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.

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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.