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Nairobi
By Harmony | January 6, 2009 | 9:46 pm
Well, here we are in Nairobi. The last 8 weeks of training went by so fast. By Thursday, I will be an official Peace Corps volunteer. I still can’t believe I’m actually here. At the moment, there are still so many unknowns. I don’t know where I will be living for the next 2 years, or what job I will perform. I don’t know if my home will have basic ammenities, or if I will like my future supervisor. All of my questions will likely be answered by the end of the week. Meanwhile, all I can do is wait.
My last week in Loitokitok was fairly relaxing. It was the holiday season, so the work was light. Since we were at the end of our training, we spend most of our language and technical training winding down and debriefing.
We had a cooking day, where the volunteers were tasked with creating a meal without Kenyan instruction. My group made pilau (a rice dish), kabichi (boiled cabbage), and chapati, and it was rather tasty, in my humble opinion. In true American style, we opted to cook our food without lots of salt or fat, and I used a little more spice than the typical pilau recipe calls for. I’m pretty sure the volunteers appreciated the food more than our Kenyan counterparts! Hakuna matata - we’ll be cooking for ourselves most days at site, anyway.
I also completed the dreaded LPI last week - that’s the final language test. It’s a 30-minute oral examination during which the trainee and a tester carry on a conversation in Kiswahili. He asks questions about anything and everything, starting with your name and where you’re from, to what specific business you have in Kenya. To make it more stressful, the entire conversation was taped, and they managed to find a room with a huge echo to hold it in. Our goal was to meet the Intermediate-Low level of comprehension and communication, a lofty feat with a shortened training schedule. But I passed!
New Year’s Day was a public holiday here in Kenya. I woke up early and hiked up to Nalimuru again, this time with my friend and bodyguard, Daniel, in tow. I thought Nalimuru was gorgeous when I saw it in the late afternoon. But the afternoon beauty doesn’t compare to that of an early morning! We stayed for a couple hours, returned to town for lunch, then proceeded up to the woods to experience nature some more. I knew that time was short, and I wanted to make sure I visited my favorite places one last time before leaving this place!
Over the weekend, I spent most of my time trying to pack all my things back into the bags I came with. Since I’ve arrived, the Peace Corps has given us a stack of books half a meter high, a mosquito net, and a medical kit… and we’ve purchased buckets to purify and store our water. I am very grateful that I splurged at the last minute for an extra duffel the day before I left America. It definitely came in handy!
The trip to Nairobi was long and a bit scary. Most of the roads outside of the big cities are not paved, and even the paved road between Nairobi and Mombassa has its problems. With a quick stop in Emali for lunch, the entire bus trip took us 9 hours. In America, it would have taken 2-3 hours.
But the trip was worth it. We are staying at a hostel, where we all have our own private rooms with toilet, shower, and even a television. While we’re here in Nairobi we will have some workshops, find out our site placements, and meet our future supervisiors. And if we’re lucky, we may even get a bite of American food while we’re in this gigi (city).
The plan is to travel to our final sites, whatever those might be, on Friday. This is a very exciting time; I’ve been waiting 2 months to become a full-fledged volunteer. I’ve almost made it!
It is a strange thing…on the one hand, I feel like training has flown by. On the other hand, I feel as though I’ve been living in Kenya forever. Either way, it’s been quite a ride, so far!
Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments, e-mails and letters. Know that I am reading every one of them! I really appreciate the support. It makes me feel as though all this hard work is really worth it!
Topics: Pre-Service Training |
January 7th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Awesome Stuff Harmony…