And my Kenyan adventure begins...

On Monday, June 4th I flew into Philadelphia for staging. There, I met the 30 other men and women headed down to Kenya for Peace Corps service. 29 of them are embarking on their first service, while one other volunteer, Dave, joins me in transferring from service in Mali.

After a day of orientation, we took a bus up to New York City and flew out of JFK Airport Tuesday evening. After transferring in Zurich, we arrived at the Nairobi airport the evening of Wednesday, June 6th.

Right from the start, I could tell that this would be a completely different experience. For one, Nairobi is very developed. Skyscrapers line the streets downtown, and amongst many large office and retail buildings are several full-scale malls! The roads are just as crowded and cumbersome as those in Bamako. But instead of cheap motorcycles and ragged bush-taxis, cars and newer, relatively spacious mini-buses fill the streets.

We stayed at a hostel just outside of Nairobi until Saturday morning. There, we attended several general classes and began our Kiswahili language training. The training facility was fully equipped with electricity and plumbing, and we each even had our own rooms with full bathrooms!

It didn’t take long for our first African wildlife sighting! Pictured above are a couple of giraffes seen feeding on the side of the road from our bus as we traveled from Nairobi to Loitokitok.

Saturday, we took a couple of buses five hours south to the town of Loitokitok in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, where we will spend the duration of our training. The bus ride took us through scenic rolling hills and plains, flanked by small mountains. The land was rather sparsely vegetated, with bushes, grasses, and spindly trees. It was beautiful, and we even got our first sightings of African wildlife! We saw giraffes, zebras, and antelope feeding right along the road.

We stayed overnight at the Outward Bound training facility. The facility has dorm rooms, a cafeteria, and bathrooms with full electricity and plumbing. It is a beautiful facility set on a forested foothill of Mount Kilimanjaro. The buildings are wooden with high-pitched Scandinavian-inspired roofs. Here, we actually saw a pack of larger monkeys swinging from trees in the distance.

On clear mornings, we are greeted by this stunning sight of Mount Kilimanjaro while walking downtown for class from our homestay sites.

On Sunday, we moved in with our homestay families. As was the case with my training in Mali, we are each staying with a local family in order to practice the local language and learn about the culture. I am staying with a family of four; my host-father John, my host-mother Jen, my 15 year-old host-brother James, and my 10 year-old host-sister Susan. John and Jen have two other children, but both are older and have moved away.

They are a Christian family, although the men practice Catholicism while the women practice Protestantism. John, James, and Susan speak flawless English, while Jen can only speak a little. But amongst themselves, they always speak Kiswahili, the second official language of Kenya and the primary language of local communication.

My host family’s house main house. The living room, my host-parent’s rooms, my room, the bathing room, and the indoor kitchen are within. To the right of the house is their detached kitchen, where most of the cooking is done with firewood. In the foreground is the wash area.

On Monday, we began our regular training schedule, attending a variety of classes from 8AM until 5PM, then returning home to our homestay families. I usually spend the night chatting and watching television with the family, studying Kiswahili, and helping my ‘mama’ Jen cook.

This experience is completely different the second time around. Making it especially weird is that the culture and lifestyle is, at least in this part of Kenya, much, much closer to America than it is to Mali. This is not to say that Kenya is ‘developed’ or ‘western.’ There are striking differences between Kenya and America. The majority of the population lives in poverty, and there is a pressing need for development assistance. What I mean instead is that this experience has simply reinforced to me just how poor Mali is and how foreign, yet remarkably beautiful, Mali’s culture is.

My family’s house has electricity, television, and a water tap in the yard. The house is rather nice looking and is beautifully landscaped with flowers. The food has been great! My family, and most in the area, grows fresh avocados, bananas, lemons, oranges, and guavas, amongst other fruits and vegetables. I enjoy these daily.

The living room of my host-family’s house. It is a huge understatement to simply say that this is an upgrade from my living conditions in Mali.

I haven’t eaten one meal in this country that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. For my first meal with my host family, I was served ‘chapatti, dengu, na kuku’ (tasty fresh flat-breads, a very tasty vegetable sauce with lintels, and chicken). It was something I’d never get sick of. I’ve also been served a bean and rice dish with tomatos, onions, green peppers, carrots, and cabbage. The staple dish of ‘ugali’ is basically the ‘to’ I was used to in Mali, but instead of being made with millet it is made with corn. It was likewise rather flavorless, but the spinach, kale, and beef combination it was served with, as a substitute for the MSG-riddled leaf sauces in Mali, made it both nutritious and tasty.

As opposed to the communal style of living found in every aspect of Malian life, families in Kenya generally spend their time alone in their independent houses, which are all fenced off. Each night, after the kids come home from school and John from his masonry job, the family gathers around the television and eats the dinner after Jen has prepared it. How much more American does it get than that!

The climate here is much more temperate than Mali, which allows for families to grow a wide and rich variety of fruits and vegetables. It also permits them to accent their yards with decorative plants and flowers, another major contrast to the always brown surroundings of Mali.

And the most striking difference, just about everyone here speaks English! It is readily apparent that this country is much further along development-wise than Mali is. And education is a big part of it. I was able to have in-depth conversations and get to know my host-family thoroughly on Day 1, while in Mali I never got to that point during training because our only common language was the one I was struggling to learn at the time. Even if I had been able to speak French, the official language of Mali, only a handful of people in most villages can speak it.

Livestock pens in my family’s concession. They keep a milking cow, baby cow, and several goats and chickens.     

Much of my conversations with John, my host-father, involve differences between Kenyan and, not American culture, but Malian culture. He is genuinely intrigued and surprised by their rustic and communal lifestyle. Instead of me being the one surprised by living conditions poorer than those I am used to, it is John and the local host-country nationals I have come to help expressing those feelings.

Every yard in Loitokitok is fully fenced in, with a gate for an entrance. My host-family’s is no exception. The building pictured above is the ‘choo,’ or latrine. It may be covered, but I do still shit in a hole!

One thing that hasn’t changed, I still shit in a hole, although the latrine is covered from the elements.

Regarding training, the schedule and procedures here in Peace Corps Kenya vary greatly from those implemented by Peace Corps Mali. I believe that the differences have to do primarily with the stark difference in living conditions between the two countries.

While I transfered to Kenya as a water and sanitation volunteer, I am now technically a health education volunteer. I will likely be working alongside a local community health center once I get to my site. Peace Corps Kenya requested water and sanitation volunteers to help modify their health education program by adding water and sanitation training to their program. Therefore, my fellow transfer Dave and I also have an added role this time around; to help lead training in water and sanitation.

I have really enjoyed my time here thus far, and although at first it was difficult to begin learning another language (I keep speaking Bambara when meaning to speak Kiswahili), it feels good to have the experience of learning a new language again.

I am also pleased to be part of such a great, fun-loving group of Peace Corps trainees here. They have made the experience thus far very enjoyable and will no-doubt become some of my closest friends.

An Acacia tree, one of the most distinctive trees found in Kenya due to its flat top, sprawls out over a house in Loitokitok.  

Although the infrastructure here in Kenya is much more developed, it may actually be harder for me to check in regularly than in Mali. Whereas Peace Corps Mali had regional houses open to volunteers for work and internet, Peace Corps Kenya volunteers must rely on internet cafes which can often be slow and unreliable. But I will do my best to keep this blog going throughout my service.