Last Days in Mombasa

The last few weeks have been a bit…manic.  My last few weeks in Mombasa were spent finishing up the first term with my kids, saying hello and goodbye to fellow volunteers and revamping some training materials.  There was also, of course, the mad dash to leave as much curriculum help as I possibly could, to get everyone by until I can get back and really put it all together.  It’s really hard to be gone for so long!

I told my kids just a couple weeks before I left that I would be gone for 2 and a half months, but I would be back in July.  This news was met with varying reactions.  Standard 8 whined that it would be boring without me (I’m assuming that they are referring to my more interactive lessons and not the fact that I’m pretty sure they constantly laugh internally at my absurdity), Standard 7 was upset with me and Standard 6 essentially shrugged their shoulders and said, “Whatevs” (they are pretty used to volunteers coming and going).  Actually saying goodbye to them on my last day proved to be a bit more anticlimactic than I expected, with the exception of one or two students in Standard 7, who responded to my friendly goodbye with outright hostility.  One of them just looked at me and said, “I won’t miss you.”  That’s ok, J, I understand.  I’ll still miss you.

For my last night in Mombasa, we went out to our favorite Western café, where I ate a ridiculous amount of chocolate cake (it had to be done).  I also got my certificate for successful completion of my volunteership, which includes a crash introductory course in TEFL.  I found the certificate a bit ironic considering the fact that I had just spent the previous week completely rewriting, giving and training other staff in the training program that I was now officially certificated in. 

I left Mombasa 2 weeks ago and now life is just travel and relax until I get home at the end of May.  I’m not going to say much about my travels here because the coming week will, hopefully, be filled with posts about everything.  I have quite a lot to say already.  So far, though, it’s been a generally enjoyable 2 weeks and I’m looking forward to getting to Greece, catching up with Kersten and settling in.  Cheers!