece together some cause-and-effect relationships behind how these programs and functionalities work. The sad thing is that most of the time, and for most of their lives, they’ll never have the opportunity to realize their full potential. In most situations they’re not expected to, or their voice, their ideas and opinions are not valued, and therefore never requested, or even suppressed. So after awhile they just do what they’re told and keep quiet the rest of the time. It has really made me understand the value of an education – especially for women – and the value of money, in a way that I never have before.
Latest time-wasting craze: The daily sudoku puzzle in the paper.
Latest attempt to recreate the comforts of home: Tuesday night, when I had two other volunteers over for dinner. Earlier that day my co-worker had given me a giant bag of oyster mushrooms – yes, oyster mushrooms, which I didn’t think existed in Kenya. It turns out she’s friends with a group of mamas who grow oyster mushrooms and sell them as an IGA (income-generating activity), which means I now have a mushroom hookup. It was one of the happier moments of my Peace Corps service, up there with the first time I had a Javahouse espresso mocha chip sundae in Nairobi, and every time I get a letter or package or postcard in the mail (keep ‘em coming, folks, put a smile on your favorite PCV’s face today!) Dinner was pineapple curry and Justina’s special mushroom mystery surprise, followed by a (bad) selection from Tony’s gladiators DVD, a giant vat of popcorn and chocolate. By 10pm our tummies were full of uncommon non-Kenyan food, and our brains were full of a very bad movie about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, with lovely cinematography. Tony went home to put yeast in his mead. Really, it’s not a metaphor. He’s actually making mead. Neetha and I stayed up for another three hours gossiping in American (an actual language.) I LOVE BEING NEAR CIVILIZATION!! The next morning I made spinach-mushroom crepes, and Neetha said, “Oh my God, you made crepes!”
Current domestic source of befuddlement and mild insanity: Mysterious curls of poo on my walls. How does poo get on the wall? I thought I had a mouse but mice don’t run up the wall to poo. Hickory dickory dock. I get a lot of slugs, so maybe they’re leaving their poo on the walls. But there aren’t any slime trails around the poo, which makes me wonder if it’s coming from geckos. Whatever it is, it’s gross, and rude.
Still wondering: Should I have gone back to Nairobi a day early from Lamu to meet Barak Obama? He had a meet-and-greet with Peace Corps volunteers at the embassy. It’s the media coverage that’s killing me, along with hearing other volunteers rave about what it was like to meet him. Guess what I learned? Obama is charismatic as hell. Obama has a great sense of humor. Obama knows how to deflect idiotic questions. Dammit I missed him! Even today there was an article about him in the paper. Kenyans LOOOOVE this guy. Although they love him a little less after he gave a speech at Nairobi University saying that corruption and tribalism are crippling Kenya. Three weeks later politicians are still complaining that he was given misinformation about Kenya’s political scandals from the opposition party, and that his portrayal of corruption here was wrong, but nonetheless he should stop talking about things that are none of his business. Because the best way to deal with problems is to tell people to stop pointing them out.
posted by Justina at 10:19 PM
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