The last few days have been filled with more emotion and more commotion than my whole two months in Africa so far! On Friday night I had my last dinner with my host family in Loitokitok. They killed a chicken and me and my mama cooked chapatti and lentils. I ate four pieces of chicken, a giant bowl of lentils and two chapattis! I bought some coca-cola for dessert so me and my family washed it all down with a glass of room temperature coke. I gave my host family cards from home with pictures of the tulip fields in Mount Vernon and the Puget Sound. I wrote a nice note (in all Swahili) thanking them for making feel like a part of their family. I then gave them a gift of laundry soap, toilet paper, bars of soap and some earrings for my mama. She asked me the next morning if all of that stuff was for them… I guess not realizing it was a gift. I went to bed with my room packed up and feeling sad to be leaving this little room of mine behind.
The next morning I got done up in my traditional African dress that I had made and mama told me how “smart” I looked. We walked up to the Peace Corps hub for the host family appreciation ceremony and lunch. A group of us put on skits for the families about all of our crazy experiences over the past 10 weeks. One was showcasing the telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) that Kenyans absolutely love to watch. The worst part about them is that they are overly dramatized then dubbed over in English which, I swear, is done by only one person in a bland monotone voice. It can be painful to watch. Other skits were about how we scream like little girls when we find bugs in our rooms, how we had no idea how to bathe out of a bucket when we arrived, and how Kenyans and Americans palate for food differ so greatly. We all laughed and then cried when one of the host mothers gave a speech about how much she will miss her new “daughter.” We all hugged our families’ goodbye and prepared for the next stage in our adventure.
We were all loaded up on matatus (large vans used for public transportation) and took the 4 hour drive back into Nairobi. It was so nice to take a hot shower and have an inside toilet all to myself! After class today we found out our “Supervisors” were coming to dinner with us to attend our training workshop tomorrow. Our supervisors are the people who requested a peace corps volunteer for their organization and are responsible for the care and feeding of us until we gain our sea-legs at our sites. It feels like going on a blind date and a job interview at the same time, except the stakes are higher because you very well might accidentally do something culturally inappropriate without realizing AND you have to actually live and work with this person for the next two years. The pressure is on!
The Peace Corps staff was talking about “maintaining strong emotions” yesterday. They said the experience of doing Peace Corps is similar to the top three stressors in a person’s life: Moving, starting a new job, and the death of a loved one (this one being the loss of all our friends who we have met in training which are our new Peace Corps family now.) It’s the unexpected that weighs the heaviest right now. All of these strong ties that I have built with people are going to be nothing but long distance phone calls as I move into another new life. On the bright side of things, I cannot wait to have my own little house and buy my own bed and new dishes! This is the final step I’ve been waiting for. Of our original group of 56 people, only 49 remain.
Maybe I’ll have a new spider I can name Ivan at my new place J
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