Animals of Kenya

I've come across quite a few awesome animals here in Kenya, and thought I'd highlight a couple.

I went to the Kakamega Rainforest about a month back, Amber has the album on her facebook if you want to see some pics of that.  I took most of the pictures with my fairly small camera, but the one that was the best IMO was the random bull we found in a field outside the forest main - he wasn't very happy to see us, and I had to get within 15 feet of him to get a good, full picture since my zoom isn't the best.  I think he nearly charged me for that.

On one of my trips on the way home from Kakamega I saw a family of baboons on the side of the road just chillin.  Didn't have my camera though.

I went to Hell's Gate National Park at the end of April for the end of the school break, and boy was that something.

You can just walk around and see the wildlife without needing to be in a safari vehicle since there are no predators there.

I also went to Fisherman's cove, a small little camping spot next to Lake Naivasha, very close to Hell's Gate.  While setting up camp we encountered some monkeys that were not very shy, and I was surprised how close they would let us come.

We went out boating after that to see the birds and hippos around the lake.

Then our boat broke down.  As you can see from the clouds, a storm was rolling in... it was nearly dark, we were quite a distance from shore, and starting talking about life insurance and wills with each other before another boat came to tow us back to shore.

That's my "We're gonna drown if help doesn't come soon" face.

At the campsite there is an electric fence set up to keep the hippos from invading the campsite.  But apparently that doesn't deter them from grazing right next to it... about 30 feet from our tents.  It was too difficult to get shots in the dark, but let me tell you, there's nothing quite like seeing Africa's second most dangerous animal (a tip of my hat to the Malaria loving mosquitoes) that close to where you are preparing dinner.  Beautiful and somewhat nerve wracking.  Mostly awesome though.

This month has been really, really busy, trying to implement a lot of new ideas and establish a new "normal" routine at school.  I'll write all about it soon, but I know everyone loves pictures so I thought I'd throw a few up here in the meantime.

What's goin on?

I don't have a lot of time to be in town this weekend (where I can get internet), but I wanted to throw a couple little updates on here.

So, Rex almost ate of the new, young chickens William bought for the farm.  She wasn't hungry actually, she was stuffed with ugali, but she is super playful.  She even taunts cows while we walk to school, and I can only facepalm and apologize to the passing shepherds.  Thankfully she isn't actually very aggressive, just hyper-energetic due to being 8 months old or so.  Go figure.  So I'm taking her to school now, trying to both fatten her up from school lunch leftovers and keep her away from my poor chickens that can't keep up with her.  There is another dog at school that hangs around the kitchen, and me and her are good friends;  it's easy to befriend dogs in a country where everyone treats them like vicious beasts most of the time.  The first time I brought Rex to school last week, they nearly started fighting - they both thought they were protecting me from the other!  After some time, and a little strong-arming, they are tolerating each other now.

No lion updates, sorry.  When I went to Hell's Gate National Park a few weeks back, there were no predators so we could walk around the place and see zebras, giraffes and all that good stuff up close.  The new animal for the month of April was the Hippopotamus!  Haven't seen those before, especially so close up when we went boating on Lake Naivasha.  Good stuff.

My students are super stoked about all the new changes I've promised.  More experiments, soccer practice every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a party if they do well at one of the competitions at the end of term, integrating grassroots soccer into life skills, and I'm opening up my house for visitors since we don't have an office for guidance and counselling as of yet.  At the end of my first HIV/AIDS education session for my Form 2s, one of my students quietly asked me if he could have my phone number to talk more about it.  I'd rather not start a precedent of handing out my number to students, but I invited to come to my home over the weekend to talk.  I'm definitely going to make an effort for the students to have a "safe place" to talk about things they don't feel comfortable talking about to friends and family normally.

I learned how to make "good" beans and rice by lightly frying the beans with tomato, onion, and green pepper!  That plus my regular pb+oatmeal will decrease my chances of starving to death due to pickiness/laziness : )  Seriously though, if I couldn't find peanut butter, I would probably be in trouble.

Next weekend I'll put up a real post with some answers to common questions I've gotten from family n friends at home.  What is the average Kenyan like, what kind of things do they have in their houses, stuff like that.

I'll post some pics and some more of whats goin on when I celebrate my birthday with Amber next week, since she has internet at home now.  I'll be 23 this friday!  Woo!  Of course, with my beard, Kenyans think I'm in my late thirties haha.  Nobody has beards here...

A few pics of home

The end of term I and the beginning of some understanding

Alright time for my first real post in months!

So I've been a little busy.

We've just wrapped up the end of term I.  In Kenya, the school system divides secondary schools into 3 terms a year, with about a month break in April, August, and December. 

This first term has been quite an experience for me.  When it comes to the new culture, language, expectations, responsibilities, and experience with teaching here, I feel like I just cannonballed into cold water.  It's all so NEW.  I'm not complaining, I'm having a blast, but it will be a while before I really really feel comfortable in this new routine and things get second-nature. 

My school itself has a plethora of gigantic problems, and I've come to realize it's a situation pretty much entirely outside of my control.  First of all there is a reputation for my school where parents basically just dump their kids there if they are doing very poorly;  it's pretty much the bottom of the barrel.  The school fees are about 12,000 KSH a year (about $150) for a student and even for Kenyan standards that's dirt cheap, but the parents have a hard time paying even that.  I've been told by the teachers that the parents have money from harvest and just don't want to pay because the school is crappy, but it's impossible for me to know exactly why at this point.  So I am looking at here is a lot of kids with little self-esteem and parents with very low expectations for their kids.


Then there are the teachers.  The teachers are examples for the students to mimic, and when they teachers not coming to school on time, or not preparing their lessons or just giving an assignment and leaving, or when they see teachers generally just treating them like crap... well you can see how that can be an issue.  And that doesn't even touch on the caning issue, which is something I don't want to get into right now, but teachers that hit their students with sticks as discipline... yeah.  That's something that permeates the entire education system and culture here, and it makes it very difficult to focus on teaching when I see it.

Lack of resources is something you'd expect coming into this, but even for Kenyan school standards my school is really scraping by.  When your school has a total of about 75 students (yes total), there's not much money coming in and it goes to pay the teachers first.  One of my classes has 10 textbooks for 26 kids.  I'm supposed to coach soccer next term but we have one polyester soccer ball that I'm certain will pop after a week of play.  Whenever I sit in on my chemistry exams, there are about 5 calculators and rulers that get shared around the room.  I think many of students don't take many notes because they just can't afford more than their tiny notebook so they don't fill it.

So I've come to an understanding after this first term, my goal is NOT to change this school.  It's not to improve grades, it's not to stop caning, it's not to convince teachers to change their ways, and it's not to do anything particularly fantastic.

My goal is to give my students a role model, and do what I can to help them grow up with a better, more positive attitude about themselves.  I'll show them that a teacher will come to school on time and teach 25 lessons a week and do his best to make experiments with the bare minimum, not because he wants a paycheck but because he thinks it matters.  I want them to see they matter, that they are the only real reason I'm here, and I think they are worth it.  My goal is to help them have fun while learning, to try to think a little more outside the box even if they won't take to a university.  But most of all, I just want them to be a little more proud of themselves.  A lot of my students are good, bright kids that are just a bit misguided.  Hell, I was a rebellious little snot when I was their age who did everything he could to subvert authority too.  I get that, I've been there.  They're still growing up, but I hope they can see they don't have to grow up to be the people everyone around them expects them to be.  They should be proud of who they are, even if they grow up to be farmers like their parents and never leave Ndalat.

Anyway, I can't complain, life is good for me here.  I went to a rainforest for the first time last weekend!  Amber and I went to the Kakamega forest reserve and had a tour guide show us around for a few hours (side note: I've noticed most of my practice with Kiswahili is with arguing about prices haha).  We saw 3 or 4 different kinds of monkeys, I'll get pics and maybe even the video for that up at some point.  I've yet to see the infamous horn billed bird that Amber has raved about, but I'm hopeful I'll catch a glimpse eventually, because I'm definitely checking that rainforest out again.  Maybe I'll get a Biology field trip worked out at some point.


I remembered to bring my school's address today so you can mail me letters and stuff!  Keep in mind it goes through my school, and I'll have to pay (read: bribe) customs more for more expensive things.  Also, things take about a month to get here.

Great birthday gifts:
shampoo
dove soap
cheezits
socks
flea collars for my dog
letters!  (I promise I'll reply)
also, pictures!  I want to make a collage of friends and family from home on my wall

Additionally, if you have any soccer balls or frisbees or things like that you aren't using, I have about 75 kids that would make good use of them.

My address is:

Tyler Kight
Nyigoon Secondary School
P.O. Box 6805-30100
Eldoret, Kenya

Alright that's all I'll write for now, I've got plenty of great stories to share though.  I'll try to blog more now that I have some free time : )

Encounters in the wild

So a lot has happened these last couple months, not really sure where to start.  The lion.  Yeah, that's as good a story as any.

I spent a couple weeks near Nairobi at a getaway hotel along with the other 110 or so Peace Corps Volunteers in Kenya while the elections went under way.  We were consolidated for safety reasons, because in 2007 there was a massive outbreak of violence from the elections;  thankfully things have gone really smoothly this time round.

Back in the states, I would often go on walks on my own in the evening, just to think to myself or listen to music.  Usually those walks were in suburbs, with little to see other than front lawns and pavement.  So, when I learn our getaway spot is surrounded by a savannah filled with zebras and wildebeests and giraffes, imagine my excitement over having one of those nice alone-time strolls passing by African wildlife.

Well I go out at dusk, and walk about a mile away from the hotel, passing by a couple joggers and generally just seeing some gazelles, zebras and a wildebeest, nothing particular amazing but a nice view nonetheless.  I turn around to head back and in the distance, maybe 100 yards or so, I see something that looks kind of like a wildebeest swishing it's tail.  Wait, that wildebeest has a mane.  Wait, that's not a wildebeest.  Oh shit where's my phone?  Oh I left it charging in my room.  I'm going to die. 

It's walking parallel to my path, back towards civilization;  I can walk away farther into the savannah, where who-knows-what awaits a tasty snack, or I can walk back to the hotel along with my new friend.  At this point, I start hyperventilating and panicking a bit.  I have no idea what to do.  I start walking a strange angle away from the lion but towards home, while praying it takes no interest in me and doesn't decide I look like a good snack.  I mean, I can't outrun it, fight it, or anything:  If it starts walking toward me, I could picture the message back home "PCV Tyler Kight was mauled by a lion because he is SO STUPID he didn't take a phone with him on his walk along into the savannah."

Thankfully, a car comes rolling along after those 3 minutes of terror passed.  I wave and shout in swahili "SI MAMA STOP SI MAMA TAFHADALI," they stop with confusion, I point, they let me in and take me back to the hotel.  "Oh yes we've heard some reports of two lions being seen out here."

And so I lived to type another blog post.

Kicking off 2013

Things have finally started to settle down a hair from all the initial excitement of all the new experiences, people, travel and whatnot from these last few months, so perhaps I should paint a better picture of what my day to day life is actually like here.

I live in a very rural farming community called Ndalat.  The centre where matatus pass through isn't big enough to be called a town, so I usually tell friends Eldoret, the nearby city about a 40 min ride away.  From this Ndalat centre where you will be dropped off if you're taking a matatu, my school is about 15 min walk away, and my house another 30 min or so past that.  When you walk around this area, you're always on some kind of dirt path in between farms, trees, or homes, and it is very green and beautiful.  You occasionally pass by locals who are typically very friendly and become excited if you try to greet them in their local mothertongue, "Nandi," a dialect of Kalenjin.  Most also speak Kiswahili, so sometimes I'll have some simple conversations with people I meet as I walk to and from school.  The children are particularly charming here;  they are really excited just to see a white person, and love saying "How are you?" and getting any kind of response, whether in English or Kiswahili or Nandi.  Sometimes little groups of kids will gather together and follow me as I walk home, giggling and chattering.  Honestly, it's pretty much exactly what I would have expected "Africa" to look like, which is a surprise for me. I even cut through a little wooded area with a stream and tiny wooden makeshift bridge in order to get to school.  It's ridiculously awesome.

Most days I get up at 6 to go for a jog with my puppy Rex.  Even though it's January, it never gets below maybe 60 degrees : )  I pump some well water for the day when I get back and make some pb and oatmeal and tea or coffee most days.  I get to school at 8, and most of the teachers are rarely on time - the culture in this country does not highly value punctuality, but that's one thing I'm hoping I can keep maintaining for myself.  When I'm not teaching at school, I'm either lesson planning, working on exams or marking or other planning, or reading my kindle.  While my home does not have electricity, my school has a very basic access (2 outlets) so I can charge my things occasionally which is nice. 

Teaching here is incredibly challenging, but a lot of fun.  The classes are required to be taught in English for secondary school (this is throughout Kenya) but English is a third language for Kenyans.  I'm sure you can imagine that as the primary barrier in education;  when the teachers themselves don't have the best grasp of a language and are then required to teach in it, the students suffer.  So, I do a tiny bit of English teaching in my classes, even though I'm only teaching sciences. 

I'm teaching Form 1 Biology and Physics, Form 2 Chemistry and Physics, and Form 3 Chemistry, along with a "life skills" weekly session starting soon.  I'm also coaching athletics and soccer because none of the other teachers were interested, and I'm the Form 3 class teacher, which basically just means I take attendance for them.  This school hasn't had a full time science teacher EVER in it's 10 year existence, only hiring temporary teachers, typically University students on break looking for a little cash.  I compiled comprehensive exams on the material the students should have covered by this point, with the scores averaging between 0-30%.  This is going to be a lot of work.

And of course, while the language barrier is what I consider the student's main hinderance, there are many other problems to consider.  Many students' parents can't or won't pay the school fees (about $160 a year), so the school has a hard time even paying for lunches, let alone lab equipment or textbooks.  There seems to be a very different relationship between students and teachers here, one that so far hasn't shown much flexibility to allow for the encouragement, respect and motivation that students need from their teachers.  Of course, I've only been teaching a few weeks now so I do not understand the subtleties of these things yet.  I just hope I can gracefully handle myself if I encounter a teaching caning (read: beating) a student, something that is unfortunately very, very common in this country. 

The teaching itself of course is the reason I'm here, and so far I'm getting into the swing of things more easily than I expected.  I'm pretty good at coming up with real life examples on the fly and finding ways to relate to and engage the kids.  Like when we go over a definition, I might say "What does this even mean?  If your mom asks you what you learned in chemistry, are you going to tell her Boyle's Law states that a given mass of gas held at constant temperature will have a volume inversely proportional to it's pressure?"  I try to steer them away from rote memorization, and so far they've been pretty receptive and actually fairly quick to learn when I give many example problems.  I try to have a little fun too.  "Is this answer 45?  45 what, cows?  Bowls of Ugali?  OH 45 Newtons!" Conceptual topics are going to be a challenge for a while, but maybe as time passes, they'll understand my "accent" better, I'll pick up more swahili, and we'll manage to communicate abstract ideas a bit better.

So!  I'm pretty busy during the week, but I'm always traveling on the weekends, whether it's to my lovely lady friend in Kakamega or hanging out with other pcvs (peace corps volunteers).  I'm having a lot of fun on the weekends too.  Except when I have to handwash my clothes...

Merry Christmas!

Hey guys!

Sorry for taking so long to make another post.  Internet was a bit expensive in the town we trained in, Loitokitok, but now that I'm at site near Eldoret I can surf for much cheaper. 

So where to begin?  These last 10 weeks of training I've made some incredible friends, unforgettable memories, and learned lots of new things about this country.  

I nearly died in a flash flood after climbing down a riverbed with friends for a picnic,
I killed, defeathered and fully prepared a chicken for my homestay family,
I went on a safari to see zebras, giraffes, elephants, baboons and - ostriches having sex...
I took a girl on a rooftop date with Italian style spaghetti and red wine,
I got hit by (read: lightly brushed) by a piki piki (read: motorcycle) in Machakos,
I partied with an Australian Red Cross worker on Thanksgiving,
I learned how to say more than Habari Yako (How are you?) in Kiswahili

My friends here have been incredible, I've never felt more comfortable being myself around people I've known for so short a time.  I've learned a lot about how you can put aside differences and become great friends with people by just focusing on what you have in common, however little, and enjoying your time together however you can. 

Recently, we were in the capital of Kenya, Nairobi, for our swearing in as official Peace Corps Volunteers.  This was at the US Embassy where the Peace Corps Director, Kenyan Minister of Education and acting US Ambassador were present to give a few words to encourage and motivate us as we go to our individual sites.  Of course, most of us were mostly excited about there being ICE with our drinks, and hot-off-the-grill HAMBURGERS AND HOTDOGS.

A lot of people have asked me about Kenyan cuisine.  The main staple for Kenyans is ugali and boiled kale.  What is ugali, you ask?  Imagine grits.  Imagine cornmeal grits that has been cooked in hot water, dried to a clump you can pick up and eat with your hands, generally served without salt, in a country where butter is virtually nonexistent.  I've lost about 15 pounds...

After swearing in we each went to our respective sites;  some of my friends are 15 hours drive away, some are only 3.  I have been incredibly lucky with my placement.  I have a beautiful, fairly large house with a private room, fully furnished, owned by a family that spends most of their time living at another house but comes home occasionally.  There is actually some running water (utilizing rain/well water tanks) and a western toilet, although no electricity so I'll need to charge my electronics either at school or my principals house.  The house is very nice, there are several chickens, cattle and sheep along with the crops owned by the host family, and even a young puppy and 3 adorable kittens that I can take care of.  The surrounding area is very beautiful with many trees and hills and I look forward to finding a good hiking or jogging route. 

I spent my first night in my new room and on the second day my school's principal and the man responsible for bringing me into town and introducing me, David Nyauma, asked if I wanted to visit his family in Nandi Hills, a few hours drive south.  After arriving, I had my first Kenyan church experience at a Seventh Day Adventist church that reminded me of the revivals that occasionally came up in my old church in South Carolina.  Everyone was really pumped, a choir was singing, the pastor was shouting into his microphone jumping back and forth speaking swahili and english, and myself being stared at as I walked in. 

Oh yes, I should mention what a Mzungu is.  "Mzungu" is a swahili term for any foreigner, but it generally means "white person."  It's not technically a racial slur, more of a catchall label that is used in a country where white people are rare.  Very very rare.  I've seen maybe 20 non-peace corps white people while here, most of which were in the capital.  So when you go to a rural area, be ready to be stared at.

Anyways, so I walk into this church bustling with excitement and I'm ushered to the front row with David.  After some time of singing and preaching the pastor invites his honored guest David to give a few words, who then gives a few words about his new friend from New York, Tyler Kight.  Now, I'm not usually shy when it comes to public speaking, but when he asked me to come up and introduce myself, my heart was definitely racing when I picked up that microphone.

"Uh... hamjambo.  Ninajua Kiswahili kidogo."  Everyone laughs.  "Ninatoka nchi ya Amerika na nimekuja kusaidia rafiki yangu David, na nitafunza sciensi.  Asanti."

10 weeks of rigorous language training and I just mumbled out "Hi, I only know a little Swahili.  I came from America to help my friend David with teaching science.  Thank you."

I've had some good conversations in Swahili, but right then I was at a loss for words... heh. 


So that's been the recent happenings in Kenya, sorry it's taken so long to post.  So far my only facebook pics have been tags from friends because my laptop died, but I will try to upload my own by Christmas.  Feel free to contact me by facebook or email (hotshotvegetarian@gmail.com) if you want to say hey. 

Till next time!