Hunter Douglas of the Fiery Oven

Help Send an Exceptionally Worthy Kenyan Student to University!

2011-07-08T17:16:00.003+03:00

Dear friends and family,

What is a "harambee?" I learned about the culture of "coming together" while living in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer and learning Swahili. Many of my students struggled to pay their school fees, but one student in particular stood out to me as being exceptionally dedicated to learning, amazingly kind, and utterly in need of outside financial assistance to fulfill his goal of attending university and becoming a high school teacher. When I met Haron Kimathi he was the school captain at Athiru Gaiti Secondary school - the school I taught at. "Captain" is a position not found in American high schools, but is somewhat akin to a student body president, except with at least three times the number of responsibilities.

To attain the position of captain Haron had to be seen by the teachers as a paragon of model student character and be respected by his peers (who were in the position of both nominating and obeying him). I lived in the school compound and, for a period of time, started my days at 5am, at which hour, even over school holidays, Haron would already be in his classroom studying by a kerosene lamp. With this devotion he earned the highest marks in the secondary school's history, qualifying him to go to university.

Unfortunately, Haron's father was murdered when Haron was a boy. Haron has many siblings and out of them he was the only one to finish secondary school. He was able to do this because he touched the principal of Athiru Gaiti Secondary school, who was willing to make special arrangements so that Haron could have basic amenities (such as kerosene to study by), and because he touched my friends and family who paid his secondary school fees. Haron has shown his ability to succeed academically, and yet an even bigger financial challenge looms in front of him, one which requires me to broaden the scope of those I reach out to.

Out of the many degree programs he could take, some of them paying more than others, he desires to be a secondary school teacher because he recognizes the profound positive impact they can have on their students' lives. In Kenya I met teachers who would work 10 or 12 hour days consistently but I also met far too many teachers that did not have sufficient internal motivation to show up more than 50% of the time. I can say without hesitation that Haron will be in the former group and will be an immense asset to his students. Not only will he be the type of secondary school teacher Kenya needs to inspire its youth, but supporting him at this juncture will ensure he gets a job as a salaried government teacher, which will help break the cycle of poverty for him and his family.

Haron has been admitted to Chuka University College for the fall term, which begins towards the end of this August. There is a non-governmental organization in Kenya (begun by a former Peace Corps Volunteer) called the Kenya Education Fund, which is willing to perform the logistics of handling the donations and dulling them out to Chuka University College each semester. Additionally, they will send a receipt of donation to each individual who donates to them, meaning your donation will be tax deductible. Per year (two combined semesters) the cost for Haron to attend school will be 143,500 Kenya Shillings, which is approximately $1,793.75 (the approximate conversion rate is 80 KSH to 1 USD). The non-profit only requires an 8 percent overhead charge for their services, which is 11,480 KSH or $143.50. Therefore, the four years cost for us to put Haron through school will be $7,749.

I know many individuals have had to tighten their pockets the past couple of years. I certainly do not have very deep pockets considering I just returned from the Peace Corps; however, I believe deeply in this cause and am going to donate $100. I am going to do this because I know the money will have a bigger impact on the course of Haron's life than it will on mine.

Additionally, I would greatly appreciate your assistance in passing along this message to people you know who may be willing to contribute. The goal is to raise all of the $7,749 now, so that the organization is assured they wont let Haron down in agreeing to sponsor him. Also, that way you don't have to hear from me on a yearly basis.

Checks should be made out to the "Kenya Education Fund" and in the note section write "referred by Thomas Mosier." It certainly would not hurt to also attach a small separate note affirming that you were "referred by Thomas Mosier" and, of course, include your return address so they are able to send a tax exemption receipt. Their New York office's address is:

Kenya Education Fund
360 E. 72nd St. #3405
New York, NY 10021

It would be helpful if you are also willing to send me a quick email when you contribute so I can track how close we are to achieving our goal and to provide me a means of checking to ensure your money goes into the correct KEF fund.

Remember, since Haron is starting university at the end of August, we only have about one month to raise this money, so please act at your earliest convenience.

I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read this lengthy email. I hope to hear from all of you!

All the Best,
Thomas Mosier

P.S. - The picture at the top features Haron (on the right in the suit jacket) with a few other students who all helped me to build a brick pizza oven (shown in their midst). The picture below is of Haron (left), me, and Elijah (who was by far my best physics student) in front of a patch of arrow roots we planted at Ahirtu Gaiti Sec school.

Upon Arriving in Washington D.C.

2011-07-08T17:06:00.002+03:00

I wrote a few notes about initial impressions of America after so long away:

Customs officials with canines, the officers jumping, hollering, and some some sniffing themselves in hopes of finding clandestine deposits.

I manually bound myself up 60 stairs, receiving looks of disbelief from the mass of otherwise stoic escalator passengers.

Near the top, but before my eyes see what lies over the escalator's horizon, I smell a familiar yet foreign smell: chips - as I know them in Kenya - but this poignant aroma cannot be derivable from deep friend potatoes and salt alone, the way they were prepared in Kenya. After two years of passing densely packed chips shops in Nairobi and the smaller towns I am an expert, and these tasty American morsels are frauds.

I have arrived in the land of intention, where all systems are refined & paradise lost.

Mt. Kenya Fading

2011-07-08T17:02:00.003+03:00

I wrote this haiku when I was in the plane flying over Mt. Kenya on my journey home, no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer but unsure of what I was to become:

Mt. Kenya fading,
plane climbs; setting Sun glows red.
Life changes again.

And an alternative version:

Sun setting, plane climbs.
I see my old home below.
Then everything fades.

Rwanda

2011-01-21T13:35:00.005+03:00

Today is my last in Rwanda. My impression is that the country is very similar to other East African countries, except that there was a huge genocide here. This series of events has changed the country in many ways; however, I am left feeling amazed that, at least on the surface, Rwandans such strength and national unity in moving on.

There are still beggars here, but the majority of these beggars do not have festering wounds or life-long diseases as they do elsewhere. Instead, many of them have scars where their extremities were hacked off - obviously removed outside of a hospital. For instance, I saw a beggar with 3 inches of forearm the elbow. I also saw a women whose entire face was one huge scar. She had trouble opening her eyes beyond that of a strained squint because the tissue healed improperly. People with missing legs and crutches fashioned in a backyard are almost the norm. And these are the survivors, over 1 million people were massacred.

Undoubtedly this has left a huge emotional and psychological scar on the country, but it is an extreme testament to Rwandans that without the beggars, the Kigali Memorial Center (genocide memorial), and the references by outsiders you would not suspect that such atrocities had taken place here.

The other way in which I have felt the genocide is through my pocketbook. After the world realized that they could have very easily prevented the genocide (the U.N. Lt. General on the ground predicted 5,000 troops with authority to keep the peace would have been enough to prevent most of the 1,000,000 murders) the country was flooded with NGO's and foreign aid workers. This has brought with it a lot of money, and a demand for good hotels, not the $6 cheapies that people like myself desire/require.

As a starting point to learn about the genocide, I recommend the film Hotel Rwanda, which seems to accurately depict one man's attempt to help others during the chaotic months of the genocide.

Ethiopia and Mt. Kilimanjaro

2011-01-10T21:40:00.002+03:00

The first leg of my post Peace Corps travels was to Ethiopia with Whitney, a fellow PCV. We had a great, yet too brief time, which allowed us to see most of the tourist sites we wanted to, but left us always on the move from one attraction to the next. One of the most amazing sites we experienced were the rock-hewn churches in Lalibella. There are at least 6 full size churches and many other smaller ones, all of which were carved out of a single piece of rock.
One very fun aspect of the trip was simply meeting fellow travelers. Two of our favorite were Rutger, a Dutchman, and Jorge, a Mexican movie professor.

Whitney and I arrived back in Nairobi at 2am on January 1st, and before dawn on the 3rd I was on a bus bound for the town of Moshi in Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro proved to be tied for the distinction of most difficult physical activity I have ever done (right up there with running a full marathon after only training for a half and doing the round-the-Mt.-Hood trail in one day). We left our highest camp at just after midnight and climbed 1200m through scree, finally reaching the summit at sunrise (right around 6am).
Our guide told us that at the summit (5875m), the air contains only half of the oxygen that it does at sea level. Needless to say, I was happy to have made it but, rather unfortunately, did not have the energy to spend a lot of time exploring the summit. Our group had 12 climbers, but we split into a faster and slower group for the summit climb. I'll let you guess which group the five of us plus our guide, Salim, were.
Tomorrow I am headed off to western Kenya, my stepping-off point for exploring Uganda, Rwanda, and possibly a corner of the DRC. More pictures when I return.

Finishing My Peace Corps Service

2010-12-09T16:51:00.006+03:00

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)

2010-12-09T16:39:00.002+03:00

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

2010-12-09T16:14:00.003+03:00

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

2010-12-09T15:54:00.003+03:00

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

2010-12-08T08:53:00.003+03:00

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

2010-11-17T15:29:00.000+03:00

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

2010-11-12T12:31:00.002+03:00

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

Book Review and Subsequent Reflections: Parting the Waters

2010-11-12T12:08:00.000+03:00

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

2010-10-27T19:04:00.000+03:00

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

2010-10-27T18:24:00.001+03:00

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

2010-10-06T11:20:00.006+03:00

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

2010-09-23T14:50:00.011+03:00

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

2010-07-30T18:40:00.007+03:00

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

2010-07-30T18:23:00.004+03:00

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

2010-07-13T10:36:00.007+03:00

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!

2010-07-06T19:41:00.002+03:00

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

2010-06-28T11:55:00.006+03:00

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

2010-06-24T13:44:00.002+03:00

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

2010-06-09T19:32:00.003+03:00

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

2010-06-09T12:49:00.003+03:00

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

2010-06-01T20:43:00.002+03:00

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

2010-06-01T20:33:00.002+03:00

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.

2010-05-29T10:51:00.004+03:00

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

2010-05-05T08:56:00.001+03:00

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

2010-04-28T19:32:00.001+03:00

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

2010-04-08T15:40:00.001+03:00

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!

Book Review: It’s Our Turn to Eat

2010-04-08T15:13:00.001+03:00

It’s Our Turn to Eat is a book written by Michela Wrong about John Githongo. John helped lead the Kenya branch of Transparency International, and in 2002 when Kibaki became president was invited to participate in the government by advising the directly advising the president on how to fight corruption.

During his time in State House (the president’s office, where John’s office was also located), it came to light that the government had continued to sign contracts with companies that had not bid on the contract for “nearly three and a half times as much as the lowest bid.” In all, there are 18 of these contracts were estimated by the auditor general to be worth a total of $751 million. Further, they the contracts specified that they be paid using irrevocable promissory notes to ultimately unknown sources.

6 of the contracts were signed during 2003-2004. During this period the foreign aid to Kenya was $521 million. Another comparative statistic is that the money paid on the contracts “would have been enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with anti-retrovirals for the next ten years.”

John Githongo used a wire-tap to record conversations of ministers and high-level government officials talking about the corruption they were participating in. He started to get threats from the top of the government on his life, prompting him to take political asylum in Britain and release his evidence from there.

This man dedicated all of his energy into trying to stop Kenyan corruption. He released the evidence to newspapers and offered it to the Kenyan government several times. In return, nothing has changed. None of the officials implicated have been prosecuted. Instead, the same officials continue to steal.

Another Peace Corps volunteer wrote a blog article about How Does Corruption Affect Volunteers. In it, he cites an article stating that the British government is withholding $30 million that was supposed to go towards education because of evidence that officials in the ministry for education are stealing the money. That is money that could send students to school, improve classrooms, bring electricity to schools, or provide hygienic toilets for the students.

Library Project

2010-04-08T15:12:00.001+03:00

I can tell that English is the most difficult aspect of school for my students. All of their course work other than kiswahili is in English, yet most of them did not really start learning English until grade 3, 4, or 5. I have been trying to encourage them to read for fun to help them improve their comprehension, but it is difficult when books are so rare and coveted.

That is why I talked to the chairman of the constituency development fund about getting money for our school to build a library.

Aside: The constituency development fund can be compared to pork-barrel spending, except that here is is directly accounted for in the budget and each constituency is allocated an equal amount of money. In my opinion it is capable of being a much more functional system than writing spending clauses into unrelated bills. That is, if it is used properly and if money is not skimmed off of the top through corruption.

Now our library is almost complete and I have also been fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a multi-school book donation project that has been developed by my good friend and “neighbor,” Matt Palma, as well as two returned Peace Corps volunteers.

They (and now we) are working with Books For Africa to bring an entire container of books from America to Kenya. The container holds about 20 thousand books, and each school will keep approximately five thousand.

Now the library structure is almost complete and the books are slated to arrive around the end of June or the start of July.

Commenting!!! - Settings May Have Changed

2010-04-02T16:57:00.003+03:00

I think that I just changed the setting on the blog so that it will be 95% easier to comment. It only took me about a year to stumble upon the area where I change the settings.

I may never have conclusive evidence if I failed, since no one will be able to comment about how difficult it still is to leave comments.

How to Be Idle

2010-04-02T16:23:00.000+03:00

There is a book titled, How to Be Idle. I think that it is supposed to be a joke, and honestly I have never read it. A Peace Corps friend of mine has it though and she told me that one of the suggestions is to take tea for an hour.

The other day I was supposed to show up for an end of term staff party at noon. I showed up at 1pm. The reason: As I was leaving my house someone invited me for tea and I took tea for an hour.

How should I interpret this? The thing is, I showed up to the staff party an hour late and I was the fourth person (out of ten) to arrive. If taking tea for an hour is a way to be idle, what about taking tea for two hours?

As I was walking to the party I kept laughing at myself. These days I have all but given up trying to adopt Kenyan culture, but it looks like I have been here long enough that I am unconsciously doing it.

Weekend in Chuka

2010-03-24T18:27:00.001+03:00

I have come to realize that left to myself, reading tends to be more enjoyable than cooking or cleaning. I still love cooking, and I can actually enjoy cleaning, but it turns out that what I love most about these two things is doing them for other people. It turns out that I am more likely to visit a friend and cheerfully clean their stove than to clean my own, and I am certainly more likely to appreciate cooking a complex meal when I am sharing it with another person.

Being busy during the school term, I have only really visited Matt, and usually have only gone away from my site for one night at a time. During the same time period, I have found my house getting dirtier and my meals getting simpler. This has been common for me towards the end of the school term. Teaching has now finished though, and I hopped on the bus with Matt to visit a Peace Corps volunteer in Chuka.

Chuka is a beautiful 3 hour bus ride from Maua. It is literally on Mt. Kenya, although much below tree line. The area where she lives is as pleasant as she is and features cool rivers twisting and turning through deep canyons that are leading them off of the mountain. Although the rivers are big by Kenyan standards they are mere streams by American standards.

While we were there we ventured downhill to the river, which included a 100m+ elevation change. I felt so energetic, that I jumped and ran down the steep grade. The weather was so beautiful, the place peaceful, and the company warm. Maybe I should mention that I just reread Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, which has kindled a little of the zen lunatics playful outlook inside of me. It felt great getting out to a place where no one was watching me so that I could shed my fear of conforming to Kenyan norms and let these feelings flow from me without inhibition.

When we got to the bottom we found a beautiful, clean, and quiet river. AND, there were not any other people there! which is amazing, considering that at every other river I have been to in Kenya I have had the company mothers washing clothes. This river, as you can see in the picture, is far below the rim of the valley, which is where the road and houses are. Inside of the valley there were only crops, and being on a Sunday all of the farmers were in church.

Matt and I waded through the river and hiked cross country to a waterfall that I had seen as we were descending. Then we came back to the river, and finding that there was still no one around we decided to swim! It was more like wading, as the river was only a few feet deep, but we took off our shirts, and were free!

I meditated on a rock, letting the sun dry my back, and I remembered how it feels to have absolutely no worry in the world – it felt GREAT!

I need to remember that there are appropriate ways to be free even when I am around acquaintances or people that I do not know. Heck, I already stand out quite a bit, a little laughter and jumping around cannot make the one mzungu stand out too much more.

I returned to school on that high note, tired, sun burnt, and ready to be with my students; but also ready for the term to end so that I can meditate more and figure out how to keep the energy and the zest with me.

Science Congress

2010-03-15T15:11:00.001+03:00

For all of this term I have been working with a few groups of students on science congress projects. Science congress is the Kenyan version of the science fair. There are several categories that students can register projects in, including physics, chemistry, agriculture, and home science. Within each of these categories they can prepare an exhibit or a talk.

Originally I was supervising exhibits for biogas production, solar water heating, solar water distillation, refrigeration using clay pots, and energy saving jikos (making wood fires that burn less wood). All of these projects were progressing, but in the final days three of the projects dropped and we went to the science congress with the solar water heater and the solar water distiller. Additionally, another teacher advised a mathematical exhibit on construction of a mathematical tool – something like a protractor, ruler, and compass all rolled into one.

At the science congress they asked me to be one of the judges for the physics exhibits. It was great getting a front row seat to all of the presentations in this category. Among the 17 projects in this category was an automatic urinal flusher, a wheel with a light for measuring distance, FOUR different solar water heaters, a homemade bicycle pump, and a homemade record player. The record player was the most exciting until the students revealed that the motor they used did not turn at the correct speed to produce music.

From our three projects, the mathematical tool placed third (one spot away from advancing to provincials), the solar water distiller placed fourth, and the solar water heater tied for ninth. I am immensely proud of the students. They all learned a lot and having our last project rank ninth out of 17 in its category was very respectable. Last year the school did not even go to the science congress but after their experience this year all of the students said that they were going to work even harder on their projects and go back next year.

It is difficult to hold a competition and have every party walk away happy. This year was no different, with claims from my students that they should have placed second and advanced to provincials, or that the judges were generally not fair – luckily they were not talking about me because I did not judge any of their projects.

As a judge and a teacher I believe that the two physics exhibits that are advancing to provincials deserve to go. Unfortunately though, I also saw first hand how carelessly the judges assigned points to our solar water heater. Basically, on the score sheets the other judges did not fill in marks for seven or eight of the points out of the total 50 points. It is not that they marked a zero, they just did not mark anything. Upon reviewing the sheet, the points that they did not assign were for simple aspects of the project such as having a visual aid and stating the mode of presentation, both of which my students did. If these marks were included in the total, our solar water heater would have placed fourth or fifth.

I do not know what the judges motivation was. It was odd that the other score sheets produced by the same judges had the majority of the marks filled.

Regardless of whether the group should have received fifth or if they deserved the ninth place position that they got, everyone from our school is very proud of them.

Below is a picture of Joshua and James waiting to give their presentation on their solar water heater.

Tea Zone

2010-03-02T18:20:00.001+03:00

This Sunday I went up to visit the home of Mr. Gitonga, the mathematics teacher at school. It is located in the tea growing zone, which is separated from the miraa growing zone – where Athiru is located. The separation is mostly along contour lines as the tea requires a cooler climate.

As we climbed up the hill behind his house on foot, I noticed how quiet and peaceful the area is. There was still an occasional drunk, but even in the market place there were fewer young men loitering around than in the Athiru market. As we climbed and began to see the patchwork of tea farms I started to realize that one difference is the population density. The tea farms tend to be 1 to 3 acres, compared to the miraa farms, which tend to be 0.2 to 0.4 acres.

With miraa, someone can survive on 0.4 acres, not well, but they can be able to afford simple food and illicit home-brewed alcohol.

Aside from the population though, the general behavior is different. Later I was talking to another teacher who told me that around Athiru the primary school children work from 4-6am every day before school on miraa farms. In that two hours they are able to earn around 100 Kenya shillings, which is the same amount that someone earns picking tea for an entire day. This relative easy access to money in the miraa zones leads to a significantly higher dropout rate. In fact, out of 200 students that start class 1, it is common for only 10 to finish class 8.

As we climbed higher, Mr. Gitonga told me about how the British had taken the land by force during colonization, but had required that Kenyans buy it back from them upon independence. The Kenyans that purchased the land were the ones who had a little money, were business oriented, and had shares in the factories that processed the tea from white settlers’ farms. The Kenyans that did not have the money to buy land or to pay the taxes that went along with selling tea settled in the lower areas such as Athiru.

As we reached the top of the hill, Mr. Gitonga pointed out the experimental fish ponds dotted into the corners of the tea farms. Apparently a foreign government is giving Kenyans money to build fish ponds. They have a sum of money allocated to each farmer, with included instructions and and materials list. The farmers receive money to pay laborers, buy cement, and then get little fish to start the venture. From the top of the hill, it is apparent that none of the ponds are lined with cement. The imagination is the limit on where this money has gone. From past experiences and from talking to more informed people the situation probably looks like this: the foreign body gives 100 thousand Kenyan shillings for the project. This is a lot of money if you usually make 2 thousand KSh per month from tea. An arrangement is worked out with the Kenyan authority on the ground. 20 000 is spent on labor to dig the hole and lay piping for water. The rest of the money vanishes.

This is not particular to any particular region. These stories are prolific. My favorite is called the “Goldenberg Scandal.” During Moi’s regime, they wanted to provide an incentive for individuals to export goods. There was a man who allegedly imported gold from another country, and then exported it from Kenya, claiming the right to receive the government subsidy. Eventually someone talked, and it came out that the gold never existed in the first place. This man simply paid off the customs authorities to fill out claim form after claim form. In total, he is estimated to have made billions of shillings off of the Kenyan government in this way. No one ever kept track of the documents, and it is unknown exactly how much he made. At the very least, he made enough to build the Grand-Regis hotel, which was estimated to be worth 7 billion shillings.

The real punch-line of the story is that the man responsible suddenly became a born-again Christian and is now a nationally renowned preacher with his own spot on national TV.

These thoughts accompanied me throughout the day, but regardless of the pessimism they created I was very joyous to be in the company of such a good teacher and good friend.

Founder’s Day

2010-02-23T18:30:00.001+03:00

Scouting Trivia: Baden Powell is buried in Kenya.

This past weekend there was a camp out a few kilometers from his grave. I went with 12 of the scouts from my school. We camped together, cooked together, hiked, and did community service together. It was the first time that they had ever been on a scout camp out – and probably the furthest that most of them have ever been from their homes. It rained and they got wet and cold, but they survived and they did not even complain once!

In Kenya, the principal activity of scouts is marching and raising the flag at school assemblies. Most scouts and scout leaders do not know about all of the other components of scouting. While at the camp out I met a few Kenyan scout leaders that are trying to teach them. They are sponsored by an NGO from Denmark to train scout troops. They told me how to get a Kenyan Scouting Association handbook for the scouts, where to buy merit badges, and how to encourage the scouts to continue on their own.

I met a lot of inspired Kenyans on the trip, to which I am grateful. For instance, on Sunday we were planning on remaining at our camp site and then going the next morning. At noon I was informed that we had to leave that day. My scouts mobilized quickly and were able to take down our camp, making it cleaner than the surrounding camp sites, in about half of an hour. Then, as they were finishing, I went to figure out how to get back to school. The public bus that we took to the camp left town at around 12:30, and it was the only direct bus from Maua to the camp, a journey which took us around 6 hours. As I was trying to find a private school bus that could squeeze us and take us I came across a scout by the name of Jean (the first French name that I have seen in Kenya). He spent over half of an hour with me helping me to track down a bus. After all that help I offered him a soda and he told me to buy my own scouts a soda before I considered buying him one. This might well have been the first time in Kenya when someone helped me so much and refused compensation.

Jean’s actions radiated the image of Baden Powell that is ingrained into scouts. My own scouts had never heard the story of the young scout that inspired Baden Powell to spread the scouting movement. I wonder if Jean had, or if even without hearing it, his involvement in scouts helped to shape the same ideology. Either way, I hope that through scouting, and outside of scouting, Jean, myself, and every other citizen can help to mold the younger generation into such enlightened beings.

The bus that we found was for a private boarding primary school. The primary students were trained in all sorts of scouting cheers and songs, and my students loved it. Once we finally arrived back at our school I was exhausted, but the scouts continued to sing the new songs that they had learned.

And some pictures:

The first one shows the scouts’ tent. It is made out of maize bags that have been cut and sewn together into a plastic sheet. There was a lot of rain, and they were soaked. This is scouting in Kenya though. You also notice that they do not have uniforms, which is because a uniform costs almost as much as school fees for a term.

As you can tell, they were super excited about all my nifty American camping gear. Here they are showing us how to use my water filter and MSR dromedary.

On the last day of the camp out all of the scouts go to Baden Powell’s grave, which is located at he outskirts of Nyeri.

Pizza Party

2010-02-06T09:59:00.001+03:00

I held a pizza party for the students that scored above a 50% on the end of term exam for any of my classes.

I will give an overview of the process for those of you that have not cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven before.

First, you make the dough, sauce, and toppings. I use normal bread dough for my pizza, although I do not use a recipe, so it may not actually be so normal given the number of iterations that I have gone through.

While one person is making the dough, another person can light the fire in the oven. The fire stays for about an hour and a half. Then, you have to remove the coals. I have had all sorts of accessories made for the oven, including my most recent addition, which is a metal pizza paddle. The pizza paddle was well worth the $4 I paid for it, because it keeps me from burning all of the hair off of my arms each time I reach into the 600 degree Farenheit oven to add or remove a pizza. The way that I used to do it was not good at all.

Then the coals are removed using another locally made tool. I put the coals in a box in order to save them for later use and keep them from smoking all over the place.

Then the pizza is put into the oven. Most people do not use pizza pans, and I may try this one day, but so far I have used aluminum pans that I bought at the local super-store.

The pizza is put into the oven and the first batch only takes about 5 minutes to cook due to the extreme heat. My oven uses locally available materials and does not retain heat very well, but if I wanted to I could cook 3 or 4 rounds of pizza and bread. Although so far I have only made enough dough for 2 rounds.

Then you cut the pizza, let it cool, and enjoy. This pizza is topped with homemade sauce (fresh tomatoes, rosemary, oregano, basil, garlic, ground pepper, hot peppers, salt, a little sugar, etc), onions, squash, potatoes, carrots, and cheese.

Book Report

2010-02-06T09:51:00.001+03:00

In part due to having stayed here for over a year life feels normal and it requires more focus to find the aspects that might be interesting to share with people in America.

Classes have started, and apart from getting malaria, I have been doing well.

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I have also been continuing to read, and the latest two books, The Invisible Cure and Imperial Reckoning, have been particularly good. The Invisible Cure is about HIV/AIDS in Africa.

In the book the author gives her perspective on the progression of international aid given to Africa to combat HIV/AIDS. What is dis-heartening about the system she portrays is that there seems to be a very low correlation between amount of money given and successful programs. Yet, western countries continue to give billions of dollars a year. PEPFAR, for instance, gives around $500 million per year to Kenya alone and is widely praised at home in America.

The “Invisible Cure” that the author alludes to is, collectively, the mass of locally born programs, which often times do not receive western aid. The directors of these programs usually volunteer and struggle financially to serve their communities, yet they continue to serve despite the challenges. This is in contrast to aid funded programs which have larger budgets, but also have goals designed with as much interest for receiving funding as for serving communities.

Certainly, international aid has improved many peoples lives. For instance, aid, to my knowledge, has been effective at distributing ARVs and, in Kenya, setting up counseling and testing centers. The short-coming of these programs is that they do not feed the many hungry Africans that are receiving the ARVS, nor do they address, in terms that the local population internalizes, the root causes behind the wide spread of HIV in Africa compared to other regions of the world.

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The other book, which I am currently reading, is Imperial Reckoning. This book makes me seriously wonder why Kenyans trust any programs that come from the west. The author of the book began investigating the final days of the British occupation of Kenya for a PhD history thesis at Harvard. Through her research she uncovered the story of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans that were tortured – some being castrated or excruciatingly electrocuted. Almost the entire Kikuyu population was put into detention camps or barbed wire villages, where they had no food and no land to farm. Even those that were not in the camps were put onto overcrowded reserves and not allowed to sell produce or cereals in the open market.

This happened here. It happened in the 1950’s. Many of the stories in the book come from interviews with the author. Many Kenyans lives are clearly worse due to the past occupation by the British and yet the many white people here today are not kicked out. This seems fairly phenomenal to me.

An interesting factoid that I learned from the book is that chiefs did not exist, at least in Kenya, before the British. This shocked me because all of my life I have imagined chiefs as being an integral component of tribal society. In reality, chiefs were Kenyans loyal to the British, who were willing to abuse their own people for a share of the profit.

There is so much talk about corruption in Kenya today, but people usually forget the circumstances that led the country to where it is today. For instance, people complain that the courts are not good and that if you want to get your case heard it is likely that you will have to pay a bribe, but most people in my circles do not mention the case of Jomo Kenyatta. The governor of Kenya came up with the idea that incarcerating Kenyatta would stop the spread of the Mau Mau movement. Unfortunately, he did not have enough evidence to convict Kenyatta, so he charged Kenyatta with the ambiguous crime of “managing an unlawful society” and paid a British judge to convict him.

Although most of these atrocities were committed against the Kikuyu, Meru are quick to add that they are closely related to the kikuyu and that generally the bantus were lumped together. Regardless of who was most attacked, the racial fight was ultimately between the white settlers and the legitimate Kenyans.

Knowing the history helps to put this society into context. It also helps to put into context the people who are now purporting to help Africans. With this context it is not surprising that some Africans believe AIDS is a weapon created by white people to destroy Africans.

Pictures!

2010-01-14T20:59:00.001+03:00

The first picture is of the green house that is covering my herb garden. The purpose of the green house here is to decrease the intensity of the Sun and increase moisture retention. The student in the front is Emmanuel and the student standing in the background is George.

Over the holiday I went to visit Emmanuel’s home. Part of the tradition here is that after circumcision (around age 14) the boy/man builds his own house on his parents’ compound. This size and type of house is very common and measures approximately 7ft. by 10ft.

Below is the form 1 class. I am their class teacher, which, for me, means that I hold meetings with them almost every week and try to check up on them as best as I am able.

Happy Mango Season!

2010-01-11T13:15:00.000+03:00

Since returning from vacation I have been wished a happy new year by countless people. When they ask what my New Year's resolution is, I usually tell them that I am resolved to write “2010” instead of “2009” on all forms that I may come across between now and the end of 2010.

Then I ask if the new year is worth celebrating more than any of the other current events. For instance, around the New Year the Minister of Education was involved in a scandal involving the theft of Ministry of Education funds. Maybe we could wish each other a corrupt free tomorrow or quick retrieval of the missing funds.

Better yet, maybe we can wish each other a merry mango season:
“may your lips be stained orange for the coming month!”
or
“may you be blessed with a thousand toothpicks for removing the mango strings from between your teeth!”

Cow Attack! And Lentil Soup

2010-01-11T13:14:00.000+03:00

When I came back from the States in August I brought with me a bunch of seeds, including thyme, oregano, Thai basil, dill, and a couple types of flowers. In order to keep them from dying I waited until the rainy season (December) to plant them. Being on the equator, even during the rainy season the Sun is very hot and so three of my students assisted me to build small green houses. We bought 6m plastic pipes, cut them in half, and attached yellow, partially opaque plastic to the outside of the plastic frames. This has turned out to work marvelously, and until the other day, I had very healthy 4 inch tall plants.

But then it struck, like an elephant in the night. I was doing my evening hour of meditation and I heard a funny rustling coming from somewhere. There are always funny noises around the school, so I ignored it, put in my ear plugs and continued to meditate for the remaining part of the hour. When I removed the earplugs the noise was still there and I found that it was coming from outside. In the dark, I could barely make out what it was. Then as my torch scanned the black abyss, I realized that part of the darkness was really a cow. The bull had escaped from its pen and was easily destroying the green house, trampling on the baby plants and eating them too! With some harsh threats I scared the cow away from my garden and into the school's tomato patch, where it continued to eat happily until the night watchman came with a stick to chase it away.

The man that the school hires to take care of the cows had done a poor job that evening, and I hope that he will help me rebuild. Most of the damage was due to the cows hooves, as it was only trying to eat the tall weeds that had grown up around the sprouts. All in all, the damage was not so bad. One variety of flower was almost completely wiped out, and the parsley looked quite mangled, but at least a few will carry on.

The biggest trouble that I have now is figuring out what delicious food I am going to use each of the spices for. When I find someone asking me what foods each spice will be used in, I end up saying “that one goes well with meat.”

Lentil Soup:
lentils
onion
carrot
tomato
thyme, oregano, basil
meat (a little bit for flavoring)

One exemplary recipe that makes use of these spices is lentil soup, which also happens to be a huge favorite of mine, dating back to the days when my grandmother would cook it for me almost weekly.

On Sunday I prepared cooked it and invited Mr. And Mrs. Mutia over to sample it. Despite their friendly conversation, as we were eating it I found myself lost deep in thought thinking about my grandmother. It was not the same as the recipe that my grandmother used to use. For one thing, I used cow meat instead of the turkey-ham that she used and I also added a little brown rice to make it a more complete meal.

I filled my biggest stock pot to the brim, and yet we managed to finish all of it between four of us. I do not know whether or not Mr. Mutia was exaggerating, but he told me that it was the tastiest food that he had ever eaten. In America I certainly would not accept this as true, but most Kenyans have never tasted a food spiced with oregano, thyme, or basil before, so maybe his accolades were at least partly true.

I enjoyed this gathering very much. There was a Sunday last term when I invited some neighbors over for fresh pizza made from my oven. Maybe I will try to start a tradition, cooking different dishes making use of my spice garden each weekend.

So far, the dishes I can think of are potato salad, lentil soup, pizza, and pasta salad, as well as generic soups and stews.

Maybe I can make good on some of those threats towards the cow and serve guests roasted cow rubbed oil and rosemary.

Vipassana Meditation

2010-01-08T17:47:00.000+03:00

Revised version:

Over Christmas me and three other PCVs took a 10 day course on Vipassana Meditation. Vipassana meditation is a non-sectarian form of meditation that was used by the Buddha to train the mind to see reality as it is. The reality that the Buddha saw is that cravings and aversions are the basis of our sufferings and that this form of meditation can be used to change the way our “inner” mind perceives reality.

Today Vipassana is taught by S.N. Goenke, a Burmese “house-holder,” who has actively spread the technique since he left Burma in the 1950's. Vipassana is taught as a ten day course, via tape and audio recordings of Goenke. During this period, students live as monks, observing five precepts which include noble silence and not taking intoxicants.

In addition to the meditation technique, Goenke also gives daily discourses on the Buddha's insight and the benefits of the technique. This may seem sectarian, because we associate the Buddha with Buddhism, but the Buddha never taught conversion from one religion to another. The truths that he teaches are universal, and it has only been since the time of his death that groups have ascribed rites, rituals, and auxiliary beliefs to his teachings, forming their own religion.

The Buddha did, however, have direct insight into his past lives. It bothered me that Goenke made reference to this teaching during the course, because either a person must have direct realization of their past lives or else it must be taken on blind faith. When I asked the assistant teacher about this, he reminded me that the Buddha directed his followers to scrutinize all of his [ the Buddha's ] teachings. If one finds a “black stone” in the porridge, remove the stone instead of going hungry and letting the nutritious portion of the food go to waste. I was satisfied with this answer, because, for me, the nutritious portions of Vipassana were far greater in quantity than the troubling components.

While I find that already I have received some benefits, the path is long and requires a life-time (maybe life-times) of practice. In order to describe how practice may change the habit patterns of a person, Goenke tells a story during one discourse. In the story, a mother gives each of her three children money to buy oil. On the way back from buying the oil, each one trips and spills half of the bottle. One is a pessimist and tells his mother, “I have failed. I have spilled half of the oil.” The second is an optimist and says enthusiastically, “I have made you proud. I tripped but I have saved half of the oil.” The third child is a Vipassana meditator and, without becoming angry of proud, he tells his mother, “the bottle is both half full and half empty. Although I spilled it, I am capable of filling it again” and goes to earn money to replace the oil.

Anecdotal stories are nice, but most people that practice Vipassana meditation has stories from their own lives. One such story came from a man that told me instead of previously yelling ten times a month, be now yells maybe eight times per month. Another man, who volunteered ten days to serve students at the course, told us that he is the happiest man in the world. Even the structure of the course suggests how many people it has benefited; the courses run entirely off of donations, first time students are not allowed to donate until after they have completed a course, and no one that helps with the courses receives renumeration.

For more information about Vipassana meditation, or to find a Vipassana meditation center on any continent, visit www.dhamma.org.

Pre-Vipassana

2009-12-22T17:19:00.000+03:00

I am attending a ten day silent retreat focusing on Vipassana meditation. The course starts the afternoon of December 23rd and is running until breakfast on January 3rd.

I am sure that I will have more to say about it after I am finished. The bit that I know so far is that the technique pre-dates the Buddha, but was discovered by him and is used as a tool in Buddhism for looking inward. I will be getting up at 4:30am each day to meditate, I will be meditating for approximately ten hours every day, and each day the meditation will be interspersed with lessons. The lessons are not to teach religious conclusions, but are to teach meditation techniques and give themes to focus on in the meditation sessions. All of the conclusions are made by the practitioner.

For those family members that were thinking about calling me over Christmas, sorry. My phone will probably be off for the duration.

I hope that all of you get the opportunity over the holidays to be with your family and forget everything else that is pulling on you.

This Has Happened to Other People I Know (In Kenya)

2009-12-18T10:48:00.000+03:00

On the 15th of December I wrote that I had found a chicken egg in my bed. That night I slept very poorly, apparently my chickens have lice!

The next day I was very vigilant about making sure that the chickens could not get into my house. I was busy and did not enter my bedroom at night, but when I did I found another chicken egg!

I began to seriously contemplate if I was crazy or not, but the next day one of my students confirmed that his chickens try to leg eggs in his bed all the time. Apparently chickens are very crafty and once they find a comfortable place they do their best to return. Yesterday I opened the glass windows, and although I still have bars over my windows the chicken tried to squeeze its way through the bars at least three different times. On the third time he succeeded in squeezing through and what ensued was a slow motion chase scene similar to the ones you see in old black and white movies where the fugitive pops out of every little corner, sometimes in front of the chaser and sometimes behind the chaser.

Finally, I coaxed her out and normality was restored, but I have given it a formal warning. Next time the chicken lays an egg in my bed, that is it, I am going to eat it.

Has This Ever Happened to Anybody Else I Know?

2009-12-15T22:59:00.000+03:00

I was cleaning my house on Tuesday, with the door wide open.

I went outside to wash some clothes. Then I came in, ate lunch, sat down to read, and finally went to go take a little nap.

When I was about flop down on my bed, I noticed an egg, right next to the pillow. I was shocked because the chicken had given no other evidence of being in my house. No tell-tale poop or muddy chicken foot prints. The culprit was definitely a chicken though. There is no one else in the school compound, let alone my house or my bedroom. I was so startled that I skipped the nap.

When I was going to bed at night, I realized that there were a few bits of mud on my bed sheets. I was very relieved to be able to rule out insanity or multiple personalities as the cause of the incident.

Burial

2009-12-15T22:58:00.000+03:00

I attended a burial on Monday. The man got married in 1988. In 1989 he started experiencing intermittent illness. This continued until 8 December 2009 when he died. Nowhere on the program, or during the service did anyone mention what ailed him all of those years. I never knew him, and cannot say what illness he had, but I have a good guess.

Do his four children and his wife know what killed him? Have they been tested? Will the children grow old enough to have their own lovers and pass the same virus to their sexual partners? How far will the lineage of this transmission extend through their social network?

Eight percent of the Kenyans that know their HIV/AIDS status have the disease. One out of 12.5. Those are the ones who know their status, what is the percentage amongst those who do not know?

Testing is free, but not very many Kenyans get tested. Some get tested once, but few get tested every time they have a new partner.

I do not know what killed this man, but even if he did not die of AIDS the burial could have been for one of the many AIDS victims in Kenya and it would have gone the same.

Back to Training: A New Crop of Math/Science Teachers

2009-12-15T22:56:00.000+03:00

After raod-trippin' with the boys, I headed down to Pre-Service training in Loitokitok for a week of intense awsomeness.

As part of the pre-service training for secondary school teachers, the trainees practice teaching in schools for a week. At the end of the school year, Kenyan teachers do not appreciate having their normal schedule disturbed in order to accommodate a group of untrained teachers. Not only are the trainees untrained in terms of their teaching, but further, they speak at these poor children with tons of enthusiasm in an accent of English that is sometimes very difficult for them to understand.

For this, and other reasons, the teaching practicum is setup by Peace Corps, and is dubbed a “model school.” This year there were three of four volunteers that did all of the organization and facilitation for the model school. Three volunteers brought students from their respective schools. In the mornings these students helped the trainees by letting the trainees teach them. Then, in the afternoon, myself and the three volunteers taught the students life skills.

We discussed the qualities that make various types of relationships positive or negative. We talked about goal setting. We also talked about HIV/AIDS facts vs. myths, and the 8-step approach to using a condom. It was very fun and rewarding working with these students for a week. There are a few of them that I miss even now. Then in the evenings we had various activities that were meant to be more recreational. All of the activities were big hits, including board/card game night, movie night, and, the session that I planned, a bridge building competition.

For the bridge building competition, I gave them each 30 straws, 7 pieces of paper, 2 pieces of string, a hand full of tooth picks and about 4 ft of masking tape. The bridge had to be free-standing and had to span a gap that was longer than both the straws and the paper.

We had a couple of trainees spend the night each night in order get more interaction time with the students. They were super excited about entering the competition, and they made a bridge using two trusses, each chalked full of triangles. The bridges were judged by placing an empty cup on top and measuring the amount of water poured into the cup before the bridge collapsed. The group of trainees even included an engineer, but they still came in last place!

I thought that it was rather unfortunate that the team that came in first basically made a bundle of tape, straws, and paper. Maybe I gave the groups too much tape...

These evening events went until around 10pm each day. Then the volunteers had to meet to debrief and plan for the next day, then we went to sleep at 11pm-midnight, and got up at 5:45 to do it all over again.

Gosh it was a lot of fun! Also, it was really awesome to see the PC trainees experiment with teaching. During our model school literally no one used an interactive activity with the students, but during this model school, the students got out of their seats to participate almost every class. I feel confident that with this introduction to teaching in Kenya that these teachers will go forth and make good Peace Corps secondary school teachers.

At the end of the week I said good bye to Kelly, another PC secondary school teacher. She was an integral component of the model school planning and facilitation. She was also on the Volunteer Action Committee, representing the views of the other Peace Corps Volunteers with me. She actually has a teaching license from the States, which is rare for a PCV. She has been a mentor of mine, and she has inspired me in the classroom. I am excited for her for this change in her life. I am thinking about what I will do in a year when I go home. I hope to have applied to graduate school programs. I also know that I am invited to go ice fishing with Kelly in Minnesota, which I will definitely take her up on!

I am excited to be here for another year though. Even though the training was not meant for me, I got practice teaching life skills to students and I got to observe other teachers lessons, all of which I will bring back to school this year.

If I do one thing for this next year, I want it to be teaching life skills.

Thanksgiving and the Boys

2009-12-01T17:14:00.000+03:00

School ended at the start of last week. Once the term ends my school is empty so I like to find other things to do. I was happy to be able to attend Thanksgiving at a woman's condo in Nairobi with about 8 other volunteers. By the time that I arrived most of the cooking was already underway. Wanting to feel useful I offered to make the gravy. I was surprised when they handed me a package of gravy mix, but I quickly set it aside, pronouncing myself the gravy-king for the evening, as I tossed the package aside and made the gravy from scratch.

What am I thankful for? - I am thankful to the Mosiers and Rowes who taught me to cook. I am thankful for all of the teachers that I have had in my life.

After Thanksgiving we had a couple of days before we had to be in Nairobi again for our mid-service medical checkups. Wanting to get out of the city, Matt and I decided on Hell's Gate National Park as our destination. Two volunteers that we had not met before asked if they could come along with us, to which we over-enthusiastically said "YES!"

It was so nice to road-trip with the boys. Plans didn't work out as we planned, but none of us really cared. The hotel where we thought that we had bunks in the dorm room told us that they had been booked full for this night since a month ago, but it is okay, we could have slept in a tent if we had to. In the end we found a dorm room a couple of hotels down next to Lake Naivasha. It was raining, prohibiting us from hiking where we had wanted to, but that did not matter. We sat out on the porch to the dorm room and talked about some of the finer points of evolution and about the States. It turns out that one of the men was the president of the frisbee club in college and also did a lot of home brewing. Both being passions of mine in college.

When the rain stopped we went out to the lake and found a hippo, in the water, in its natural habitat, with no barrier keeping us apart. Luckily, he did not want to decrease the distance between us.

Then, the next day, we went to Hell's Gate National Park, the only park in Kenya (so I have been told), where you can walk or ride a bike through the park. We rented really unkempt mountain bikes from the park service, and spent the day riding up to groups of zebra, giraffe, and warthogs, scaring them off as we gave chase on our bikes.

In all, we rode close to 30 km on these mountain bikes, most of which had low-to-flat tires by mid-day. Towards the end of our circuit in the park we went to the park's main feature, called "the Gorge." It reminded me of one of the slot canyons entering the Grand Canyon, without the adjoining Grand Canyon.

There is no way that they would allow a tour like this one in the States. Our guide showed us how to over come each obstacle, sometimes showing us hand holds to use to skirt by pools of water on a small ledge. Other times wedging himself horizontally between the two cliff faces as he progressed toward and up over a ledge in the canyon.

I cannot imagine most tourists overcoming these obstacles, but it didn't matter for us - the boys. After two hours of canyoneering, and a day of riding bikes we mounted the matatu for the two hour journey back into Nairobi. Finishing off the night with a mango lassi and paneer from a deserted Indian restaurant.

Just us boys.

It really made me miss these interactions. Backpacking, road-tripping, and relaxing, just us boys, together, without another care in the world, a nice way to celebrate the end of a term and re-energize myself.

Population

2009-11-21T19:45:00.000+03:00

A national population census was carried out in Kenya in August. The Daily Nation (a national newspaper) just announced in an article today that the current population of Kenya is 39 million and that the population is increasing by 1 million people per year.

This last week I have been the teacher on duty and have permitted around 8 different students to attend burials. This strikes me as being a higher rate than a similarly sized high school in America. If this many people are dying every week, and every year, how many babies are born every year to increase the total population by one million?

Kenya is probably smaller geographically than Oregon and Washington put together. Also, Kenya was rated the second or third most water poor country in the world per capita. The average Kenyan does not have access to a surplus of resources. Each generation the plot of land gets divided into two or three pieces in order to give each son an opportunity to plant food and build a house. Most of these pieces of land are now less than an acre, and agriculture is the main source of lively hood. Where do these additional 1 million Kenyans per year make their living? How will development occur and how will the income of the average Kenyan increase if their opportunity to make a living is increasing divided?

No issue stands alone. Compounding the issue of population increase is the drought, which seems to be continuing this year even though the papers reported that El Nino was coming and that the country would have a bumper harvest. Additionally, AIDS, TB, and Malaria continue to ravage peoples well being and decimate families.

What is the way forward? Aid from developed countries is not the answer, but neither is isolation. Religion is not the answer, but neither is agnosticism. Education is probably helpful, but only if is focuses heavily on discussing these country wide issues. Currently the education system does not emphasize this at all. There is a “life skills” syllabus, but there is no national test on it, which means that 95% of schools do not teach it.

If I do anything in Kenya, I need to lead debates and discussions with my students on these issues. It requires a lot of courage to discuss these issues with the students though, because they are taboo issues, especially AIDS. Around 7 percent of Kenyans have AIDS, but it is only talked about in whispers.

There are students in almost every school in Kenya that have AIDS, but most of these students do not know that they carry the disease.

By the way, did you know that more than one million babies are born each year in Kenya?

Electricity!!!

2009-11-16T12:17:00.001+03:00

I just returned to school from over a week of traveling to help with Peace Corps training. All the buzz around school is about the electricity that was finally connected. Until now the boarding students have huddled around two parafin pressure lamps in the evening and early morning. These break all the time, causing them to go off during the middle of the study periods once every two or three days. They also require a student to prepare them for about thirty minutes prior to every session and they do not provide very even lighting for the room. Now the florescent tubes have been installed in the classrooms and one of the tubes lights the room better than one of the pressure lamps used to.

The principal also installed two halogen flood lamps outside of the classrooms, which helps the watchman to monitor if students are sneeking in and out of school.

I walked past the classrooms during the prepatory period last night, and was met by students who appeared like deer caught in the headlights. Instead of the typically murmering, they were silent, and they looked as though they have been stunned. Looking over their books, it appeared as though every word was captivating.

My guess is that, at most, one or two have electricity at home. Most of them have mud floors at home. This is huge for them.

It also seems to be huge for the teachers. This morning, when I returned from administering a form 1 mathematics exam, they had clogged mine and Mr. Mutia's desks with a Sony sound system.

In the office I had to set up a computer for them. Among the problems were a monitor that needed to be plugged in and two power buttons that needed to be pressed. It is so new seeing people with no computer experience and being the only person within a few kilometers who knows who to help them. I am happy for them, but at the same time I wonder why they have a computer if nobody knows how to use it. Thus far it seems like more of a status symbol than a helpful tool. Hopefully they will learn.

My dream is to start a computer lab in the school for the students. I would love to be able to teach the students how to type and use a computer. It would definitely give them an advantage when seeking employment, and would increase their access to information after they finish secondary school.

Of course I am also very excited to have electricity. In fact, I am writing this blog post using the electricity. I can now charge my cell phone without dropping the battery off with the barber. I am able to charge my ipod, and I can use the laptop computer that I bought in Nairobi back in April. Best of all I can share educational movies that I have with my students. An example that I am very excited about is the Planet Earth series.

Maybe I will even keep up my recent trend of writing blog posts frequently.

Farms of Loitokitok

2009-11-12T20:22:00.000+03:00

I returned home to my host family in Loitokitok for a cup of late afternoon tea and fruit. Patrick, my 7th grade host brother is doing well. He told me that he is continuing to be ranked 1st-3rd in his class. My host father's daughters came to say hello and they told me that all of their children are doing well. Sammy, Stacy, and Kamau are just about the cutest kids.

When I looked up from the kiswahili book that Patrick was teaching me from my eyes fell on their bok shelf, which was lined with animal carvings the last time I saw it. From left to right I looked at an a walking elephant, a rhino bucking its head, a trumpeting elephant, an empty bottle of '07 Ransom Cattrall Brothers Vineyard wine, and a tall giraffe.

One of those items was not there last time... Continuing my gaze around the room I began to feel a bit empty myself. The simple items that I had given them were still there, including an Obama Biden bumper sticker that they had stuck to the inside of their covered porch.

Meanwhile my father told me about how Loitokitok has not had rain since the last time I was there. I remember hearing from him one year ago a similar story. That was December of 2008 and they had not had good rain since the December before that. People in this area literally survive by the rain and the last time that they were able to take in a sufficient harvest was sometime in late 2007. In 2007 they also had election related violence in which the country's food supply was burnt. I 2008 relief food was obtained but mysteriously disappeared with allegations that the minister of agriculture had sold it illegally.

This means that the whole country has been trying to survive for two years on one years yield.

In Maua it is not very visible due to the money from tea and miraa, but in Loitokitok you can see the effects. This area has many Massai who are traditionally herders, and even on to Loitokitok there were cows that had dropped dead next to the road due to the lack of water.

My family is still here though, surviving on about a hundred dollar a month pension, putting their daughter through college while at the same time their 5 acres of fields have dried up prematurely for too long. The people have no other option to plant. When they stop planting they will have no other hope to turn to.

These people have planted four times, once every six months, weeding by hand, spraying pesticides with hand held sprayers, only to find each time that your work was for nothing.

They have heard that El Nino is coming this year, but so far there has been less rain than during a regular year of good rain. Nobody in the area knows if it has come and missed them, or if it is still coming. The people of the coast are seeing roads and bridges being washed out and would tell the people of Loitokitok that El Nino is bypassing them.

Looking towards the south you can see the reason why. Mount Kilamanjaro has attracted attention for centuries due to its' size. Most of the clouds seem to come from the south-east and dump their water on the Tanzania side of the border. It is only when all light is blocked out by pregnant clouds that substantial rain is released onto the northern side.

I continued to talk to them about the state of things while I wondered to myself if I would ever see my Kenyan family again. Gazing out the window across from where I was sitting on their couch I noticed that the covered area where they store food for their animals was completely empty. How long can they buy feed for two calves, a dairy cow, and four goats, while feeding their own mouths and the mind of their daughter in school. Mama was so happy to see me, and this time I was better able to talk to her in kiswahili than when I left, which made her even more jovial.

These people are better off than most. There has been an upsurge in kidnappings of westerners, but what amazes me is that it has not spiked higher than it has.

As dusk was setting in I said my good byes, my host father walking me a half kilometer up the road commenting on the state of the farms along the road side. He repeatedly told me there fate is up to God and that it is not good to ask for hand outs.

Just before he left me he conceded that it is also not good to work year after year without getting any return for the labor.

I agreed as I said good bye. Then I left him there as I walked away. Wondering to myself about where I want to apply to graduate school and what I believe the purpose of my life is.

The Sun continued to set and I had to quicken my pace to avoid being left in total darkness.

Loitokitok - Round 2

2009-11-11T20:20:00.001+03:00

On Saturday I came back to Loitokitok, but this time I was not a trainee - I was accompanying the new trainees! There are 25 of them, about 2/3 math-science like me and 1/3 deaf-ed. I got to give them this session at the start of the week comparing the Kenyan and education system. I gave them several cards with topics (i.e. diet, books, and tests). Each one related to the group their experience in the American educational system. Then me and the Kenyans in the room gave them the Kenyan experience. Below are my notes for the session.

Assignments - teachers mark notes in math/science maybe twice per three months; students given one exercise book for each subject by the school, where they put all of their notes and assignments together; assignments are not counted towards their grade in any subject (even mathematics)

Access to Information - teachers use the same book as the students; there are no computers or internet in most district schools; textbooks contain all testable material

Religion - there are always prayers (assemblies, special events, and meetings); attending religious clubs and services is mandatory, even in government schools

Hiring of Teachers - There is one central hiring body for the entire country (called Teachers' Service Commission); principal cannot hire or fire any government paid teachers; principal usually hires recent form 4 and college graduates to act as temporary teachers - these teachers usually work harder since they know that they can be fired

Diet - Students eat githeri (35% beans and 65% corn) for lunch and supper 6 days a week; Saturday they each corn flour, cabbage, and a little meat; for breakfast they eat a porridge made from corn flour, water, and sugar

Games/Clubs - Mon: Games, Tues: Clubs, Wed: Debate, Thur: Christian services, Fri: Games - ALL DAYS MANDATORY.

Tests - They come to secondary school to take the KCSE (Kenyan Certificate of Secondary Education). In their minds, the main purpose of school is to prepare them for this test

Teacher-Student Relationships/Interaction - culture dictates that students get teachers anything they ask for (cups, chairs, and water); Very formal; information comes from teacher to student

Books - There are several on the market, but the exam is set from one book, which is produced by KLB, a governmental organisation; this is the book used to set the KCSE; KLB produces the books for all subjects; it is made to be affordable, which means it is not edited often, it is small, and there are no color illustrations; KLB is used in 90% of schools as the only text

Timetable - no time between lessons; each class has their own room, which the teachers come to when it is time; one student is in charge of keeping time and ringing the bell; there is a different order to the classes everyday

Study Habits - Boarding students are required to study from 5:30-6:30am, 7-8:30am, and 7-9:30pm everyday; all students required to attend school on Saturday and Sunday although teachers do not attend these days

Cultural Work Expectations For Teachers - they should be in staff room from 8:30-4; they do not take work home; a lot of time in the staff room is spent reading the newspaper and talking to one another

Students' Responsibilities at Home - girls find wood, bring water, cook, and clean; boys have leisure time, which they can use to study or sit in the market

syllabus - there is a national syllabus; all topics are examinable on the KCSE; teachers are expected to cover every topic

Women/Men & Boys/Girls - students are always called boys and girls; students are not called men or women; women serve food (even women teachers are usually expected to serve the males); girls always wash the classroom; girls caned on hands while boys are caned on the butt

November Rains Bring Spring

2009-10-27T12:39:00.000+03:00

It has been almost a year since I first landed in Kenya, and now I am preparing to meet the new group of trainees as they travel to their training site in Loitokitok. In the mornings I have been hearing a vibrancy among the birds' songs that has not been present since last November. The start of the rains have come and everything is green again. There continues to be a lot of talk about El Nino, with people telling tales of last time El Nino hit the country and all of the destruction it caused. I was a bit scared by their stories, but now I am a bit disappointed by this "El Nino" - if it can even be called that. We only had "torrential" rains for maybe two days. I really think that the country needs more of this. I may be speaking too soon though, since the rain is supposed to come again in November and December.

A few days after the fiercest rains I went outside my house and found a week old puppy curled up next to my bread oven. His mother was not around, and although he as weak he was still alive. I wondered how it had landed here, but without giving it a thorough inquisition I bought it milk and started feeding it. He was so weak that the milk had to be poured into his mouth. It was all the talk around the school, "that dog is lucky to have landed at one of the few houses where it would be given milk instead of being stoned to death." I admit that buying milk for the dog made me feel guilty since there are so many humans around that would love milk. How would I have reacted if a beggar had found his way to my house?

I made a burlap bed for the dog and went to teach my classes. When I returned the dogs mother was there, and it was obvious that she was too malnourished to produce any milk for the puppy. A teacher at school told me, "if you love the child, shouldn't you also love the mother?" To which I said, "sure, but that doesn't mean that I want to feed her." After a few minutes I softened and I cooked the mother a meal of dog food (the dog food here comes as a powder. You have to mix it with boiling water and stir).

I tried to attend to the puppy again, giving it more milk, until it eventually threw it all back up due to my enthusiastic feeding regiment.

As I went to sleep I tucked the puppy into the burlap bed, and watched as the mother put her paws around it to keep it warm.

In the morning, the puppy was lying about a foot away from the mother, dead. I was disappointed, because I had been thinking about how fun it would be to have a dog, but I was also relieved because I have other things to focus my attention on besides a dog. Maybe I should have let the puppy sleep inside my house next to a sauce pot of hot water. Maybe there is nothing I could have done. I felt bad, but I dug a hole, while two of my students sung a Kimeru burial song, and that was the end of my puppy.

Since then almost all of the heavy rain clouds have faded from the sky. Even the dirt seems to be more vibrant than before, probably because of the contrast between the brown and green. The dust is definitely gone for a few days and the students are happy to be able to sit in the grass without getting muddy OR dusty.

I hope that we remain in this equilibrium for another week so that the new trainees can wake up their first morning in Nairobi to the smell of growing plants and the sounds of birds. If they miss it, at least they will get to see Kenya's second spring season in April.

A Few Photos

2009-10-12T22:36:00.000+03:00

I am in Nairobi and I am using my access to electricity and nearby cellphone booster towers to upload a few pictures from my computer.

The first picture is one of the form four students at our school standing in front of his father's matatu. This is the most common vehicle used for public transportation. The student helps his father over the holidays by washing the vehicle and driving the route (and promptly washing it again because it is so dusty).

This is the acting deputy principal at my school, Mr. Nderitu. He lives in the hills above the school where the conditions are right for growing tea.

In August, just after the end of the term, me, Abed (left), and Martin (right) hiked to the "White Mountain." Our school is just behind the first line of ridges in the background.

Finally, here are two pictures of common building materials for homes in rural Kenya. The first home is mine. It measures approximately 10 ft. by 20 ft. The Kenyans in the village did not believe that a white person (muzungu) is able to live in a house like this. They believed that I would threaten to go home when I saw this house and demand that it be replaced by a much larger home with more amenities. I think it is nice though. It keeps the rain out most of the time, and it encourages me to spend more time outside. The bottom picture is of a more traditional style of home. This one is not quite traditional due to its tin roof, but the walls are made out of a mixture of sticks, mud, and cow dung and the floor is made of dirt.

Farewell Party for Form Four Students

2009-10-10T09:34:00.000+03:00

The form four students are having a farewell party in about one week. They asked me to be their adviser for the preparations, and for the most part the program is similar to that of an American ceremony for a similar occasion. It will start with a service, then there will be presentations by the school clubs, followed by speeches from the PTA Representative and the chairman of the school's board. The difference is that as part of my role as adviser is to help them pick out a bull, which will be slaughtered the day of the event. We have not yet found the bull, but the process involves finding one in an animal market and then walking with the bull on a foot path cross-country to the school (up to around 15 km).

The bull is really what makes the occasion. We have to find a big healthy one. This isn't my specialty, and the students know it. Mostly my role is to be the money bearer and lead novice bull-hunter.

It is still strange to think about the places where technology has come in and the places where it has not. Everyone has a cell phone and wears a New York Yankees baseball hat (new, still with a sticker, just like my brother in America wears), but electricity is not very common. Only very rich individuals own refrigerators and then they own what Americans call a mini-fridge. Butcheries definitely do not have a refrigerator and neither do schools. The people are very able to do without them though. On the day of the party our school cook and his two aides will butcher a cow, cook tea, cook the bull, and cook rice for around 400 people.

(Below is a picture from the wedding of Mr. Mutia that shows what a meal at a party looks like.)

Day After:

I met my students in Maua on Saturday expecting to spend the day sitting in the market until the time when the students bargained for a good bull. Then we would end the day by driving it home. Instead, I met the students on Saturday to find that they had not made the necessary arrangements. I went home realizing that I needed to come up with a back-up plan for them in case they needed me to become the head bull diviner. I am good friends with an animal doctor and after a phone call with him on Sunday morning I was preparing to take charge of the bull, but then one of the students called me to say that one of their fathers had agreed to sell us a mid-sized bull for the price we had budgeted for.

I am happy that my student's pulled through without me, but then my happiness turned into slight disappointment when they told me that the father agreed to deliver the bull in the back of his Land Rover. I have been told since that bulls can be rough on their handlers when they get separated from the herd. Although I coveted the idea of trekking cross-country through the Kenyan bush, the Land Rover really was a blessing.

Due to the delay, I did not have the time to go by foot anyways. I had to head to Nairobi very early the next morning, because I was selected by my supervisor in Peace Corps to help plan the training for the new group of secondary school teachers that will come in November. I will be busy in Nairobi, until Saturday morning, at which point I will rush back to Athiru to eat the bull that I picked out of the herd with my students. Together we will listen to speeches by the PTA, board of governors, and the principal. Then the deputy will give prizes to the students who performed the best and those who were active in leading the school.

Then on the 20th the form fours will begin their KCSE. Each day for two and a half weeks they will take two 1.5-2.5 hour tests. Then they will leave the school and wait at home for over two months before they receive their scores.

The Hard and the Soft

2009-09-28T15:18:00.000+03:00

Okay. Lots of stuff all mixed together. I've started doing yoga. The book that I have is called "Power Yoga" and is the official yoga program of the New York Runner's Club. The author makes reference to that olde dichotomy, the yin and the yang, or the hard and the soft. What she was referencing on the literal level is that you have to be flexible in order to be strong, or in order to actually use your strength. Of course, similar lines of reasoning can be applied in other situations. All of that is only vaguely related to what I will talk about in this post, but you'll see why that title came to mind.

First, The Soft:

I defied all sorts of cultural norms with regards to sexuality on Sunday. Me, a young bachelor, had invited two of my Kenyan friends, who happen to be married, over to my house for Sunday lunch. In preparation I went down to the milk buying center, bought some milk, and made some poor quality mozzarella. All of this all by myself, without the help of a woman! Then I got a couple of students to help me build a fire and make the bread and pizza dough. Then we chopped veggies, made sauce, and prepared for our guests. The guests came in their Sunday best and we feasted! My recipe just keep improving, and they were very satisfied, although I did require a lot of steering by the others about how to treat guests. I continued to work cooking even though they were standing. I cooked tea, but didn't bring the sugar, and then didn't bring the spoon for the sugar. I did offer them water for drinking before they were able to ask for it. Both the guests and the students were very appreciative, despite the fact that this may have been the first or second time in their lives that these 14 year old boys had cooked. I asked a 20 year old male assistant teacher to cook with me a couple of weeks ago and he told me that it was the first time he had ever cooked a meal! It feels really good to share the soft side of myself with Kenyans and to help them open up their soft selves also.

Then, The Hard:

Later that night, 15 minutes after finishing a long phone conversation with a friend from America, I was laying in bed and heard three loud bangs, like someone hitting a piece of wood. Then 30 seconds later one louder bang that sounded like something hard hitting something soft.

I pulled on my trousers, debated whether or not to take my wooden cudgel (decided against it), and rushed out of my house towards the screaming noises in the dark. The boys were all standing around outside yelling at each other looking upset, and piece by piece I found out that one student had been making noise (for debated reasons). The self-appointed asst. dorm captain had responded by first telling the boy to be quite and then beating the boy with a belt - the three whacks. In retaliation the boy had grabbed a timber, about the size of a 2x4 and had whacked the student in the back of the skull, causing the asst. dorm captain to get pretty loopy to the point that he was unable to walk.

By the time that I reached them, a group of students had instinctively decided to rush him off to the hospital. Unfortunately, their instincts over powered their logic and they didn't tell me or take any money. At night, the hospital is a 4 km walk and then a 4 km. taxi drive. From sampling different hysterical students knowledge there seemed to be a group of about 15 of them somewhere in between our school and the hospital at, by now, midnight. The students are not supposed to have cell phones, but they do have them, and after another half hour I coerced them into giving me the number of one of the students in the hospital party. By this time I had called the teacher on duty, who also has a Land Rover, and he was on his way to help them. In Kenyan emergency rooms they wont treat you if you do not pay first, so these students were not going to get very far without our help. Thankfully the teacher was able to find them, and front the money and the student got stitches.

By 3:15am when they had dropped back to school, I had counseled the hitter, quieted the students, and made sure that the hitter had protection from the others. So things were quite until 8:00am when I gave them a riveting speech about being your brother's keep - even referencing the bible. The situation had escalated over the course of 15 minutes, while 50+ male boarders sat around and watched first one student whip another, and then the other retaliate. It was only after the retaliation that they started becoming upset and restraining the fighters.

All over the world people want to punish each other with physical violence. It is not just the culture of this one school, American schools have guns, drugs, and fist fights also. I think that counseling is an under nourished aspect of the educational system everywhere. That being said, here it is still normal in rural places for students, children, wives, and animals to be punished with physical violence. Caning is officially illegal in the schools, but if I tell one of my student's parents that his child misbehaved he will tell me to give him a good caning. Most teachers oblige and do give the students' canings, simultaneously telling me how much "better" the canings used to be when they were in school, back when men were men, and the moral fabric of the villages was upheld.

Okay, here's how all of this relates to yoga and The Hard and The Soft. Now, we think that by punishing the body we are being very hard and strong, but maybe by learning to be soft and pliable through challenging our views we will be able to achieve a different sort of strength. I don't think that cooking is exactly the answer... but it probably wont hurt.

K.C.S.E.

2009-09-17T14:32:00.000+03:00

On October 21st the fourth year students begin their final exam of secondary school. It is also the only exam that they have taken in secondary school that will matter after they leave. Grades do not matter, clubs and responsibilities only matter a microscopic amount, and essays cannot help them. This is It for them. The exam takes about a month, with two papers each day. Needless to say, they feel it coming. Worse, it is not just my school, but every form 4 student in Kenya will be taking the same exam at the exact same time. All of the students appear to me to have turned into ticking time-bombs by this point. Some are so on edge that are are creating discipline problems, others are studying so long and furiously that I am worried them will lose it before exam time, and a few of them have become so mellow and lost emotionally that the emotional explosion wont happen until they leave school.

In my 8 student form 4 physics class I have all of the three types. Two of the students were sent home from breaking into the principal's office. Two of the students are super focused, and 4 are unable to pay attention even when I am lecturing them about paying attention. It saddens me to follow their gazes out the window and realize that they are staring disinterestedly at nothing.

I feel for them. I want them to see other possibilities for success, or to put there time spent in secondary school into a broader context: they are part of literate Kenya. They have more access to information than most Kenyans, and even though they wont be able to go to college, they are helping - they are stepping Kenya in a better direction than if they had not gone to school. I understand though that it is difficult for them to see this. Someone who goes to college will earn around 20000-35000 Kenya shillings a month as a starting teacher and someone who does not go to college will likely earn 2, 3, 4 thousand shillings a month (if they are able to find employment). Some will go to polytechnics and learn to be a carpenter or mechanic, and others who have connections will be employed earning decent livings. In perspective, food for one person for one month if you buy it all is about 1000 for a very cheap, entirely local food diet.

So most of them are trying to get into that upper echelon. They have proposed that we do 4 labs per week for the next month in addition to our normal lessons where we are revising past exams. I am happy that they are excited about practicals, but wish that their enthusiasm began in a different context.

The other students do not seem to understand what the form 4's are going through exactly. They are acting like little siblings, displaying superficial understanding, but going too far with their attempts at empathy or picking fights.

The teachers have been doing a good job at keeping the younger brothers and sisters busy though. With the support of the other teachers we found new life for the debating club. The first debate of the term was yesterday and I witnessed the form 1's versus the form 2's have an energetic debate about whether or not it is better to educate boys or girls. Students have also been starting to respond to my offers to help them with extra curricular activities. One group wants to try building a mini-biogas digester. Another group wants to try making pipes out of hollowed out trees (I don't yet understand exactly why, but I am happy to help). The students also just found out a few days ago that I have been doing yoga. I am very excited to introduce yoga (and eastern tradition in general), but first I want to feel more confident with my own ability and I want to get over my feelings of embarrassment about showing the students that I have a book full of pictures of a woman in spandex.

The best part of the energy of this term is that the principal has been around the school a lot, which has helped inspire the other teachers to be around school more. Although I sympathize with the form 4's, I have been feeling very happy to be around the school and interacting with the students.

Market Day - Chicken For Sale

2009-09-05T13:30:00.000+03:00

While I was away in Mombasa a student called me to tell me that one of my chickens died, and that he thought the rest were going to die. There was also something in there about eating them that didn't really come through over the phone. I was a little upset, but not enough to ruin my day. I got back to my house yesterday pleasantly surprised to see that I still had 4 chickens left, although one had a limp. I was told that the full story about the other chickens was that one died outright, then two other looked very sick, so they were eaten. This worries me a little bit, because i could imagine a situation in which my friend the animal doctor could have been called and could have given them medicine, but oh well, that didn't happen. So then I had two roosters and two hens, one rooster with a limp. Who knows how it got that limp, I heard somewhere that they also wanted to eat that one, but thankfully they refrained because they knew that someone would tell on them. The healthy rooster was picking on the injured one and chickens are not monogomous anyways, so I decided to take the rooster to the market to sell it.

First a kid that had been picking kale with one of my students offered me 300 KSH for it, but this chicken was worth at least 400 KSH (probably more). Then with the help of my student I shackled the chickens legs with a piece of banana tree twine (the bark of the banana tree is peeled and then used to bind chickens, vegetables, and fix leaky water pipes) and set off for the market. Just outside of the school gate another man offered me 300 KSH for the chicken, but I countered with 600 KSH. I had been briefed on how to bargain from the sellers perspective by this point, and although I felt a little silly saying 600 KSH, which is more than I have ever paid for a chicken, I did it anyways. It worked well enough to get him up to 400 KSH, but I decided to try for 450 KSH and he didn't budge. So on we went. A friend of mine asked me how much it was, but then when I told her 450 KSH she told me she didn't have the money. After walking away I felt bad, and told the student that we should go back and give it to her, but he thought that we should try to get 450 and if we couldn't that we should go back. I agreed, and we walked up through the market, although we continued past the open air market because the student wanted to try selling it to a hotel he knows buys chickens. On the way some old men asked about the chicken, and we went through the bargaining process again, but they stopped too low and I told them "wazee, unacheza," in a joking tone. Translated into English this means, "old men, you are playing," which they appreciated hearing coming from a mzungu (white person) and so they laughed, and then we continuted to the hotel.

Here's how the final debate over the price of this chickens life went:
"Bwana, untaka kuku?" - sir, do you want a chicken?
"ladba, unataka bei gani?" - maybe, what is the price?
"mia sita" - 600
laugh from the shopkeeper. "hapana. Nitalipa mita tatu na hamsini" - no. I will buy it for 350
"bwana, kuku hi ni kubwa, na mimi hupatia chakula katika jioni. Kwa hivyo sasa tumbo yeye is empty (whoops, I used a little enlglish because I didn't remember empty)" - sir, this chicken is big and I feed it in the evening so it's stomach is empty (people selling chickens usually force feed them right before they try to sell them)
"400."
"450. Mimi patia chakula nzuri, na Kenbro ni kuku nzuri." - 450, I give the chicken good food, and Kenbro chickens are very good.
"sawa. 450, na kama utakua kuku wengine, leta hapa, nitanunua." - fine. 450 and if you grow more chickens bring them here, I will buy them.

So my chickens life was worth 450 KSH. Not bad for my first sale ever. Maybe the students can start raising chickens at the school and supply this guy.

Contrasts

2009-09-05T12:49:00.000+03:00

Okay, some of you know that I took a two week vacation to the US recently. A common question that people ask is, "how is the transition?" - "is it difficult?" My standard answer is "not really," but I don't think that this answer is very descriptive. Here are a few of the situations that I found myself adjusting.

I was in transit from Nairobi to San Francisco for 20+ hours and the extent of my communication with people in a non-service position was "hello" to a couple of people sitting next to me on the plane. After that we put on our headphones and didn't say another word the entire flight. In Kenya I cannot sit next to someone for more than five or ten minutes without us casually chit-chating. I cannot walk through a town for more than 3 minutes without someone saying hello to me.

The first night in America, I was driving up from SFO with Julia and we stopped at a hotel for the night. It was around 10 or 11pm, I was half asleep, and she said she was going out to the car to get something. My response was, "what, this late? is it safe? do you want me to get up and go with you?" Okay, so we were in a hotel compound, and the car was only like 50 yards away. After acclimatizing to America I realized that going out to the car was a perfectly normal thing for people to do at night. In Kenya I only walk around the village after 8pm if I someone is walking with me, and usually they are carrying some sort of stick.

Americans are rich. It took me going home to realize just how much this is true. Okay, I will admit it, I am rich. I have a computer, a digital camera, money in the bank, and I get enough money each month to buy food. Oh, and I have an ipod nano. At the back of my mind all of this is outweighed by my student loans that I will have to repay someday, but then again I was able to get loans to go to school. Credit is so much more available in America. Even if a Kenyan has a computer and a digital camera, the American doesn't usually have the same deep attachment to that item that the Kenyan does.

In Kenya if seeds are sown they will grow (provided they have sufficient water). Here I don't have to wait until March or April to think about my garden. Most people plant just before the two rainy seasons, but for a small garden that can be watered by hand, I can plant anytime.

In America if I tried to bargain for a textbook the shop keeper would look at me funny. Here it seems nearly impossible to get away from bargaining. I even have to bargain if I want to buy something from a good friend.

America has so many more choices for beer, wine, food, and spices. Kenya has 6-7 choices for beer, Guiness and 6 that come from the same company. All of them from East African Breweries are lagers and are slightly better than Budweiser. I don't really mind the limited choices. I don't need any of those things to be happy. As long as I have a balanced diet in terms of the nutrients, the flavor doesn't matter too much. I did adapt back to all the American flavors very readily though.

All in all, adapting was not too difficult. The only other contrast is that in America I have family and very close friends, while in Kenya I have a few Kenyan friends that I really trust but we don't go back as far and our cultures are very different. This one is the hardest for me to adapt to. I feel so fortunate though that I got to visit my family and friends in America. I feel energized because I have seen that they are all doing well and so i am no longer anxious about being away from them for another year and 4 months.

Mr. Toinya

2009-07-31T10:13:00.000+03:00

I mentioned that Mr. Toinya left towards the start of this term, which was about two months ago now. Shortly after he left we exchanged one or two calls, promising to meet eachother to talk and catch up, but neither of us really followed through. Then, the other day I ran into him in Maua. He was getting a letter typeset at a local computer shop, and I was picking up my cell phone battery.

He told me all about his new school, and here's the run down:

It is maybe two years old, and it has one classroom of its own. The rest is rented (for free) from the neighboring primary school. This is the situation all accross Kenya. The primary schools are much older than the secondary schools, so they all have classrooms and big sports fields. Even with my school, the land was donated by the primary school, and the soccer field that we use belongs to them. So Mr. Toinya keeps very busy running to Nairobi for 4 days and then back to talk to the secretaries for the member of parliment for our area, then back to talk to the parents of his school, all in the hopes that somehow they will find funds to construct more classrooms and a laboratory. That is what the letter was for when I ran into him, and then after I said hi to him, he rushed me along with him to the public planning office to deliver the letter for materials estimates and the official stamp of approval. Then we went to sit in a cafe to have lunch so that he could explain all of this to me.

He also told me, that his students understand the struggles of the school, and are very dedicated to coming early to school and going home late in the home that spending an extra half hour with their books will make them more successful students. And the issue of funding does not really stop at that infrastructure; Mr. Toinya, the principal, is the only official employee of the government in this government school. All six of the teachers are recent graduates of secondary school themselves, and are paid directly by the parents of the school. I think that I have mentioned that these teachers are usually the hardest working, which I think is because they can be fired very easily, but why should those who are paid the least, and have no experience as teachers work the most?

Mr. Toinya hopes that his consistent moving about will put enough pressure on the government to make some foreseeable change, but what about the other principals that don't spend as much time running around trying to seek funding for their schools? Or what about the school that in his absence is run by people who themselves graduated from secondary school within the past two years?

These are the struggles that I hear about not only from Mr. Toinya, but from almost all of the new days schools in Kenya. I don't know what the answer is, or what the effect will be. Hopefully these students will not lose hope and will see the value of sending their own children to schools. Maybe by that time these issues will be sorted out. In my eyes, which generation really has the right to feel like pioneers. I think that all generations have that right and obligation. We all want to change our world and improve on our parents' world. I hope that this generation of Kenyans can hear stories from their grandparents about how life used to be, and come to the conclusion that education, even if it has problems is improving their lives. I hope that it is true... I hope that their lives are improving, and I hope that their children will be born into a better world. With Somalia so close by, it is easy to think that if a generation here in Kenya gives up hope in education and reason the result could be ugly.

Volleyball

2009-07-31T09:19:00.000+03:00

Let me admit something here that I have not admitted around my school: I don't know how to play volleyball (very well). I know, it seems like a silly thing to keep secret, but when you are the girls' volleyball coach it is sometimes necessary. By the end of the season I learned some lessons from my embarassing mistakes. For instance, you can't just tell girls to substitute with those on the field, you actually have to get the referees approval first. Not only that, but the substitute has to come from a specific section of the sidelines, and the player coming off has to return to a certain place.

My time on the sidelines was filled with whispering small admitions to a few trusted students and asking them about the rules. Despite the incompetance of their coach, our team still beat the teams of the 5 other schools in our zone and came in first place. This icluded a very well organized team from a distinguished all girls school. Their school is around 20 years old, has uniforms, and coaches that know the rules. They even have set plays. In contrast our students does not have uniforms, the school is only 5 years old, and lets face it, their coach isn't the best volleyballer.

This performance in zonals qualified them for districts, where unfortunately, they were beaten in the first round. They definitely did not play as well in districts as they had before, and some say that this was an intentional protest because I did not let "their boyfriends" come to watch them play. I think that it is true that they would have been more enthusisatic if more students were there to cheer them on, but I don't know how intentionally the consequence followed from my actions.

I was proud of them either way. It really didn't take much for them to do so well either. All they had to was have somebody to shoo away the boys. I found this to be the most infurriating behavior on the part of the boys. They would tell me that the girls were not good enough to play by themselves, and that the boys must be allowed to practice with them so that they wouldn't look so bad. After a few weeks of keeping the boys away pitch and introducing drills, the boys began to realize that I was right and they began to become proud of their sisters (or girlfriends).

I think if the other coaches had done as much for their teams, the other teams would have performed better also. As it is, most of the coaches watched their teams only play one or two times, but they sure were quick to chastize the players after the games.

I try to remind myself that everybody wants happiness in their life. If somebody ignores another, it is because they don't see how paying attention will bring them happiness. I also remind myself that the difference in America is not usually that the coaches are more enlightened, but that their supervisors can fire them.

How neat it would be to live in a society where people valued nurturing others above money. It is easy for me to say since I don't really have to worry about money. I don't really have a lot, in fact I owe quite a bit to the banks because of college, but I have everything that I need. 70 percent of Kenyans live on less than an American dollar a day. It must create a very different psychology to grow up seeing this all around you, and maybe come from one of these families yourself, and then find yourself with a regular salary.

This is not to say that my views are entirely different from all of the teachers. Mr. Mutia really shows his nurturing concern about the students and the school's welfare. Mr. Toiyna, the former deputy, was another example. I met with him recently and he is trying very hard to help his new school, which I will talk about more in another post. I know that the others shine in their own ways also. Maybe I just don't see it as much, because my life revolves around the school, where as they have their own children and seperate businesses in addition to being teachers.

I think that the more proud we become of the school though, the mroe energy we will put into it. Maybe the success of the girls' volleyball team can help us move in that direction.

Interior Shots of Classroom + My House

2009-06-29T20:48:00.000+03:00

All of the classrooms at my school say 'silent' above the door. As far as I can tell, it is meant to deter students from talking during their prep time. It certainly doesn't accomplish its intended purpose.

The other picture shows my sitting room. My house contains three rooms that are this size. To the rigt is my bedroom and to the left is my kitchen. On the floor I am displaying my collection of bottle tops. The class one students at the next door primary school collected these for me and I spent 4 days with the nursery class teaching them about cleaning and playing with water. We had a good time together. I don't think that there is any way that I will be able to use all of these bottle tops as Go pieces, so I will return one day and make shaker instruments with them.

Wedding of James and Winnie Mutia

2009-06-28T09:14:00.000+03:00

This is one of the teachers at my school on his wedding day. I volunteered to be his wedding photographer, which was a new experience and kind of fun. His wedding was very colorful, and I have been told that it was a "Nairobi wedding." Almost all weddings in Kenya are Christian weddings, but the difference with a Nairobi wedding is just the size and the grandeur.

He teaches agriculture and biology, and is a very understanding man.

Oven Picture

2009-06-24T18:55:00.001+03:00

Here I am with a few of the students that dedicated the most time to helping me with the oven.

I have received requests for more information about my oven project. In response I will include a few pictures that look at the structural aspects of the oven, and an updated edition of the article.

Thomas Mosier
28 May 09
Not long after I arrived at site, I began asking the teachers at my school questions such as, “if I build a 'cavern' from this gravel and that cement, and then light a fire inside, do you think that it will explode?” After receiving enough looks of doubt, I instead began to ask if the hardware stores in town sell clay bricks. It was clear that the Kenyans working with me on the project had gaps in their conceptualizations of what I was doing, but they answered all of my questions as best they could and together we succeeded in builing a bread oven.

By the time I pulled the first batch of pizza and bread out of the oven, I had become confident that most of the holes in the understanding had been filled. Seeing the oven made it easy to grasp the concepts involved, especially when explaining thermal physics to my form 2 class. Now that the class has smelled the fresh bread, they perk right up at the mention of heat transfer or applications of the topic we are learning. They have even begun telling me that they are going to build their own ovens, at which point I perk right up and we talk about how to turn this interest into a science congress project.

The teachers have also been watching to understand how the oven works. Following a recent parents' day, I invited the teachers to a pizza party outside of my house. In preparation, Matt Palma and I cooked 8 pizzas and 5 loaves of bread. What pleased me about this party was that it marked one of the first times since I have come to the school that the teachers and staff were all together, enjoying each others company outside of the staff room. The male teachers even asked me to teach them to cook, which made all of the women smile with a mixture of approval and skepticism. In response to which, one male teacher said, “By the way, it is good to gain knowledge about all topics.” His words did more to spread my gospel than my words ever could.

The project is not finished - I am learning as much about building wood ovens and community as my students are. There are changes that the students and I will make to the design, and by the time science congress roles around, maybe the we will have even more ideas. Maybe by then, there will even be some male teachers who are artisan bakers. Matt Palma is hoping that we can invent a pizza delivery system so that I can put a pizza on a matatu and get it to him while it is still hot. I don't think there is any way that it could make it that far without an armed guard, but we all have a right to dream. Even if we can't send you a pizza, you are always still welcome to come to the source and bake it yourself.

Moles

2009-06-24T18:44:00.001+03:00

The scouts at my school have planted kale. It is a very sizable plot, at about 15 ft by 80, with still more sprouts to be planted. Of course, the nice soft soil attracted some moles and the scouts had to figure out what to do about it. From my chair in front of my house I could hear them arguing about whether or not they could flush it out with water. One said, "it is close to this place" and then another jumped over the ditch and foliage separating me from them and informed me of the state of the situation, asking for my opinion as to whether or not they would be able to route him out. I told them that I didn't think so, and went back to reading the newspaper only to hear one of them squeal with excitement 5 minutes later. One of them jumped back over to ditch to tell me to come look.

There it was, the first real-live mole that I have ever seen. I remember my father borrowing a trap from the neighbor as a kid, but I didn't really like the idea of killing animals and never stuck around to help discard of the mole. This one was ugly, and they made sure to point out its teeth and then let it run a round a bit. If it wasn't so ugly, its activities would have seemed rather cute. It found a banana leaf laying on the ground and ran underneath, beginning to dig another hole.

Finally the students started playing with it a little too much for my taste and I brought them the panga to finish 'er off. Much to my surprise they did not chop it in two, but instead used the broad side to club it to death - what experienced scouts.

Mid-Term Week: A Break From Routine

2009-06-19T22:02:00.000+03:00

This week we have been having mid-term examinations, which is a nice break from the usual routine, at least until it comes time to grading. I had a very nice day yesterday visiting with my newly wed teacher and his wife. They have a very nice apartment in Maua town, complete with electricity and running water. I didn't peek inside of the bathroom, but I suspect that they even have a shower.

That day their new furniture was being delivered, and when I arrived they had only one sofa and a computer. The furniture did not draw my attention, but what was unavoidable was listening to, and subsequentally watching, the video playing on the computer. It was some sort of pop band made up of singing boys with bleached hair. I guess they are called, “West Life,” but they might as well have been the Backstreet Boys or New Kids On the Block. These videos are so popular here. Well correction, there are like three of these videos that are popular here. They are played in the nice matatus, in the restaurants, and the privacy of peoples own homes it seems. Each of these videos features music that is unchanging from song to song and they are only an hour long, unless played on repeat, which always happens. For me, all I can think about while listening to them is the rate of brain decay during the experience, but for the people who play them, they must represent something more. I haven't brought up the subject yet, but I imagine it has something to due with the rapid changes that are taking place in Kenya. I certainly cannot imagine what it must be like for the 60 year olds who have lived through the Mau Mau revolution, through the years of Moi, and now walk around in villages that still do not have electricity, but where each person has their own cell phone. The experience of growing up with dirt floors and an economy with a daily event horizon contrasted with now having running water and a microwave must implant some values that differ from my own. I find it helpful to remember this when I don't understand someone's decision. It is not that they are Kenyan and I am American. It is not that Kenyans are unable to learn or appreciate mathematics, or that Americans are unable to relax and enjoy the moment. It is just that we have grown up so differently.

Then again, some things are the same. Later that day, I returned to school and found very many teachers still around a few hours after all of the teachers have usually departed. They told me that the form 4's had gone out on a field trip to watch a traveling play, but that they hadn't returned on time. When they did return, a few of the students were so drunk that when told to enter their classroom, they ran into the wall instead of making it through the door. There were even a few girls that were drunk, which is totally unacceptable in the culture here. Thankfully our BOG teachers (remember, they just finished secondary school and get hired by the schools directly to act as assistant teachers) had all decided to help control and monitor the students until the principal arrived. The principal was thoroughly upset for being called to school at 7:30pm, and upon arrival gave the two drunkest students a thorough slapping before leading them to the local police station.

I haven't figured out what to make of this situation yet. This is the sort of situation that happens in America also. What is maybe different are the techniques used for mitigating it. I think that power is less overtly forceful in America. The cops are ready to tackle someone, but they prefer to cuff you, put you in the drunk tank, and give you a fine in the morning. I think that the fate of these students was to get beaten a little while they were drunk, put in a cell at the police post, and then caned again in the morning.

In addition, I think that they will both be kicked out of school. I don't know exactly how I feel about this. On the one hand, that behavior is unacceptable and in conjunction with their previous offenses, they have shown that they have not fully reformed. Whether or not our school is capable of helping them reform I am not sure. Furthermore, what I want to think about a little bit is whether Kenya is better off to have them loitering outside of school, or causing trouble in school. They will disrupt people both places, but I tend to think that I will fear these boys more now that they are not trying to work towards a goal. I fear that their lives will involve more drinking and other deviant behaviors. At the same time, it is not fair for them to pull others down.

What makes the situation more regrettable is that one of the two was generally nice to me, and was one of 7 students in my form 3 physics class. He had shown me that he was capable of performing in physics and I wish that he had shown that he was also capable of making better choices.

Real. Live. Able to Shock You and Kill You. It's Electricity!

2009-06-18T13:25:00.000+03:00

Yesterday power came to our school. Well, so far power lines have come to our school. I have heard that there was some sort of mix up in the office, we paid for 3-phase power but they only brought the lines for 1-phase. The presence of the electrical company brought a great energy to the school. The workers on these civic improvement projects must be some of the most warmly greeted workers in all of Africa.

As 8 workers drug the poles over the ground, from the truck to their resting place, they sang and even seemed to have a bounce in their step that is not usually present with construction workers. 8 men, working in unison, being watched and admired by villages day after day. I think that the singing and the bounce is proof of the power of indirect positive reinforcement.

Concurrently, another man dug a hole by hand about 6 feet deep in preparation for the pole's arrival. After all of the poles were erected, a man with spiked boots and a hand auger climbed each one to install guide wires and supports for the lines.

The sun was bright, but the day was not too hot. Even if they didn't turn on the lights, their presence was definitely felt. Teachers stopped complaining about the lack of staples and the school not paying for their daily lunch. Instead, they talked about the changes that electricity would bring. Students forgot about their mid-term exams during their breaks in order to consult each other and me about how electricity works. I quit worrying about the strength of the debate club and got really excited telling the students about how much voltage it takes for electricty to conduct through air and about how a ground (or "Earth-wire") works.

Birthday in Kenya

2009-06-18T13:12:00.000+03:00

Birthdays aren't celebrated in Kenya. When you tell people about the concept, they tell you that birthdays are for the rich. It is easy to understand why, if you think about birthdays most people think of cakes and presents. If you see someone in a movie receiving a computer or a car for their birthday, you might say to yourself that a birthday is a luxury of the rich. More problematic though is that the movie depiction is often not far off from the truth. As a child I would become excited about what presents I thought I might get. Of course it is not necessary to see birthdays this way and instead they can be a nice excuse to remember friends. Should we need an excuse to visit friends though? No, not really. I would prefer it if we all agreed to remember our interrelatedness for its own sake, without excuses. So let's just do that instead. If someone forgets your birthday, but invites you to dinner two weeks later just to be with you, let's be more honored than if they had used our birthday as a crutch.

Instead of celebrating that I was one year closer to death, on my birthday I was more excited that I obtained a cow's stomach from the butcher. I celebrated as I hung it from the rafter, and I even gave the local stray dog some bits since I appreciate having him around. I celebrated the presence of the stomach because I am hoping to be able to use the naturally occurring rennet inside of it to make mozzarella cheese.

As a debut, I am inviting the teachers over this weekend. In addition to mozarella they will also learn what pizza is. They don't know it is my birthday, although admittedly me being one year closer to death was the reason that I chose this weekend to have them over.

Locally grown rosemary will one of the guests of honor at this party, as we kick off my mission to make food in our village that is currently only available in ritzy parts of Nairobi.

Striking Season

2009-06-09T16:14:00.000+03:00

Today in the staff room a teacher mentioned that two well established secondary schools in the area went on strike over the weekend. At one school a student pastor was suspended and the other students struck out of solidarity. The result was that the entire student body was suspended. I am not sure of the cause at the other school, but the school's next door neighbor happens to be the police station and they were kept in school under the station's watchful eye.

This was kind of funny to me since my own school had an averted strike of its own just about two weeks ago, and upon asking the teacher it seems that June is striking month in the Kenyan school calendar. He was not able to explain this phenomenon to me, except that once one school strikes over an issue it inspires the others to follow suit.

My personal experience took place on a Friday, and as far as I know, it was the first in the area. Maybe it inspired the others, what leaders we are. It was about 6pm when I heard that the students were refusing to eat the githeri. They were claiming that it had been laced with lamp oil in order to dull their sexual excitability. I of course jumped right up for a bowl, and the githeri was as good as it ever is inside of the school. There were not any rocks in this bowl, which is my biggest criteria for grading. I absolutely do not think that the school intentionally put lamp oil in it, but there are always slight off flavors in the githeri from bugs that have been feasting on the corn only to find themselves part of the feast or from dirt. Who knows why they thought that this githeri was any different than normal. After refusing to eat, the principal was called, and at about the time that he arrived I was at the shop next door buying milk. When I was returning by the back way I heard shouting and rocks, which caused me to back track and go to the front gate to see what was happening. By the point that I reached the front gate the principal was standing next to the flag pole shouting and all of the students were silenced. From talking to the neighbors it seems that a few students started throwing rocks as he drove up in his car. There was even a girl studying in class that got hit and began to bleed as a rock broke through a classroom window. The rest of the rocks seem to have been thrown at the iron roofing. Who knows what they were trying to accomplish. They were then quieted down. I think that the principal handled the situation well. He told them about the proper channels for voicing concerns and about the struggles of the school. He also told them about the privileges that they had just sacrificed by committing this act. It was decided that really there were only a few instigators that were very dangerous. They were dealt with by the police and we all went to sleep. Since then we haven't had a problem.

Bread Oven - Article for the Kenya Peace Corps Newsletter

2009-06-08T09:36:00.000+03:00

My supervisor with Peace Corps approached me about a month ago to write an article for the Peace Corps Newsletter about the bread oven that I have constructed. Below is a preliminary piece, which I will edit and repost as it evolves. I haven't decided if the scope is too wide or if it is appropriate for the newsletter, but I thought that I would post it here. You can read it and give me feedback.

Thomas Mosier
Newsletter Article – Bread Oven

22 June 09 - v. 4

Not long after I arrived at site I began asking the teachers at my school questions such as, “if I light a fire inside of a cavern made from this gravel and that cement, do you think it will explode?” Eventually this evolved into, “do the hardware stores in town sell clay bricks?” It wasn't much later that I had drawn up a design for the cavern and gotten one of the teachers at my school to help me source bricks from Nairobi. I had only been at site for a couple weeks and already we were beginning to build a bread oven.

The idea of building a bread oven arose from a friend in college who had built a portable pizza oven. On weekends he would wheel it around campus and invite students to join him to make pizza from scratch. I think that for him, he was teaching those American students about the processes that go into food production, from plant to pizza. It seemed to me that Kenyans already know where their food comes from and that this type of instruction would not be needed. What seemed more applicable to my situation was that he was also socializing and sharing his interests with others. In addition, as a physics teacher my oven would be a tool for teaching the students about heat transfer and thermal expansion.

In physics I have been able to use it as an example during lessons on thermal physics. We have also used the design process as a template for a competition that I held in class where I formed groups and asked the groups to design tools or components of a house that would make use of our knowledge of thermal physics. Many of the groups responded to the assignment by giving me detailed descriptions of how they would design their dream house, with an emphasis on the aspects that pertain to the physics we are learning. A few groups even came up with original methods for heating water, including placing a network of pipes inside of the schools concrete jiko or designing a roof so that the mabauti focus the light on a container of water.

The students who have had these ideas have seen that I have been able to build an oven and have begun to ask me if we can try building their ideas to see how they work and possibly submit them for the science congress. They have even told me that they want to build their own ovens now, at which point I get even more excited and tell them that I would like to build more test ovens to see how changing the shape and building materials affects the usability of the oven.

In this way, the oven has helped me bond with not only the students who helped build it, but also with students who see me baking foreign foods such as pizza or sourdough bread. The teachers have also been watching to understand how it works and following a recent parents' day I invited them all to a pizza party outside of my house. At the party they talked, ate, and asked questions. Even the more conservative male teachers said that they wanted to learn how to bake, which made all of the women smile and laugh with a mixture of approval and skepticism.

A frequent question is whether or not the oven can be used to make money, and I honestly do not know. I have heard that there is an orphanage group baking fried bread balls nearby, and if they can make a profit on those it seems feasible that we could make a profit also. One prohibitive aspect was the cost of the bricks. If my students try building ovens with local materials and are successful, their is a greater likelihood that similar ovens can be profitable. Regardless of the answer, as a teacher and someone who wants to share my interests and my culture with my community, the bread oven was a good investment.

10 June 2009 - v. 3

Not long after I arrived at site I began asking the teachers at my school questions such as, “if I light a fire inside of a cavern made from this gravel and that cement, do you think it will explode?” Eventually this evolved into, “do the hardware stores in town sell clay bricks?” It wasn't much later that I had drawn up a design for the cavern and gotten one of the teachers at my school to help me source bricks from Nairobi. I had only been at site for a couple weeks and already we were beginning to build a bread oven.

The idea of building a bread oven arose from a friend in college who had built a portable pizza oven. On weekends he would wheel it around campus and invite students to join him to make pizza from scratch. I think that for him, he was teaching those American students about the processes that go into food production, from plant to pizza. It seemed to me that Kenyans already know where their food comes from and that this type of instruction would not be needed. What seemed more applicable to my situation was that he was also socializing and sharing his interests with others. In addition, as a physics teacher I could justify the oven as a demonstration in thermal physics and a practical experience in thinking about the thought process of turning a concept into a reality.

A while after the oven was completed, a Kenyan friend complained to me that the children these days are growing up without knowing calabashes or cooking pots, the traditional tools for cooking and eating. The friend from college and his oven came back to me, and I realized that our situations have similarities. Both groups are evolving, and in the process appear to be losing knowledge of the past. My oven, I realized, could be a vehicle for showing that luxury can be synthesized from within one's own region. In addition to pizza and bread, for instance, our communities in Kenya can create mozzarella cheese from a cow's stomach and milk. They can also grow spices such as oregano, dill, lemon grass, sage, and rosemary, right here and use them to make dill pickles or “very sweet” soups.

If they become excited about my synthesis of tradition and locally available resources and I begin to ask them about their traditions, maybe they will begin to willingly ask their parents. Maybe a few will learn more about calabashes and cooking pots. Even if they do not catch this enthusiasm, it still makes me smile when people ask me for my bread recipe in addition to a watch from America.

The New Term Brings Changes

2009-05-26T15:06:00.000+03:00

The new term is well under way. A highlight has been the presence of a new assistant teacher (helping me and the math teacher) and a new full time teacher. The new full time teacher is a "sportsman," not a "Sportsman," which is a popular cigarette. In one day he was able to help us revitalize the enthusiasm for sports at our school. His secret: intramural competitions. For the next week we are putting clubs on hold to give all attention to rehydrating the program.

As soon as clubs return I hope to give more time to the solid establishment of our debate club. Last semester it lacked continuity. Another project of mine is the introduction of the board game Go into the students consciousness. If you haven't heard of it, wikipedia has a nice article. A few of my house mates at Reed were really into it. It is considered to be about as strategically complex as chess, but there are fewer pieces required. All you need are stones of two different colors. You need a couple hundred just for one set, so with the help of my local kiosk mama I recruited the local primary school students to collect bottle tops for me. Glass bottles are the dominant means of soda transportation and the caps have made the roads here look like they are made out of skittles. I asked about 150 students, and much to my surprise received at least 2 thousand. Now they have to be cleaned, but thankfully labor is cheap. The nursery class will be completely happy to help if I give them a big smile and a few pieces of candy in exchange for their support.

The first day that I introduced Go to the teachers was just so pleasant. The smiles on their faces as they placed and captured stones dissolved all of my stress. That is, until I challenged the best of them to a match. I could tell that he really got the game. My heart started pounding and I became anxious thinking to myself, "come on, you have to beat this guy, you introduced the game." It was a little bit of a let down when I won though, since it meant that although I can teach the game, I probably wont be challenged right away.

The sad news around our school right now is the departure of Mr. Toinya, our deputy principal. He was called up for a government training in Embu and never returned. He called to say that he had been promoted to be the principal at another school about 25 km away. It is funny how the government deals with these issues. I don't think that he knew about the transfer before he left to Embu. Then a day or two after he left the training he was expected to begin his responsibilities at the new school. The students were very sad to hear that he was leaving as they thought that he was very fair with his discipline and was helping to move the school in the right direction. He was also my best friend around the school, so I feel a bit of a personal loss. Without him though, I have noticed some of the other teachers really stepping up when they are on duty. I definitely think we are starting off this semester in the right way.

In an effort to further my relationship with the other teachers I made fresh bread and served it to them on a platter with avocado during tea time two days ago. After I ran out of avocado I began serving it with peanut butter, which they preferred. It is still a little funny to me how common avocados are here, it is hard for me to imagine someone at home asking for peanut butter instead of fresh, buttery, perfectly ripe avocado. The landscape and climate in Kenya is so varied, and for me, coming from America, it reminds me of paradise.

Whenever I ask a local how to grow a particular plant the answer it always, "put it in the ground and it will grow." It keeps blowing my mind; instead of trying to do a science experiment in the kitchen window sprouting an avocado, I can actually grow an avocado tree. Just by putting it in the ground. Amazing! Passion fruit trees, papaya trees, avocado trees, here I come!

The other exciting news is that the teacher in charge of guidance and counseling at my school is getting married. I told him that I would help him by taking wedding photos for him since I brought my digital SLR with me. He is one of the more bubbly Kenyans I know, and I am very excited for him. It will also be a good opportunity for all of the teachers at my school to come together outside of school.

Back to School

2009-05-09T09:55:00.000+03:00

Proffesor Griffiths is retiring from Reed this year. I think that his retirement party is today and I wanted to acknowledge it because of the impact that he has had on so many students world wide - his electricity and magnetism book has been translated into at least 5 languages. He has an ability to make elementary particle physics seem easy and I appreciated having seeing his teaching so that I can think about how to replicate it for my students.

Since I haven't written on the blog much recently, this entry will be mostly a recap of events that have happened in my life over the past month. I did at last upload a few pictures while I was borrowing a friends computer in Nairobi. As you can see from the pictures, the bread oven has been completed. I was able to use it once before leaving Athiru to attend my Peace Corps in-service training (IST). I have not perfected my bread baking technique by any stretch of the imagination. The loaves that came out all seemed to be too big because the bottom-middle of each loaf wasn't cooked thoroughly enough, while the outside was. I experienced the same problem with a chicken that I cooked with friends after training (see WORandPeace.blogspot.com article from Friday May 1st). The outside of the chicken was delicious, but the inside wasn't done well enough to alleviate our fear that we might get sick from eating it (my bet is that the germs were all dead, but others tend to appreciate having more than a hunch about these things). I really want to be able to roast a turkey for thanksgiving or Christmas, so hopefully I can develop my technique.

The best parts of IST were those where the volunteers directed the discussions. It was fun and insightful to learn from each others experiences with coping, disciplining students, and integrating into our students. The Peace Corps invited a lot of qualified speakers to talk to us about topics we had asked for, but with a lot of these speakers their presentations weren't directed towards our interests. Maybe they did not get briefed well enough about what we had already learned, but then it would be impossible to brief them sufficiently. I think what I took away from some of these talks is that a really good speaker needs to be highly dynamic. They need to be able to take input, find how that input relates to their topic, hear questions, and continually hone their presentation to the needs of the group. This awareness was a valuable lesson for me to learn, and it was good for me to be in a place mentally where I could both be thinking about myself as a teacher and thinking critically about the teaching styles I was witnessing.

We also elected volunteer advisory committee (VAC) representatives and I was elected to represent the teachers from my training group. I am honored and will do my best to be a voice for my electorate. A day later I participated in my first meeting with the Peace Corps Kenya country director and I feel comfortable with his reaction to volunteer concerns. The program has made changes on various issues where it is able, such as volunteer out of community policy, but there will always be some areas where they are less able to budge (for instance, now adays volunteers are prohibited from riding motorcycles).

I was very happy to come back to Maua and Athiru after being in Nairobi. Nairobi is big, loud, and scary; there are at least three volunteers from my training group that have been robbed in Nairobi already. In my absence the rains had come and made the landscape even more green than before. The grass around my school had grown a foot and a half, which really made the place feel empty since there were no students around when I returned. Luckily though, I returned with 4 of my friends and we spent our time hiking, baking, and even went to the 27th birthday of a Danish woman named Ea. The highlight might have been the Viking Game that we learned at the party, also called Cubb (or is it cuub?). You throw throwing sticks at blocks that are a little bit larger than 4x4's back home. They stand about 1 ft high, and you have to knock them over. It is more complicated than that, and I think that when I return to the States it will be my number one barbecue game. Maybe I can even find a carpenter here to make a set for me and my students to play together. The students are required to play games 3 days a week, but with only a 2 balls and 250 students most of them end up sitting around. I also may want to introduce Ultimate Frisbee, and I definitely want to introduce Go. There are tons of bottle caps that get ground into the dirt here, so maybe I can sort them by color and draw some boards on old plastic grain sacks. I think that they would be into it. The difficulty will be trying to juggle debate, frisbee, and go, but I think that students will be excited enough that once they get going we can elect student leaders for the various activities.

Before the term started I also went to a Peace Corps sponsored perma-culture workshop (paid for care of PEPFAR - Predisdent Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, started by President Bush the 2nd. I have been told that they have an annual budget in Kenya of around 500million usd, which is larger than the annual Peace Corps budget worldwide. They do lots of good, like buying anti-retro viral drugs for AIDS victims and paying for us to attend a permaculture workshop). One of the highlights of this workshop for me was finding out that dill, sage, lemon grass, parsley, and basil all grow in Kenya. I was trying to find the plants locally so that I wouldn't have to transport them from the workshop to my site, but I have been unable. There is a volunteer that lives next to the permaculture site so over a long weekend I may have to pay him a visit.

The arrow roots that I planted with my students have grown quite a bit. I didn't mention this before, but on one of the days that we were working three of us were trying to remove a very large rock and it pinched one of my fingers between itself and another rock. I didn't swear, but I sure did pace for a couple of hours. It hurt a lot and the majority of the nail instantly turned black. Now the new nail is growing back and the old nail is about to fall off. It reminds me a lot of when my adult teeth were coming in. The baby nail is so close to coming off, but it is attached just enough to cause a very large surge of pain when it gets caught on something. It doesn't cause me too many problems though, and it gives the students a conversation point to bring up since they just returned to school on Wednesday.

Classes have kind of begun, but three quarters of the students were sent home yesterday to bring their parents and explain why they didn't pay school fees. We have a staff meeting on Monday, which means that no teaching will get done by anyone, but hopefully on Tuesday we will begin the normal routine. I know that the students (especially the form 4's) are anxious to move ahead in the syllabus. Last term we moved at a normal pace, but when I arrived they were two years behind and I feel obligated to them to help them catch up a bit before their big Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) test at the end of the year. Whether or not I believe in the content of the syllabus (read "WORandPeace" especially Wednesday, April 22 for his thoughts on the content), I believe that I can teach the content in a way that will give them skills to improve their lives. We can gloss over some comentary on god in the books and can ask critical questions about how to extrappolate on the information in the book, or how to apply the basic principles to their lives.

That is what I will be spending my time thinking about this afternoon and tomorrow in preperation for Tuesday.

Pictures

2009-04-19T14:38:00.000+03:00

Currently I am at in-service training with my fellow volunteers in Nairobi. I'll write more about that later, but for now enjoy a few pictures.

The top is the bread oven that I have been talking about. The next component will be an outdoor table so that the students can bake bread at their leisure and I don't have to worry about cleaning my house.

The Peace Corps volunteer in the picture is Matt Palma. He is a teacher at a deaf school about an hour and a half from my site. Him and another volunteer came to help me celebrate the completion of the oven. Together we made pizza with panier cheese and fresh tomatoes. Now that we have had this first success it is time to experiment. When the students return to school they are going to bring ingredients and together we will learn to make delicious bread.

This is the arrowroot that we planted, with our school in the background. You are also able to see an almost finished classroom - maybe it will be completely finished by the time I return to site.

The school year ends at the end of November and by then the students will have 40 or 50 giant arrow roots to eat. The students are very excited to see all of changes and energy around their school.

Arrowroot is purple and white in color and is cooked by boiling it whole. It is similar to potato, but a little gummier tasting.

This is from a day when the teachers and board of governors for my school went to Meru National Park. I have a lot of pictures of the animals, including a herd of about 200 elephants, but those can wait. The man with the hat is our school cook Mr. Mirathi. He cooked us a goat and ugali for lunch. It was a very nice day, we even saw hippos.
I am trying to find a way to be able to share more with you. Currently the tension is between using the internet and remaining with my students on the weekends. There are some options that I am exploring to minimize this conflict, but we will see. Thanks for your patience and remember that if you are not hearing from me it means that life is good.

Rock Gang

2009-03-13T16:39:00.001+03:00

I have been teaching physics and attending all the events; we had a district decathlon, heptathlon, and cross country meet last weekend. There were some highlights like when I stood around with a group of about 50 secondary school students and they were asking all the standard questions about America. Normally it is only the primary school students that gather around me so it was nice to talk see what students from other secondary schools are like. What I took away from the event (and from comparing our test results to other schools) is that I am a teacher at a typical Kenya day school.

Today we had a district "prize giving day." The assistant minister of education (for the whole country) was there, the local member of parliament, and all of the school students. School was cancelled in all of the schools so that we could receive prizes for how our schools performed last year. The primary school students had songs and skits that they had rehearsed so that they could show off to their member of Parliament - most of the money for school improvements comes directly from the mp's constituency development fund, so the politicking is important. Remember though, that this is a school system that is mostly without buses, so imagine walking with 250 high school students on an hour long walk through small villages and outposts, hoping that none of them sneaks off to disobey the rules. The muzungu is still an attraction and without fail every time during the day that I passed through the field my path became clogged by 100's of primary school children. They always look up at me wearing their cute knitted caps, their checkered shirts, and their big eyes. It is always just as adorable as the time before. The Kenyan adults that are walking with me don't seem to understand my interest with the children and always try to swat them away.

The Kenyan scouts were also at the event. It turns out that Baden Paul (I don't know the spelling, but he is considered the "founder" of Boy Scouts) lived in Kenya and scouts is popular but here it seems to mostly involve marching. The scouts marched for us, and their scout matter marched along with them, smiling and waving at the politicians. It really is exactly like the military parades that I have seen on TV. I get to see this at my school twice a week when the scouts raise the Kenyan flag at the assemblies. They always come up with a new set of commands and a new dance routine to show off to the school, but they never learn skills to earn merit badges. - Scouts at ease, atten-tion, scouts at ease, atten-tion, scouts count off one through 2, *scouts count*, all ones one full step to the left, one step back, about face, backwards march, scouts: do the polka, now scout on duty raise the flag. The polka part in the middle always gives the student body a good laugh. Actually, I can't hear what some of the commands are, their accent is much different than mine, but the student body does always have a good time watching whatever dance steps they are doing.

The times these past two weeks when I have been most happy are the times when I have been moving rocks with the dudes. Okay, dudes is going a little too far, they are my students, granted some of them are twenty five. All of the teachers refer to them as their boys and girls. My wavulana and wasichana. It feels good to work along side them though. I know they are becoming impressed by the improvement in the toughness of my hands. The current project is planting arrow root in order to utilize the otherwise waste water. It seemed simple enough the first day that I proposed the project, but since then it has proven difficult due to the very large rocks that make up our ground. None of them has been impossible to remove, but some of them have taken 3 or 4 of us around 4 hours to remove.

Sometimes they take a little nudging, but I make sure that they have a vested interest in these projects. I think labor is a good way to form bonds with people, but also I think that it is good for the students to know that this school is theirs. They are able to make it a positive place both academically and otherwise. When we are working it is not the A students or the F students, but the students of Athiru Gaiti. I want to get to the point where the students will come to me with their projects because they are the ones who know what improves their lives. Maybe I could form some sort of "good Samaritan" club where the students improve their lives and the look out for the well being of the community. Maybe they could become artisan bred makers and use the profits to build a covered bus stop, or maybe they could create a scholarship for students who are unable to pay school fees but are otherwise bright. We will see if there is much of a market for artisan bread around here, but the Methodist hospital in town would be a good place to start looking for our core market. It is only an hours walk from the school and there is a steady stream of Europeans and Americans coming through their for a few months at a time. Even if we cannot make a profit, we can still help to feed each other.

Next weekend I am going to Meru National Park. The board of governors for the school is helping to pay for all of the teachers to go. Sounds like someone is even donating a goat that we will slaughter and roast together. Nyama choma ya mbozi - roasted goat meat. They roast it and then cut it up into bite sized pieces. From there you take a piece, pick up some onions, tomatoes, and peppers and enjoy. Delicious. As my deputy principal tells people, "it is [ my ] best food."

Bread Oven

2009-02-21T14:50:00.000+03:00

This past week were mid-term exams. The students took a one hour exam in each subject and then they went home on Thursday afternoon. I ran with them before I left, and boy am I sore. How could I not go for a run though, because it gave the villagers such amusement. "Muzungu" and then words that I didn't understand. A lot of laughing though, and general merriment. And then my boys appreciated it too. It's happening, they are becoming my boys. Some of them (many actually) are older than I am, but here they are still called boys and girls until the graduate. Four of my boys are remaining at the school over the break. Thursday night we hunkered about a kerosene lamp and talked about cultural differences between schools in Kenya and America. In Kenya students are expected to fetch their teachers water, relay messages, and clean the teachers' office. In Kenya things come up and some teachers don't make it to class. I gave one of those Obama speeches, "yes we can" grow into effective adults and make a difference.

I also told them about my hope to build a wood fire bread oven. They got super excited. This is my first "project" here and it feels good to have the jimbe in my hand, to dig up dirt, place stones, and be working towards a common goal with the people around me. A fundi (worker, this was was a mason by trade) came on Friday since I don't know much about masonry. With my vision, his knowledge, and the students muscles we completed the first stage, a 2 1/2 ft tall base. I want to show you pictures, and some day I will but not today. You will have to wait. I am unable to upload them at these Internet cafes.

I introduced the project to the students by saying that I wanted to build an oven because when I lived in America I would bake bread about once a week. After they got the message they came up with their own plans, "maybe we will be able to bake bread for the school, maybe we will be able to sell bread to the community." Yes, that would be good. Maybe you will be able to build a covered matatu shelter so that people don't have to stand in the rain. Maybe you will be able to use the money to help children more needy than yourselves pay school fees. I hope that they will be able to tell me what the community needs. They are the ones who know, not me. We will see how this pans out. Even if there is not a sufficient demand, I will still be able to teach the students my favorite bread recipes. They will still have gotten practice working with their hands, skills that will help them after school. They will have learned a little bit about thermal expansion (hopefully the oven will not crack under the force). Most importantly, my boys and I will have grown closer through working together.

I found a coconut on a journey to Meru last weekend. I am hoping to reward them this evening for there help by cooking a peanut - coconut curry for them. Spices are not used here because they are expensive and they do not add nutrition. If I wasn't cooking for them they would be eating rice seasoned with salt. In Kenya boarding students eat githeri (beans and corn) for two meals a day. I wish that the American school system was a little closer to this. Instead of fake nacho cheese and corn dogs we could given them githeri with a little sakuma wiki (kale). They could get excited for Ugali (kind of like polenta) day instead of square pizza day. Could you imagine sending your kid to school with a cold lunch of beans and corn? He would hate himself, and no one would trade them their shoe-glue go-gurt for your kids organic proteins.

X Country Coach

2009-02-14T14:29:00.000+03:00

Many of you know that during my time in high school I was interested in running, until I got burnt out and quit. So I played frisbee instead, which gave me everything that I felt like I had been lacking when I was running. They don't have frisbee teams in Kenya and the cross country team at my school was coachless, leading me to make a re-entry into the sport. My first initial duty, other than doing mazeuzi (exercises) with the students was to attend a cross country meet with the students last weekend. Being there brought back a lot of memories for me, the stress, the passion for endorphines, and the desire to perform well. During the 8km boys race one of my students was the third in the pack after the first lap, which intensified all of these feelings even more. He went out of site, and then upon seeing him again he was about 200m in front of the others. I was so excited for him. I cheered, ran along side him, and then hurried off to meet him at the finish. He moved onto the provincial meet, which was today, and I accompanied him to the course.

We were told that the first meet was going to begin at 7:30am, and so I was very worried when we showed up at 8:30am and no one was at the course. Round about 9 another school showed up. At about 9:45 the officials showed up, and then we got going at about 10:30. I felt awful because I told my physics students that I would be back at the school in the afternoon to teach a few extra classes, but there wasn't a lot I could do. So today we got to town at about 7:30, when we were told to meet at 7, only to find that everyone had already proceeeded ahead of us to the course. This is exactly the way Kenya is, you cannot say that they do not care about keeping time, because sometimes they keep strict times. It's those other times that really throw me off. No matter what time is kept - or not kept, people are generally understanding.

We arrived to the meet just in time, and everybody was very curious of who this mazungu. I met with the chairman, I met with some teachers, and some students. Then I got to watch the races. The students were lined up on the starting line, the gun goes off, and I see my student sprint to the front. I know that he got first last time, but maybe I should have warned him that this would be a slightly tougher crowd. One of the reasons why I left cross country was that I was the best at my school, and there was a lot pressure on me to always achieve results. The stress became too much and it just was not fun anymore. Maybe I should have relayed this story to my student, I don't care how well he does, as long as he tries and feels good about himself. So I see him after the first lap and yell out encouragement, "Paul, keep it up," and he returns, "but mwalimu" and gives me this pained face. After that I didn't notice him in the pack next time around but was able to find him sitting away from the course next to a few other students. Okay, talk time, I don't care if you get first, there were lots of people in the race that you could have kept up with. He says that he knows, and wants to try again. During this talk it comes out that the cross country team only goes on 4 km runs, maybe 3 times a week, while the races are between 8 and 12 km. No wonder he got burnt out quickly. Now though, he knows what races are like, and can help motivate the other students. I will also try to step up a little more to help them organize themselves.

The event was followed by speeches from a member of parliment, district commisioner, and a representatives of the sponsors of the events. We were even blessed by the presence of the winner of like 6 international marathons who happens to be from this part of Kenya. Runners in Kenya are really revered. Even the runners today who finished in the top 6 for each race received track suits, 20 thousand shillings, and are being put up in the training camp for the next week in order to prepare for the national event.

I told my student that in highschool my English teacher told me that Kenyans are good runners because they don't have TV, which means that they go on 300 mile runs. We both had a good laugh at cross cultural mis-representations and ended the day on a happy note.

Now I just have to get in shape so that I can run with my students. I don't know what it is, if it is the elevation, the heat, or my diet, but I can't keep up with the students for more than 1/2 a mile. I can't say that I am getting old, because there was a 69 year old man that ran the 12 km race with the students. This guy gave a speech, and said that he has worked on a shamba all of his life, but he just loves running so much that on top of his farm work he runs about 10 km a day. What an inspiration. He certainly didn't get first, but he seemed to be about the happiest of any of the runners.

Week of Obama and School Strikes

2009-01-24T12:22:00.000+03:00

Teachers are striking here. I have not been able to discern precisely which teachers are striking and which are not. Some teachers, primary school teachers, are definitely striking. Secondary school teachers may or may not be striking. All week I have been at school teaching, and some of the other teachers have been too. This week the school may close completely, or it may not. Either way, it is a peaceful strike and I will continue to be present for my students.

On the 20th I had the pleasure of announcing to the students that Obama was being inaugurated today. I imagined myself sitting around a radio with 100 students at 8pm (noon in Washington, DC) listening to the event. In preparation I ran to my fellow teachers house across town, borrowed her radio, and upon returning called all interested students to the flag pole to listen with me. I imagined that even if students were not interested in hearing Obama speak that they would at least be interested in finding a reason to not study. I know that my students are excited about Obama, but still only 6 or 7 joined me. The reason was that they were all too concerned about their studies to leave for an hour. It also turned out that all of the commentary was in Kiswahili. I am learning Kiswahili, but in my excitement I wanted to hear all of the details. The school cook has a friend in Athiru with a hotel that has a generator and a TV. Him and two students rushed me off, or maybe I was rushing them, to the hotel and arrived in time to see the opening prayer of the inauguration. The room was packed by about 60 Kenyans and one American. I wanted my students to absorb and appreciate it all. They said that Obama's speech was very clear and that they understood it, but I wanted to push them to the front of the crowd and let my excitement overwhelm them. I think that even though I refrained from this course of action that they appreciated the experience very much. The TV showed a split screen between the crowd in Washington, DC and the students at Nairobi University. My students said that the crowd in Nairobi looked more excited, but I think that the people were excited in different ways. In Nairobi they had pop music artists playing and the crowds were active. In Washington the people felt how I felt, and we showed it by feeling as though we would cry. It wasn't quite the night that I imagined, I wish that I could have been with all of my students to let them all have the experience with me, but I think that the night would have meant more to me anyways.

At school, two days later, I had the privilege of attending the prefect and administration meeting. This is the analog of student counsel in the States, except that the student prefects do a lot more than I did when I was on student counsel. They do everything from helping the teachers ensure that games happen, to coordinating cleaning efforts around the school, to helping the teachers discipline students. It amazes me that you can expect a student to help enforce the discipline of the other students, but in Kenya it seems to work.

At the meeting we mostly discussed the discipline of the school, and I received confirmation that indeed to the students being discipline with their studying was more important than listening to Obama. The students asked us to enforce discipline more strictly, they asked us to change the schedule to require the boarding students to be in their classrooms every morning at 5am, and they asked us to punish them for speaking Kiswahili instead of English. I am continually amazed and impressed by the students. They really want to be the early bird and to do well. The goal of most of the students is to make it to America. I've been reading the book, The Bottom Billion, which has been making me think about issues like this one. I recommend the book for anyone who is interested in globalization or the giving of Aid to developing countries. It is a big problem for the development of Kenya that the most educated citizens want to leave. I try to tell them that it would be better for Kenya if they focused their energy not on leaving, but on trying to change and build the country. This doesn't work though, I need to think about how to get them to believe the words that I am saying. I wonder if the most educated will always want to leave as long as they see life as being better abroad, or if there are other motivations make them want to remain. Maybe the key to make them appreciate Kenya is to focus on helping them to think about what makes a life good. I have tried this a little by saying that I think the best life that you can lead is the one where you affect the most positive change, but how sure am I of this? Being here in Kenya I have come to believe it, but there was a time when I thought that maybe the best life was the most simple life. Maybe if I open up this dialog with my students they will be able to help teach me what is best. This last sentence was inspired by the movie, Conan, where someone says to Conan, "Conan, what is best in life?" And Conan responds something about crushing your enemies and see them driven before you. I think I can say with confidence that I do not agree with Conan.

I am going to start a debate club in the next couple of weeks, and maybe this can be a topic.

I Am Here

2009-01-17T11:33:00.000+03:00

I have arrived and all is well.

I am now a teacher at a new secondary school just outside of Athiru. I have a modest house (about 10x20 ft), which is located on the school grounds between the women's dorm and the men's dorm. The students here are amazingly disciplined. They wake up at 5am, study for an hour, take porridge for breakfast, do a little religious ceremony, and are in their classrooms at 8am when the teachers arrive. They are in class, with the exception of a few breaks from 8am to 4:10 pm. Then they play sports or do clubs until maybe 6pm. By 7pm they are huddled together around a single kerosene lantern to study. They study until 9:30pm, then are in bed by 9. Furthermore, they do this 6 days a week! On Saturdays there is rarely a teacher around, but they do the chores of the school and spend the rest of the day in the classrooms studying.

The structure of the Kenyan curriculum is different than the US. Here, all students study physics in form 1 and 2, then some of them choose to continue on in physics for form 3 and 4. The last physics teacher is no longer at the school, so I have taken over all four forms. In forms 3 and 4 I have only about 6 and 8 students respectively, but in form 2 I have two classes of 45. We have not yet received out form 1 students, but I am told to expect either one class of 60 or two classes of 40. On top of the physics I may also teach form 1 math.

I want them all to learn so much physics, but what I need to step back and consider more thoroughly is how I will develop a pedagogy to teach them not only the syllabus but how to get them to think critically. So far I have been including this by asking them to try to figure out which equations to use, and to try themselves to apply them before I show them how to do the problem. I feel like there should be more though... I think that the answer may lie in taking a whole holistic approach. That is, maybe if I also spend time having conversations with them after school and on the weekends we will get a lot further in developing their general reasoning. Maybe just the exercise of challenging them to apply their knowledge to novel situations will do it. What did my teachers do?

I have such a respect for teachers. Being back in a school setting makes me think about and miss Reed College. Could I be a teacher all my life though? I don't know, but more importantly I don't think that I need to know at this point. Being a teacher for two years will be a good exercise regardless of whether or not I will be a school teacher later on. I already feel more comfortable expounding on topics in front of groups and teaching physics certainly forces me to think about my organization of topics.

I was going to upload pictures, but I could feel the voltage potential difference between the computer and my hand when I plugged the flashdrive into the computer. I freaked out a little bit and removed the flashdrive quickly. Maybe you will be fortunate enough to get pictures at a later date.

Site Placement

2009-01-08T17:55:00.000+03:00

I am currently in Nairobi, Kenya. Staying at a lovely hostel. It is unlike any hostel I have ever imagined. It's really a jolly good hotel. Tea 4 times a day. This is the site that Peace Corps is putting us, the volunteers (today we were sworn in), and our supervisors. I met my supervisor yesterday morning and found out that I will be 5 km outside of a town called Maua, which in Kiswahili means "flower." The town is located between a national game reserve and Mount Kenya. Very beautiful sounding, and it also sounds like it is the coldest place in Kenya - the temperature is in the 70's every month of the year.

I am a secondary school teacher at a small school that was founded in 2004. The principal is the representative that came to meet me. My initial impression of him is that he is very hard working as he was responsible for the creation of the school. The story, as I have heard it, is that he was a career teacher who saw a need for a secondary school in the area. He talked to the chief, a former student of his, who was able to mobilize the community around the project and raise the initial building. From there the principal contacted former students of his that now work for the government and was able to get teachers and grants for a science building. The story is very inspiring, and I am excited to be a part of the community.

About half of the students board and the other half are day students. I will be living on campus in a house that was formerly occupied by the principal. I will write more about that once I see it. I have learned that I do not have an adequate intuition for connecting Kenyan descriptions with the real object yet. For instance, I could tell you that Loitokitok has a supermarket and you would think of Safeway. I have come to associate the term supermarket to mean "corner store" - a store that is big enough to walk into but maybe only 15 ft by 30 ft. I can tell you about the traffic jams in Nairobi, but you don't imagine a city the size of Seattle during rush hour, with only a few traffic lights and with no lines painted on the roads in many places. Imagine that 1/4 of the vehicles in this traffic jam are vans called "matatus," about the size of an aerostar with 12 people crammed inside. The music is blaring, some have TV's with music videos and the drivers are young and aggressive, picking up as many people as they can as quickly as they can to make some money. Remember, no lines on the roads, its amazing.

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for the school. I've heard that the road is paved and is decent condition the whole way. I'll be in a station wagon with 5 people, three of whom are trainees meaning that we have 3 big pieces of luggage each. It will be a great opportunity to get to know more about my supervisor and become closer to the other two trainees that will be within 70 km of me. I just realized that I have been using trainee, as I mentioned before we are now real live volunteers. My principal was actually taught by a Peace Corps volunteer back in 1971 -2 while he was a secondary school student. He told me about what an impact the volunteer made on his life and career path.

An aspect of the school that I particularly appreciate is that students are allowed to attend the school term even if they are not able to come up with all of the school fees. This cost is offset by raising the school fees for those who can afford it. It isn't perfect, but I think that it is a much better system than 99 percent of Kenyan school where students are sent home and not allowed to return if they cannot afford the fees. A consequence of this system is that the school is very tight monetarily, and there are not enough teachers. In forms 2 - 4 each class has close to 65 students.

It will be a new and thrilling experience living in such close quarters to so many students. It will be important to set up strict boundaries initially, but I am thrilled by the prospect of having a form 4 student tutor me in Kiswahili, playing football afterschool, and teaching the students about baking their own bread.