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.