Finishing My Peace Corps Service

I am amazed, the time has come for me to ship off back to the Great American Frontier to face the challenge of figuring out how to get someone to pay me to do work I am passionate about.

I know that my blogging has always been erratic, but I am warning you that from this point forward it will most definitely be even more so. The reason is that on December 15th I will officially cease to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. On the 16th I am flying to Ethiopia to experience that for a little more than two weeks. Then a day after flying back to Nairobi I am headed to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (1 week) and then lay on the beaches of Zanzibar for a few days. From there I am rushing to western Kenya to meet up with another returned PCV to visit Uganda, Rwanda, and maybe the DRC for about 15 days.

That bring me to February 3rd, which is when my dad is coming to visit. Him and I will be visiting my school and surrounding area, then are headed to Lamu, the most beautiful Swahili city intact in Kenya. After that I will be visiting a friend in Western Kenya until I fly out for good on March 8th.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are so many things that I am leaving behind. I don't intend to suggest that passion fruit plants are at the top of the list of things I will miss, but I took a picture of them that I like the other day and thought I would include a little about them because I don't think people in the US have seen them.

I planted these four vines in the summer of 2009. They were so fragile and vulnerable that I had to enclose them in sticks to keep chickens from eating them and the dogs from sitting on them.
Now they are so massive that they have grown all the way up to the peak of my roof and half way down the other side. They flowered about two months ago, at the start of the rainy season, and now have lots of fruits. Only a few of them are currently ripe enough to eat, but the next PCV in the house will eat so many he will get sick of them.

Below is a picture I took of one of the flowers. The spherical fruit emerges from center, as the flower simultaneously wilts and falls out.

Last Dance With My Students (Figuratively)

Just before the last day of school, my students and I finished our world map project, which we started back in August. It felt so relieving to be done with it and to hear all the positive comments from passersby.
Then, a few days after school closed, I made pizza with some of my most helpful students for the last time. We made 12 pizzas and 6 loaves of bread, which was more than we could finish. They got to take leftovers home, I did not spy on them at home but I would be curious to see what percentage of their treasure they shared with their family. I would probably have been pleasantly surprised in many cases.
I tried to make sure they did most of the steps in order to know that they can carry on after I leave. I still helped out a little bit, including here, where was showing them how to properly flick the pizzas off of the paddle.

American Friends: Thanksgiving and Otherwise

At Thanksgivings past I have had small responsibilities like making the gravy, but this Thanksgiving us PCVs did not have our elders around, so we took the lead role. Additionally, being Kenya, I not only took on the traditionally patriarchal role of turkey carver, but also of turkey killer and disembowler. Everyone who was present helped with the preparation, and together we enjoyed a feast. There was so much food that I even got to have one of my favorite post-Thanksgiving meals, which is turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce.

Lots of awesome photos were taken, but unfortunately I do not yet have them. Instead, I have pictures of a feasting day a month or so before Thanksgiving. This feast included a roasted goat, Mr. Kobia's family, and a couple of PCVs.

After we butchered it we got to sit down a little bit and start the consumption phase of the day. The old man in both of these photos is Kobia's father. He is tied for the position of being my favorite old Kenyan man (see "My Farewell Party" for a picture of my other favorite old man). He has earned this title because he seems so frail, and I think he also has cancer, but every day he goes out to find nappier grass to feed the goats. He continues to putz around the family farm for the majority of the day, and is always just so well tempered. What is it about becoming old that makes some mens outlooks on life ripen so much? Maybe we can try to learn their secrets before we become old ourselves.
I guess the visit was more of a feasting weekend rather than a single day because the day after visiting Mr. Kobia's family we cooked pizza. Here is my good friend Ari, looking all big and strong, chopping wood in front of the Peace Corps emblem I painted.
Here is me, getting all lit up by the fire:
I don't know why exactly, but I really like making pizza at night. Maybe it is just the contrast in lighting. Seeing the flames shoot out of the top of the oven is awesome. Maybe it is also because I know that after I tire myself out chopping wood, tending the fire, making the pizza, my only other work for the day is eating pizza; then I get to sit down, relax, and sleep.

Mr. Kobia's two oldest sons joined us for the evening. It was fun sharing the time and experience with them.

My Farewell Party

I have helped spur a tradition of having staff parties after the end of each school term. This term the party carried special significance as it was the last function I would attend as a staff member. As such, the staff agreed to have the party at the school and slaughter our own goat instead of going to a restaurant and ordering the food.

I was trying to get rid of my chickens, so I donated three, which I demanded that we roast and coat with the delicious barbecue sauce recipe I remember using as a child.
Then every gave speeches, which is a necessary part of any function in Kenya. People said lots of nice things about me, but generally repeated the refrain, "we are so happy you have brought the library. Make sure to keep us in your mind and bring us something else." I don't think I will be bringing anything else. I tried to make it clear that not every PCV has the opportunity to do big projects, and that this one sort of fell into my lap, but I understand their perceptions and desires.

Then they sang an impromptu rendition of a traditional Meru song. The man in the front is a new English teacher at the school. The song and dance was his idea.
Then we took a staff picture:
and carried on the informal festivities, which surprised me by extending well into the night. What surprised me even more was that when it got dark the Kenny Rodgers American country music came on and we had a dance party. I even danced, which most of you probably know is fairly uncommon.
The male teacher in the picture is Benson. He is actually a retired teacher turned school inspector turned administration chief. In order to make a little money and keep busy he has started teaching again. He is tied for the position of being my favorite old Kenyan man.

Newspaper Article: Amount of Money Taken Through Corruption

Check out this article in The Standard, one of the two largest daily newspapers in Kenya.

270bn KSH is lost to corruption each year. That is approximately 3.3 billion USD every year. The article provides very jarring comparisons of that sum to the budgets of ministries within the Kenyan government, but as an American I have been thinking about it in terms of foreign aid.

The PEPFAR program in Kenya has a yearly budget of about $500 million ($15 billion worldwide budget over 5 years). The worldwide Peace Corps budget for FY 2010 is $373 million. I was not able to find the USAID budget for Kenya, but in fiscal year 2005 I found that USAID proposed to invest approximately $1 billion for all of sub-saharan African in the areas of development assistance, child survival and health, and Global AIDS Initiative funding.

Any way you slice it, $3.3 billion comes up as A LOT of money and is probably comparable to, if not greater than, the yearly foreign aid to Kenya. How do Kenyan members of parliament continue to wield an ability to raise their own paychecks? Maybe it is because there is enough foreign aid that services will still be provided. How come schools function even if $3.3 billion is stolen yearly? Maybe it is because governments are forthcoming with money to help out.

Thoughts On Building a More Perfect Union

After finishing Parting the Waters, I had a strong desire to read something a little more politically upbeat. Audacity of Hope is effective in its goal of giving me hope and left me a little more optimistic than before.

It is clear though that many of the changes he proposes wont be effected, which led to to wonder, what change in the American system would be most effective at shifting the social conscience of our nation? Are we largely shaped in the image of our parents or what are the external factors carry that carry the most influence over us? For instance, if all children receive more education in elementary school about the poverty of the bottom half of the world's population, would that lead them to become more socially liberal? What about mandating a community service component to students' learning from an early age? What if we took children from affluent schools to do activities with children from schools in poorer areas and vice versa? I believe that, if my personal aims in these proposals are ignored, most conservatives as well as liberals would agree they are generally wholesome additions to a child's education.

It is clear that most Americans want ours to be a meritocratic society, which we usually apply to financial standing, but what extending the idea of meritocracy to social beliefs also: we want a child from the morally worst household to have the support to become the most virtuous person. Would objective activities such as community service or pen pals in Africa change their world views?

Of course, their must be a strong critical analysis component to these activities because otherwise you might breed people who think debt-relief to African governments or direct budget supplements is a good idea (the problem is that these programs promote higher levels of corruption without a proportional increase in public outcry against the vice).

I was always raised to believe that education is central to shaping who you become and that it is one asset no one can take away from you. Maybe if we place weight on a well rounded and high quality education system in all corners of America, our future sons and daughters will make socially enlightened decisions on issues that are today vehemently debated.

Date of My Return To the USA

I will be arriving in Portland, OR on March 9th, 2011.

Book Review and Subsequent Reflections: Parting the Waters

One of my goals before leaving Peace Corps was to finish reading Parting the Waters, an extensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr.'s involvement in the civil rights movement from 1954-1963.

Unfortunately, for our collective ego, a facile summarization of the book would be that it is a 922 page record of atrocities committed by Americans against our own people, in many instances receiving the tacit, and sometimes explicit, consent of individuals within the government. Here is one of the many graphic examples supporting this compendium:

At the beginning of the Freedom Rides to test the enforcement of desegregation of inter-state bus facilities, the local police formed a pact with local segregationists that they would not arrive at the scene for at least ten minutes. In this context, “a dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, the white Wisconsin exchange student [ who was on the Freedom ride . . . ] one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could take turns hitting him. As they steadily knocked out his teeth, and his face and chest were streaming with blood, a few adults on the perimeter put their children on their shoulders to view the carnage. A small girl asked what the men were doing, and her father replied 'Well, they're really carrying on.' ”

When the police did arrive they issued an injunction against the Freedom Riders, stating that they were under arrest for inciting violence, ignoring the fact that their movement was grounded in the principles of non-violence and blatantly disregarding all of the violent acts committed against them.

In light of these barbarous attacks and repression by city and state officials it would be reasonable to expect agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation to aid in the prosecution of the true criminals. Conversely though, under Hoover's orders the FBI seemed primarily interested in falsely interpreting situations in a manner to suggest that King's associates were communist spies, directed by Moscow to subvert the United States government. Throughout this era, Hoover hid behind the supposed necessity of protecting implanted agents and informants as grounds for offering only unsupported accusations to the executive branch. To hide this affront to justice, after King was assassinated a federal judge ordered all FBI files related to King be sealed away, preventing public scrutiny of the FBI's groundless claims until 50 years later when a legal team fought, and won, the declassification of the files.

Reading these accounts within Parting the Waters, which are supported by an 82 page bibliography, makes me feel ashamed to be a human being and an American, and makes me distrust what we, the public, believe we know about the work of our government. If the same secrecy exists today that existed then, even Obama may not know exactly which lenses certain branches of our government are using to filter their presentations of information.

To put into a broader context why I am embarrassed, societies with a written history have existed since around 5,000 BC. A conservative estimate of the rise of the first democracy is 500BC, with the rise of Athens. In 1776 America began the journey towards democracy with the declaration of independence, at which point our founding fathers acknowledged as “self-evident, that all men are created equal” and that we have been endowed by our creator with “unalienable Rights, [ . . . ] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It took roughly 200 years for these rights to be applied to Americans with more skin pigment than the founding fathers. In the broader context of colonialism and world slavery, it took approximately 6,960 years for these Rights to be nearly universally recognized across the globe (approximately 6,980 years for the dilatory South African government). Stated another way, minority groups have had their rights recognized for loosely 0.7% of recorded history and 2.4% of democratic history. These numbers of course are all debatable, and simply to to highlight the point that it has taken a very long time for civilizations to globally acknowledge equality based on skin color. Many people might even argue that we have not currently reached an acceptable recognition of Rights (consider, for example, people deemed “illegal aliens” by the government who have lived in America for almost their entire lives).

If something so basic has taken so long, what will happen now that our world is changing ever-more quickly, both ecologically and technologically? I am left feeling pessimistic that societies can pull together for the pressing, yet controversial, issue of transforming economies for the sake of environmental preservation.

Further, given the short time span over which “unalienable Rights” have been recognized as a preclusion to commit the atrocities of slavery and racially inspired violence, what should lead us to believe we have now reached a point where our social institution will forever dutifully protect basic human rights and freedoms?

Perhaps the problem is based on the observation of Reinhold Neibuhr (quoted in Parting the Waters), that “only in extremity do people 'discover what they really live by.' ” Only when a situation disrupts our complacency and rouses us from routine existence do we recognize an intrusion upon our core values. When we become complacent again, forgetting past struggles, so to may our application of rights wane.

Oloitokitok

I am back in town, for a week of assisting with the 2010 Math/Science Secondary Education Pre-Service Training. The new training group is great: they are eager, level-headed, and will make good teachers.

In addition to assisting the Peace Corps staff to organize sessions and choose sites for the trainees, I also went to visit my host family. I wanted to bring them a chicken, and wanting to arrive as early as possible after the day's work was done, I ran with the chicken held in both hands out in front of me. I ran for maybe 3 kilometers this way, which I am sure was a fantastic site for all those I passed.

The last time I slaughtered a chicken for my host family was the end of December 2008. This was the first chicken I had ever slaughtered, so when I cut off the head and it kept moving I was startled and let it go. Yes, the chicken did run around with its head cut off, but it also flew, spraying blood on me and on my younger host brother's clothes. Needless to say, I had something to prove, and I did prove it. I chopped the head, defeathered it, and removed the internal organs. The only time I embarrassed myself was when I broke its leg to butcher it and a mix of chicken juices got into my eye.

Afterwards I sat outside, looking up at Mt. Kilimanjaro and husked black-eyed peas for my host mother. While sitting there I felt this overwhelming calm about me and I thought to myself that this is how I imagined my Peace Corps experience. I imagined leading a simple life, a slow life, filled with many calm moments sitting outside in cool shade. My experience has been this way in some instances, but in others I have chosen to retain my stressed out technology-crazed life (take the netbook that I am writing this on as one example). Instead of making time to separate rocks from unprocessed rice, I find it much nicer to buy processed rice with the rocks already removed. Often times, when people want to talk talk talk about nothing, instead of entertaining them I become fidgety and make an excuse to leave.

My life is certainly less crazy than it has been at many points, but I have retained more of my Western customs than I expected to.

After my nice sit, watching the cows and goats and husking peas, I went inside to talk to my host father about lots of things of little importance. We sat, and I enjoyed it. I did not become very fidgety. Then we ate, and realizing it was getting late, instead of rushing back to the hotel I asked if they had an extra bed to sleep there.

Leaving at 7am, I began my quick paced life again, running back to the hotel to shower, eat, and rush to Peace Corps training.

Theft: A Lost Knife and Self-Questioning

Friday morning, while walking past the row of classrooms I encountered a student walking in the other direction. When we got closer I realized he had a knife twirling from his king ring; not only that, but the knife was mine!

He told me he had purchased it “in Nanyuki, or rather, it was Meru town.” You cannot find CRKT knives in Kenya. Even in Nairobi there are only two stores that sell serious outdoor gear and they sell a single brand of gear (not CRKT).

When the student was called to the principal's office the story changed again and the student said he purchased it in Nyeri at the gate to a Scout camp out we attended. And the price at which he purchased this knife new? 350KSH, or approximately $4.50. Admittedly CRKT is a cheaper brand of knife, but I bought this one for at least $20.

The worst part of this ordeal was that while I was reclaiming my knife from him I had in my other hand a picture of him and 4 other scouts smiling and enjoying themselves at the aforementioned camp out (the first camp out I took them on). Unlike America where there are many adult leaders who participate in the camp outs, I was alone with them for two nights. We cooked together, played frisbee, and shivered next to one another.

I interacted with them very freely. As an example, the only dry area at the camp was my tent, which I offered as a storage facility for the grains. The scouts entered it even when I was not present, which I permitted them to do because I trusted them.

I do still trust most of them. The biggest question I have is to what extent my faith in them can change their habits. For instance, I was also dismayed to find out on the more recent camp out that they were trying to trap animals. I guess trapping animals is the sort of activity most boys would do if they thought they had the opportunity, even American boys. In Kenya though, trapping animals is very illegal, yet the animals are still over-trapped, leading to a decline in animal populations.

As a parent, a leader, or a teacher, how should I balance showing my disapproval with offering loving-kindness to keep them from hardening their deviant behaviors? Does it take two people working together to pull this off? - One who is the yin, showing unconditional love, and the other who is sharp and critical? I am a 24 year old male and I find myself fitting the stereotype that young males tend to be critical and exacting in their code of conduct. And, like a true addict, I find myself justifying it, while simultaneously acknowledging that I make more enemies than friends through this conduct. My self appraisal might be hyperbolic to some degree, but I guess the point is I am still at a point in my life where I am trying to figure out how to be a good coach and mentor.

I wanted quick and moving justice exacted on the student, but the principal and deputy were more verbally critical of the behavior than they were with their actions – which I see to be neither yin nor yang, but just ineffective.

After the knife was paraded as evidence I sat down with it, filed out the dings, tightened the bolts, and gave it to a Kenyan friend: I did not miss the knife too greatly while it was gone.

Why I Am Skeptical of Donating My Money to NGOs

NGOs obviously do a lot of good. Take for instance AMREF, which has the endorsement of the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and has a 4 star charity rating from "Charity Navigator" (whoever that is). There is no way to get the endorsements that AMREF has without doing MANY good things.

I wonder if they really need my money though... Take the following situation as an example:

There is a Peace Corps Volunteer living in desert Masai-land somewhere south of Nairobi. Shortly after he arrived at his site AMREF showed up with four computers. They explained that the computers were loaded with all sorts of health-related education software and that the students should be instructed to use the software to raise their awareness of health issues and how to protect themselves. Sounds great, right? Well, this school's electricity comes from a few small solar panels. The electricity is powerful enough to charge cell phones and power approximately one laptop at a time, but NOT powerful enough to run even one desktop, let alone four.

Okay, so AMREF made a single mistake... they did not confirm whether or not the computers could function before they took off in their shining luxury Land Rover, but thankfully they came back some time later to check how things were coming. Only one of the computers had been taken out of the box until the morning when AMREF was to arrive, at which point the other computers were hurriedly set up and dusted off. The officials arrived, were shown around, and were told by the school that things were going great: THANKS FOR THE FREE COMPUTERS, we are making excellent use of them (as receptors for passing dust)!!! At the end of the visit the volunteer took the officials aside and informed them of the charades they had just been put through. The official looked concerned and instructed the volunteer to begin sending AMREF reports on the subject. The volunteer acquiesced at first, but never received a reply and eventually quit.

Some months later along comes AMREF again, this time with a 72" thin screen, state-of-the-art, impress-your-neighbors TV in tow (Okay, I don't know the exact size of the TV, but the box was more than 4 ft. long and about 2.5ft tall). They told the school the TV was for the school's HIV/AIDS resource center. The problem? The school has no resource center and has no plans of constructing one. Additionally, again, the school's electricity is almost definitely not sufficient to power an electricity sucking vampire like this one. When I visited my friend some months after the TV arrived I found it in the corner of a storage room, still in its box.

As I said, in other situations AMREF does probably do useful things to improve community health. I wonder though, how many other schools and communities are targeted in such ridiculous ways.

This story is meant to highlight the dissonance between what people hear about from NGOs about the need for more money and the NGOs ability to wantonly spend money.

This state can be attributed to a few factors, among them: (1) NGOs usually do not have people on the ground to assess potential methods of conveying information and (2) in order to increase the scope and reach of their organization they must continue to show donors they need more money, which can become a vicious cycle.

Additionally, NGOs (and groups like Peace Corps) really want to brag about how many people they are reaching per money they are spending. A one-time investment such as a TV and a few computers allows them to say that they are initially reaching around 350 students and around another 70 each year, which if true would be great. Therefore, they have some incentive to ignore the finer details of their projects and focus on the report numbers.

Traveling in August and Shipment From Books For Africa

In Kenyan parlance, “I have been quiet” or “I have been lost” which means that I haven't communicated in too long.

When people tell me this I instinctively become defensive, since despite my lack of communication I have been neither quiet nor lost. As proof of this, or rather because I want to share some of this with folks in America, I have included a number of photos from this period.


At the beginning of the month my mother visited me for two weeks. Not only did she meet my friends, including Mary, Mr. Dick, and Mr. Hyena (shown in the above picture), but we also went to Masai Mara where she got to fulfill her high school dream of seeing exotic animals (such as the Cheetah shown below).


After she left I climbed Mt. Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Africa, with a small band of Peace Corps Volunteers. In the picture we are standing on the third tallest peak.


From Mt. Kenya I went to visit Eckhart at his site deep in the heart of Masai land - relatively uninhabited desert outside of Magadi. When we swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers and were given a map of Kenya I noted that there was a hot springs indicated on the map and set out to one day visit it. On the last day with Eckhart we set out at 5am to be at the hot springs in the early morning.


This hot springs is the most undeveloped I have ever seen. All of the pools are completely natural and the only sign of human use is garbage cans that have been strategically placed around the periphery.


Lake Magadi is home to the Magadi Soda Company, which mines and processes soda ash, a mineral compound used in the production of glass.


The lake was also used in the movie The Constant Gardener in the last scene where the diplomat, Mr. Doyle, goes to meet certain death. I believe that the picture below is where the scene was shot.


From Eckhart's site I visited my house for two days before heading off to Nairobi to meet a shipment of books, the arrival of which Matt Palma and I have been facilitating. See the bottom for a short tirade on the how this seemingly routine process went.


I had the pleasure of traveling with the truck of books to Matt's school while Matt remained in behind to tie up some loose ends. His students were very excited and equally cute.


The next day my school's portion of the books made it to school. Four schools participated and each one received approximately 5000 books. The board of governors at my school has been very helpful and is currently making arrangements to build shelves in our newly constructed library building. They want to call it the "Thomas Mosier School Library," a name that I am opposed to. Maybe we can call it the "Watu wa Amani School Library," which means "people of peace."


About facilitating the clearance of our container of books:
From personal research I knew that the importation of books in Kenya is NOT subject to the duty tax, and that this fee is automatically waived. They are subject to a CIF tax, which can be waived for books being donated to non-profit groups.

Matt and I set out to get the CIF waived. First, we compiled six documents ranging from a packing list for the container to a letter from the District Education Office and forwarded them to the Ministry of Education in Nairobi. The people there assured us that they would write the necessary two paragraph letter and forward it to the Ministry of Finance within 2 days. A week after the first meeting we called to inquire and found that they had not completed this task. Five more visits, numerous phone calls and one month later, they did forward the letter to the Ministry of Finance.

When Matt asked them which office they had forwarded the letter to in the Ministry of Finance they refused to tell him, saying that he would be notified when they had finished processing the exemption. Knowing that we did not have a chance of getting the exemption without our constant probing, Matt investigated and found the person in the Ministry of Finance responsible for handling this type of claim. This man assured us that all that needed to be done was for the Minister of Finance to sign our request and to forward the exemption code to the Kenya Revenue Authority.

One month and six visits by a plethora of volunteers, our books arrived in the Mombasa port without the Ministry of Finance fulfilling their promise. Having five days before the shipment was processed, we asked the shipping company, Siginon, to provide us with paperwork stating the amount required if we were unable to get the exemption. Siginon was very slow in providing this paperwork, but at our continued insistence gave us a paper on KRA letterhead stating that we did have to pay duty, which with the CIF totaled to 120,000KSH (about $1,500). Being very sure that duty was automatically waived, we took this presumably KRA issued paperwork to the KRA office, where we were informed that this paper was a forgery. The officer then showed us the real document, readily available in the KRA's online database, which showed that we only owed 20,000KSH (about $250).

They then called Siginon and threatened to press charges forgery charges. The company then called us, upset that we would go to KRA. Obviously we were the ones with a valid complaint since they forged a government document, presumably in an attempt to steal over $1,000 from us.

When I inquired again with the Ministry of Finance to hear how the tax exemption was coming, the officer who we had been dealing with told me that he had forwarded the letter to his supervisor and he no longer had any ability to work on the case. When I asked for the office number of his supervisor he said that I would not be able to find the person with the document because it had to pass through the hands of around seven other officers in the ministry.

With one day left, Matt went back to the officer who had the day before told me he could no longer assist us with the case, and was told by him that the next morning the Minister of Finance would sign the document. Matt called to tell Siginon this, but they informed him that they had already paid the 20,000KSH on our behalf. This was a good decision on their part because the officer in the Ministry of Finance stopped returning our calls and did not forward the exemption code to KRA.

This experience of dealing with the Kenyan government ministries was by far the most ridiculous and frustrating experience that I have had while in Kenya. It is almost comical how good they are at giving people that are trying to help Kenyan students the run around.

Samburu National Park

The principal and I organized a trip for some of the students to visit Samburu National Park. The trip cost about $17, for a one night and full second day trip, yet the majority of the students' parents could not afford it. Most of these students have not ever traveled more than 50km from their homes, so for those that did go it was a great experience.

The park is about 150km from the school and in order to see the most animals we spent Friday night at a 30 child foster home that is close to the park. Seeing our students play with the orphans, share stories about their challenges, and sing together was very moving to me. What made it so nice is that the students really enjoyed getting to know and helping nurture the children.


Then, on Saturday morning, we got up at 4:15am and headed out to the park, which contained all other sorts of unexpected highlights.

For example, the students got to get their picture taken with the wildlife ranger's gun. I have about 50 pictures on my computer, more than one picture of each student, of each student taking their turn holding the gun.


Another total surprise was the spring that we came across. This area was totally dry until WWII, when an Italian soldier bombed the desert in the middle of nowhere, and, like some figure from the Bible, striking this vast rock-land produced water! No joke, he happened to hit an underground river.




More expected, we saw many animals, including these zebras.


The last new experience for the students on the trip was getting to see an airplane. This was such a big deal for them that we sat waiting for it to arrive for almost an hour.


Trips like this was are more common place at more established schools, but this was the first one of its kind for our school. It goes without saying how nice it was to be with the students on this trip and to see their excitement.

My Dog Friend

It might be a bad sign that I decorated the neighbors dog...

The dog belongs to a man that lives about 0.8km away from me in the village. I have never fed the dog, but he comes over to my house sometimes. In fact, he even follows me to the market, and one time he tried to follow me all the way to Maua (5km away). The only reason that he likes me is because I pet him and no one else does.

I really like having him around. He can fight with other dogs and people don't care much. He can pee on the neighbors fence without a second glance from the fence's owner. When he goes with me to the market there is never talk of a leash. His life seems so natural and free. Even though he has made me really want a dog I don't think that I could get a dog in the States, in part because no dog there could ever have as nice an existence as this dog.

Campout: Building Our Scout Troop

Scouting in Kenya is typically very different from America. For one, there is no parent involvement in Kenya, two girls and boys are together in the same troops, and the troops focus heavily on marching and do not know that there is anything else to scouts - like merit badges.

I attained the rank of Eagle Scout in America, without being very good at marching, so I am inclined to think that the scouts will benefit from a little re-direction, which I am trying to provide them by organizing more activities for them to participate in


This last weekend the principal, who was also a scout, and I organized a 3 day hike and camping trip to the Nyambene forest.

In Kenya, the forest is a place that people usually do not go unless they have some shady businesses, such as cutting down trees illegally or poaching animals. Therefore, most of our students had never been to the forest even though it is only 12km from our school. It was great to see how excited they were to be out in nature. While we were there we went on a hike, I taught them about first aid, we talked with them about environmental conservation, and yes, they even practiced marching a little bit.

Additionally, they had never been organized into patrols and had never elected leaders, so we took advantage of this time together to explain the organization to them and help them elect their first set of leaders.


Another difference between American scouts and Kenyan ones is the gear. In America, we are used to having rain jackets, pre-fabricated tents, gas stoves, thermarests, sleeping bags, etc. In Kenya, they use whatever clothes they can kind to keep warm, they usually make their own tents (often out of tarps or left over grain storage sacks), they cook everything over a wood fire, they carry their mattresses and blankets from school, and often times they only carry one set for each pair of students.


Another difference is that they have rotating watchmen throughout the night, so that at every hour of the night there are 3-4 scouts huddled around the camp fire watching the darkness.

Camping alongside of their plastic tarp tent I felt over-privileged in my REI 2-person backpacking tent. All of them love seeing my camping gear, and I know that they envy it. Even though I have been here for over a year and a half, living with this group of people, I cannot really reconcile the feelings that these thoughts evoke. On the one hand, this is the life that I am used to, so it seems kind of natural, but on the other hand, I see that it is not natural or accessible for very many of the worlds people. I do not ever want to become comfortable with this discrepancy. When we are comfortable or not cognizant of this discrepancy we live like we are the only people on this earth, which is not true. The answer is not just to throw money at the problem either though. Foreign countries are doing that currently, and the result is that the Kenyan MPs can free up money from other places to give themselves a 50% pay increase, or just outright steal the money without being prosecuted by the attorney general.

All of that is a digression, but the corruption aspect of it is relative to scouting, because the first point of the Scout's Law is to be trustworthy, and how do you really teach the youth to be trustworthy and honest when they are bombarded daily with examples of extremely rich Kenyans lying and stealing their money. They see my tent, they know that I am rich, they probably think that I must also be corrupt by virtue of our status. The only way that I know how to combat this is to try to be as forthcoming, honest, and transparent as I can be, and also to have discussions with them about the scout oath and laws, which we did.

On a completely different note, check out this cool grass. The principal said that it is actually part of the moss family.

Volleyball Girls Placed 2nd!

Here's a group photo of this years volleyball team.

The district tournament was last Friday and, out of the more than 20 schools in our district, our school placed 2nd!

I think that the volleyball team is really my biggest success story. I have kept this a secret from everyone in Kenya, but as you all know, boys don't really play volleyball in America - at least not in high school. I don't have any volleyball experience, but I was still able to take my school's team from being an average team for the district to being 2nd. The only reason is that there is almost no other coach in the district that shows up to his own team's practice. Doesn't this sound absurd? It does to me, but unfortunately it is true. Typically what happens is that a teacher will be assigned the duty of coaching a particular team, they may even volunteer for it, but then the coach doesn't really do much until it comes time to go to a tournament.

As a result, the students are very lackadaisical about practicing. My biggest role has been to give their training structure and let them flourish within it. -And they did!

Running Wild - Lewa Marathon

Here I am, waiting near the start line.


Everyone is gathering for the start.


This was like 5 minutes after I finished. It is surprising how much color is gone from my face (compare to pre-race picture). About a minute after this picture was taken I thought that I was going to faint. Luckily the race has a free "recovery tent" so instead of passing out I got a free leg rub down.

Lewa Marathon, with the motto "Running Wild," has been rated by Runner's World as "one of the top ten races to run in your life." - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewa_marathon). I have been running very regularly for a past couple of months, with my longest run being 16 miles, which I ran last Tuesday. With this in mind I told my friend Carly, who was also running the race, that there was a one percent chance that I would attempt the full marathon, leaving a 99 percent chance that I would stop after the half. About half a kilometer from the 13.1 mile mark there was a junction, with the finishers of the half heading left and those brave souls attempting the full marathon turning right. As I approached the sign, I reaffirmed that doing the half was the correct decision and that I was not ready to complete the full marathon. Somehow though, I found my legs carrying me down the path on the right. Actually, I think that I went right because the person that I was running next to ran to the right, so I figured, what the hell, if he can do it, so can I.

So away I went, down the path less taken - 850 runners did the half and less than 150 did the full. The same man that I had been running along side looked over at me after we were 3 km down the path and said, "this is going to be tough." I ended up passing him, and when I came up to the next person in front of me he said, "If you can smile, if you can talk, if you can sing, then you can continue running," which was better fuel for me and became my mantra for the rest of the run.

The race is awesome, each half is a lap through a wildlife conservancy north of Mount Kenya. For the entire second lap I only passed or was passed by 3 runners. The only other people that I saw where wildlife rangers (protecting us from lions, hyenas, and rhinos), and the volunteers manning aid stations every 2.5 km.

I was able to smile, talk, and sing until about the 20 mile mark, and from there on out the race was a little rough on my body. I finished though, and, in the words of Carly (the other volunteer running the race), "we didn't get eaten by a lion, not even munched on a little bit"

Open Air Markets

Yesterday I ventured into the heart of the open air market in Maua to buy a used pair of shoes. While doing so I figured out how to describe them.

Imagine a standard sized Good Will store. Now imagine that dividers are put up dividing all of the sections of clothes into groups of 15. Each group of 15 gets its own sales representative, whose sole lively hood is derived from the number of items he sells from his particular group of 15 items. Next to him there is another salesman, with another 15 items that are almost indistinguishable, and each of them is trying to compete and get you to buy their used shirt, shoes, or trousers, none of which are an exact fit, and none of which are your favorite style.

You know that they rely on their sales to feed their families, but that doesn't mean that you should buy something you wont use. You go to 7 of these stalls and none of them has a pair of nice looking and comfortable shoes in your size. So you end up going back to the first stall and buying a pair that are a half (or full) size too big for the equivalent of $9.50.

A friend was commenting that I have been making a lot plans for my $6000 readjustment money. I dream of the day when I can browse through clothes without someone standing over me. I marvel at having a sales representative that will honestly tell me whether or not an item is my size instead of trying to tell me that everything is my size.

I go back and forth on whether or not I will make a trip to a shopping mall when I get back to America, but even if I buy my clothes from a Good Will, at least I will be able to freely choose from 200 shirts while the only sound in my head is the soft jazz humming through the store's public address system.

The Other Side of Running

There is a side of my experience that I rarely share with people outside of the Peace Corps sphere. All of you know that I stand out everywhere I go, and I have talked about some of the attention that I get, but the following is an example of some of the common, unflattering attention that I receive.

It starts pretty normal, I was running, with tons of people yelling at me and some people running along side me. Today I decided to run 10 miles, and I had completed about 8.5 of those miles when I child threw a small stone at me and hit me. This is about the 5th time that this has happened to me in the past month. My reaction was to show this child that this was bad behavior, so I started chasing after her. I caught her after about a 30m chase and grabbed hold of her arm. Then she started shouting something that I did not understand in kimeru. It must have been something pretty intense because she kept repeating it and within about 20 seconds the population on the street had gone from 10 to 50. They all saw that she was not in any danger, so they just stood by looking amused and waiting to see what was going on. The girl kept screaming, but I carried her to the nearest person that looked like a mom and explained that the girl had hit me with a rock. The mom replied by telling me that this girl did not do it, but she definitely did, which I tried to explain to her although it was difficult since I had just finished running 8.5 miles... I finished the rest of the 10 miles without much hassle.

At the end of the run I decided to do about 1.5 miles barefoot at the primary school attached to the secondary school. There were some local young men hanging around watching the Athiru Gaiti football club practice. One of them bystanders started running right in front of me, looking back at me with that look on his face that says "look at you, I am beating you" (I commonly have people start running in front of me yelling at the top of their lungs, "I am beating the white man"). Although this guy didn't make any sound, the words were still there, so I told him in kiswahili "continue for 16km and then you will have reached where I am." After I said this he sped up and flipped me off.

I just kept running and he stopped running and left me alone. I continued by myself for half a mile, then a couple of kids started running with me. They were really great. A couple of nights ago they laughed at me when I stepped on a big rock barefooted, but then I scolded them and they apologized. Today they ran with me, without saying anything. Then when it got so dark that I was afraid of really hurting my bare-footed self me and one of the kids said good night and I returned home to wolf down some calories.

Return Is Inevitable

In town yesterday, I received a wonderful birthday package from a returned Peace Corps volunteer yesterday (Thanks Kelly!). The afternoon was sunny, but not too hot, and I did not have anything pressing to do at school, so I walked leisurely. Included in the package were some granola bars. I picked an almond flavored bar out and started to munch as I walked.

At that moment it struck me, my return to America is inevitable and eating granola bars that come in nice little packages with all sorts of captivating nutritional information will once again be common place.

This means that I have been in Kenya for over a year and a half. The thing is, I have like 6 months left, but right now, 6 months seems like nothing. Phrasing it like this makes me think of other times in life when we are given set arrival and departure dates. One such notable analogy is prison. The problem is, I do not know which side is prison. Do I gain freedom in 6 months or do I lose my freedom? Of course it is not as simple or as complicated as that. The dichotomy is artificial though. There will certainly be a lot of external changes though. I will have more choices of how to use my money, but I will also become more of a slave to monetary choices.

Maybe the scariest aspect of returning home is that I do not know anything about my future life. I do not know if I will get into grad school, if I do get in I do not know where in the country I will be, I do not know what I will do before August of 2011, and how I will spend the little money that Peace Corps will give me.

Thinking about those things now, while I am seated in the staff room in front of my laptop, I am scared. Yesterday, strolling down a dirt road munching on a delicious granola bar, I was excited. Maybe this means that I need to spend more time outdoors eating granola bars...

Garbage Truck

Cruising away from Meru town the matatu that I was in followed a dump truck full of garbage for about a kilometer. The truck has just been loaded up with garbage from the town and was piled high.

It might be hard to imagine how much garbage there is spread around public areas in Kenya, but a few months back they removed something like 50 tons from a creek running through Nairobi. Meru is as dirty as Nairobi and I applaud the efforts that these people had made in removing garbage.

Most of this garbage is in the form of small plastic bags, due to their ubiquity in Kenyan markets. Each time you buy an orange, a drink, biscuits, or tomatoes, the purchased object is put into a bag, which is instantly discarded by the buyer.

This dump truck was not tarped and at 80 km/hr these bags were forming a perpetual cloud above the bed of the truck. Hundreds of the bags in this cloud would lose equilibrium and would shoot out to the sides of the truck, gently falling to the ground on either side of the road. Simultaneously more bags would be dislodged from the ever decreasing pile in the truck bed.

Maybe this garbage truck is not actually headed for a specific dump site; maybe the journey is the end of the line and the goal is to redistribute all of the manufactured goods that had converged on the city.

Maybe they were trying to make the statement that what they were doing to the forest is what all of us are doing to the forests, or, more likely, they just don't care.

Perpetual Road Work

As we cruise along the road in a matatu, there is a man ahead with his back bent towards the road, jimbe (hoe) in hand. A cigarette is hanging loosely out the side of his mouth, as him an another man spread dirt inside of a pothole. As the matatu approaches the man holds out his hand asking for the driver to pay him for the work that he is doing to fill the holes. Instead of stopping, the driver maintains speed, and as we pass over the hole dirt flies out, pushed by the wheels and rising as a dust cloud in back of the matatu.

This happens every time that a car passes, but the men continue to refill the hole, hoping that someone will give them money.

I haven't written much for about a month, in part because the school term has begun and I have gotten into what appears to be a routine: get up at 6am, plan for lessons from 7am, teach and work on curriculum until 4pm, play volleyball or help officiate a club until 5:30pm, go for a run until 6:30 or 7pm (By the way, I am training for a half-marathon - or maybe full marathon? - at the end of June), eat a little, bathe, read, and meditate until bed. As a write this, it is dawning on me just how many of my days in the past month have followed this exact pattern...

So that is my excuse for why I haven't written more, but what I really want to write about is this book, Born to Run, which was lent to me by another Peace Corps volunteer.

Ever since I ran cross country in high school I have ended almost every season/period of training with an injury. Even now, as I am training for this run I have been ending each run with sharp pain in my groin muscle and an aching right knee. I have always blamed my body for not being able to run without injury, but it turns out that I have just never known the proper way to run... As soon as I got the hint from this book I changed my stride and since then the aching in my knee has subsided and the pain in the groin has entirely disappeared.

The book chronicles Christopher McDougall's research into a tribe in Mexico that routinely runs 50-100 milers. As he studies them, he also studies ultra-marathoners in the United States and anthropologists who are studying our evolutionary roots.

According to their research, homo-erectus evolved as persistence hunters (read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting). This means that we ran animals to death... We have the unique ability to dissipate heat on the run, where as most other animals have to stop and pant in order to expel excess heat (example: dogs have to stop and pant). So all of our ancestors were regular marathoners. On the great open plains in Africa they would run after a gazelle just fast enough that the gazelle did not get time to rest, until finally, after between 10 and 20 miles, the gazelle would die of heat exhaustion. They even found a small tribe near South Africa that still persistence hunts.

These guys run these distances until their 60's and they do it bare-foot. We, on the other hand, buy $150 shoes and get injured after running regularly for 5 months... The reason is because these shoes are so padded that they allow us to use the worst running form ever known to man.

The book has changed my life because I know have a slightly better idea of how to run, and how to run long-distance. I also have a better idea of who I am, because I have a better sense of how we evolved into what I am today.

The writing is totally gripping and I lost sleep in order to continue to read the book. I think that the book would be interesting even if you are not particularly interested in running.

Crash Course In Mid-HOOVEry

Last night I was preparing to read a book in bed when the school watchman started talking to me through my window.  I couldn’t really make out what he was saying, but it was clear that he saying something about the school cow and that he wanted me to come.  Feeling slightly annoyed I put on a jacket and headed outside.  He led me to where the school cow was laying on the ground, with what I think you would call a dilated birth canal. 

Before my very eyes part of the sack enveloping the baby started coming out, and within a few minutes I was staring at two hooves.

As we watched this happening our watchman and the primary school’s watchman decided that we needed the animal doctor to come and assist us with the birthing process.  As the watchman and I kept vigil the primary school’s watchman hurried off.

After a few minutes with the two of us watching the calf it became clear that the doctor may not come in time.  Despite this, I was slightly disturbed when the watchman grabbed the placenta and popped it, causing a small flood of fluid.

As all of this was happening, the mother was periodically becoming disturbed by a dog that was circling around her.  This caused the mother to jump up and hobble around with two hooves sticking out of her.  She looked so unstable that I thought she might seriously break a leg, but she never did and after each of these movements she settled back into a birthing position.

Then the watchman decided that it was time to, figuratively, take the baby-bull by the horns, or literally take it by the hooves, and separate it from it’s mother.  As he grabbed the head to keep the mother from jumping up, it became apparent that I was to be an integral part of this magic trick.  From his shouting I gathered that I was supposed to grab the hooves and pull, which I did.  The mother didn’t seem to enjoy this much, and I guess I don’t blame her.  I quickly found out that the hooves I had been seeing were the front ones and after about a minute of frantic pulling, I soon saw a head.  I do not know how many of you have ever tried to do this before, but it reminded me of trying to catch a greased pig at the country fair.  I have never tried to catch a greased pig, but I think that this would be a good analogy, so long as your greased pig had gotten himself wedged inside of a hole with an opening a third his size. 

Somehow I succeeded at this unlikely fair game, and once the calves' shoulders emerged the mom seemed to relax and the rest of the calf slipped right out.

Not a bad performance for my first time performing the pull-a-cow-from-another-cow trick!  The doctor then arrived in time to confirm that we had done good work. 

What I was noticing at this point was that the mother did not seem very interested in her new-born calf.  The doctor had a solution to this though.  He got a big handful of placenta and he smeared it all over the mother’s mouth. Instantly upon tasting this seemingly gross blood-water mixture, the mother became so excited that she hopped right up from where she has been trying to sleep and started licking that calf clean with a vigor that is possibly only matched in cows during the period when the bull is trying to mount the female.  This was a lot nicer to watch though, and I seriously cannot express my surprise at how energetic this mother became just from tasting placenta.

Below is a picture that I took of the calf about 14 hours after it was born.  With all that the calf and I have been through together it is sad to think that it will grow up for a few years only to be slaughtered.  Such is the life of cows though.

Travels in Turkana Land

The first bit of travelling that I did in April was to the region west of Lake Turkana, a huge lake in the desert of northern Kenya.  We spent as much time awake on public buses and matatus as we did on the ground, but it was well worth it.  It was exciting because the region is so different from anywhere else that I have been in Kenya.  There are not a lot of tourist sites in the area, which is fine with me, and most of what we did was travel to nearby towns and talk with people we met there.

The access point for the region is Kitale, which is in the northern Rift Valley.  At Kitale Eckhart and I went to a museum of local history.  The museum seemed to basically be someone’s personal collection of Kenyan crafts, most of which Eckhart and I had already seen.  We did learn a few new bits of information, as the picture below highlights.

  Who knew that African paths are characterized by narrowness and meandering?

From Kitale we arrived in Lodwar, the biggest town in the region.  From there we went to Kalokol, which is just 5km from the lake.  There is not a road from Kalokol to the lake.  Eckhart and I found ourselves crossing desert and passing by Turkana herdsmen in our search for the undrinkable water of Lake Turkana.  Along the way we met a hut of Turkana men hiding from the scorching sun.  The hut really belonged to a guard.  Turns out that 50 plus years ago an investor built a huge pipeline from Kalokol to a resort they were building on the lake. Unfortunately the region did not attract very many guests, being located so far away from other tourist infrastructure and the pipeline was never utilized.  Now, an Indian investor has bought the pipeline and is having it deconstructed in order to melt the steel and sell the raw material. 

At the lake there is a community of turkana people.  Traditionally they are pastoralists, but this lake-side community consists of about 200 mostly young turkana (I think the oldest I saw was in their early 40’s, which is very different from the other communities I saw).  There is a refrigerated truck that drives the 20 hours from NRB to the lake in order to buy fish from these people.  The turkana fishermen only have to put out their nets, reel in the catch, eat their fill, and sell the rest to the waiting truck.  It looks like a much easier, and different, life than the turkana that herd goats.

We were ferried to the peninsula that the camp is on by a boat (similar to the one in the above picture).  Below is a picture of boys swimming alongside the boat and a boy imitating my camera. From Kalokol we headed up to Kakuma, a Sudanese refugee camp in Kenya, and Lokichogio, which used to be the headquarters from all relief work in Sudan.  Now that the security situation in Sudan has increased the relief programs have moved inside of Sudan and Lokichogio is left with a great deal of infrastructure and few guests.  Basically, it reminds me of a typical Kenyan town.  I do not know the story of the truck in the picture, but it was parked outside of a very lonely post office and next to a government of Kenya immigration office.  To give a feel for the degree to which the post office is isolated, we were talking to the post master; then he decided to go on break and went to town without closing the door to the post office or leaving any other worker behind. After returning to Lodwar we spent a day walking through the neighborhoods.  On the outskirts of town we came across this graveyard.  If crosses a the head of the grave are a sign, it appears that about a third of the dead were Christian.

Also, we sat under a tree in one of the “suburbs” of Lodwar and chatted with the locals.  Some of them were very friendly and showed us around.  I don’t know how, but somehow they got the idea that because we are teachers we are coming to Lodwar to build a school.  They made sure to outline the prices and availability of land as well as introduce us to a few students and wazee (old men).

The traditional turkana men wear a circular knife around their wrist, they always carry a walking stick, and the majority of them carry a small stool (although this man does not have it).

The women usually wear beads around their necks and more than half of them cut their hair into mohawks.  According to me, this combination makes them some of the most beautiful women in Kenya.

Then we returned to Eldoret, passing through a national park created for the preservation of a now seemingly extinct variety of antelope. 

From there Eckhart and I headed our separate ways, and I had a peaceful ride back to my site, other than being stranded on a matatu that broke down for three hours.

April – Break After the Third Term

I know that I have always been an irregular blogger, sometimes not blogging for 2+ weeks, and some days (like today) writing three posts.  All the same, I feel an obligation to say that you may not hear from me for a while. 

This month is our break from teaching and on Saturday I am heading up to lake Turkana, which is in Northern Kenya. 

After that I will be in Nairobi for the volunteer advisory committee meeting and the diversity and peer support meeting, as well as session and training.

Then I will be visiting another volunteer’s site to talk about ways to teach meditation in our schools.

Here are also a couple pictures you might enjoy.  The first two are from a trip that I took to the forest with Mr. Gitonga (mathematics teacher at Athiru Gaiti) and Mr. Ndreba (board of governors’ teacher in physics, mathematics, and agriculture at Athiru Gaiti).  I think you can tell in one of the photos that I did not feel well.  In fact it was very unfortunate because we had been planning this trip for sometime.  The good thing is that I got some medicine to destroy all of those pesky food-borne viruses from my system and now I feel great!

The forest is government property and you are only allowed to go there if you have permission from the police.  It is about 8-10km from town, and is the source of the water for most of the region around Maua.

Below is a picture of a table at Athiru Gaiti primary school that is built around a tree.  How cool!